Ron’s VW bus had a full 30 horsepower so we stayed far to right in the wide way that had no lane separation lines visible for much of the time. We t...aveled up and down the low hills and I was getting to see Germany wide open as not a tourist but a new resident of sorts.I figured he wanted to talk to me about Hanna but I didn’t bring it up. He didn’t either. Instead he started telling me about his German girl friend, Christa, the reason he was able to locate and buy the bus he named “Herman”.. So far they'd only barely succeeded, and Ashley loved making them squirm.She didn't do it to be cruel. They treated Ashley like a princess in most ways; she felt very loved. She teased them mostly because of the frustration they caused her, teasing her in more ways than one. Ashley's dreams, too, involved the two handsome men (mostly separately), and not always in the way a girl should be thinking of members of her own family.Ashley was finally eighteen as of that morning, and she was intent. Although we were only feet apart, sitting in the heart of the family home we loved so much, at that moment it felt like Jill and I were a thousand miles apart.I knew I needed to give Jill the space she needed. I ate, staying quiet, just monitoring her expression out of the corner of my eye, respecting her privacy but desperately wanting to know what was in her mind. Bit by bit I sensed she was working through whatever it was, until she finally turned to me, now ready to talk.I wasn’t ready for. He saw them as they first met in the beginning, young and brave and not really understanding what they were doing but determined to be heroes of the regiment. Fools but oh so brave fools they all were.The training was hard and whittled the numbers of recruits down but they all kept going because they all thought they were immortal. The hubris of youth and what made them all magnificent.The reduced numbers of recruits finally reached the final goal of their hard training and passed in review and.