I'm sorry for not being able to post this sooner but I've been pretty busy with school.😑
If you see any mistakes, English or German, please let me know and I'll fix them as soon as possible.
Also, just as a side note. Whenever the Rat Patrol are in their jeeps and moving, I'm going to have exclamation marks behind whatever they say because of the wind and noise (trying to make it a little more realistic). I just didn't want someone wondering why everyone was yelling at each other.
Moffitt felt like he was sitting on pins and needles as the minutes slowly ticked by, "Could I have prevented this? Should I have done something different? What if they kill Tully?"
"Hey, Tully'll be okay, he's tough," Beanie said breaking through Moffitt's thoughts.
"Yes, he is." Moffitt took a slow breath in and tried to calm himself down. He didn't like thinking the worst but it was hard not to, he jerked his gaze over to the end of the truck as Fischer and several of his men walked up.
"Maybe your friend will not be so quick to hit me next time," Fischer said as the German officers threw Tully in the back. They walked off laughing and Beanie and Moffitt sprang forward to the injured Tully. They rolled him over and Moffitt held back the string of profanities threatening to spill from his mouth. There was dried and fresh blood on the side of Tully's head where a gash was and his face looked like someone had used it for a punching bag, which they probably did, and his left hand had raw skin on the top as well on the palm.
"If I ever get my hands on that twisted excuse for a man, I'm gonna rip his head off!" Growled Beanie. Moffitt tore strips of cloth off of his sleeve and gingerly swathed Tully's hand trying to be quick and cause as little pain as possible. Tully opened his eyes slowly and looked up at the two men above him, "Tully it's me, Beanie. Remember?" Tully just stared ahead seeing but not seeing at the same time. " 'Member that time I broke your ma's vase and she came in with a shotgun in her hands threatening to shoot off our heads?" Beanie cradled Tully's head on his shoulder while Moffitt cleaned the blood off as best he could. "Boy, I was sure that she'd really do it."
Moffitt wrapped some cloth around Tully's forehead and wound it about several times before tying it in the back. "She threatened you with a shotgun?" Asked Moffitt incredulously.
"Yeah, but then she started laughing at our faces and just made us clean it up... and sweep the kitchen, dust the living room, and wash a few dishes." Moffitt smirked imagining a young Tully and Beanie washing dishes.
"So, where did the name Beanie come from?"
"Well, when I was thirteen, I found some beans in an old pail back out in a shed. I thought'd be fun for me to sit up in a tree and hit unsuspecting people as they walked by. So about after twenty victims later I only had a few beans left so I threw them at a man who turned out to be the preacher. He found out later as did my mom and I don't think she's ever forgiven me, but I'm gettin' off track. Tully here decided that he wouldn't let me ever forget so he nicknamed me Beanie, and it's stuck ever since."
Moffitt chuckled and brushed back some of Tully's hair, a calm silence descended on everyone and it gave him a chance to think about what had happened earlier. What had caused Tully to break out of his trance-like state? "Was it because the captain threatened my life?" He wondered, "But Dietrich did the same thing, of course, he wouldn't actually shoot me because he has his own standards, maybe Tully knew the difference." He absentmindedly licked his lips and became aware of how thirsty he was, with all the action that had been going he realized he hadn't had something to drink since his time in Dietrich's cell. "Wann bekommen wir etwas Wasser?" He asked a young guard.
The guard murmured something to the officer beside him and pointed to a canteen lying on a makeshift table, the young man swiftly jogged over to it and handed it to Moffitt, he glanced around furtively and then whispered, "Wenn Sie mehr brauchen, sagen Sie es mir bitte."
"Danke." Moffitt took a small swallow and then managed to get some down Tully before handed it to Beanie. After it had been passed around, he gave it back to the German guard who put it back in its original spot.
"I suggest that you try to sleep, we have a long day ahead of us." Fischer said loudly as he strutted past looking for all the world like a peacock, "A very long day." He murmured smiling to himself.
"Sarge! Do you think that we'll be able to catch up with Moffitt and Tully!?" Asked Hitch.
"I don't know, they've had at least a 5-hour head start and I'm not sure if they're going to stop for the night!" Troy looked behind them to see if Dietrich was following, "I guess Dietrich's going to be pretty busy for a while!" he grinned at his driver and Hitch couldn't help but grin also.
"Yeah, so much for that perfect cell, eh Sarge?"
"Yeah, what they need are perfect guards."
Hitch sobered and asked uncertainly, "Do you think they're okay?"
Troy wanted to assure the young private that his friends were okay and that everything would turn out fine, but he couldn't say that and be truthful, "I don't know, I hope they are, but I just don't know."
Hitch nodded and his grip tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. He remembered the first time he had met Tully, the soft-spoken Kentuckian had been sitting on the hood of a jeep chewing on a matchstick and fiddling with a slingshot. They had hit it off immediately and could always rely on the other one being there. He didn't know what he'd do it he lost Tully.
While Hitch was lost in his own thoughts, Troy was thinking about his first encounter with Tully also. He had seen the young private standing amongst a crowd of children with a bag of candy handing the pieces out to them. The smile on his face as he distributed the candy could only be described as pure happiness as the children exclaimed with oohs and aahs as they tasted the sweets. He definitely had a way with humans, Troy couldn't imagine not seeing him without a smile ever on his face again. He sighed and looked around once more. Everything was still quiet and peaceful but he could feel a sense of foreboding in the air.
1. When do we get some water?
2. Thank you.
3. If you need more, please tell me.
