THE SANDS OF TIME (UPDATED)...

I saw the above photo on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW yesterday and it prompted the following very short 'story'.  The photograph doesn't exactly match the description in the text below, but I just wanted to show you what gave me the idea.  The notion of people looking out from the past into the present (and vice versa) fascinates me.  I'll probably revise it if anything occurs to me. (Still tweaking.)

******

The four men sat in their fold-out canvas chairs at the opening of their tent and smiled into the camera on its tripod in front of them.  A button was pressed on the little device at the end of the connecting cable and the moment was preserved for posterity.  "Wonder how long it'll be before we're back home," one of the soldiers said, wistfully.  "Yeah, I can't wait.  This sand gets everywhere.  It's in places where I didn't even know I had places," said another.  They all chuckled.

The sea of sand spread in every direction, disappearing into the distance on four far horizons.  It was as if the world consisted only of sand and they felt trapped by the monotony of the view.  "At least the war's nearly over," ventured one.  "A bit of mopping up and we'll be out of here, back to dear ol' Blighty and each to his missus and kids."  The shell exploded almost before they'd had a chance to hear it descend, and all plans for the future, for their eagerly anticipated family reunions, perished with them.  Only the camera survived, relatively unscathed.  The negative was developed later by their comrades.

Seventy years later, Albert and his wife looked at a faded sepia photograph of four men in army fatigues in its cheap frame in the window of an antique shop.  "The guy at the end on the right looks a bit like you," said the wife, gazing at Albert then back to the photo.  Albert squinted a little, taking a closer look.  "Yeah, he does a bit, doesn't he?" he said.  Then Albert and his wife walked on, and never thought of the photo again, having already consigned it to oblivion in their minds.

Yet in the moment that Albert had looked into the eyes of the man looking out of the photo seemingly into his, across the decades and geographical distance, for a few brief seconds he'd connected with the grandfather he'd never known, who'd perished along with three comrades in a mortar blast in a far-flung desert in the closing days of World War II.  Albert hadn't been born then, but through the medium of a photograph, fate had brought him and his grandfather 'face-to-face' for a few seconds, even though each of them, in their own moment in time, were unaware of it.