3 May 2007. Sun against matte gray sky. Swerving open-bodied truck plows up Solano. Man in pony-tail, rough face, smiling, leans against late-model Porsche, cigarette and coffee in hand--Leigh K. right alongside, holding forth. Last night: near Chechnya--the mountain kairns. Carefully assembled out of piles of slate, in the shape of large gray hives. Ancestors within, visible, their long straight bones. "Preserved by that particular combination of sunlight, coolness and dry mountain air." Then, summer of 1944, Operation Bagration. The savior of Moscow--with Kutuzov--but the city is burned to the ground. A quarter of a million men, many many lost, fought to no conclusion. "A pyrric victory for Napoleon," who was "curiously detached," distracted apparently by a fever...
Eliminate the personal, they say--may vows of objectivity prevail. Cut to the bone. AK-47, Kalishnikov, the M-1...
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