War Story

by Brett Rutherford

Warned not to pay mind

to the old man

in the wheelchair

when his eyes went funny,

I listened anyway.

"Hungry?" he said.

"I'm never hungry

the way I was

when we got lost

on the Eastern Front.

"Russians swept in,

we, after. We chewed

on roots and leaves

as we hid in the forest.

We watched a house,

a one-room hovel,

as puffs of smoke

went up, then died.

"Gunshots we heard

in the dark,

and when we looked

at sunrise, the door

to the place was open.

Two bodies lay side

by side in the dirt.

"We waited. We waited.

So famished we almost

crawled, at last we dared

go to the farmhouse.

"That smell. A pot —

steam rose from it

when we lifted the lid.

'Soup,' I shouted,

'My God! It's soup!

Cabbage and potatoes,

onions and meat!'

"I put the ladle in.

I lifted up.

It was a human foot

at the bottom.

"Young man:

we ate it anyway."