Sgt. Burton oversaw our eight-man team I was part of. He took his orders from the division leader and Burton planned our missions. He was a burly man and well groomed. I remember him always smelling of Brylcreem. The English always had Brylcreem with them. He had been wounded from a grenade explosion and needed a cane to help him walk. He was a tough SOB. 

I admired his tenacity and faith in his mission. “It was of the upmost importance that the powers of evil never find the artifacts they were so desperately looking for”. He knew how to inspire men under his command. To this day I remember his words he used to say just before leaving on a mission. “There are a many good and terrible things in the world, and it is up to us to keep the wrong men to find use for them. We will be the good. We will be the terrible. We will be the keep.” He was shot by sniper on the 8th day of the 8th month of 1944. 

We were on mission, and I had tripped over thick brush, and he reached out to help me up. Dropping his cane, he fell onto me. I called him clumsy by the time the sound of the shot reached us. He looked at me and said that he had dodged death enough times that he was finally ready to leave this world. He insisted that his cane kept him alive and that by dropping it, it opened the door to his well past death day. By the time the squad came back, he was reaching for his cane. With his last words he told me to take it and to finish the quest given to him by Michael. There were no upper commanders named Michael. I always wondered what he meant; people say the strangest things at their dying. I use that cane to this day. I wonder if that was the reason, I made it out alive.

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