A/N: This is my first BoB fic, I hope you like it. As always I'm sorry for any mistake but english is not my native language so I tend to do lot of typos.
A small thing about this fic: it obviously doesn't follow very strictly the real story, I took the license of deviating from that.
This fic is not meant to be read as a slash fic, it's about a strong brotherly bond between soldiers.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from the tv show nor I meant any disrespect to the veterans. If it wasn't for them we wouldn't be a free country. I do anyway own the idea at the base of this fic.
Mortar hits were falling everywhere. The trees were blowing like fireworks, soldiers were dying like flies.
"Stay in your foxholes! Stay in your foxhole!" Lipton was screaming to the men as he ran through the battlefield to find one on his own.
Lieutenant Speirs heard the officer shouting but he never got the chance to follow his advice.
A mortar fell a couple of meters from him.
He didn't even had the time to get down on the ground.
He felt a sharp pain in his abdomen and in his right leg and blood started flowing as he fell on the snow, he tried to call for a medic but he sadly realized that he didn't have the strength to yell anymore, as he coughed up blood he realized that is time was about to run out.
In one last moment of lucidity he tried to fight for his life, he pushed himself to his feet. Somehow he managed to drag himself on, as his vision blurred and his legs failed him he did not hear someone calling his name and when he felt strong firm arms holding him he knew death had come for him.
Mortar hits were falling everywhere. The trees were blowing like fireworks, soldiers were dying like flies.
"Stay in your foxholes! Stay in your foxhole!" Lipton was screaming to the men as he ran through the battlefield to find one on his own.
And it was in that moment that Sergeant Grant realized that his foxhole companion was still out there. But where the hell was he?
In the midst of the explosion he spotted a figure barely moving, just a few meters from him. The man was laying in the snow. Then he saw him getting up to his feet.
"Lieutenant?" he called out. No answer.
Grant, for just a moment, was sure that it was not a man he was seeing but death himself. The man was soaked in blood. Then his helmet fell and Chuck Grant saw his face.
"Lieutenant Speirs!" he yelled, but Speirs could only hear the blood pumping in his veins and he could only see the trees exploding.
Grant climbed out of his foxhole and run to his friend. And as Speirs fell to the ground he grabbed him firmly in his arms.
He gently laid his body on the ground and tried to apply a tourniquet to the leg. He had lost so much blood that Grant had no idea how he could still be alive.
He screamed his lungs out in an attempt to get the attention of a medic, but the explosion made it hard to hear anything.
"Lieutenant you've got to stay awake!" he shook him trying to get a response.
"Lieutenant Speirs!" he placed a gauze on his lacerated abdomen and applied pressure.
"Ronald stay wake!" he slapped his face hard.
Speirs' eyes fluttered open and started coughing, spurting even more blood on his face and clothes.
"Hey, the medic is coming and you're going to be fine" Grant tried to reassure him but he knew his wound were serious.
Eventually mortars stopped falling.
Screams could be heard coming from everywhere.
Grant chose that moment of calm to call for a medic once again. This time he heard Doc Roe voice yelling to let him pass.
"He took a mortar hit" told him Grant when Roe finally reached him.
Speirs was barely conscious, he was shaking from cold from shock and from blood loss.
He took care of the leg first. Luckily the mortar fragment had missed the artery, he grabbed the piece of metal firmly and pulled it out causing Speirs to scream out in pain. He spread sulfur all over the found and bandaged it tight.
"Don't you have any morphine?" Grant asked him. It pained him to see his friend to suffer like that.
"No can do. We're short of everything down here" he grabbed another bandage and placed it on the abdomen wound.
"Radio man!" yelled Roe.
Luz appeared out of nowhere, he had blood on his face.
"We need a jeep here" ordered Roe. While Luz called for the jeep Lipton arrived on the scene too.
"What the hell happened?" he asked.
"Mortar hit" answered Roe "Help us, we need to get him to the jeep!"
They lifted his limb body and loaded him on the jeep.
By the time they reached Bastogne Speirs had passed out. Sadly they reached their destination and found out that there was no aid station. The wounded could not be evacuated.
There was no surgeon that could perform the operation on Speirs to remove the fragment of the mortar from his abdomen. The surgeon had been replaced by a bunch of nuns turned nurses and village girls who were doing their best in helping the wounded.
Roe disappeared with a nurse, taking the Lieutenant with them and Grant was left alone with himself.
Two days later
Lipton took over Speirs men in the meantime. Nobody had news about him, not even Winters.
In between on shelling and the other, Grant found a corner of time in which he intercepted a jeep heading for the town of Bastogne. When he arrived there he started roaming around the improvised hospital asking around for Lieutenant Speirs but apparently nobody knew where he was.
Eventually he recognized the nurse who helped out Roe when they had brought him in.
She pointed Grant to a small room in the back of the structure.
He crossed the corridor and stopped in front of the door, placed a hand on it and took a deep breath. Then he pushed it open.
The room was very small and there was a strong stench of blood.
There was a single bed in the middle of the room. If bed it could be called. It was a line of wooden crates that had been covered with blankets and straw.
Lt. Ronald Speirs laid on top of hit.
He could hear him breathing slowly, harshly.
"Grant?" he heard him calling, his voice was weak.
"How are you feeling sir?"
"Like a tank ran over me" he joked. He started coughing. He tried to pull himself up but he was too weak to do it on its own.
Grant sat by his side and slid an arm behind his back helping him to sit up.
When the coughing fit was finally passed he still kept holding him up and helped him drink some water.
Speirs nodded a thanks and laid back down.
"You're not going to be evacuated" explained Grant "We've been cut off. This is our aid station now"
"I want to come back" stated Speirs "I can't stay here" he tried to get up to his feet only to get another coughing feet and a shot of pain in his leg.
Grant grabbed him right in the moment his legs failed him, he gently made him sit back on the bed.
"If you come back like that you'll be dead by the end of the day. You must heal before you can come back" Grant tried to convince him to stay "The nurses will take care of you here. They will take care of your wounds and when you've regained your strength you can come back ok?"
But Speirs was barely hearing him.
He laid back on the bad and passed out once again.
Grant stayed for some hours. He got himself a hot meal and then remained to watch over his friend for the rest of the time until Lipton eventually found him half asleep in Speirs room.
"Sergeant Grant" he saluted him.
"Lieutenant!" Grant jumped on his feet and saluted his superior.
"At ease Grant" he looked at Speirs than turned to Grant again "How is he doing?"
"He's barely alive" Grant leaned against the wall "His wounds are life threatening and there is no aid station to send him to, no doctor to tend to him" he made a pause weighting his next words "Doc Roe says he might not make it."
"He'll make it, he's stronger than this." Lipton patted him on the back "We have to go back to the line, we're expecting heavy attacks tonight."
They went back to the line and remained there for weeks. Eventually their relief arrived.
They had a few days off and they spent them in Bastogne. At least they had hot meals and a roof over their heads.
When they headed back to the front line, they had an extra man than what they had come in with.
He nodded a thanks to Sergeant Grant and took back the command of his men.
It was hard to walk, hard to breath, hard to do anything besides laying on a bed under warm covers.
But he was a Lieutenant and those were his men, it was his duty and he gladly obeyed to it.
When they finally took over the small town over the hill his wound were healed and he was regaining his strength.
If they were first graders, Speirs and Grant would have defined themselves as best friend, thing is, they were soldier. So they called themselves brothers.