Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images[With apologies to James Thurber, the Thurber estate, and anyone who has ever heard of James Thurber]
“Incoming!” shouted the Commander as another rifle-crack sounded, cleaving the late-summer night in two. “To your battle stations, men! Hold the wall! Raise the shields!” Boom, boom, boom, like fireworks splitting the July sky back home in North Carolina, Miss Debbie’s lemonade stand at the county fair, Cheerwine in a dusty pickup truck and watching for shooting stars, all the summer things he’d given up forever when he chose this path. Boom, boom, boom, and he forced the woods back home out of his mind and focused instead on manning his position, trying…
