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November 25, 1942
by Ernest Hemingway
We were coming over the ridge, and the sun was rising like a
drunk girl wandering the streets of Paris. I couldn't see the
Germans, I knew they were out there. I didn't care too much, since
Patty had sent me that letter and that guy had finally married her.
I was thinking about throwing the letter over the trench line,
watching it take some hits, get buried in the mud and blood, and then
Sarge yelled out, "Incoming!"
We all hit the deck, and heard a roaring rustle, a grotesque
squacking, then a sickening thud. It was in the trench with us; when
we were done with prayers to God and Yahweh, we looked at it,
clucking over Lieutenant Klowski's feet. It was a bird, a huge bird,
and Sandy Johnson was screaming something about the date or the
month. We weren't listening, he had always been sort of womanish.
That was when Sarge looked at his watch, the one his wife had
bought him for Christmas in 1939, right after the Poles had folded
like a deck of cards before the advancing Hun. He looked up at the
daylight, a profile like America had walked into the Black Forest and
settled Mount Rushmore into our patch of mud, and then he said,
"Happy Thanksgiving, boys."
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(Thanks to Jeffrey Anbinder and Kate McCann)
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