We looked at what had been done, which we had done; and we wondered. We wondered just what would happen next. The crimson banner of our party flew over a captured city, but myself and my fellow soldiers only wondered what all of this had been for.

I opened my rifle's bolt and set it down onto the pavement and I looked towards the heavens. Less then ten of my brothers died so that I might see that site, over smoke rising over a great, but fallen city; and two hundred of our enemy's soldiers had given their lives in vain defense of their dictator. Two-hundred-eight human beings lay dead so I might see sight of 'victory.'

I looked over and watched the prisoners we had taken digging the mass grave, and did so for well over thirty minutes, until their gray coated captor had them put their fallen comrades into the pit one by one. I watched later as the eight men whom I had called brother but had fallen received a much more dignified burial in graves dug by the same hands. What made our dead enemies different from our fallen comrades? Two hundred and eight sons and fathers had died; but yet only eight received the respect they deserved falling for causes that none of them understood.

Minutes later I witnessed the grave diggers go to join their comrades, and I was called upon to seal them there. What made them different? What made the Slavs unworthy of respect that they deserved? What made the Germans who met the same fate so much better that they received respect? In sixty years, that question has unanswered when I was a young man, and is a question that remains on this old mans lips to this day.