This should not have taken so long to write and post XP. But I was planning on rewatching BOB before I began actually writing the story but I can't seem to steal it from my brother in law!Plus it was the holidays and I started my job last month so I've been majorly busy!
Important-This was originally supposed to be a Dean & Sam story but I tried writing the next few chapters experimentally and I couldn't get the feel for the two and I repeatedly kept coming back to Dean & Cas because I love those two and as I thought about plot and lots of stuff I want to do, plus the overall feel of it I decided to switch no one is too terribly heartbroken. I know more ship Dean/ Cas anyways.
Dean
After a year of harsh training at Toccoa under the hellish leadership of Dick Roman we made our way to Fort Benning .If possible I think fort Benning was worse than Toccoa. We were all excited to be in actual jump school instead of just doing exercise and ground training. We were supposed to start with physical training(A stage) before moving onto B, C, and D stages that each lasted a week long but the 506th skipped a stage.
This happened because our regiment arrived early, went into A stage and embarrassed the jump school sergeants who were in charge of leading our calisthenics and runs. Us Toccoa graduates would laugh at the sergeants as we ran backwards and challenged them to races. I remember private Gabriel Muck asking a wheezing sergeant after three hours of drill runs when we were going to get past the warm-ups and to the real stuff.
After two days of our abuse the sergeants told the C.O that we, the 506th, were in much better physical condition than them so all companies of the 506th immediately jumped to B stage. We learned how to fold our parachutes and started jumping into sawdust piles and then controlled jumps with wind machines. We moved up till finally we were ready for D stage.
The night before I remember packing and repacking my chute and checking it three times before repacking it again nervously. We were loaded 24 onto a plane. I remember Ash Luz pissing so many times I lost count and Guarnere chain smoking an entire pack. We were told to look at the horizon and not the ground for obvious reasons before the green light came on and we jumped out one by one.
Before the jump we stood all in a line hooked onto a line and we'd unhook before jumping out. My breath caught and I think I left my stomach in the plane as I plummeted out the door. We weren't jumping too high so you were supposed to instantly pull your chute and my heart slowed a little when it came out like it was supposed to. My mind was blank and as Webster had said, my heart popped into my mouth.
For a couple of minutes the skies above the jump fields were filled with whooping and screaming high spirited troopers. Most of us had been so psyched I think we'd have jumped out without our chutes.
Standing in that open door was an obvious moment of truth. Men who had been outstanding in training, men who later won medals for bravery in combat as ordinary infantry, would freeze.
Sometimes men were given second chances but most of the time they weren't and even if they were they wouldn't jump. We only had two men not jump, one whom was Joe Ramirez and he told me the second the plane had passed over the field he'd yelled for them to pull back around so he could jump. That took more guts than jumping the first time.
We jumped again that evening and again on Christmas Eve. We had Christmas off though and we all sat down for a big turkey meal. It was my first Christmas away from home. I was born in Astoria Oregon and my family had seen hard times. My father was a drunk and my mother the best there ever was. I had two siblings, one John Jr. and the other Adam. John was only 10, thank God too young for the army but Adam had joined the air force last year much to my mother's horror, he was only seventeen, I was 20.
After Pearl Harbor I'd gone to enlist in the Marines but was turned down for some damned dental issue that I didn't even know I had. I joined the army because I sucked at math even though I was attending University of Oregon at the time and later I joined the Airborne. If I looked back I could say it was fate, when I was a kid I'd jumped from our roof with an umbrella and remarkably not killed myself or broken anything vital.
I'd had a girlfriend that I'd been dating for three years, Lisa, but I broke it off soon after I'd gone into college. It was a stupid thing to do since I'd loved her more than anything but I was young and stupid.
December 26th we made our last jump and finally earned our wings. On that day Colonel Singer held a parade for us. I can still remember his speech…
"You are a member of one of the finest regiments in the United States Army and consequently in the world."
We were sent on a ten day furlough to go home. My mother cried since I'd decided to be an ass and make my visit a surprise. I wore my uniform proudly, the badge of the screaming eagle worn on my chest and I wore my pants bloomed inside my boots instead of "straight legged" like the infantry.
I was elite; we men of Easy were elite. Not only were the paratroopers within the airborne elite but so was the 506th and within that Easy Company was the best out of all nine companies that made up the battalion. It wasn't just me saying that either.
I'd complained to Muck almost a year into combat that Easy was always at the front taking direct fire or at the rear always exposed to the enemy. We were the 5th company making up a regiment of 9 and under normal circumstances we would have been in the middle. But because we were the best we were the only company exposed at all times. Of course none of us shit heads had realized it then, that headquarters viewed us like that, we'd just thought we had shit luck and someone high up hated us. At the end of the war when we'd discovered the real crap going down most of us had sat in a sort of stunned realization.
After heading back to camp after my 10 day leave we packed up and moved out to Camp Mackall in North Carolina which was home to Airborne Command. Our training intensified, we didn't just jump with rifles but with all of our gear. We had two to three day exercises in the woods, most at night with focus on quick troop movements and operating behind enemy lines.
Now I have to stop a moment and maybe explain just one of the reasons why Easy got a leg up starting off as the best trained and in Shape Company. Sure Easy was made of the finest men and the greatest officers but as much as I hated Dick Roman more than any other human alive he made Easy.
While other companies were training normal and taking regular night runs and training exercises Roman was beating our asses into the dust. He'd make us take night exercise movements and hikes twice as hard, twice as long, twice as fast and twice as often as the other companies. We trained more at night then in the day so that Ash claimed he could "see better in the fuckin' dark than I can in the damned day!"
Oh God how we hated him for it. To this day I sneer at the thought of Dick Roman, he was shit and we loathed him, but our hatred of Roman bonded Easy closer together than any other company. We'd already seen hell and we'd never been into live combat.
On Field exercises some of us were designated as stimulated casualties so the medics could practice on us. This was the first time I ever met Sam Roe, Easy Company's new Medic. They were evacuating us "injured" ones on litters and so forth. God how I hated that term, injured was fell and broke somethin' or cut yourself chopping damn vegitables, what us sorry bastards were was wounded.
I first realized I liked Sam a whole damn lot when he came over to where I was laying, I was supposed to have a busted up leg full of mortar and shell shrapnel. He grinned at me and gave me a shot of real morphine that didn't wear off till that night. He had a mischievous streak and since I was already trippy on pain meds I was howling my ass off when he and one of his med buddies put Roman under a real anesthetic, pulled down his pants, and made a real incision stimulating an appendectomy. Those two sewed him back up and bound it with bandages and surgical tape then disappeared.
God he'd been furious, couldn't blame him on that one but he didn't get anywhere asking us who'd done it. Not one of us would tell him who the guilty medics were.
It was at Mackall that the entire battalion took the Army fitness test. The battalion scored 97 percent and as this was the highest score ever recorded some shit general from Washington thought Colonel Singer had rigged the score. So they had us run it a second time under direct observation…we scored 98 percent.
At the end of May we packed up our bags and headed down to Kentucky and Tennessee for combat training. On our way Red Cross girls met us with coffee and donuts. I remember Gabriel somehow managing to smooth talk nearly a dozen just for him. We pitched camp, made latrines and ate the army's favorite meal for us poor bastards in the field, cream chipped beef on toast, or as we liked to call it SOS or shit on a shingle.
It wasn't combat but it was as damned close as the army could get it. One night we made a jump into the backwoods. God it had been so hot in that C-47, all the muggy warm air currents making the plane sweltering and nauseating. Bull Randleman in the back farthest from the door got sick from the rocking motions from the hot air and lost his lunch into his helmet. God then Buck in front of him puked in his helmet and it literally worked its way up the line.
Not everyone managed to spew into their helmets, the floor was slippery with the shit and my stomach rebelled at the smell as I hurled into my own helmet. When the green light went on we were screaming for them to "MOVE, MOVE, FUCKIN MOVE!"
We spent weeks of late night marches through the southern woods and God was it miserable. We were hot and sweaty and itchy and tired. At the end of July we were through and moved on to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. There were hot showers, good beds and the food was great. It was obvious it was a staging area before sending us overseas.
We didn't know where we were going, the European, Mediterranean or Pacific Theater? Gossiping and rumors became a popular past time during that period. By this time we had all found our closest friends in Easy. Mine were Gabriel Muck, Ash Luz and Sam Roe although Sam wasn't around as much bein' a medic and all.
At this point I wasn't close to Lieutenant Castiel Novak although I had a deep respect for the man none could compare to. I would have gladly laid my life down for him although before combat I couldn't remember ever talking to him that much. He was quiet although he ate and lived with the men far more than his superiors thought proper of his rank. He didn't drink alcohol which his closest friend Lewis Nixon thought highly insane. Lewis was one of Easy's only rich boys, his dad owned some big company and he was a graduate from Yale…he was also an alcoholic, but a damn likable one.
Soon before we were to leave Muck got a hold of some whiskey. Now damn none of us had ever had any whisky, I'd only ever had beer and that was after going to college. Christenson got so drunk he was "making out with the toilet". Somehow I can remember that night and some of Muck, Luz, and Guarnere and my antics. I remember Muck slurring at a newspaper he was somehow reading.
"Hey whatcha readin' Muck?"
"I'm readin' why were at war!"
"Really, what does it say?"
He slurred out a laugh."It says here that the Germans are bad...very bad."
I made a face to show I thought it seemed legitimate before elbowing Luz. "Hey Luz, did you know that the Germans are bad!"
We took a train to New York and with that we knew we'd be headed to the European Theater. We were crammed onto a transport like sardines meant to carry 1,000 passengers. There were 5,000 of us. And so we set off for England.
That also took a reallllly long time to write because believe me, almost every single thing in this is accurate. I'd like to note that every little story in this chapter came from the BOB book. I hope you liked them, I laugh my ass off every time I read about all those poor guys puking into their helmets. And some medics really did put Herbert Sobel(Dick Roman's real character) under anesthetics and gave him an appendectomy.
In a way I feel sorry for Sobel. He was a real ass but every man in Easy company hated that man's guts, several of them said they'd shoot him in combat. He did make them good soldiers.
Dean Winchester-His character represents the real man Sergeant Donald Malarkey. Dean's past is Malarkey's real history, his dad was a drunk and he was from Oregon with two siblings, one who was named John. Adam was an embellishment and I don't know if either sibling was in the army. Malarkey also went to U.I and went back after the war. He also broke up with a serious girlfriend and regretted it.
Castiel Novak-His character represents the real man (the eventual Major) but at the beginning 1st Lieutenant Richard Winters. As of yet my descriptions of him are the literal descriptions that Easy men used in interviews to describe Winters.
Gabriel Muck-His character represents the real man Sgt. Warren H. Muck who was from New York and good friends with Donald Malarkey. Also Richard Speight Jr. plays both Gabriel and Muck, a coincidence I'm thrilled over.
Ash Luz-Character represents the real man George Luz who was best friends with Muck and Malarkey
Sam Roe-Character represents the real man Eugene Roe who was from Louisiana and Easy's medic
Lewis Nixon-real man,best friends with Richard Winters, graduated from Yale, was an alcoholic and rich
Dick Roman-Real man was Herbert Sobel, all info on him is real although he wasn't a politician. Easy men hated him and was often described as chickenshit.
Review and tell me what you think! I'm really starting to like this and I hope you are to, I haven't been able to get too deep yet or get in a lot of dialogue but I had to lay the ground work. Within the next chapter or possibly the one after they will be seeing live combat, first drop was D-day.
