The war had started.

Not in the metaphorical sense, not the "inner war" that so many writers expound upon--that had started a long time ago and had no end in sight. Actual war, the kind that involved mines and guns and grenades and real, live death.

Isaac was ready. Isaac kept current on all available news concerning the war, the war which governments and politicians all over the world were labeling "World War II". Oh yes, I'd known it was going on--everybody did by now--and I knew that the military was recruiting. But if I'd known Isaac was so keen on the war I would have tuned in more when they broadcasted on radio and printed in the newspaper. On those mediums, even with the sounds and the images, it remained nothing more to me than a dull book that was trying rather too hard. Like a chess game, almost, and I'd put an insignificant wager on white.

But then Isaac told me where he was planning on enrolling after he finished his senior year. And I finally opened my ears, and opened my eyes, and saw that he was going to be walking into Death itself--there seemed to be no way out of it, if that was where he was to be. With every explosion I heard on the air, with every corpse I noticed in the paper, I imagined Isaac there, his face grimy with engine grease and week-old sweat and blood like rust.

This guy was my friend. We found each other when we had nothing but the sun, the moon, and solitude. When his mother died I was who he came to first--not his father, not his girlfriend, me. I would give him anything--my car, my house, my life, freedom, love--but to give him death? To give him a death on foreign soil, with home but a distant and fading memory, with the last vestiges of his girlfriend's lips dying on his cheeks, with no man his friend and no man his rock?

It was beyond me.

I joined the navy with him. We received out uniforms together and boarded the same ship that would take us to the training camp, and then to Europe--to death. But I would face his death with him, as he would face my death with me, for our bond runs deeper than that of blood brothers, and where we go, we go together, in stride, step by step.

One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, pivot, and march!