Almost twenty years since the war hundreds of miles away, life alienated me from my Squad. People I got to know under the most unfortunate circumstances have become close as brothers in one period of my life, but over the years bonds dissolved into distant memories. Outsider, without many friends and acquaintances in the city, and by the whim of luck, drafted into service for the fast pacing oncoming war and put in charge of a squad of unwilling soldiers. From all the improbable places to make friendships, it happened to be the best one. Sharing troubles made a perfect base for it.

War brought out the best and the worst of the people, as much of them as of me. There are some things that I would like to forget if I could and then again there are some memories I am fond of. Still, these guys were mine in one period of the time, I cared about them back then and somehow liked to know what happened to them afterward. Occasional phonecall, or a chance meeting with someone, or some information found on the internet, let me believe that I knew what was going on.

But it was a mistake. Actually, I had no idea what happened to them, and how they lived. One morning, a phone call came that made these illusions fade away. The voice from the other sounded vaguely familiar, not as cheerful as it used to be.

“Hey old friend, what’s up?”

“I have no good news.”

“What’s the matter?”

“C. your second in command, committed suicide.”

C. was a decent man. Calm, capable and nice, he had a way with the people. That was one of the reasons why I made him my deputy. It wasn’t anything official, for I had no authority to make it official, but we made it be that way, unofficially, and it was even better. No one ever challenged his authority and his sense of justice. He was a stone, a pillar upon which I built our squad. We trusted that man with our life. What made him make such a desperate move?

“Oh, shit. When, how, why?”

“Monday morning, hanged himself, no one knows why. Just thought that you may wanna know about it.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Yeah, I know. Stay well, don’t be a stranger. Find a time to visit us, while there is us.”

“I will. I promise.”

Just another empty promise, like a many I made lately. There would never be a time to spare and I knew it. For C. it was already too late. But it made me think about it.

I was a shitty officer, cutting corners and neglecting duties. The only thing I cared about was to keep them out of the harm’s way. All I ever wanted in this stupid war is to get me and my men back home alive and well. And I went over and above the line of duty in doing so. Happily and unexpectedly we all came back home.  That was the one decent thing I did in a life, or so I thought.

But apparently, war is such an effective destroyer, that you never could tell for certain. There is some small piece in each of us that died out there. Some innocence that never came back home. For someone, it is just a tiny piece, for someone bigger, and for someone, when it died it didn’t leave enough to last. Maybe it is so, for the best among us.