The truck smelled like beans. It always smelled like beans.

I drove for six hours on a road that wasn't a road. The sand got in everything. In my teeth, in my boots, in my bed. I didn't mind. The beans were heavier than I expected.

My name is Tom Reilly. I'm thirty-one years old. I was a dockworker in Liverpool before the war. Now I drive a truck for the British Army in North Africa. I transport supplies. I take food from the depot to the front lines. I take wounded men from the front lines to the aid station. Sometimes in the other direction. Always the same road. Always the same sand.

The unit I was delivering to was an infantry company. Lieutenant in command. Young officer. Irish. I knew this because the delivery order said "O'Brien" and the men who came out to help me carry the crates had accents that sounded like home.

Not Liverpool home. Irish home.

The lieutenant's name was Conor O'Brien. He was twenty-four, red-haired, freckled, with a smile that made you think summer existed even in the middle of a desert. He came out to meet me himself.

"Thank you, mate," he said. "We've been waiting six hours for this."

I nodded. Six hours was nothing. I had waited twelve for a meal in Liverpool.

We carried the crates into the tent. O'Brien stayed to help. That's the kind of officer he was. He could have sent a private. He came himself.

"Where are you from, Reilly?" he asked.

"Liverpool."

"Small town?"

"I've seen smaller."

He laughed. It was a good laugh. The kind of laugh that makes you forget you're sitting in a tent in the middle of a desert about two hundred yards from where men are trying to kill each other.

"I'm from a small town in Ireland," he said. "You wouldn't find it on a map."

"I've seen smaller towns."

He laughed again.

I delivered food to O'Brien three times. First time: canned beans. Second time: cold sandwiches. Third time: coffee. He always said thank you. Always came out himself. Always had time to stand in the dirt and talk for five minutes about nothing.

That's the thing about men like O'Brien. They have time for nothing. And they give it away anyway.

I noticed the sergeant early. Patrick Doyle. Thirty-five, Irish, O'Brien's second-in-command. He was the kind of man who stood in the corner of a room and watched everyone else talk. He never sat next to O'Brien. Always across the tent. Always far enough that he had to raise his voice to be heard.

I heard him on the radio once. Night time. I was loading crates and I heard the crackle of the military wireless and Doyle's voice saying something I couldn't understand. But I knew the schedule. You weren't supposed to use the radio at night. Not without orders.

I didn't think anything of it. The army has rules. Men break rules. It's what men do.

The battle started on a Tuesday afternoon. No warning. No artillery barrage. Just suddenly there were German planes overhead and then there were bullets and then the world became noise and dust and men running.

I stayed with the truck. That's my job. I don't fight. I drive. I carry food. I carry wounded men. That's what I do.

The first hour, I treated seven wounds. Second hour, thirteen. Third hour—

O'Brien came in on a stretcher. Bullet in the neck. He was bleeding through his hands, pressing on the wound, trying to hold his own life inside his body like a man trying to hold water in his cupped hands.

I was the last medic near him. I knelt down and put my hands over his and pressed harder. His eyes were open. They were blue. They were the kind of blue that Irish people have, the blue of summer sky over a field of green.

"Tom," he said. He knew my name. He knew my name.

"Yeah," I said.

"Tell my mother—"

He didn't finish the sentence. The sentence just stopped. Like a radio turning off. His eyes stayed open. They stayed blue. Then they didn't.

I closed them. I don't cry. I just closed them.

I took his wallet out of his pocket. There was a photograph inside. A woman with red hair and a young girl, standing in front of a house that looked like it had been painted green by someone who loved green a lot. O'Brien's mother and sister. I put the wallet in my pocket.

Then I got back to work.

I treated more wounds. I carried more bodies. I drove more beans to a unit that was smaller every hour.

Three days later, I heard about Doyle.

He had been working for the Germans. Intelligence. He had been sending them information— troop positions, supply routes, weakness in the line. He had been doing it for months. O'Brien had trusted him. O'Brien had trusted him with his men. With his life.

I wasn't surprised. I had noticed things. The radio at night. The way Doyle stood across the tent. The way he avoided O'Brien's eyes.

I noticed a lot of things. That's what drivers do. You watch the road. You watch the mirrors. You watch what's coming up behind you and what's coming up in front and you try to figure out which one is going to kill you first.

I drove back to the depot. I unloaded the beans. I washed the truck at the river.

The river was brown. It was always brown. You didn't look at what was floating in it. You just washed your hands and you got back in the truck.

I sat in the driver's seat and ate a can of beans with a knife. The sand was in my teeth. The beans were cold. The truck smelled like beans.

There were seven more supply points ahead of me. Six hours of driving.

I started the engine. I got back on the road that wasn't a road. The sand got in everything.

The river took everything. But the beans were still heavy.

OTMES-v2-V05-10.0-0.15-0.70-82.0-180-14.1 (M1=10.0, M2=0.0, M3=3.0, M4=1.5, M5=3.0, M6=2.0, M7=3.0, M8=0.0, M9=1.0, M10=4.0 | N1=0.15, N2=0.85 | K1=0.70, K2=0.30 | TI=82.0, Theta=180, E=14.1)