Copyright: 03/16

Fan-Fiction based on TV Show Combat! Copyright Selmur Production, Inc., ABC, Image Productions etc. Disclaimer: Combat! and its characters do not belong to me, this WWII story is a piece of fan-fiction and I am not being compensated in any tangible way for this story.

HIDE IN PLAIN SIGHT

The elderly couple sat on the glider of their front porch. It was a beautiful warm spring day. The breeze gently floated past their faces. They had been waiting for their daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren to arrive.

The woman notices that her husband had fallen asleep. She gently removed the glass of lemonade from his hand and quietly sat it on the table.

She stared at his face and notices he is wearing a bit of a smile. What is he dreaming about, she wondered?

As if by magic his eyes opened. "I must've fallen asleep. Ya know, I was dreamin' about the first time we met, honey. I was so sick and you were so sweet and kind to me. I shoulda realized right then and there you were the girl for me."

"Oh go on with you! You had so many girlfriends back then, I don't know how you kept them all straight in your head."

"You know you were my best friend."

"Aren't you forgetting Paul, I thought he was your best friend?"

"I mean girl, woman, you know what I mean. I try to say something nice to you and we get into an argument!"

The woman placed her time worn hand inside his. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

They had no idea that their daughter and her family were watching them.

Their daughter looked at her husband and became misty eyed. "Oh Dave, they are getting so old."

Julie put on a happy face as they approached her parents. "Hey Dave, did you ever notice that my parents are always smooching?"

Their children began to laugh.

Julie and Dave's oldest daughter ran up the stairs to hug her grandparents.

"Hi grandma, grandpa!"

"Grandpa," she purred. "I need your help."

"Sure sweetie, what do you need?"

"Grandpa, I have a school project for my history class. I need to write a story about something that happened to a person who was living during World War II and I thought of you. Will you do it, for me, please?"

"What about your grandma; she was an Army nurse during WWII."

"I know but you were a soldier and it had to be really exciting when you were on a patrol or mission. Grandma, well, all she did was medical stuff; you know, like giving shots and putting bandages on people. It was important but not…"

Laura began to laugh so hard she started to cough. Bill grabbed his glass of lemonade and placed it to her lips. "Honey slow down. Here, take a sip."

She waived him off as she and patted his worried cheek.

"Oh I'm fine; that was so funny. So all I did was give shots and put bandages on wounds. English translation, boring!"

"I'm sorry grandma, I didn't mean it. I just thought grandpa would have had a lot more stories."

Laura smiled at her eldest grandchild.

"It's alright Amy, you're right. Your Grandpa has a lot of stories and some of them are true."

"Hey, come on now, I haven't told those kind of stories in a while."

His wife shook her head.

"Okay, I haven't told those kind of stories since last week when Billy spent the weekend with us."

Everyone began to laugh at his confession.

Laura became a bit more serious.

"Bill, why don't you and Amy go into the study, where you can talk? Dinner will be ready in about an hour."

"Come on honey, you're grandma is right. I'll tell you a story, a true story this time."

They walked into the study and Bill seated himself into an easy chair. Amy sat down across from him. Bill took a deep breath.

"Ya know most times when you were young, I'd tell you stories about the War. I am sure you now know that sometimes I'd make stuff up and then other times when I did tell you something that really happened, I'd leave out a lot of the bad things that were going on. I felt that none of you kids needed to hear those kind of things. You'll be eighteen in a few months and will be graduating from high school, so I think you are old enough to hear what really happened."

"I'm just not sure where I should begin."

Kirby looked passed his grand-daughter and a faraway look crossed his face.

Amy could almost see the young man her grandfather had once been.

"It was December, 1944, close to Christmas. I had been shot twice when we were on patrol. We had been ordered to take a village. We had no idea how many Germans were entrenched in there. Intelligence had told us that there was probably a platoon holding the village."

"How many is that Grandpa?"

"Approximately forty to fifty men. We had about the same number. Once we entered the village, we found out there were a bit more Germans than we had anticipated. In our favor, we caught them by surprise and was able to capture the village."

"I know this story Grandpa, why are you telling it to me again?"

"I know you know. I am going to tell you what happened after I was shot."

Amy seemed disappointed. "So you are going to tell me about going to the hospital and Grandma?"

"Your Grandma is in the story but it is not about her or me. It is about another guy in our squad. He was our radio man and also our translator. His name was Brockmeyer."

"After I was shot, I was taken to a hospital in Liege, Belgium. It really wasn't much of a hospital. It wasn't even a building, the whole thing was made out of tents. I was an experimental type hospital. They were very close to the front lines. In fact, during the Battle of the Bulge, the hospital was only four miles from the front."

"I'd been hit twice but I was lucky, both bullet wounds were through and throughs and I was, as the nurses would say, ambulatory. I could get around pretty much on my own."

"All of the patients that were bed ridden had been transported back to Paris and London. Some of the nurses went with them, so they were short-handed."

"Since I could get around a bit, I would help out with some of the patients. If a guy wanted a cup of coffee and couldn't handle the cup and for example, crutches, I go and get him a cup. There were also women from the village who were helping out."

"I had been there a day, when I saw this big blond guy trying to sit up. Most of us guys tried not to bother the nurses. They had enough to do without us continually asking for help."

"Anyway, this G.I.'s back was facing me but there was something about him. He looked familiar. It took me a while to get myself into a sitting position and I eventually got to my feet. I walked over to his bed and realized it was Joe Brockmeyer. Boy, it was really nice to see someone I knew."

I said, "Hey Brockmeyer, ya need a hand?"

"I could tell that he was happy to see me too."

Brockmeyer smiled at me and said, "Kirby you're a sight for sore eyes! I sure can use some help!"

"With my good arm I helped to pull him up to a standing position. Bockmeyer had told me that he had been there for a week. He had been hit by branch from a tree."

"A branch; how could a branch hurt you?"

"Ya see, the Germans would shoot this big thing called an 88. It was an anti-aircraft and anti-artillery gun. When they were shootin' at us, they would shoot up into the trees and the branches would come down on us like missiles. So that's what happened to him."

"Grandpa where were you and he hit?"

"Well, I was hit in the right shoulder and arm and Brockmeyer if I remember correctly, was hit on his left side."

"It was nice to have a friend to talk to because the squad was too busy fightin'.

"Now during this time a fog had enveloped the whole area. You could barely see your hand in front of your face. It was really eerie. When you had to go outside, you could hear the crunching of the snow. You knew it was people walking around. You just wasn't sure if it was the Germans or your own people. Everybody was so tense."

"On top of everything else, the Germans were shootin' V1 or V2 Rockets at us. As long as you could hear the buzzing of the rocket overhead, you'd be fine. It was when the buzzing stopped, then you had to find a place to hide. That meant it was comin' down and hopefully not close to you. It was a scary, crazy time."

"One day Brockmeyer said he wanted me to meet someone. He had met a nice girl from the village. I told him that there was this nice nurse I wanted him to meet."

"Brockmeyer laughed and said, "Gee Kirby you've been here less than two days and you have already got a girl?"

"I told him that I had known her back in the states and we were talkin' about gettin' married. I think you could have knocked him over with a feather."

Bill looked over at Amy and could see she was getting a bit bored.

"Alright, I know I said the story had little to do with me and Grandma but I had to bring that part in because it is important to the story."

"Okay Grandpa, I'll give you that one."

"Soon after that Brockmeyer and this pretty girl came over to my bed. I could tell by the way he was smilin' that he liked her a lot."

"Brockmeyer called out to me." "Hey Kirby, I want you to meet Gisela."

"I told her that it was nice to meet her and was glad she spoke English."

"She smiled and quietly said that she was also glad to meet a friend of Joe's."

"She seemed very sweet and a bit shy. She had strawberry blond hair and blue eyes. She was a pretty girl."

"I told her that I liked her name. She told me that Gisela meant a pledge or an oath."

"Joe Brockmeyer was so proud of her. I think if he could have, he would have shown her off to the whole world."

"Gisela asked me where I was shot and I told her in my shoulder and arm. She said she was sorry for not speaking better English. She meant to ask where in Belgium?"

"We were always told not to talk about where our units were located and even though it seemed like an innocent question, I felt uncomfortable answering her. So I just said that I couldn't remember the name and even if I had, I probably would have messed up the name."

"I would watch them and they did look happy together. I was glad that he had found somebody."

"I did watch her. She would talk to the other G.I's and it was just casual; like was he married or did he have a sweetheart back home, things like that. I did noticed when it was new patients, she would ask things like where were they when they were hit or were they by themselves or were they with friends?"

"However, something just wasn't right, I couldn't put my finger on it. I knew I had to say something even if it meant having Brockmeyer getting mad and punching me out."

"I hadn't seen much of your Grandma because she was in the operating room working sometimes twenty four hours straight and it wasn't putting bandages on our guys. The doctors, nurses, medics and the orderlies all worked until they dropped trying to keep men alive."

"Grandpa, I'm sorry. When you see nurses on TV and in the movies, they don't show them like that. And I am proud of what Grandma did."

Bill patted Amy's hand. "I just wanted you to understand that if it hadn't been for Laura and all those other doctors and nurses who took care of me, you might not have been here."

"Now where was I? Oh yea, I decided to talk to Laura first before I brought it up to Brockmeyer. I finally got my chance. It was December 25th, Christmas Day. The fog had finally lifted. It was still very cold. The moon was so bright, you could actually read by light. Laura came to my bed and asked if I wanted to go outside for a few minutes to see the stars. She put my jacket on and then wrapped three blankets around me. I looked like a mummy. It was so beautiful but I couldn't enjoy the stars and the moon. I had Gisela on my mind."

"I told Laura that something was bothering me. She asked me what was wrong. I told her all about Gisela. I said that her questions could be innocent but when new guys came in, she'd always ask the same questions. Laura said she would watch her the next time she had new patients."

"As luck would have it, because of the sky being so clear, a German plane was strafing the men who were out on the front line. We even got it. Heck, you could see the Red Cross plain as day, he just didn't care. He strafed the tents."

"You could hear the nurses screaming for all of us to get under our beds. Laura and I ran back inside the tent and got under my bed."

Kirby began to laugh. "We heard one nurse scream out. A concerned orderly asked if she had been hit. The nurse said yes but not by a bullet but by a full duck. All the staff began to laugh, which helped break up the tension."

"I asked Laura what was a full duck? She stopped laughing long enough to tell me that the nurse got hit by a very full bed pan."

"Apparently the pilot wasn't satisfied by strafing us once. Over the next few of days that pilot strafed us until one of our guys shot him down. We began to call him "Bed Check Charlie"*. Thankfully, no one was hurt except the tents. In the dead of winter, it got very chilly. The medics and orderlies used tape to try and plug up the holes."

"Once the strafing stopped, I watched as the staff got ready for the wounded. Gisela had been visiting Brockmeyer when all this happened. She asked if she could help out and Laura told her that it would be greatly appreciated."

"About an hour later the first of many soldiers began coming in for help. Some were just scratches but others were more serious. Laura tried to stay close to Gisela."

"She listened to the conversations. Laura noticed she worked on the guys who had minor injuries."

"Thankfully, none of the wounds were life threatening. Laura stopped by my bed and told me that I was right to be suspicious. She had been asking questions that were inappropriate and she needed to get the MP's involved in order to stop her."

"Laura whispered to an orderly and he rushed out of the tent."

"I noticed that Gisela was hurrying to get out of the tent. I got up and walked over to her."

"I didn't know what I was going to say but I would think of something."

"I told her that she was so good with the guys that she should take up nursing after the war was over."

"She told me that she was in a hurry to get home. I told her that I bet Laura could get someone to drive her. I called Laura over and told her that Gisela needed to get home and could someone drive her?"

"Laura said sure. She lightly put her hand on Gisela's arm. Laura said that she could get someone right away. Gisela became agitated and said she wanted to go home. Brockmeyer got up out of his bed and asked what was going on? Laura explained that she was going to arrange someone to drive Gisela home."

"Gisela broke free of Laura's grasp and pulled a hand gun out of her pocket. We all backed away except for Brockmeyer. He was so confused. He asked what was happening."

"Laura said all she wanted to do was give Gisela a ride home, to make sure she would be okay, especially with that crazy pilot out there."

"I'll never forget the way Brockmeyer looked at her. I could tell he really cared for her. He said, "Gisela I don't want you to get hurt, put the gun down. Why are you acting like this?"

"Gisela laughed hysterically. She said to Brockmeyer, "You are so stupid Joe."

She pointed in my direction. "You figured it out didn't you, Kirby?"

"I tried to sound calm when I explained to Brockmeyer that Gisela was probably collaborating with the Germans."

"She sneered at me and said that she was not a collaborator, she was German and a patriot! She pledged her life and her love to Hitler and the Third Reich."

"Brockmeyer lunged forward and knocked her down. The gun went off. He landed on top of her. I could see blood streaming from Brockmeyer. Gisela still had the gun but she couldn't move because Brockmeyer had her pinned down. Your Grandmother fell down on her knees and knocked that girl out with one punch."

"Laura and I turned Brockmeyer over. I grabbed the gun. Laura screamed for help. There was so much blood. I know when Laura saw it, I knew she was afraid for him. The orderlies picked him up and rushed him into the OR."

"The MP's finally showed up. I have never seen your Grandmother as nervous as she was that night. She was shaking from head to toe."

"I asked why she was so nervous and she said she was afraid that she hadn't hit Gisela hard enough and that Gisela would shoot me."

"I just laughed and said to her, "Honey, your knuckles are turning a lovely shade of purple. I don't believe she'll be waking up until tomorrow!"

"We all waited for the news about Brockmeyer."

"When the doctor came out, he had the biggest smile on his face. The doc said the bullet entered the side of his stomach. It passed through the muscles surrounding the abdomen. He said it was a miracle because it didn't enter the abdominal cavity at all. There would be several weeks for his recovery."

"Brockmeyer was eventually sent to London and once he was better he was sent home. We never saw him again."

"Grandpa, what happened to Gisela?"

"She was turned over to Intelligence with a big black eye. We don't know what happened to her. It feels like this all happened only yesterday."

"One thing that I found interesting was how well her name fit her. It meant pledge or oath and that was exactly what she did. Unfortunately, she pledged her life to a monster."

THE END

*The hospital outside Liege, Belgium was an experimental type hospital. It was the closest to the front lines. During the Battle of the Bulge it was hit a number of times by V1 or V2 Rockets. It was also strafed a few times by a plane. They nicknamed the pilot Bed Check Charlie.