I trailed behind him in the darkness, the camp falling quiet around us as the other soldiers turned in for the night. “Bert,” I whispered, catching a hand full of his shirt before he started past the mess tent. I yanked on the fabric but he shrugged me off. “This is stupid,” I muttered, but he wasn’t listening to me. “We’re going to get caught—”
“We will if you don’t shut up,” he told me as he led the way through camp.
In the still night air, I heard the faint clank of metal on metal as we skirted around the flag pole that marked the center of the encampment. Then we passed the medical tent, the showers, the nurse’s station. The USO tents were on the outskirts of camp, close enough to the medical tent that they wouldn’t be hit in an attack. There was something almost magical about the r
