Two soldiers in a black and grey battlefield scene on a

Your letter came on Tuesday, and Marta read it out at the table because my hands were full of flour. You want to know why I went quiet at the Whitsun fair when Herr Brandt asked me to tell the town council about the war. I have never told you properly, and I think I owe you the field below the bridge at Lorch, where the smoke lay so thick the hedges seemed to breathe.

I threw the stick grenade because the hedge ahead was full of rifle fire and one of my arms had already gone numb from the shoulder. I did not aim it. I just let go, the way you let go of a rope you no longer trust. It sailed over the rubble wall and I heard nothing from it, only the grass hissing. Behind me Kessler was crouched beside the boy from Fulda, who lay on his side with one boot off. Kessler kept looking at the boy's face as though it might tell him what to do next. I think he was waiting for it to say the thing was over.

The boy's name was Lothar. He had a paper bag of sugared almonds in his pocket, meant for a girl in Fulda whose name he never said aloud. Kessler carried them to her himself, two years later, when he came home on the train. He told me she did not open the bag in front of him.

I keep the wooden handle of that grenade on the shelf above the ovens. Marta asks why I have not thrown it out. I tell her it holds the back door open, and she laughs. It is not for the door.

Yours, Walter