The silence was sometimes heavier than the uniform itself.
As the vehicle rattled along the muddy track, the soldier gazed towards the horizon, where earth and sky seemed to merge into an endless gray.

He wasn’t looking at anything in particular.
Perhaps because everything around him was becoming increasingly similar:
the mud, the icy wind, the empty fields… and this weariness that wouldn’t even leave him in his sleep.

They had been marching for days.
The roar of the engines, the shouted commands, the distant echo of front-line fire…
all of it had long since become part of the familiar soundscape.
But in this brief moment, on the back of the truck, he heard only his own breath beneath his steel helmet.

On his belt he carried an ammunition box for the machine gun – cold as the metal that now defined his life.
He was the machine gun assistant.
A role that offered no honor, but demanded constant, silent, indispensable presence.

For a moment he thought of the letter he had never finished writing.
Every sentence seemed too dangerous, too final, too real.
Perhaps that was why he had placed it unfinished between the pages of a worn little notebook.

Around him, no one spoke a word.
Each soldier traveled in his own thoughts, on a front so vast and endless that one could disappear into it without leaving a trace.

The vehicle bounced slightly as it hit a pothole.
The soldier gripped his rifle tighter and looked again at the horizon.
He didn’t know what awaited them: a burned-down village, a Soviet counterattack, or simply another sleepless night.

But for a moment—just one—
he allowed himself to think of something other than the war.
Of a distant home.
Of a voice he barely remembered.
Of a time that seemed to belong to another life.

And the road stretched on, endlessly, just like the war.