Double Chapter update because we need to get to some action in this story.
Chapter 4: The Realities of War
Barnes marched into the command tent where stern faced officers stood over a strategy board. Captain Fishburn raised his head to see who had come in. "Sargent, I need you to look over these plans right quick than get your squad hustlin up to Azzano. We have just received word that the 57th has been ambushed on a transport mission and they need backup. Yours and Delta are to deliver. Understood?" Bucky shook his head the affirmative and looked over the telegram. Glancing over at the map however, he noticed something strange.
Among the myriad of Nazi flags pasted all over the map, there was a brown triangle with an H and a question mark printed on it. " What's that supposed to be?" Bucky asked, putting his finger on the map. " Above your paygrade son." Fishburn replied and went back to looking at papers. Bucky slapped his hand on the map. " The hell it is! That location is near where we are being told to go and I'm not going in blind." Bucky snapped.
Fishburn looked up sharply. " Finish your damn report and get out there Barnes, or it'll be the 57th's blood on your hands." "Don't pull that on me Captain, I've already got blood on my hands. I've got it whatever way I turn." Bucky said lowly, already sick of the war. " Go fight soldier. And follow your orders." Fishburn growled. Knowing he was not going to win, Bucky saluted with a " Yes Sir." and left the tent. He turned the corner and dropped the telegram into the muck without looking back.
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" C'mon fellas gear up and get ready to move out, the Cap's just ordered a rescue, our neighbor the 57th has been attacked!" Bucky hollered as he ran into the camp. "Have everything you need ready to move in ten minutes tops, Sandy, you know what to do." "Got it Sarge!" The men shout back as Sandy make final adjustments to her medic yoke and puts on her helmet. "Alright count off and be ready to move out!" Bucky told the group. All were accounted for until 39 did not call out.
Bucky sighed and walked towards a tree. " Williamson? You up there?" Bucky asked. "Y-yes Sarge." Came a meek voice from out of the tree. "Can you come down? You need to keep an eye on your buddy, we are about to move out." Bucky said with understanding. " I can't do this Sarge, I should have run when I got the chance. Why didn't I run?!" Asked the distressed soldier as he climbed down from the tree.
Bucky put his arm around Williamson and led him over to the edge of a tent where they could have privacy for a minute. " Ya know Williamson, my mom wanted me to get to Canada, avoid the draft. I knew I couldn't though, knew if I ran I could never go down the street with any of the hard earned respect I had acquired, life's tough for an immigrant you know. I've been where you are, heck, I'm not going to lie, I'm scared now. But even if you are scared to death you still gotta square your shoulders and plow on ahead. You're going to make it through this, ok kid?" Bucky assured the terrified greenhorn.
Williamson shook his head frowning, " You don't get it Sarge! I'm a Jew, I practically have a target on my head. Those Nazi's get a hold of me and I'm good as dead." Williamson said frustrated and scared, tugging out his dogtags. Bucky looked with new concern at the Private, this wasn't just a case of pre-fight jitters, this was a soldier who was more at risk than any of them, who would be targeted if anything were to go wrong.
" I won't let them take you. Just stick close to me okay?" Assured Bucky. " Alright, I'm trusting you Sarge. Get me back to my family." Said Williamson. "Ok, now fall into formation, the 57th need back up in Azzano and we've been chosen to deliver." Said Bucky. " Yes Sergeant!" Williamson called out, jogging to the formation. "39, Last man Sir!" The now emboldened soldier cried. " Alright Alpha, load up and move out! Alpha!" Bucky called, " AVENGERS!" Shouted the squad.
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Even a mile before the convoy of Alpha and Delta squads see anything they hear the explosions of the flares being lit to provide light in the battle and shells being shot into the sky, grenades, mines, and gunfire being exchanged. "This really was an ambush." Sandy said as she looked ahead of the lead vehicle to the oncoming battle. In the back, some soldiers were holding hands in a circle and praying for safety, and guidance, and that their guns wouldn't lock up. " You ready doc?" Dugan asked from the driver's seat of the transport vehicle Sandy was in. "Guess I have to be at this point, It's what I signed up for after all." Sandy said watching the treeline for danger, they were almost to the front. In the moment, Sandy wondered just what they would face out there and if the fear of the unknown was better or worse than that of the present.
"Yer allowed to be scared ya know, we all are. Take it from an old soldier and accept that you are and move on. Don't want you to freeze up out there." DumDum said wisely and halted the vehicle. It was time. Sandy looked around the formations only to find Harolds and Bucky having to put aside their differences and call a truce on the matter of unit division, it was not the place. Delta, it was decided, was to move in from the East and Alpha was going to stay where it was and come in from the South. There was a large hill to the North and a wide gully to the West. No wonder the 57th had been attacked at this point. Delta left to pick up their mark and the tension in the air was thick as pea soup fog.
"Alpha, you ready? Cover your buddy, watch out for mines, hope to see you all on the other side of the field." Bucky said as a last word of advice to his troops before charging in alongside them. Dugan gave a Wahoo as he ran, firing his shotgun like a mad hobo into the fray. Sandy looked out of a hole she had tripped into and did not like what she saw, there were so many people running about and grenades and mines were exploding and creating craters in the ground several feet deep, large enough to hide in. But not without consequence, men crawled away from the pits missing limbs and collapsing. People were falling. It was like a brutal slaughterhouse.
Sandy would run up to a man, prepared to assist and find him dead, already bled out into the ground. Sandy would close his glazed eyes and move on to the next. She found herself carefully dashing across the ground, trying to find troops to aid and avoid injury to herself, she was just as likely to get blown up as anyone, one wrong move and you were gone.
She skidded to a halt next to a soldier whose leg was obviously broken, it was twisted at an unnatural angle and blood was running profusely from mid calf. After quickly dodging a frantic and delirious stab at her with a long field knife, grabbing the hilt and tossing it away, Sandy was able to get the hyperventilating man to calm down enough to understand English. " It's alright, you are gonna be alright. Just stay with me!" Sandy shouted over the deafening noise of the battlefield. Shouts, screams, explosions and orders all collided in a meaningless conglomeration. Sandy carefully stabilized the soldier's leg wound as best as she could, before literally dragging the screaming man behind a tree to avoid a barrage of bullets.
Leaning him up against the tree, Sandy paused for breath, before continuing to patch up the wound. " Hey, Medic!" Shouted a man who was running towards her, also wearing the crosses. Thank goodness, backup was coming. Than it wasn't.. A shot, and the medic collapsed with a hole through his neck. 'Sniper, there is a Nazi sniper somewhere and he is hunting medics.' Sandy thought as she looked around for potential nests. Than she saw it, in the tree right above her, the gleam of a scope in the light of the blast flares and little fires which burned everywhere. Sandy gasped and reeled back, throwing off her armbands and grabbing up a helmet which lay sticking out of the mud. She grabbed the knife as well from where she had thrown it before grabbing handfuls of mud and slapping them over the crosses on her medical yoke. She checked the man once more to find that having applied a tourniquet, the bleeding had slowed considerably.
" If you can, get to the hill, I don't think we will be getting past that sniper easily together." Sandy said to the man. " Don't worry.. I've got this." He said tightly before shooting straight up into the tree. The sniper crashed out of the tall tree and hit the ground before he did not move again. His rifle falling down after him. The troop picked up the rifle, a Karabiner 98 Kurtz, and leaned on it like a crutch before testing his leg and hobbling along the edge of the woods to get up the hill. Sandy caught her breath as she took in the sniper, than checked him and left, crawling to keep low back the way she came from, feeling the ground for loose or misplaced soil that would indicate a mine. Only to have to treat another troop who had fallen on top of her after a particularly bad blast shrieking about some fire blasting tank he saw. Sandy tried to get him to calm down and She thought it was gibberish from shell shock, It happens to the best of them. She moved the man and another she picked up on the way to safety up on the hill where a transport team had moved in, before running back down the hill to repeat the process.
Suddenly a rocket hit the ground not five feet away from Sandy and exploded, the shockwave throwing her and another man through the air and into the roughly shorne wall of a mine crater. Sandy was numb, her ears were ringing, and she felt her head start bleeding from impacting the wall with the heavy helmet. She lay curled in a ball and covered in dirt for a minute not able to even think, then fear and realization pierced through her daze. " Hey! Are you alive?!" Sandy asked as she scrambled around in the hole and pressed her hand to his neck, feeling for a heartbeat. The man sprung fearfully to animation at her touch. Sandy jumped back, remembering that she had almost been stabbed to death by a disoriented soldier not ten minutes before. "Oh, God! I can't hear anything!" Williamson exclaimed frantically, staring at Sandy with wide, terrified eyes. Sandy grabbed him around the shoulders, forcing him to focus on her. She gestured at her ears and made a thumbs up or down motion. Williamson motioned the negative and Sandy help up two fingers, indicating that he should be able to hear in a couple of minutes since she didn't see blood coming out that would indicate a burst eardrum. Williamson relaxed a fraction and doubled over suddenly. Sandy got to ground level with Williamson and felt gently, he could have cracked ribs or be shot somewhere. Williamson yelped and tried to move away.
'Cracked ribs, at least two. Don't think they are floaters yet, not coughing up blood anyway.' Sandy mentally diagnosed. Williamson wheezed shallowly, sinking to the wall of the crater with a wince. He had blood all over his face from a scalp laceration.
Sandy pointed at her ear again, Williamson nodded." You think you can make it back to the hill?" Sandy asked hurriedly, observing a break in the shelling. "Yeah, maybe. Just gotta get up and Woah!" Williamson yelped ducking back down into the crater,
" One just ricocheted off my helmet!" He said with shock said taking it off and observing the new dent it had acquired. "Put that back on! The next one might get you true." Sandy reprimanded while looking over the edge for a second before ducking back down. " Where's Barnes, weren't you supposed to stick with him?" Sandy asked. " I don't know! He told me to run, so I did. There was a really bad explosion..It's all too much. God, it's too much. I'm gonna die and never get out'a this hole!" Williamson said tearfully, clutching his ribs. " You're going to be ok, we are going to get out of this." Sandy promised.
A minute later Bucky has jumped into Sandy's crater along with Gabe and Dum Dum. " Here they come! There's gotta be at least five mortar companies out there. Tell them we need cover now!" Bucky yells over the cacophony of noise as bullets whizzed over their heads, thick as ever. " That might be a bit tough Sarge." Jones replies shaking his head. They are trying to get the backpack radio transponder to work but it has been shot in the fight and is smoking with a hole through it, tubes all blown. " Bucky behind you!" Dum Dum shouted. They are having to cover all directions of the crater to keep from being overrun by Nazi's. " I hate these guys." Dum Dum growled. " They never seem to get tired either." Bucky noted as he shot. Sandy had her ideas of why, this was not the time to voice it though.
Suddenly these strange fire blasting tanks start firing on all of the Nazis the unit had been fighting and they all stop, cautiously standing up to look at the strange tanks. Around them some of the other soldiers start to cheer, believing them to be allied backup.
" That looks, new." says Dum Dum puzzled. " Are those ours?" Williamson asks suspiciously. "I don't think they are." Dum Dum says wide eyed as the tank suddenly points its barrel at the group. "Everybody Get Down!" Bucky shouts suddenly, throwing himself over Sandy as the fire blasts mere centimeters above their heads, rocking the ground and throwing what felt like a ton of dirt, rocks, and wood; The remains of a barricade, all over the group with a concussive explosion! There is a hot blast and the strong smell of a lightning storm fills the air.