Making Mr. Bamff

During the winter of 1944, American and German armies are locked in a desperate, bloody battle in the Hurtgen forest on the German-Belgium border. The forest, of no military significance, has become a point of pride to American commanders who stubbornly throw division after division into the costly campaign. A squad of American soldiers advances cautiously on a night patrol, hunting the enemy among the dense fir trees. They become victims of landmine explosion, and the squad leader is the lone survivor of the blast, his wounds rendering him unable to move or speak. A mysterious stranger emerges from the darkness and drags the wounded man to safety. The soldier is relieved to learn that his rescuer is an army medic, but with the coming of the new day, discovers that they are alone in an obscure rock quarry, home to a tombstone carver. Dead soldiers from the two armies are neatly arranged in stacks on the quarry floor. The soldier soon realizes that his rescuer has been severely traumatized by the carnage of war. The medic has witnessed bloodied and mangled soldiers, many of them close friends, suffer horribly. Eventually overcome with guilt as soldiers under his care continue to die, the medic is a broken man seeking escape through the morphine drugs he carries. The wounded soldier becomes caught up in the man’s spiraling descent into insanity. The medic, yearning for the peaceful times he knew before the war, has deserted his unit and roams the forest at night, collecting the bodies of the dead. In his morphine-fueled madness, he is determined to bring back to life his good friend and mentor, Mr. Bamff, the kindly janitor from his high school days. Convinced that, with his friend’s resurrection, the world would once again be the utopia it had been, the man is willing to do whatever it takes to make his Mr. Bamff.