Damp linoleum floors swallowed the sound of our passing steps, muting them as if we’d never walked through the nursing home hallway. Dad shortened his long strides to avoid outpacing the receptionist, who showed us the way to Eudora’s room. I scurried behind them both.
As You Were: The Military Review, Vol. 18. Spring 2023.
I met the Lieutenant at a diplomatic reception at our embassy. Carrying papers which issued weaponry to his nation’s military, I passed them to my contact – a pock-marked General whose eyes glittered when he seized them. Having done my duty as military attaché, I grabbed a drink and contemplated my exit.
Our Best War Stories: Prize-winning Poetry & Prose from the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards – October 12, 2020
Every day for the past year, I walked past the same man sitting on a park bench in Farragut Square rattling the meager change inside a Big Gulp cup. His pitch altered with the seasons: “’Help a man stay hy-drate-ed! Ain’t no summer like those in the District!”
“It’s cold again, folks! Freezing out here. Spare whatcha got before heading into those heated of-fi-ces!”
His bellowed appeals and resonant tenor echoed off both the historic, wrought iron and weathered stone buildings and the modern, glass and chrome edifices standing as sentinels around the Square. Most passers-by directed their eyes to some point far off in the distance. A few tossed dollar bills from their leather wallets before scurrying with their briefcases and totes into K Street offices. Even the statue of Admiral Farragut, the green, weathered bronze sculpture looming nearly thirty feet above the eponymous Square, seemed to divert his gaze at the squalor surrounding him.
We didn’t bring any mortuary equipment with us on my last deployment. Not enough, anyway. No one on the ship thought to include it. Then we discovered the bodies, one hundred and twenty-seven of them. Migrants whose boat capsized in rough sea on their way to Italy or Greece. We pulled them all out of the water and used whatever was available to label the remains – duct tape, engineering tags, even some red curling ribbon, the type used to decorate Christmas packages. The incident became infamous across the Navy, as all screw-ups do. But that was over two years ago. By the time I transferred to another command and started preparing for my second deployment, word had spread throughout the fleet, and that ship had enough bags and tags onboard to accommodate five cruise ships’ worth of human remains. This freed up our minds to focus on other preparations.
When the episode aired on its designated evening, Ellie realized the producers had changed her voice.
Confined with the television screen’s shiny black border, she watched her own figure, standing in front of the grey warship behind her, clad in her dark blue uniform overalls emblazoned with the gold stitching and insignia designating her as the ship’s Commanding Officer.
Her ship. Her face. Her name at the bottom of the screen.
Jillian Danback-McGhan | Writer 
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