Chapter One
Everything Has A Beginning
Story Title: Mission Aborted
Chapter Title: Everything Has A Beginning
Summary: A short POV of sorts centering around one of the lovable members of Hogan's inner circle. Majority of the chapter is ruminations of a time before 'now' with only the tail end catching up with the time the whole story is in.
A/N: Yes, I know this must be the third time I have reposted this story. I promise this is not only the last repost but this time I do have more to add and will keep myself on tract to continue this story out to its end.
Hurry up and wait. Hurry up and wait. The normal bump and grind of army life. Once again he wonders what it would be like to go against this antagonizing flow, well know he knew. He had done it, he was not proud of what he did and he would never speak on the truth of what he did but he did it. Now he had learned his lesson, when you do not follow your orders you end up in a place like this. An ugly, filthy prison camp. At the least it was not a 'normal' prison camp. Not like the ones he heard only too much about back home, not like the ones he still heard only too much about at his current camp. No, this one had a magnificent tunnel system. Sometimes he could forget that he was even in a prison camp to start with.
If he were to be honest with himself he would have to admit that – what would he have to admit? Being here at this prison camp was exactly like before but exactly different. He still had to follow the flow, be a team player, follow his commanders orders – the usual. At least now he had some freedom and plenty of wiggle room to swing his elbows about and put his own two pence in on conversation. Now he had some room to object to orders he was given and know that his objects were dully noted even if they did not seem to really make much difference.
Nothing they did seemed to make much difference, not at first anyways. After a time they would eventually receive news one way or another that the tides were shifting, that things were changing on a grander scale that could be linked back to activities they had personally been involved in. They, it was now a they. Not the unit, or the group, but they. He could not pinpoint at what time he began calling the group he now worked with as 'they'. 'They' seemed so much more personal, like he truly considered himself a part of the unit, an intimate part of the unit in fact. Almost like the unit was more like a family of brothers instead of a trained hodgepodge of men forced together to do the bidding of the commanding officers. It was almost – dare he think it? – as if they were all friends.
He had never had a lot of friends. He used to have friends; long ago he may have eagerly welcomed a new friend but now? Now he made sure his friends were few and far between. He had long ago decided that he would prefer to be a loner. It was safer that way for himself and his supposed friends. The change came about after bad things began occurring to him and his friends, very bad things that convinced him friends were not needed. Not ever. He did not want to go through the loss any more. He found quickly that he preferred to be a loner anyways so it was not as bad as he expected them to be. Even so – there were four men in this camp that in his heart of hearts he could not deny that he did consider his friends. Perhaps it was the close living quarters, perhaps it was the close working quarters, perhaps a lot of things. Whatever the real reason was it did not matter. As time went by his friendships flourished no matter how hard he tried to push them away.
He had always, well at least as long as he could remember, believed that when push came to shove the only person he could really count on was himself. In time he had learned that he neither needed nor wanted nor cared about anyone else. That mindset was really starting to change. These people, these 'friends', were performing miracles on his heart everyday. He had always been cool if not cold, but these men were slowly but surly melting his iced heart and chipping down his barricading walls.
If someone had told him when he first got to Stalag 13 that one day he would willingly risk his life for another without thinking twice he would have laughed in their face. Yet that was exactly what he was doing now. The mission had gone awry, it had all been a trap to ensnare Papa Bear or any one of his affiliates. It had almost worked, in all reality it may still work. Now he and two others were running for their very existence from the Gestapo and their guns. He had purposely placed himself between the younger and skinnier tech sergeant and the Jerries with their constantly firing guns.
He ran, refusing to look over his shoulder. He did not need to. He could feel the heat and the slap of the wind displacement the bullets made as they came too close. He could feel the slight tug as a few of the hailstorm snatched at the fringes of his uniform. He could hear the whiplash sound of the flying pieces of metal as they whipped past his ears. Lastly he could see the damage the bullets made as they ripped through the trees and shrubs all around him.
He could not be more grateful now than ever that the Germans were such bad shots.
