Stacked like cordwood, waiting to be fed into a fire, frozen and stiff, legs sticking out from under a grimey canvas tarp, ten pairs of shoes were smeared with blood and mud. Twenty shoes were laced and tied that morning as their owners awoke from a cold restless sleep, preparing to resume the combat that would end them up together that evening. It was a rag-tag collection of footware in varying states of condition, a couple of pairs of military issue combat boots, laced tightly and double knotted around the ankle, one set of shoes torn in random patterns by the shrapnel that had shredded it’s owners legs, strips of brown leather dyed a deeper darker shade by the dried blood of its owner.
These shoes, waiting for their ultimate disposition as the battle either ebbs or moves on, to be disposed of by whoever ends up ontrolling the ground on which they rest.
As the cold deepens and the howling wind intensifies these shoes stand as silent sentinels to the madness, the deviance in human nature that set their owners against each other in battle, opponents in life their owners are united in, death, united as in a pile of cordwood.
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