I am no stranger to death, sad to say. Mostly the fast kind, at the end of a bullet or a mortar shell, but I’ve seen the slow kind often enough, as infection and wound fever takes its toll. Often enough, the dying saw things that weren’t there. Sometimes it was the enemy, coming for them. Usually it was their mothers. Once or twice, something more dramatic. There was no rhyme or reason to it, not really. The most fanciful soldier I ever served beside was coldly lucid until kan heart stopped, and Sergeant Melisa, who had less imagination than a sheep, took two days to die and raved about angels
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