It's muggy and almost unbearably hot outside, the temperature made almost bearable if you sit in the shade. There has been a lull in the battle and soldiers sit sprawled around their very temporary camp, some writing letters, some just relaxing, and a few even playing a game of football. Beneath one of the few trees sits a blonde-haired man with his pen poised above a half-scrawled letter. His name is Lieutenant David Calley and he is going to be twenty years old in four months. He does not know it, but he will not live to his twentieth birthday.
It's July of 1951 and the young Lieutenant has been in Korea for six months (two weeks, three days, not that he's counting) When David, better know as Dave or Davey to his unit, had signed up he'd imagined glory in these battles. There's no glory in war, he's learned in the months that he's spent fighting on the front line. Those who search for glory are fools. There are plenty of those in his unit, he thinks privately to himself.
It's a Tuesday and the sun is strong. This is just one misery and David knows that he prefers the heat to the cold that he knows will come with the winter months. He sits beneath a tree that he thinks he should know the name of and thinks on the letters he has to write. Before he had left his mother had made him promise to write every week. He found out soon enough that any regular letter writing was impossible. It could sometimes take weeks, or even a month or two, for your mail to catch up with you on the front line and you most often couldn't send it out regularly. This was the first time there had been a lull in the fighting long enough for him sit down and write his letters.
Besides the one to his mother and father he owes one to his sister and one to his sweetheart. Annie Sands has been his sweetheart since high-school. Dark and fair to his blonde and tan his mother always said proudly that they'd make beautiful children. Something that always had Annie blushing faintly pink. When he'd gone off to war Annie had promised to wait for him. She had given him her ring to remember her by. A simple silver band, it'd been her mother's once. He wore it on a chain along with his class ring underneath his clothes.
With a bit of a shake of his head David pulled himself from his musings. Pretty thoughts would do nothing to help him write out the letters that were long overdue, no matter how welcome pretty thoughts would be. He sighed quietly and put his pen to paper. The letter to his mother and father was short. There was so much he could not tell his parents about his time at war. His father viewed war through the rose-colored glasses of someone who'd never experienced battle and his mother was too delicate to explain the finer aspect of war to. She'd faint as soon as he uttered one word of blood or death in her presence. His sister was another matter.
Beth Calley was as strong-willed as he was and considerably less delicate than her mother. Raised to be a lady though she was, she had never truly conformed to societies limits on women and he found a confident in her. His letter to her was longer and more detailed on how he was truly doing. Less pleasantries, although there were those as well, and more genuine conversation. He found a certain comfort in truly speaking to someone who was not there with him every day. The letter that he penned to Annie was long and flowing words of love and affection. He has long decided not to taint her with his words of war and she has never asked him to. He finishes, signing his name to all three letters and stuffing them into their respective envelopes.
Not long after he's handed his letters off so that they will make it out as soon as possible his C.O. approaches him. Colonel Sanders is a good man, regular army and someone who fought in World War Two. He relates to his men and treats them with the respect they deserve if not the respect they try and demand. David likes him because he tells it like it is and has always treated him like and equal. David snaps a smart salute that Sanders waves away with the casual motion of something often repeated.
"Lieutenant." Sanders greets him.
"Sir." David returns with a friendly nod.
"We've got our orders. Let the men know we're heading out in the morning." Sanders tells him. David nods and snaps another salute that causes Sanders to glare mildly at him. Then he follows the orders given to him.
It's a month and several intense battles later before they all get another brief rest. This time they are close enough to a village with a small bar owned and run by a small South Korean woman that they immediately head there. None of them would mind getting very drunk after their last battle where they'd lost a fair share of their friends. Some to death, some only to a MASH unit to patched up and sent back to the front lines. Some maybe even sent home if they were wounded badly enough. No one can bring themselves to think of that last as a lucky choice, any more so than the first two.
There's an empty seat at the bar next to David at the bar where Tom Hardy should be sitting. Throughout the bar there are seats like that, conspicuously kept empty. A tribute to their fallen friends perhaps. The alcohol loosens tongues and sends everyone into their own happy, drunken haze. A haze that causes normally composed guys to laugh as loud and raucously as the next guy. If these laughs don't quite cover for the half-pause of one guy waiting for Elliot to jump in with his witty jokes, or the way some jokes fall just a little flat, the tell-tale sign of someone not quite used to the joke he was telling, then no one will mention it.
David sits, more sober than the rest of his unit, at the bar. He watches his friends and fellow soldiers drape themselves, amoeba like, across surfaces and friends and other customers with the easy camaraderie of the drunk. He stifles a laugh as one guy, George Ceres, climbs up on one off the unstable, little, wooden tables. Swaying drunkenly, and almost falling when the table tips precariously, he breaks out in to a great story-telling. Unfortunately for George, he's using large sweeping gestures and even sober and with his balance he would have knocked himself off the table. Drunk he stands no chance, he falls with no grace, on to the hard floor with a loud thump and a muffled swear-word. The rest of the room, especially his drunken crowd, cheer appreciatively, laughing and clapping happily.
David just stifles another smile, turning to watch another one of his friends. He's drank enough to feel the effects in the warm sensation in the pit of his stomach and in the slightly fuzzy feeling of his head. It's not long after George's unfortunate dive off the table that groups begin filtering out of small bar. If some make their excuses and stay longer, solitary figures spread throughout a near empty bar, than no one makes a big deal out of it. If they need to find comfort in the bottom of a bottle for a little longer who would begrudge them that?
Stuck in the middle of battle with shells bursting around him David regrets the moment he decided to sign up for this blasted war. Late July and it's sweltering, the heat only adding to the discomfort he feels as bullets and grenades rain down on them. There is a loud, high-pitched whistle. David finds his mind wandering to Annie in her summer dress, sitting on his porch and drinking lemonade. The image is sweet and he can almost feel the ice-cool glass that he'd be holding.
Then there is chaos. Someone's screaming, why is someone screaming. He wants them to stop it. His thoughts are muddled, fuzzy, like he'd been drinking. Yet he hadn't, he knows. All of a sudden he realizes his legs hurt, and someone's still screaming except now there's the overlaying sound of someone calling something out.
"David! Davey. Davey!" Oh, it's his name their calling out. He tries to respond and the screaming stops. For a moment he doesn't understand the corellation, then his fuzzy brain makes the connection. He'd been the one screaming, maybe that explains why his throat hurts. Someone is speaking again.
"Hey, come on Davey. You need to stay with me." He thinks he should recognize the voice although whenever he tries the knowledge slips from his grasp. There is a thread of worry there that he thinks, vaguely, does not belong there.
"Come on, kid. We're getting you a field-medic. He'll patch you up and then get you where they'll really fix you all better." The voice continued, a little more desperate. David just listens and tries ever so often to make a comforting noise.
It feels as if forever has passed before the field-medic is there. He speaks in a soft soothing voice trying to reassure David. David almost wishes that the medic had stayed away because the medic is proding his legs in a way that sets them aflame with pain The medic says something to the voice, which has not gotten less worried just fainter. David feels himself fading, his last thought regret that he couldn't stay awake to reassure the voice. It's nice that the voice was so worried about him, even if David can not place the voice.
Next time he wakes up it's dark and he's laid out on a stretcher on the ground. A woman kneels above him, rattling off something he can't understand to another woman. He would be interested most likely if not for the fact that his head is still very fuzzy and he can't pay attention for long enough to try and ask a question.
The women leave, rushing off in separate directions to do other, no doubt important thins. He still hurts, hurts enough that he can't really distinguish between where he hurts and where he doesn't. His thoughts are starting to fuzz out again taking his vision and other senses with them. He hurts enough that he doesn't see anything wrong with this new development. Just as he once again passes into oblivion a knew voice appears over him. He has just enough time to note that this one is mail before everything goes dark again.
He does not wake up again for a long, long time. In the real world that is. In the world of sleep and dreams and head-injury induced slumber time is not so much an issue. David does not dream in his head-injury induced slumber, although once in a while a stray thought or part of a memory or some half-image will drift across his subconscious. But there are no dreams. When he wakes, he wakes tired, disoriented and in no little amount of pain. It doesn't take long for David to fight past the fuzzy, disoriented, pain-filled haze so he can identify his surroundings.
He's in a MASH unit. Unsurprising considering the last memory he has is tainted with pain even worse than what he's now experiencing. He's been in a couple of MASH units, it's not uncommon to get injured a few times especially in the time he's been in Korea. This is the first time he's woken up in what David recognizes to be the post-operations room. Also unsurprising, again due to his last memory. He tries to move but a nurse, who seems to be checking on all the patients, moves over to him.
"David," She smiles far to brightly at him, "Moving around already! I know it's boring here, but for now we need you to stay mostly still. If you need anything I'll try to get it for you. One of our Doctors will be over in a little bit to talk to you!"
Her voice is just as bright and cheerful as her smile. It grates on David's nerves, as he does not feel as if being cheerful is entirely the right attitude to be taking with someone who has just woken up after surgery. As such all he does is grunt in response, though he does stop trying to get up. It wasn't helping the pain, which he can now distinguish to be mostly in his head, legs and left side in general. The nurse walks away with a little bit of a skip in her step that does not fit the surrounding atmosphere of gloom that accompanies sick people. David blinks after her, not quite believing she is real.
Not long after a doctor came over to introduce himself as Dr. Evanson. His smile tried to be comforting but fit oddly, like it was something he was unaccustomed to showing and was not quite sure how to do. He spoke in an even, measured tone that could have been calming if used write but instead just sounded flat. Thin and tall with not-quite cold gray eyes, and hair that was graying entirely before his time, Dr. Evanson was the strangest man David had ever met. That included the guy who tried to get himself discharged by insisting he was a plant and that they must water him every day. So Dr. Evanson was strange. But he still managed to explain what was wrong with David simply and without any condescension. Mild head trauma, shrapnel in his legs and left side, mostly mild but he'd have to stay off his left leg for a while. A few cracked ribs. He'd live and was already well on his way to being healed. By the time Dr. Evanson had left David also discovered that either the man had no sense of humor to speak of or he was exceptionally good at covering it up. A very strange man, David decided.
It's only a couple of weeks before he's well enough to be shipped out. In this time he goes through two bunk-mates on his left and has the same one his entire time on his right. The two on the left had been mostly friendly and pleasant. The guy on his left had been as dour, gloomy, sour, sarcastic, rude and just plain mean as he could be. More than once David had just wanted to punch him. He blamed his shortened temper on the pain medication he was taking.
In the course of these weeks he has also gotten letters from his family and Annie. They had been a comfort and had become so well worn from being read over and over again that there were minor rips forming at the creases. He had already sent his replies out, although the letters were somewhat shorter due to the lack of anything interesting actually happening in the entire camp. The most interesting thing was listening to his fellow patients gossiping about their units.
David nearly cries with happiness when he's finally discharged. He caught a ride with a jeep to where his unit is stationed and they greet with great enthusiasm. His normal good cheer, which had been conspicuously been missing as of late, restores itself. After a great deal of laughing, and hugging on the part of his friends, things quiet down and Tom, who is back and better than ever, drags him off to find a drink.
Things return to normal after that. A few battles, nothing to serious, a few scrimmages. Tom gets more and more excited as it draws closer to David's birthday, happy at the prospect of gift-giving and party-throwing. There are more letters exchanged between him and his mother, his sister and Annie. Pictures are sent of all of them, through respective letters, as well as news of Beth's engagement to a man named Jason Hewelley. In Beth's letter she had told him,
"Love, dear brother, is not as fairy-tail simple as they would have us believe. Perhaps it is once in a lifetime, perhaps not, but I am loathe to take chances with what I have. I ask for your blessing, brother, for all you have not yet met the man I plan to marry."
He had sent his blessing in his next letter. With the return letter Beth had sent that she hoped it to be a June wedding, and she hoped even more that he would make it there to support her on her day. There was nothing he wished more. Yet a strange sense of foreboding curls around his heart. A strange twist in the air as if something is waiting just out of his sight to be acknowledged. The weight of it nags at him increasingly over the following weeks and as October bleeds into November he finds more and more comfort in his sister's words of wisdom and weddings. (Although he does not always understand either.)
On November ninth Lieutenant David Calley decides, after reading a letter from Beth and Annie each, to ask Annie to marry him as soon as he gets back home. He immediately pens a letter to Beth telling here and swearing her to secrecy. Along with it he sends thirty dollars and instructions to find the perfect ring. He knows he can trust her with this important task. After much thought, and much weighing of choices he adds in instructions to take the birthday money he knew she was going to send him and put it towards the ring fund. He'd continue to send her money. Then he signed it and handed it off so it could be sent out.
His birthday was in ten days, less than two weeks. His twentieth birthday, the big 2-0. Tom was already making plans like a mad man. He did like to plan a good party, preferably one with alcohol. David just didn't care, as long as no one broke any rules he was fine with whatever. There was that feeling again though, twisting deep in his gut, something dark and heavy like molasses. He did his best to expel it, but it seemed so terribly stubborn. Resolving to ignore it he got up and sought out something better to do than wallow in his own suspicion. Plus maybe he'd tell Tom about his decision.
Three days later they were involved in yet another scrimmage, this one a little worse than those previous, but not bad enough to consider a battle. David and Tom had been joking about C-Rations not moments before, now they were taking cover as a grenade sailed past, blowing several of their unit up. David winced as Tom said with forced levity, "Glad I saw that coming. Wouldn't want to end up in pieces like those guys." Which might have seemed callous if David didn't know that jokes were Tom's way of coping with the death and destruction and chaos that war created around him.
David was ducking out from where he'd taken shelter, preparing to make a run for it when his sense of foreboding sharpened into a Very Bad Feeling. He could tell it deserved to be said with all capital letters. The Very Bad Feeling was what made him falter as he stepped, stumbling slightly and hindering his forward motion. Things happened very quickly after that. A grenade hit the ground right in front of him, David righted himself, there was a shout from Tom that might have been "No!" or "David" or just a wordless warning. Things slowed down for him, if only for a passing moment, and everything sharpened.
"I am going to die." He realized, very calmly. He thought of his mother sobbing when she heard that he'd died, his father standing stoic in his grief. Annie drinking lemonade on their front porch, Beth walking down the aisle all dressed in white. Thought of the grief, the things he would miss, the things he still had to do.
Things sped up again. David tried to dive out of the way. The bomb went off, catching him before he'd even managed to get halfway through. He had no time for last thoughts as the grenade blasted him to bits. (Tom would forever hate himself for that last joke.) Seven days before his twentieth birthday, Lieutenant David Calley found his end.
She has just got the letter, is ecstatic with the news. Beth is beyond happy about her brother finally deciding to propose to Annie who is practically already part of the family. She can't wait to find the perfect ring for them. In her excitement she does not see the letter that is tellingly from the Army. It does not bode well for any of them.
It is not until much later when she is sorting the mail properly that she notices it hidden under David's letter to their mother and father and Senile Aunt Lucy's letters about her cats of which she's sent at least three all at once. The sensation of ice freezing and settling in her stomach surprises her with it's strength. Beth Calley was raised strong and she does not hesitate to open the letter.
To Mr. and Mrs. Jonathon Calley
Oh, no.