Wisps of a Soft Gentle Wind

He raised the bugle and all nervousness dropped from him. He was suddenly alone, gone away from the rest of them.

The first note was clear and absolutely certain. There was no question or stumbling: it swept across the quadrangle positively, held long like a length of time, stretching away from the weary day to weary day. The second note was short, almost too short, abrupt: cut short and too soon gone. Then the last note of the first phrase rose from the slightly broken rhythm, triumphantly high, on an untouchable level.

He played it all that way, with a paused, then hurried rhythm. The notes rose high in the air and hung above the open space of the empty quadrangle. They vibrated there, caressingly, filled with infinite sadness and endless patience, the requiem and epitaph of the common soldier. They hovered like halos over the heads of sleeping men in darkened barracks, turning all to the beauty that is the beauty of sympathy and understanding. It is the beauty and the sorrow of things as they really are. 

This is the song of men who have no place, played by a man who never had a place and can, therefore, play it. Listen to it. This is the song you close your ears to every night, so you can sleep. This is a song of great loneliness, creeping in like the probing tendrils of a soft and gentle wind. This is the song you will hear on the day you die, as you wait for it to come, knowing that sleep will not evade it. Then you will hear this song and, remembering, recognize it.
 
"Day is done:
Gone the sun
From the hill,
From the sea,
From the sky.
Rest in peace,
Soldier brave:
God
Is
Nigh."

As the last note quivered to silence, the traditional repeat rose to join her quivering, tearful sister. The clear, proud notes reverberated back and forth across the silent quad. Men had come from the day rooms to the porches to listen in the darkness, feeling the sudden choking kinship bred of fear that supersedes all personal feelings. They stood in the darkness of the porches, listening, feeling suddenly very near the man beside them who was also a Soldier, who must also die. Then, silent as they had come, they filed back inside with lowered eyes, suddenly ashamed of their own emotion, of seeing another man's naked soul. 

~From an unknown World War II novel