The bullets screech through the air like notes off the strings of a violin. I respond with a burst of fire from my rifle instead of a wave of my baton. I am conducting a symphony in the key of M16 major. I stand at my podium in a foxhole wishing the movement would end–the applause would come and I could take a bow and return to my dressing room.

A soldier strikes a single chord when a bullet pierces his chest. He is only a few yards from me. I hear him groan. His body arches backwards and falls into the sand with a thump. “Medic!” I holler.

I fire a few shots in the direction the bullet came from and then crawl over to the soldier. He lies there motionless, vacant eyes pointing to the sky. I recall a conversation I had with the dead soldier, just the day before.

“I like to race cars. It’s the one thing I really want to do,” he’d told me.

“For me it’s the symphony,” I said. “I want a life filled with music.”

He shook his head and smiled. “The sound of hot tires, a fine tuned V8, that’s my music.”

A medic and a sergeant arrive to attend to him. “Back to your post, soldier,” the sergeant orders “We’ll take care of him.”

The dead no longer need anyone to care for them. I return to my foxhole.

Gunfire rips and chews at the desert sky. I wave my rifle; fire back.