Author's Note: This is a sort of sequel/companion to Chapter 1, Piano Man, but can be read separately. I hope you're enjoying them all, thanks for the good reviews!

"You know something, Corporal?" Wilson tossed the spent bandage in the nearby trashcan and continued scolding his poor patient, "You are the worst patient I've ever treated. And when I was first shot down I took care of a whole bomber crew of Germans for a whole night before we were found."

"You know what you should do," Loewe was beginning to look a little scared of Wilson's grousing, "Is you should tell me that story. Instead of berating me for… whatever it is you're mad at me for."

"Picking at your wound, for one thing," Wilson pulled a small can from his bag and swiped a bit of the gunk onto his fingers, "Then breaking three stitches."

"What was I supposed to do? I can't walk around with no facial expression for a month!" Loewe winced as Wilson smeared the cream onto the red wound streaking across his face.

"It wouldn't have been a month," Wilson muttered, "Just a few weeks."

Loewe sighed, "Fine, sorry."

Wilson just shook his head, "You're the one stuck with an ugly scar for the rest of your life."

Loewe shrugged.

"Hold still!"

He stiffened, but couldn't resist, after a few more moments, "How'd you end up taking care of a German bomber crew?"

"Oh?" Wilson recapped the little can, "Well, I was shot down not quite a year ago, right."

"Right."

"Yeah… it was over Mannheim…"

1942

"Wilson, you're the worst bombardier in the entire United States Air Force!" Scratch was right about to take Wilson's head off, when the Captain snapped,

"Can it, Scratch! We've got to find the others before the Krauts do, so shut your mouth."

Scratch sent Wilson a last withering glare and shoved his cap down under his eyes, following Captain Winters through the forest towards where he thought he'd seen the other parachutes go down.

Despite their general animosity towards each other, the two sergeants found themselves walking side by side as they picked their way through the underbrush, until they came upon the smoking wreck of -

"That's a Kraut plane!" Scratch squawked, and scrambled backwards.

Captain Winters was just about to follow him when Wilson hissed, "Wait! Some of 'em are hurt!"

"They're supposed to be, Sergeant," Winters grabbed his sleeve and was about to tug him along when a voice behind them shouted,

"Halt!"

"Now you've done it!" Scratch snapped as they stuck their hands in the air.

"Shut it," Winters muttered through gritted teeth.

There was the rustling of feet and a Luftwaffe soldier appeared in front of them, Wilson wasn't sure if it was an officer or an enlisted man, gripping a pistol so tight his knuckles were white.

"Kindly don't shoot us," Winters said, and from the uncertainty in his eyes it was apparent he didn't speak English.

"Komm," He said finally, and motioned for them to turn around and walk.

They came back to the wreck, and one man stood up, holding a bloodied arm close to him, and looked them up and down,

"Amerikaners," He said finally, and Winters nodded, "I speak -," He waved his hand, "A little English. You are now prisoners."

"We'd gathered," Scratch said. Wilson glared at him.

The German shook his head, "Look, we are -," He frowned and motioned between them, then finally sighed, giving up on trying to conjure the words, and stuck out a hand to Captain Winters, "Aumann."

"Winters," After a moment's hesitation, the Captain shook his hand firmly.

Wilson took a half a step forward and motioned to the rest of the crew, "I'm a medic," He said simply, hoping Aumann understood. He wasn't really a medic, but he'd had more training than the average flyer, and he'd studied plenty.

He did, "Oh! Gut! Please -," He waved a hand towards the six other men, "The aeroplane - fire."

Wilson nodded. There was only one man who looked to be only unconscious, the others were nursing tender burns, "Let me help. I need cool water."

"Water?" Aumann repeated. Wilson nodded, "Ja. Schäfer," He fired off fast German to the other man, who nodded, pressed the gun into Aumann's good hand, and ran off into the woods.

"Who's the worst?" Wilson looked around the small group, and Aumann looked at a loss for a translation. Nevermind, Wilson could see.

He knelt down by the delirious man, a bit younger than him (it seemed everyone was younger than him), whose whole left side was pocked with bloody blisters. The two others eyed him cautiously, but finally moved back, "Help me get his shirt off," He waved Scratch over.

Scratch held his ground, scowling.

Winters sighed, and went over to Wilson, "Let me help."

They started to peel off what was left of his shirt and coat, and his eyes fluttered open and he murmured something hoarsely.

Wilson glanced up at Aumann, who said something back, and the man gasped, starting to scramble up.

"No! Wait!" Wilson pushed him gently back to the Earth as Aumann crouched down beside them, again stringing something off in German.

The man's eyes found Aumann's, a bit uncertain, but then he nodded slowly and let Wilson and Winters take off his shirt and spread it beneath him, biting back groans with every movement.

"Good. As soon as that fellow - Schäfer - gets back with the water, we need to sponge it, sort of, onto his burns. We can't soak it or it might get infected."

Aumann listened to all of this with a confused frown, and finally sighed dejectedly and shook his head, "I do not know."

"That's okay," Wilson said firmly, "I know."

A few minutes later, Schäfer came back with a helmet full of water. Wilson set Aumann gently cleaning off the man's wounds with a cloth from one of their first aid kits, and Schäfer took two more of the men's helmets and went off again as Wilson and Winters moved on to the next man.

Most of them were conscious, and one, who introduced himself as Roth, began to help as soon as Wilson secured his seared arm against his body, and told them the names of each of the men. Besides he, Aumann, and Schäfer, the first man was Von Essen, and then Voss, Schriver, Weiß, and Rudi. Rudi was the one who hadn't been burnt, he'd been thrown from the plane before it blew, and Wilson decided to check on him last. Hopefully he would come around between now and then.

He didn't. Wilson was a bit more concerned by the time he got to treating him (by then, Schäfer had been back and forth with the water a few times, and Scratch had begrudgingly agreed to help), and reached for his wrist to find a pulse.

It was weak, for a moment Wilson could have sworn he was dead.

He put his hand over his face, feeling for a breath, "Aw…"

Aumann looked up and his eyes widened, "Nein!"

Wilson shook his head and pressed his hands into Rudi's chest, "We have to bring him back around, he's not breathing," He waved his hand up from his throat, and tapped his own chest, showing what he meant to Aumann.

The German nodded, and then gently moved Wilson's hands aside and pumped on his chest himself.

"Don't stop," Wilson said solemnly, and looked up as Schäfer came back into the clearing, with two more helmetfuls of water.

He set one down next to Wilson and the other next to Scratch, and picked up the two others.

But he didn't leave, walking over to Aumann and asking something in a worried tone.

Aumann's reply was terse, through gritted teeth, and Schäfer ducked his head and left again.

It was an hour. The moon that night was slim and not at all helpful, but as soon as they'd built a fire - small, so as not to aggravate anyone's burns - Wilson could tell by his watch that it was nearly one in the morning when Aumann exclaimed, "Er atmet!"

Quickly, almost everyone able scrambled over to them, watching anxiously.

In the next minutes, Rudi awoke, mostly because he was losing everything he'd eaten, until there was nothing left, and then he just retched for a while until he finally caught a great, desperate breath and sank back.

Aumann caught him, and sat him up, "Rudi!"

"Aumann?" Rudi murmured, his eyes fluttering open.

"Ja," Aumann talked a little more, and then motioned for someone to pass over the water. He got a bit into Rudi, and then talked a bit more and helped him closer to the fire, "Sit."

Rudi nodded, and slowly the men backed away from the fire.

There were still two men who couldn't get up. Von Essen was conscious, and watched everything silently with his head propped up on a pair of boots from someone's burnt feet. Weiß hadn't regained consciousness, although he was breathing. By now Wilson was worrying about infection.

"Wilson," He looked up at Captain Winters, whose eyes were darting over the group, "Scratch's gone."

Wilson looked around, "How long?"

Winters shook his head, "It's been a while. But we have to let him go, Wilson. You know why."

Wilson nodded. They could probably be court-martialed for this, "You think he'll find the others?"

"I sure hope so," Winters sighed.

Wilson nodded, "Could you keep Rudi awake? If he falls asleep again so soon it might be bad."

"Sure," Winters plopped down next to Rudi, and started talking. How they would get around the language barrier Wilson didn't know.

He went back to Weiß and Von Essen, and concluded that they were as good as they would be, until help arrived. Schriver and Voss were trying to piece together what was left of their radio to see if they could send for help - none of them had much of an idea where they were.

A long while passed uneventfully, and Wilson reflected that it was better than a bad event.

At three thirty they got the radio put together.

A cheer rose up among the German crew, and Wilson and Winters exchanged solemn looks.

Winters looked at Aumann, who looked from his men to the two Americans.

Finally, he said, "Soon. Go."

Wilson nodded, and Winters grinned broadly.

They stood, and both shook Aumann's good hand firmly, "Danke, Aumann," Winters said, "We won't forget. Take care."

Aumann just shook his head, "I don't know what you say."

They laughed together for a minute, and then, after Wilson had given the best instructions he could to take care of each other, the two Americans ran for the woods.

"But you still got caught," Loewe said, after Wilson had finished the story. It certainly didn't have all the glamor it had in his head, he'd never been very good at storytelling.

"Sure," Wilson shrugged, "We did make it a couple more days, though. And we found Corporal Anders," He shook his head, "He'd been hiding in a treewell with a giant gash in his side. The infection was awful. He only lasted a couple hours after we found him."

"I'm sorry," Loewe said softly.

Wilson nodded.

Loewe looked up, "You ever -," He stopped himself.

"Wonder if I could have saved him, if I hadn't stuck around with the Messerschmitt crew," Wilson finished, "Yeah, for a while. But he couldn't be saved." He swallowed the memory - Lord, that poor boy - and went on, "But even if I'd have known, I would've had to stay. They needed help. And I'm not a soldier, I'm a medic."

Loewe nodded, "Yeah."

Wilson frowned down at his hands, laying limp in his lap, and then looked up again, "You got a deck of cards?"

Loewe nodded and pulled a box from his pocket, "What happened to yours?"

"A tragic accident," Wilson said dryly, taking the cards in his hands. They danced between his fingers as he shuffled them - he dared say he had nimble fingers for shuffling, being a doctor and all, "I stood up, bumped the table, and they all went flying into the ash bucket," He nodded towards the bucket next to the stove in the center of the room.

"Ouch," Loewe watched the cards, "Do you often change the subject when it gets like that?"

Wilson sighed, "I can't say I've had many conversations like that."

"Oh," Loewe was quiet for a long minute after that, and then he nodded slowly.

Wilson was glad he didn't say anything more, "If you haven't got any other place to be, I'll play you cards."

With a half-hearted grin, Loewe said, "Can't think of any pressing engagements."

Wilson smiled at him, and dealt the cards.