Their Guns Fired Bullets

They had marched for months now. It was coming up on a year with only letters from home padding the inside of their jackets. Protecting them against the elements. The crushing of leaves had created a rhythm matching their hearts, starting the day rapidly only to slow as it wore on. Each man wore two pairs of socks to prevent blisters. A soldier was only as good as the strength in his feet.

The rain had helped their uniforms become a muddy tint of brown. They could never get them completely clean when they undressed and scrubbed at the remnants of the day. Most of the streams they washed in had become full of sediment as recent landslides found new residence there. Reflections were no longer visible in the water. The men hadn't seen themselves for months. They probably wouldn't have recognized their own faces.

The jagged-faced infantry wore smiles not unlike domestic abuse victims wear turtlenecks to hide bruises. The men talked strategy and logistics. Their past was never mentioned. It was all about the task at hand. The present was all they concerned themselves with.

Onlookers took pictures. Thousands would come out to see them march. It was a spectacle, this recreation of the past, and I was part of it. I was assigned to follow them and document their practices. I watched them from a distance photographing their battles and training. No part of the past months had gone undocumented. It had become weird to see the world outside of my lens. I had become used to the slightly obscured view accompanied by constant shutter closings, blocking out everything and leaving me blind for a split second.

Everything was real. Their uniforms, intensity, and blisters were all real. They had endured the marches. They had fought in battles. They had left a trail of dead in their wake. It was all real, to them. Their guns fired bullets. Their death was imminent.

They were soldiers.

It was only from the outside that one knew the truth about these men. That they were the equivalent of actors, and each leaf-covered trail and gunpowder-stained battlefield was their stage.

They had generals. There was a whole chain of command, and no one ever broke rank. Teachers gave orders to congressmen. It was beautiful. Well at least from the outside.

To them it was war. It was life or death, and one mistake could compromise everything they had marched for. It could be over just like that, and they would be forced to return to their real lives. Bankers would be forced to trade in their uniforms for suits. Teachers would turn in their guns for a few sticks of chalk. Death meant facing reality, and none of these men seemed to want that. They all liked their new lives better.

None of them had kept their actual names. Not even the German ones. They all assumed a new persona completely separate from the man they used to be and were doomed to become again. All of them had new histories. They all had new wives and mothers. The letters they received from their old homes seemed to be from strangers.

They never wrote back.

The men didn't love the Nazis for their beliefs, but for their military prowess. They were impressed by the strength Nazi soldiers had showed in battle, and this is why they had enlisted to march wearing the uniform of an SS soldier. A replica, of course. One man told me, “If any country can take on the world and almost win, then it's up to us to recreate how they did it. We have to honor accomplishments like that. It seems dumb to just let something so important in our history die.”

In every picture I've developed, however, the swastika on each of their uniforms burns white against the multicolored backdrop. A symbol so powerful seemed like it could use some mud covering it. Or at least that's how it felt from the outside. Sometimes I felt like covering them all up, every white swastika, while they slept, but I wasn't to interfere. I had to let them carry out what they had come here to do.

The death of Hans Frick occurred two months into the men's tour. I use his German name because he would have appreciated that. I sat down with him after his death on the battlefield, and he told me his German name was the same as a Nazi war criminal. The man he had named himself after was the only executed man to express repentance at the Nuremburg Trials. Hans, the more recently killed Hans, that is, said he took the name because he didn't want people to think he was actually a Nazi. He wanted to completely separate himself from what the men who wore the same uniform before him had done. He stated many times his deepest sympathies for what went on during the war. “To me, it's all about the history and preserving it. We're all peaceful men with morals here,” he told me during our last conversation. “All we want is to see what the life of a German soldier was like.” I failed to remind him of a German soldier's duty to strip himself of all humanity. I thought coping with his recent death was enough suffering for one day.

After nine months, the battles had become sluggish. As much as these men wanted to be, they were not soldiers. Their guns had become too heavy, and a lack of sufficient nutrition left them enervated. On one particular day, I found a perch well above the battlefield to photograph from. I shot pictures of men as they fell. My camera began to feel like a rifle.

The men retreated early into that day, and morale was low in camp. One man was considering leaving early, an interesting mix of desertion and suicide.

They marched for two months after that. America had become their own Eastern Europe, and it was almost time for this battalion's last stand. This march did have an end date as the men tried to be as historically accurate as possible. They were reaching the battle where the particular group they were honoring, I mean re-enacting, met its end. All the faces in camp began to look like those of men about to face a death squad. Perhaps, for the first time in months, the real world was finally invading these men's minds.

The last campsite we had was a half-mile away from the battlefield where these men would be forced to surrender the next day. They unpacked something that had been hidden away for the entire journey. It signified the end of the road. The death of all their new lives and their rebirth into the habitual.

They had the white flag with them all along. It was prepared before they even began to march. Their fate had been pre-determined as their current lives were simply reflections of past ones already expired. As we walked through the morning mist towards the last battle, I began to wonder what exactly these men were learning.

Before their last stand began, I found another perfect perch. The men looked even smaller below me that day. They didn't look like men until I looked through my lens. I saw them preparing. I looked at the other side, the side honoring the British. Those men looked excited. And soon enough, both sides began to charge and find cover. No shots had been fired. One man rose up from the German side to get at least one kill before his group was inevitably overrun. He must have missed because every British soldier remained standing after his bold attack. Then, as a spark ignites a flame, the history became real. Caught in confusion, protest, or some sort of demented prank, reality had entered the chambers of each man's gun well before they had stepped onto the battlefield. The exposed German fell to the ground. The damp grass below the fallen soldier began to soak up something. I zoomed in on the man. A red streak was beginning to form down the front of his uniform. His face was pale, and I saw the life attempting to free itself from his body. It escaped out of two searing holes. An entry and exit wound.

Their guns fired bullets.

Both sides held up their hands. A truce. Each man came out from hiding to witness what they had only pretended to know. None of these men had ever seen the real cost of war. I scanned over the crowd through the lens. It would have been impossible to tell the two sides apart if it were not for the unmistakable white swastikas which helped to identify each German impersonator. I didn't take any pictures. My lens came to rest on one German who hadn't lowered his weapon.

I zoomed.

I could see his eyes consumed by anger. His own searing hole aimed in the enemy's direction. The British soldiers had begun to walk towards the bleeding man. I kept my lens fixed on the armed soldier.

Then, another spark.

He fired.

I pulled back from the lens. A dot fell below me. This led to rapid movements and then another dot ceasing to move. Falling.

Then another.

Soon these dots came to abrupt halts in multiples of twos, threes, and fours. I didn't take a picture. I couldn't bring the camera to my eye. The perspective on the mountaintop was all I could subject myself to. Soon there were only a few dots moving, and a faint glint of white rose up from the right side. The German side. I held the camera out and took a picture of the scene without looking through the lens. A slight calm tried to take control of my senses. It passed quickly.

I couldn't bring myself to face what had happened below me, but I knew it was important to bring it with me. I knew I had a duty to at least do that. I closed my eyes and held the camera out allowing it to take a few more pictures. I never saw them after they were developed. Not even the negatives. Such terrible history was never meant to be repeated.

Tom Noonan is a freshman at Princeton University where he plans on studying English and plays for the school's basketball team. This is his first published work, but he has been writing short fiction constantly for almost a year. He is honored to be part of Sleet Magazine's Spring 2011 edition.