Outside, the front had been a single long howl for three days, engines, flares, the quick staccato of men dying, and only now, in the small pocket between orders, had Erich allowed himself to sit.
He held the tin cup with both hands as if the metal itself might steady him.
The coffee was scorched and black and terrible, but it burned a way through the frost of fatigue and warmed his palms.
A cigarette hung from his mouth like a made-up prop; he did not feel the habit so much as the shape of it, the way ritual sometimes steadied a soldier more surely than prayer.
He understood after his foray in Spain why there were literal paintings of his grandfather smoking, despite never seeing the man do it himself.
At this point Erich had been awake for seventy-two hours.
He had not thought of sleep in any practical way for longer than that.
The men around him moved like ghosts, doing what needed doing.
