"Doc! Can't you give him something?" Kirby's voice was strained, and I could hear the panic.

I had my hands full but I spared Kirby a glance. The muscles in his arms were taut, the blood vessels bold against his skin. He struggled to keep the GI underneath him from escaping out the back of the moving truck.

At least the infantryman wasn't screaming anymore. He'd run out of breath, or screamed his throat raw. He was still voicing his pain in strained moans though.

Kirby's head had to have been aching something fierce. He'd taken a gunbutt to the face. Even with his helmet on, the blow had done some damage and Kirby's steel pot had a crack in it now. Then the Kraut had swung his gun into Kirby's knee. From the swelling and the tenderness I figured something was definitely broken or cracked inside but I couldn't do anything about it, but wrap it up tight.

I had to look back at what I was doing. My fingers were caked with blood that was already starting to congeal and get sticky. The blood was making the thin muslin of the bandage straps a mess to work with and I felt like I was suddenly all thumbs. The rocking truck didn't help either. The kid I was working on, another medic like me, had more holes in his arm than whole places. There weren't bandages enough to cover the damage that a dropped grenade had done to him. The best I could do was cover the whole arm with a bandage and linen to try to stop some of the infection. The tourniquet was taking care of most of the bleeding.

I shifted, thinking I would straighten up, turn and deal with Kirby's problem. The wound in my back came back to life and changed my mind. Soon as I straightened the muscles there, the jagged edges burned hard and hot. I felt the blood rush to my face in a burst of heat that made me dizzy. I threw my hand back to the bandage and it came back with a fresh streak of crimson.

I was bleeding again. When I shifted back, leaning against the wall of the rocking truck, I could see that Kirby knew it too. His face was pale with concern and he was staring at me. I closed my eyes, suddenly too tired to do anything about it.

I couldn't remember the last time I had energy. You got used to being this tired, and you learned to press through it, and do your job anyway. You learned to never look at the big picture. Only at the little things that you could put your hands to. Do one little thing, after another, and eventually you might actually get the job done.

"Doc?" Kirby sounded like a little kid who'd just realized that his mom or dad was mortal.

I took a breath in and said, "I'm alright, Kirby." My voice was weaker than even I liked. I forced my eyes open and looked down at the knot I'd tied in my own bandage. I loosened it, took in a deep breath, pulled hard to tighten the bandage just a little more. It hurt. God, did it hurt. Another burst of heat that had to have turned my face beet red. I held on to the side of the truck until the dizziness passed.

I figured the dizziness was because we hadn't eaten in a day. We'd run out of rations out where we were holding the line, and the truck that had ammo, rations, blankets and supplies had been stuck in the snow. By the time it came I was too anxious to get the wounded loaded in the empty bed and get back on the road to stop for food. Sgt. Saunders had tossed a bag of rations in with the driver for the first time we stopped, but with the threat of more snow on the way, and the roads already a slush covered mess. There just hadn't been time yet. The adrenaline had helped to warm us up and keep us going, but it was draining out and onto the floor along with the blood.

Besides me, Kirby, and Private Yancey, the kid he was holding down, there were three others with us. They were from other platoons and they'd just been passed along down the line to a collecting point closest to the rear. Me, the medic I was working on and two others had been working together to keep them alive. Now it was only me, and maybe the driver if he ever stopped the truck.

The medic I knew only as Pete. He was a wirey, skinny kid from New York, maybe a year younger than me. Then there was Pvt Thomas Jones, and Pvt Chris Jones. No relation, from two separate parts of the country. Thomas went by TJ, and Chris went by Topher. Topher, TJ and Kirby were the only ones conscious when we loaded the trucks. Since then, exhausted by the cold and the pain, Kirby and I had been the only ones awake.

I could tell Kirby wasn't long for the conscious world, and if I kept bleeding the way I was, I wasn't going to last. We needed food, and heat, and medical care. Strange enough, I was absolutely convinced we needed them in that order.

Sleep...some people think it's a necessity, but it's more like a luxury for a frontline GI. Sleep would come when the men were in the hands of surgeons and nurses. Or it'd come when our bodies just couldn't stand the cold or the hunger anymore.

The truck jolted into and out of a pothole and my head bounced away from the side wall. I pushed upright, crawled over Topher and got to where Kirby and Yancey were smashed up against the tailgate of the truck. There was a heavy canvas cover, tied closed over the back of the truck, saving a little bit of the heat we were putting off, but not much. Beyond that cover it was still bright daylight, sun reflecting off mounds of snow. My tired mind wanted to stare at the flashes of white. My eyes wanted to lose focus on the sea of red and settle on that heavenly white until everything was black.

I grunted at myself and leaned forward on one knee to look at Yancey's wound. Three broken ribs, and his side was all tore up from debris exploding inside his foxhole.

Kirby noticed before I did that Yancey was staring without blinking. For a second I was delighted, because it looked like the bleeding had finally stopped, and I thought it meant Yancey had one hell of a chance. Then I heard Kirby mumble something and looked up. Yancey was dead.

The words came to me before I realized I was saying them. "He didn't have much of a chance to begin with, Kirby." I said, heading off the guilt that I knew came with having a man die in your arms. Didn't matter that you weren't the reason he was busted up to begin with, and it didn't matter that there was piss all that you could do about it in a foxhole in the dead of winter in the middle of the forest in the armpit of a war. You still felt guilty.

Telling other soldiers that it wasn't their fault that they were alive and their buddy was dead was not a part of the medic training manual. Psychological and emotional support was supposed to come from the doctors and the chaplains. But chaplains didn't go out on the front lines. Chaplains didn't ride in the ambulances, and the doctors were too damn precious to risk their getting it under fire. So the medics did it. The medics, and the sergeants and the lieutenants and sometimes the other privates and corporals.

"He only just come up from the replacement depot right after Christmas." Kirby was saying, his words slurring the way they always did. "We didn't really even know him."

I braced my arm on the tailgate and settled my butt down on the cold wood of the bed of the truck. My back ached horribly and it took a minute to find a position that gave me some relief. I would'a killed for a shot of morphine but I had to save what little was left for the other guys. Besides, it wouldn't do for the one functional medic to be out of his wits on drugs.

I thought about when I'd first met Yancey. I'd been on leave when he joined the unit, just a one-day trip to battalion headquarters and back. Kirby and Little John had introduced me and I'd got a polite nod from the new kid, but that was it. He'd kinda faded into the background after that. He wasn't a screw up and he wasn't a hero. He didn't talk much like Kirby, and he didn't sing and joke like Caje. Little John and Nelson tried to get him to join in a game of poker but Yancey had found a way to politely refuse.

It took me a minute to dredge up a good memory of the kid when he was alive. Each of the guys had a thing, you know. Something that made them who they were in your mind. It bothered me, the more I thought about it, that Yancey hadn't had a thing. He'd been a good soldier. He did what he was asked to do and nothing more. He didn't smoke, he didn't play poker. He didn't tell dirty jokes or brag about conquests with girls. He didn't tell stories about a wife or kids. He was...just a guy.

The truck swerved and bounced and the impact shot pain up my back that I couldn't prepare for. I let out a noise that sounded something like a bawling calf and squeezed my eyes shut hard and tight til the pain went away. I heard Kirby shifting, heard the thick fabric of his coat moving against his pants and felt a hand on my ankle. It stayed there til I opened my eyes again.

When I looked at Kirby his face was pale and blank. While I was sitting there thinking, he'd managed to get more exhausted. Pain did that to a body. Even without blood loss, pain could kill a man if it was bad enough.

"We...gotta stop, Doc. Take a break." Kirby said, leaning back limp-like. He was out of breath, just from the effort it'd taken to rise up and put his hand on my ankle. I'd take a thousand gunshot wounds over a broken bone or a head wound, any day.

I nodded to what Kirby said, but the way the truck was bouncing you couldn't tell the difference. I banged my hand on the wall of the truck and shouted, "Hey, driver!"

The curtain that hung over the grate between the drive box and the bed, slid to the side.

"We need a break." I called. I saw the shadow of a gloved thumbs up from the driver, and heard the brakes squeal.

The truck slowed, fishtailing a little before it moved at a crawl to get over to the side, out of the main line of traffic. Kirby reached behind him to loosen the latch on the tailgate and I did the same on my side.

"Sit tight, Kirby. I'll get the rations."

"Rather have a cup of coffee." Kirby said with a shiver.

I gave him a smirk. We both knew the last thing we'd see on this ride was anything liquid and steaming.

I sat on the edge of the truck bed, then slid slowly to the ground, testing my balance and the strength left in my legs. Crawling around in the bed had made my thighs burn, and my knees creak.

I had to remind myself frequently that I was still a young man.

Before I could get more than a foot from the truck the driver came back with the bag of rations.

I took the bag and handed some to Kirby. I tried shaking some of the other guys awake, those that I could reach from outside the truck. TJ came awake, and Pete. The others stayed asleep and I figured that was best for them. I started opening cans of meat and cheese and biscuits, handing them back into the truck.

While we ate, the driver stood a few feet away, boots sunk into the snow, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He probably had a regular source for smokes and could afford to go through them that fast. I watched him, watching the road, spike in one hand, the other laid across the barrel of the M1 he had strapped over his shoulder. He had the same quiet, calmness that Saunders had. The kind that some might think meant he wasn't paying attention, but meant he was in tune to everything around him.

When a chunk of snow fell off a high branch and punched into the groundcover the driver made the tiniest of motions, but I knew he'd seen and heard it. I felt better knowing this guy was behind the wheel of the truck. A lot of the drivers were antsy when they weren't in motion. Safety was speed and motion for them, but with this guy it felt like he'd been on the ground for a bit.

I wondered about him, like I did most of the guys, chewing mechanically through the chipped beef in my tin. Then we were back in the truck, and back on the road. I would've been spinning the wheels and tossing snow and mud trying to get back onto the gravel, but the driver had us in motion in minutes.

After he got some food in his belly, Kirby nodded off. Pete didn't stay awake long. He said his arm wasn't hurting him but I could tell better. TJ, a kid with bad acne and the start of some peach fuzz on his cheeks, stayed awake with me. He'd taken a round through his shoulder. The bleeding hadn't been too bad, but the way he had limited motion told me there was probably something wrong with the tendons, muscles or nerves. More than a bandage could fix. And something that needed treatment from someone who knew if he was ever gonna use that arm again.

I asked TJ what he had done before he enlisted and he told me he'd been in high school. He'd been on the swim team of his southern california alma mater, and had been class president and captain of the debate team. A decently smart kid, with the kind of bright eyed idealism that seemed to always come from that part of the country. I asked him what he wanted to do after the war and I could see him thinking about it. Thinking about what his arm would let him do if the docs couldn't fix it up.

Finally he told me that he wanted to be a teacher. Teach history maybe, or science. I wanted to ask him what he would do if his arm turned out to be just fine, but it was a wishy washy direction to take the conversation. Far too many ifs involved. I was tired, aching all up and down my back, and dealing with new spikes of pain shooting down my legs. I couldn't keep the pain out of my voice anymore and I desperately wanted to use the last of the morphine on myself.

It was an unspoken rule, though. Medics didn't dose themselves, no matter what.

Maybe it wasn't unspoken. Maybe it had been in the training manual, or a command by one of the doctors doing our first aid training. Maybe it was written down somewhere in an oath. I knew it intrinsically. If Pete had been awake I'd've asked him if he remembered where it'd come from. Just to keep awake. Just to keep my mind going.

Even though it had been cold, the food seemed to warm me up a little and I started to doze. The little voice in my head said that I should get up, check on the guys that I hadn't been able to rouse before. Kirby, with his head banged up, shouldn't be sleeping too long without my checking on his pupils either. My head kept dipping and my chin kept resting on my chest, and it felt so damned good to let go for just a few seconds.

It was a guilty sleep, though, and it didn't last long. My dad suddenly popped into my head as I forced my eyes open. I remembered him, night after night, nodding off in his chair with his dead pipe hanging out of his mouth. Meanwhile, mom was in the kitchen with us kids cleaning dishes, making lunches for the next day at school, wringing out the wet wash. Every night she'd work on embroidery and read the Bible for a bit. She had her routines, and so did my Pop, but they were so very different. I wondered if Pop ever felt guilty for dozing all that time, while Ma worked.

I gritted my teeth and made my rounds on my hands and knees. Kirby mumbled and shoved my hands away when I forced his eyes open. TJ was sleeping peacefully enough, and the bandages on Topher's leg were dry. Pete was shivering despite the heavy coat and the blanket. I wedged myself into the corner of the back wall and pulled Pete back against my chest and between my legs. I spread the blanket over us both and after a while he warmed up ok.

Then sleep came for real. The pain in my back and legs went away. I wasn't hungry or thirsty or cold or tired. A sweet smelling, brown-haired lady came up to me in a WAC uniform. She had pillowy curls surrounding her heart-shaped face, and the brightest, bluest eyes you've ever seen. No makeup, but for a touch of pink on her lips. She was the girl next door. She was smart and funny. She made the best apple pie you've ever tasted and she wanted twenty kids someday. She was thinking about signing up to be a transport nurse, and she would do anything to serve her country, no matter the cost.

I couldn't remember her name. I never did. But I relived that night with every fiber of my being, every chance I got. We'd had dinner together. There'd been ten of us, girls and guys, but it'd been like she and I were alone in the world. We'd gone out dancing, walked around London in the twilight hours, then gone to the apartment of a married buddy of ours. He'd wound up the Victrola and we'd danced to all the latest hits, some of us figuring it was the last time we'd hear anything current.

She'd been just tall enough for me, even with her low heels on. Her head rested on my chest and I'd buried my nose in her hair and smelled the lavender water she told me she'd made herself.

I'd held her most of the night. I knew most of her life story. But like an idiot, I'd never gotten her address. Not even the one back in the states. I didn't even know what hospital she was with. Heaven knew I checked every time we came across one.

In my dream we passed the sweetest part of that night. Curled up together by the fire, still awake long after the others had sacked out. We were building a dream house together. I had designed the back yard, and the barn and the garage. She was designing the sewing room, the kitchen and the family room. We were working our way up to the master bedroom, and I was working my way up to thoughts that a decent man maybe shouldn't ought to have, when the truck rolled over.