What Time is it in Detroit?

You cut the right forefinger
Off your glove
To better curl around the trigger
Of your Garand.
Hopefully the action has not frozen.
You continue to blow your warm breath
On the receiver
But then you fear the vapor might freeze on the slide
And you’ve made things worse.

You fear your breath
Rising like steam
Will betray your position.
But if you can't see them
How can they see you?
They aren't supermen after all.

Just within the range of your rifle
A heavy mist has settled.
If they are coming
You won’t know until they’re too close.
Hopefully their equipment will clink
And give away their surprise.

You have to piss so bad it hurts
But if you try to go
That’s when they’ll come
So you hold it.

You don’t remember when you last ate
A warm meal
But what you really crave
Is a cigarette.
The glowing ash is too dangerous to risk
So you push that need away too.

You re nineteen years old.

The fog enhances sound
And you think you hear German voices
Out there.
And beyond the voices
You hear Panzers on the move.
Their engines roar and their treads clang.
To you they seem dragon-like
And you shudder involuntarily.

Shit.

Shit, shit.

The Sergeant hears them too.
He's an old man at twenty six.
He looks at you from his hole
Ten yards to your right.
He taps his helmet and shrugs.
You nod in response.
You both hear them.

It begins to snow.
You think of home
And the snows of Christmas past
Of sledding with your friends
Down Powel’s Hill.
You think you smell your mother’s cookies.

To your left
Freddie clears the action on his heavy .50
And you think any German out there
Surely heard that.

Shit.

Down the line
On both sides
You hear boys clicking bayonets
Onto their rifles.
You do the same.

Somebody out there
In the milky white
Coughed then laughed.

Too damn close.

Then you dimly see ghost forms
Clad in white camouflage
Break through the mist
Stepping slowly
And hunched over.

An instant before you hear
The first ferocious bursts
Jet past your left ear
You see the blazing yellow orange blossoms
From the muzzle of an automatic weapon.
The infamous Schmiesser.

Christmas Eve.

What time is it in Detroit?