Carrier Pierre

He told me to call him Jacques. We would sometimes talk after sundown, while he smoked a sweet-smelling meerschaum pipe. I forget his major but he had a PhD, maybe from a university in Haiti, his nativity. He had enlisted in the Army to accelerate his citizenship process. He was an ammo-bearer for a machine-gunner who hadn't finished high school and this suited Jacques fine. It was also grist for the mill of our weighty discussions. He was killed by friendly fire, ordinance stale from being warehoused too long, landing short of its target.