The door swung closed behind him and he was left watching dawn break softly over the torn landscape. He sometimes wondered if dawn was the only gentle thing that remained with them on the battlefield. But even dawn had been corrupted and taken hostage by the war. It was a favourite time for attack. That was why he saw so many dawns. You didn't want to be asleep when the enemy hurtled over the parapets of their trenches and dashed across no-man's land toward you. You didn't want to be unaware when they encircled your position and began closing the net around you and your company. You couldn't doze when lines of wounded men stretched out into the compound, waiting for their chance under the scalpel.
Winter was setting in and the air was cold. He could see the clouds of frost that formed in front of him with every breath. The fatigue jacket he wore over his white scrubs wasn't enough protection from the weather and he wrapped his arms around himself as he walked slowly in the direction of his tent. His leg was bothering him a little. It was a reminder of his time in the trenches. It always warned him when there was going to be snow or rain.
Hopefully he could catch a little sleep, real sleep, before he wandered over to the mess for breakfast. Lately, as the front had moved ever closer to their position, he was sleeping only fitfully. His dreams were haunted by memories of other times, the times that he had tried to hard to forget. When he was asleep, he saw the faces of men that he would never see again in life. He heard the voices and the sounds that he had spent yeas trying to silence.
But perhaps they were a warning. When he awoke stifling his screams, he wouldn't attempt to go back to sleep. He would go to Post-OP and start evaluating the patients, trying to decide which could be moved and how. Then he would go back to his office and start drawing up plans for bugging out. Most of the time the plans were unneeded, but they would always sit on his desk until the shooting moved further away and he was again able to sleep.
His wife had never understood his nightmares. She couldn't, she had never survived through a living nightmare. But she had been patient, waking him when he began to toss and turn, heading off the worst of them. Now he was alone in his tent and had no one to save him from himself. So his remembrances of Flanders blurred with his recollections of Germany and bled into his life in Korea. When the front was too close and when shells were landing just outside the camp, the distinctions were no longer sharp and he saw things that he knew could not be.
The last time the shelling had been close, he thought that he had seen Billy Thompson, one of his trench-mates from the first war, laying flattened in the nearest crater. He had been pressed down into the dirt as far as he could; only the top of his helmet protruded over the edge of the protective hollow. It had taken a great deal of self-control to stop from yelling for Billy to keep down. It wouldn't change what had happened. The bullet that had pierced the top of that helmet and taken off the top of Billy's head had been fired forty years before.
Another time he had seen Joe Wilkins, fellow Charlie Company medic, bent over a patient in the compound, bandage scissors clutched beneath his teeth as he tied off the tourniquet around the wounded man's leg. He had actually stepped away, the instructions for Joe to leave the soldier actually rising to his lips. But it was too late. The shell that had hit both Joe and the wounded man had been launched ten years ago. And when Joe had lifted his head, it had turned out to be BJ, blonde moustache twitching in an expression of concern.
The visions of Korea hadn't come yet. But he knew that when this war was over, if it was ever over, when a car backfired he would see Hawkeye dropping to the ground to escape sniper fire, when he watched the Fourth of July fireworks with his grandchildren, he would see the terror in Margaret's blue eyes, pleading over her surgical mask. He knew that the events being burned into his mind now would rear up and begin to consume him, much as the others had.
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"Halt!"
"Hold your horses," he said firmly, smiling at the guard, "it's just me on the way back from Post-OP."
"Sorry, sir," the guard stammered, lowering his rifle. "I didn't know that it was you." The kid was new, had only been with them for a few days. This was probably his first time on guard duty at night and it was only natural that he be nervous. He hadn't yet built up a tolerance for blood, and guns, and death.
"It's okay, son," he reassured the boy. "You're doing a good job."
And then he was off, making his slow way toward his tent. He only had a few hours before the camp would be stirring, long OR session or not. There were patients to care for, and if the intensity of the distant shelling was any indication, more wounded to treat. He made a mental note to have Radar requisition more supplies from HQ. They wouldn't want to run short if the fighting was moving back toward them. And the shelling could easily cut their supply lines if it started moving closer.
He had just reached the door to his tent when he heard footsteps hurrying in his direction. "Sorry, sir," Radar said softly, "but we've got incoming wounded. Four choppers and two busses coming in probably the next hour or so."
He sighed and turned, the door not yet even half open. "Get on the horn and find out exactly—"
"Right, sir," Radar interrupted. "I'll find out exactly how far away they are and then I'll put through that order for supplies you had me make up yesterday."
And then the young clerk was off, hurrying through the night, teddy bear still clutched beneath his arm. He hesitated for a moment, debating whether or not to start preparing for the incoming wounded or to try and catch some sleep before they arrived. The shellfire slowed its pace and he pushed open the door to his tent. The shelling was getting progressively closer and the wounded that were coming were likely only the tip of the iceberg. If he didn't take this opportunity to rest, he didn't know when he would get another.
He stretched out on his cot, not bothering to remove his clothes. It wouldn't be long before he was forced to dress in them again. And he had long ago grown used to going weeks without being able to change into clean clothing. It was the curse of a combat soldier. Clean clothes and warm food were two things that were like gifts from above, so much manna from heaven.
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He had woken with warnings on his lips, half-shouted, and his heart pounding the rat-a-tat rhythm of an MG-42. The mud and chaos of Flanders had bled into the screams and mayhem of Germany. Those had turned into the blood and turmoil that made up his life. He could hear the choppers coming in and the harsh crackle of the PA system as the surgeons and nurses were called back to their task.
The shelling had moved closer yet. The Koreans must be making advances. The front was falling back toward the hospital unit. Hopefully the advance could be checked. With this many wounded coming in and wounded from the last round still clogging Post-OP, it would be next to impossible to move everyone to an un-scouted temporary location. And yet, there was that all too familiar feeling of fear that had settled in his gut. It was not fear of death or of being wounded, those fears had been conquered long ago. This was the unnamed fear that all combat soldiers carried with them that went beyond the mere fear of death or wounds. It was a fear that encompassed it all.
He looked up at the leaden sky; the sun was hidden behind clouds that had moved in quickly after that grey dawn. It still looked like snow. "Radar!" he called in the direction of his office. The boy hurried out, clipboard in hand.
"Yes, sir?" Radar asked, mind already trying to jump four steps ahead.
"Find out where the front is and what's going on out there," he directed. "That shelling keeps getting closer; we're going to need to know if there's any chance that we're going to have to prove that the mobile part of MASH is true."
"You don't think that we'll have to bug out?" Radar asked, eyes round behind the lenses of his glasses. "Do you?"
Even Radar didn't know about his plans and his worries. At least, not unless that sixth sense could be used to figure out things like that. "I just want to be sure," he answered, unwilling to share his fears. A commanding officer was supposed to be all knowing and fearless. Of course, that wasn't true and everyone knew it. But it helped everyone if he continued to put on that façade. And it perhaps helped him most of all.