Love is the Last

I don't have much to tell, really, that hasn't been said by other people already. I'm not well educated, which is probably the reason I found myself on foot with a rifle in the front lines in the first place. But I've sworn to tell the story, so if you'll excuse my lack of polish, here I go.

We were about a month in, and everyone in the squad was joking around a fire in one of the abandoned farmhouses, just back from the front line. He'd gone and blocked out the windows and then did a circuit outside to make sure there was no light to be seen. By that time, we had a brew going and stew on the boil.

Our officer was maybe just a couple of years older than me, almost straight out of the college, and the lads were often giving him a hard time about his good looks and soft skin. It was nothing inappropriate, mind, and he took it with grace. A lot of the guys were a lot older, see, drafted in from all walks of life.

One of them was maybe forty, gruff, big, didn't say too much, but everyone respected him. He was the kind that would just get stuff done, like being the one to check the blackout curtains when we came back to the farmhouse of a night, or walk the perimeter. So that night, when he came back in and sat down I wasn't expecting what happened next.

He went into his pocket and pulled out his eating knife, and a pair of red silk panties dropped out. Well, I can tell you that the room went silent. We all looked at each other, and then at him, and then at each other again, not knowing what to say.

Cool as you like, he picked them up off the ground, folded them up neatly and then put them back in his pocket. I was taken aback. Then he looked at us and explained they were his wife's, and that she had been wearing them when she kissed him goodbye. She'd taken them off as he left, and he'd kept them in his pocket ever since, so he always had a little part of her with him to remind him of the reason he was fighting. Then he helped himself to the stew and the conversation moved on. Not a word more was spoken about it.

We got posted into the thick of it a couple of weeks later, and I remember all the shit coming down one day, huddled up in a crater next to him. I told him that I didn't see how we were going to get out, and he just looked at me, pulled out the red silk panties and kissed them. He put them back in his pocket and just like that, he got up and went over the top.

We all followed. I honestly believe he saved the lot of us that day. After that, our sergeant said he should deploy the silk more often, as he called it. We all laughed; we were pretty giddy from the close escape. The red panties came out again and the sergeant said, if that's what you can do when you're holding them, what happens when you're wearing them? And no word of a lie, that's what he did. From that day to the last day, he ditched the army undies for the red silk.

He would rinse them out and hang them on the line. I can still see them now, blowing in the wind, red silk among the thick grey woollen army socks. We never touched them. Oh, we wouldn't dare. There was no temptation between heaven and hell that would convince us to disturb such fate.

So, each day, he would put on the red silk, buckle up his uniform and pull on his boots. Then we would go out on patrol. Each evening, we would make camp somewhere and count every last one of us safe and sound at the end of the day.

We saw terrible things, oh yes. We were caught in awful positions and saw other squads completely wiped out even as we got out untouched. It was the power, you see. It was the universe telling us in the middle of all the shit that there was still such a thing as love. He led the charge and I swear the bullets would go around him as he strode up the hillside to face the enemy, because not a single bullet would dare to change the story.

After a while, the story spread and honestly, we were glad of it. People laughed, but in a good way. The man wearing his wife's underwear, taking fire and walking out unscathed. People started to talk about it, a legend began to take shape and in a strange way, it gave us all hope that in the middle of all that hatred there was still love, and it lifted us.

Now, what happened well, of course it happened. The truth of it is this: we were devastated after it happened, and I tried to make sense of it, but I couldn't, and we were all very low. We buried him next to the house, arranged him and dressed him as best we could. We marked the spot, and he lies there even now, I like to think safe at last, still wearing the red silk so that his wife was with him, we said to each other.

Then our sergeant spoke up. I'm so glad he did, because what he said made sense, and it helped me a lot. He said the panties had done their job. They had brought us safe through it all and because of them, we were all the rest of us going home. I asked the sergeant why they hadn't saved him though, and the answer was this. He sat down and explained it.

The sergeant said that if he had gone home to his wife, given her back her underwear, they would have laughed about it and after a while the tale would have faded, all just one man's nonsense to trot out at Christmas after too much to drink. It would eventually have been dismissed as chance, or something else, and I saw the reasoning of it. The sergeant said that it happened the way it did so that the story would never die. That years from now, the tale would be told of how love was the shield against our bitterest trials, and of how we overcame them.

Instead of being dismissed and forgotten in time, the story of his love for his wife and the things he did because of the strength of his love for her would go on forever. People would hear about it and understand how love was more powerful than all the bullets they sent against us.

But I'm getting away from myself. I was supposed to be relaying the facts. Let me just say what happened on that day.

We got up early, and it was cloudless blue in the sky, such a beautiful day. The tide of the war was turning, and we had a spring in our step, that's for sure. He was up the front as usual, with us all behind, like nothing could touch him, and we all believed it.

When the fire came in, he was first in line. They let loose with mortars and it was just awful. But they'd seen him coming along the track and they went too early, not waiting to get all of us in the ambush point. We scrambled like hell, finding cover and began to return fire like demons. They were no match, and we finished them off, and were glad of it.

When at last the smoke cleared, we found him there, just there on the rise. His uniform was ripped and he was broken up, but I knew it was him. He was lying face down and I could see the red silk showing through his trousers. I scrambled up the bank, turned him over, but, well, it was all over and he knew it. He asked me if I would find his wife and tell her the story. I asked how on earth I would find her in all this war and he said that I should tell the story wherever I go. Tell it to everyone, he said, and eventually I would tell it to her.

Then he went. I have thought about it a lot, because sometimes all you can do is think. I've seen it happen many times now and while each time it's different it's also the same. Eventually, the breath goes, then the heart goes and then all you can see is what is left in their eyes. The last thing to go is love.

I don't know if that helps you, but at least now I feel I have done my duty. I have carried out my promise to him, to let you know he was thinking of you when he got to the end. I am far from an expert on these things. I haven't had the education that some others have received. I am not a scholar, but if you'll permit me, I'll say this.

I believe the magnificence of life is in the way that it ends, like his did, thinking of love at the last.

I believe love is the last thing.

I believe that's because it is the only thing we are able to take with us when we go.