Obergefreiter Koch found it in the snow—a photograph, slightly damp but intact. A family: mother, father, three children, all smiling at a future they couldn't see.
German family. Probably fleeing, like everyone else. Probably lost, like everyone else.
Koch tucked the photograph into his pocket. He didn't know why. Perhaps because he had a family too, somewhere in the rubble of the Reich, waiting for a father who might never return.
That night, huddled in a ruined barn, he showed it to his comrades. They passed it around in silence, each seeing their own family in those anonymous fac