drexcaliber
The summer parks; green grass; a picnic. There was a band playing somewhere, a movement of Rhapsody in Blue.
We had a band in the war. Three guys who hardly knew each other, hardly anything in common, but they were band because they knew music. Every night they'd play, after we put out the pitiful shelters we called "camp." They'd play soft tunes, so they wouldn't carry to the commander's sack, and we'd all hum along in our heads as the oblivion of exhaustion filled our minds.
Our helmets were still filled with the echo of gunfire, the smell of sulfur, the taste of metal. We'd look at each other across the firelight everynight, look at the man right in front of us, and we were scared. Scared because we were looking at a dead man, just waiting for the song to end. We were band, and we played our own song: Rhapsody in Red.
Rhapsody in Blood. That's the song we'd sing as we march.
Nobody noticed when the music stopped. Nobody'd noticed they were gone. I guess some guy in the back had seen their body's in a ditch.
Funny. We can't hear the music, but we just can't stop marching.