The last time I had the dream was on the night before I flew out to see Lanny MacPherson. Poor bastard had been suffering through pancreatic cancer for months on end. Things were going badly, and his wife prompted me to come visit and say my goodbyes.

The dream always starts the same way. The sound of footsteps in the snow. Silence. Then singing. Sweet, perfect tones from a young voice that will never age.

Then the question comes. “Was it you?”

Sometimes it’s accusatory. Other times it’s pleading, forlorn. But it’s always the same question.

“Was it you, sarge?”

And that’s when I wake from the dream, trembling and disoriented. Are they even dreams? I don’t know. A few times I’ve seen him standing there, looking at me, even after I wake. Once in a while I can even smell the forest for minutes afterward; the scorched evergreens, the smoke. The death.

* * *

I was staring out of the small window at the snow-covered tarmac when a youngish man dropped himself into the seat next to me and began pulling tablets and pens from a nylon sack with “NEW YORK TIMES” embroidered on it. He looked a bit too casual and rough around the edges to be a businessman. I pegged him for a writer.

“Hopefully it will be warmer in Charlotte,” he said without looking up from his rustlings.

“I’m only connecting there,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Where are you off to?”

“Philadelphia.”

“Family there? Grandkids?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just an old war buddy.”

That’s more words than I usually exchange with strangers these days, but it seemed to get the young man’s attention. He shifted in his seat towards me.

“No kidding. Where did you serve?”

Maybe it was the after-effects of the previous night’s dream, and the resulting lack of sleep. It also could have been the whiskey and ginger I drank once I boarded the plane, the liquids doing their little fluid dance in my empty stomach. Whatever it was, my guard was down, and I uncharacteristically let myself get involved in the small-talk.

“I didn’t serve with him for long. He and another buddy of mine spent some time together in France and Belgium in the winter of ’44. Just four guys in a foxhole.”

“But you just said you had two buddies there.”

“Did I? Yeah. Well. Didn’t know the other fella all that long. You sure do ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I’m a writer. I ask questions. That’s what I do.”

I smiled and nodded towards his bag. “That’s alright. I figured as much.”

“So you would have been in the Battle of the Bulge, then,” he said more as a statement than a question. “Man, that must have been pretty exciting.”

I chuckled. “Exciting? Not where I was. Mitchell and Lanny—my buddies—and I were along a quiet part of the Ardennes Forest. We sat in freezing foxholes for days on end, with light German infantry no more than two hundred yards away through the dense woods.”

By this time the young man had pulled out a notebook and a chewed-up pen and was scribbling furiously.

“So you just sat there?”

“Pretty much, that’s all we did. Once in a while there would be a firefight during the daytime, and we’d get shelled fairly often. That was hell. And sometimes at night we would exchange a few shots.”

“Wow,” he said, still scribbling.

“I was a company sergeant, so my job was mostly just taking in all the replacements and getting them ready to go up into the real action.”

“Replacements?”

“Yeah, the new kids. The green ones. Boys right from basic training. They always got to us loaded with equipment they didn’t need, so we’d strip them down to the basics and tell them what they really needed to know. We’d take their extra pouches and packs, their shovels, parts of their mess kits, their overcoats—”

“Wait, you took their coats away? In wintertime?”

“We only took their overcoats away. They still had field jackets and sweaters. Look, none of us who’d been on the line had overcoats,” I said, emphasizing my point with a finger. “The paratroops didn’t have overcoats. The only people who had long coats were the Germans. If you wore a long coat, you had a pretty good chance of getting yourself shot at.”

The writer fellow made special note of this.

“A lot of those stupid kids, though, kept them anyway. Stored them in their sacks and used them as blankets.”

“Did some men wear them anyway?”

“Hell no!” I said. “I’d read any of my boys the riot act if I ever saw them wearing the damn things.”

I paused.

“There was this one kid, though,” I said quietly. “Skinny kid from Texas. Always cold and shaking like a leaf. He just loved his coat and wouldn’t give the thing up. Wrapped himself in it every night. He was the fourth one in the hole with Lanny and Mitchell and me.”

“What was his name?”

“Don’t remember his name. We just called him Pitchpipe. He wasn’t much of a soldier, but he was a happy kid, and boy could he sing. He’d sing all day long. On patrol, at mess time. Beautiful songs. He kept a smile on a lot of tired faces for the few days he was with us.”

The writer put his pen down. “Is that who you’re going to see?”

“No,” I said. “I’m going to see Lanny.”

“And what became of Mitchell?” he asked, picking up his pen once again.

“Dead. Killed himself in the early seventies. He suffered from horrible nightmares and paranoia for most of his life.”

“And this Pitchpipe kid?”

I quickly changed the subject to some other silly war story, and before long, we were on the ground in Charlotte.

“Look, Mister…”

“Just call me Ben,” I said, extending my hand.

“Okay, Ben. Do you mind if I get in touch with you? I think I have the makings of a great story here and I’d love to talk some more about it.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Give me your address and when the time comes, I’ll tell you everything about that winter in the forest. Everything. You may not even believe it, but it’ll be the truth.”

The writer fellow pulled out a business card and wrote his home address on the back.

* * *

I stepped into the cold VA hospital room and lowered myself into the chair next to the bed where Lanny was sleeping. I grabbed the remote off of the tray table and turned down the droning voice of a CNN talking head on the TV.

Lanny stirred.

“Hey there,” I said, trying to smile. He didn’t look good at all, and I knew it would likely be the last time I’d ever talk to him.

“Pitchpipe,” Lanny squeaked. “Pitchpipe sang to me last night, Ben.”

“That’s just the morphine drip. Vivid dreams.”

“No. No, he was here. He sat right there in that chair and he sang to me.”

“Lanny, he’s been dead for 65 years.”

“Jesus, has it really been that long?”

“Feels like a thousand.”

Lanny chuckled, then coughed. He took a deep breath through the oxygen feed in his nose and turned his yellow eyes to me.

“Did we really do that to him? I mean, I know what we did. But the dreams. They feel so real.”

I looked down into my folded hands. “I don’t know. We were just kids then, really.”

“Kids forget their nightmares. You and I have never forgotten.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“Does he still sing to you?” Lanny asked. I was still looking away but I could feel his gaze fixed on me. “Does Pitchpipe still sing to you in the night? I bet he does.”

My throat tightened. I’d come to say goodbye to my dying friend, not be reminded of shared tragedy and years of sleepless nights. Though I suppose I knew in my heart that it would come up in what was essentially a deathbed conversation.

“How about some morphine?” I asked, and pushed the button on the pump without waiting for a response. Lanny’s eyes began to flutter and his pursed lips relaxed.

“You won’t tell anyone after I’m gone, will you Ben? We promised. We swore we’d never tell anyone.”

“I won’t tell a soul,” I lied.

“Good,” Lanny said weakly as he began drifting back into his narcotic haze.

I didn’t know how else to say goodbye without actually saying goodbye. I just patted him on the leg. “Well, I’ll be seeing you,” I said, and left the room.

I got no more than ten steps down the hallway when I heard singing from Lanny’s room.

“Who knows if we shall meet again,” Lanny sang, weakly. “But when the morning chimes ring sweet again, I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places…”

I shuddered, and quickened my pace towards the exit.

* * *

The following morning I got a phone call at my hotel. Lanny had passed during the night.

In a way, I was happy for him. No more pain. And no more dreams. He was lucky in that sense.

I found myself hoping that there would be no more dreams. Two of the three of us were gone, now. And God only knows how many more years I’ll be around. Once Mitchell died, the dreams continued for me and for Lanny. All we could think of was that Mitchell didn’t do it. It must have been either Lanny or me. And now that Lanny was dead, maybe I’d be off the hook.

Maybe.

It didn’t matter now, I thought to myself. Maybe talking about it after all these years would do something. It had felt almost comforting to tell part of the story on the plane. Telling the rest of the story would not be anything resembling penance, that was for sure. But I wrote the letter anyway. I spent the entire day writing out the events of that December night, and mailed it off to the young writer.

I went to sleep comfortably, hoping that it was finally all behind me.

* * *

I had the dream again that night.

It was different than all of the other nights, though. Vivid. Like I was reliving the memory.

Mitchell and I were curled up together in the deep foxhole to keep our body heat while Lanny stayed awake as sentry. There were some breaks in the snow-clouds that night, casting a ghostly sort of blue glow over the complete whiteness of the forest.

Lanny kicked me while raising his carbine and pointing it out into the treeline. I grabbed my rifle as well and pulled Mitchell up with me. A shadowed figure in a long coat approached our hole from maybe fifty yards away.

I don’t know who fired first. We were all exhausted and twitchy. But one shot rang out, and then another. In the span of a few seconds, all three of us had fired at the figure, who had since fallen to the ground.

We must have inadvertently started a firefight, because shots started coming at us from the German line. Other men in the holes near us returned fire into the darkness.

Before long, a few shells burst overhead, splintering the trees and lighting up the forest like daylight before raining snow and burned wood shards onto us from above.

And then it was over. The shots ended, and the dark forest returned to quiet.

“Pitchpipe,” said Mitchell. “Where is he, sarge?”

I realized he hadn’t been in the hole with us the entire time. Lanny leapt from the hole and ran out into the snow.

“Lanny, what are you doing?” I called after him, as quietly as I could. But I knew exactly what he was doing. And it froze me to the core.

Lanny came back to the hole, dragging a body with him. Pitchpipe was glassy-eyed and white, wheezing through his own blood in his nose and mouth. The front of his long overcoat was soaked in red.

“Jesus, kid,” Lanny said in a crying panic. “I thought you were a kraut.”

“Just…,” Pitchpipe squeaked, “went… to take… a leak.”

“MEDIC!” I shouted down the line. “We need a medic down here!”

“You’ll be ok,” Lanny kept saying. “You’ll be ok. I didn’t see you leave the hole, kid. I must have fallen asleep. You’ll be ok.”

I knew there was no way he would last more than another couple of minutes. “I told you not to wear than damn overcoat, private,” I said to him with a forced smile, in a poor attempt at some modicum of comfort for the dying boy.

Pitchpipe’s wheezing became more shallow, and his eyes searched ours. He couldn’t speak any longer, but I think we all knew what he was trying to ask: Why?

A company medic finally ducked his way to our hole, but by that time Pitchpipe had slipped away.

“Looks like they got him pretty good,” he said, coldly. “I’ll get him tagged and sent to the rear.” He waved in another medic with a stretcher, and just like that, they were gone.

We were in shock.

I had no words. Lanny just kept muttering to himself. And Mitchell was huddled at the bottom of the hole.

“We killed him,” he said at length. “We killed that poor fucking kid.”

“Maybe we didn’t,” I said. “The Germans opened fire too.”

“Mitchell’s right. We did kill him. He was coming towards us and he was shot through the front.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

“Which one of us hit him, do you think?” Lanny asked.

“Does it matter?” said Mitchell. “He’s dead. Doesn’t matter whose bullet it was. We all killed him.”

By the time dawn arrived, we’d decided we’d keep it to ourselves. We didn’t have much of a choice, really. The kid deserved to die as a hero killed in action, not the victim of a reckless accident; a thought that we would use to assuage our collective guilt for a long time to come.

And then the dream was seemingly over.

I woke in my hotel room in the middle of the night. For the first time, I didn’t wake in a panic or a sweat. I merely felt the hollow, crushing weight of that night.

Then I heard the voice.

“Hey sarge,” it said, breezily.

I looked in the direction of the voice. Through the darkness I could make out a thin figure in a long coat.

He began singing.

“And when the night is new, I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you…”

He finished the song.

Silence.

“Was it you, sarge?”