Frozen Ground

Silence meant the guns were cooling. It meant men were waiting. It meant something was about to break.

We were dug in along a frozen stretch of road near the Imjin River, the kind of place that didn’t look important until history decided otherwise. The cold wasn’t just uncomfortable—it was personal. It crept into your boots, your bones, your thoughts. At night, I dreamed of heat: radiators, kitchens, the smell of coffee. I woke up with frost on my helmet.

My name is Tom Harris. I was twenty-two years old and already felt older than my father.

The order came just after noon. Movement reported to the north. We spread out, rifles ready, fingers stiff and slow. The hills looked empty, blanketed in snow that erased everything—roads, trenches, bodies. That was the problem with this war. Every time the land went quiet, it pretended nothing had happened.

Then the shooting started.

It cracked through the air without warning. One moment we were advancing, the next we were scattered, shouting into the wind. I dropped behind a low ridge as dirt and snow exploded nearby. Someone screamed. Someone else didn’t.

I ran when I shouldn’t have, tripped when I should’ve watched my footing, and ended up flat on my back, staring at a sky the color of old steel. When I scrambled up, I nearly collided with a boy.

He couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

He wore no uniform, just a thin coat and boots too big for him. A sack lay nearby, split open, ammunition spilling onto the snow. His eyes were wide, terrified, and locked onto mine like I was the thing that might kill him.

For a second, neither of us moved.

Then a bullet snapped overhead, close enough that I felt it rather than heard it. Instinct kicked in. I grabbed the kid by the collar and dragged him toward a shallow ditch, yelling even though I knew he couldn’t understand me. We hit the ground hard, breathless, frozen mud pressing into our faces.

We stayed there longer than felt safe.

I could hear my heart pounding louder than the gunfire. The boy was shaking—not just from the cold. His hands were empty. He wasn’t reaching for a weapon. That mattered more to me than it should have.

I finally risked a look. The fighting had shifted, rolling away from us like a storm moving across hills. We were alone.

I stood first, rifle raised, scanning. Nothing. Just snow, smoke, and shapes that used to be men. The boy stood too, slowly, as if I might change my mind and shoot him.

He said something then, softly. I didn’t understand the words, but I understood the fear in them.

“Tom,” I said, tapping my chest, because names felt important suddenly. Like proof we were real people and not just shapes in the snow.

He answered, “Min-jae.”

We found shelter in a ruined farmhouse nearby. The roof had collapsed on one side, and the walls were black with old smoke. It smelled like burned grain and wet wood. War had a smell, and it followed you everywhere.

We sat across from each other, keeping distance out of habit. I didn’t know what to do with him. I didn’t know what I was allowed to do. The rulebook didn’t cover boys with ammunition sacks and frightened eyes.

I pulled out a photograph from my jacket. My wife, Ellen, standing on our porch with our daughter on her hip. The picture was creased and faded, but it was proof of another world. I showed it to him.

“Home,” I said.

He nodded like he understood, even if the word meant something different to him. He stared at the photo longer than I expected, like he was memorizing it.

Night came fast. The cold got worse. I broke a piece of chocolate in half and handed it to him. He hesitated, then took it with both hands, bowing his head slightly. He gave me some roasted barley in return, hard and tasteless, but I ate it anyway.

We didn’t talk much after that. There was nothing useful to say. Outside, engines rumbled—ours, I hoped. I knew what was coming.

At dawn, I stood and checked my rifle. My unit would be nearby. If they found us together, there would be questions. Answers I wasn’t sure I had.

I pointed south, trying to tell him to go. He understood immediately. Before he left, I pulled my lighter from my pack and pressed it into his hand. I don’t know why. It just felt wrong to let him walk away with nothing.

“For luck,” I said, even though luck hadn’t brought either of us here.

He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded and disappeared into the pale morning light, moving fast and quiet, like he’d learned to do.

I watched until he was gone.

The war kept going. It always did. We advanced, we retreated. Lines were drawn, erased, and drawn again. Men froze, bled, and vanished into reports and numbers. I stopped dreaming of heat and started dreaming of snow instead.

Sometimes, late at night, I thought of the boy. I wondered which side he’d been on, if sides even meant anything to him. I wondered if he was still alive.

Years later, after I came home, I found the photograph still in my wallet. Ellen had aged. So had I. The war ended on paper, but not in my head.

Every winter, when the air turns sharp and still, I remember that frozen road by the river. I remember a boy who wasn’t my enemy, and a moment when the war forgot us both.

And somehow, that memory burns warmer than anything else I brought back.