The wind swirling trash on Kirov Street, the main thoroughfare of the district of Perchersk--an extension of Kiev--rose unhindered from the Dnieper, the river masking the smell of war, a mixture of the exhaust fumes of trucks, tanks, mobile artillery pieces, horses, wet uniforms, field kitchens, dead bodies rotting under collapsed masonry, and the smell that shook him with fear: the odor of singed hair and burned bodies. Earlier, when he reported in at the field hospital to receive his…
Lawrence DorrDecember 16, 2003