Chapter 4: Divine intervention or coincidence?

By the time Winchester came out of OR, the shock of his ordeal had worn off. He had also dismissed the sighting of Bambi as just a severe case of heatstroke. As the three surgeons trooped wearily back to the Swamp, they all seemed distracted with their own thoughts of the day's mysterious events. The Major flopped down on his bed as Hawkeye made a beeline for the still.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, as he noticed the clusters lying on the martini tray. He waved them jubilantly at Winchester. "Look what I've found!"

Charles marched over to Hawkeye and grabbed the clusters.

"I suppose you expect me to believe that you've just miraculously found them?" he questioned in a disbelieving voice.

"Well, I'm sure I would have remembered if I had hid them in such an obvious place," replied Hawkeye, frowning deeply. He looked genuinely surprised as he peered down at the tray, and then back at Charles.

"Perhaps this is just more than a coincidence," reflected BJ, also looking baffled at their sudden re-appearance. He was sure he would have noticed the clusters on the tray during his part of playing the "hunter" in their game. "After all," he persisted. "Didn't the Turks say that Bambi was their lucky mascot?

"Don't be absurd!" rebuffed Winchester. "Surely you don't believe in all that black magic rubbish, Hunnicutt!"

But there was an expression of doubt on the Major's face. It also took him a good couple of days before he would wear his clusters again! Just as he was beginning to forget the whole unnerving incident, new sightings of the deer became a regular occurrence around the camp.

It started with a patient who had been bitten by a copperhead snake on his finger. A blue-tinged bruising had already appeared around the fang marks. His finger, hand and arm were swelling up at a terrific rate, as red blister-like burn marks erupted on his skin.

BJ, who was conducting triage, thought that the finger would probably have to be amputated to stop the infection from spreading. Unfortunately, due to other more serious casualties, the patient would have to wait his turn.

He instructed the nurse to administer an antivenom injection and to watch out for signs of delayed shock, vomiting and abdominal cramping. Before the corpsmen took him to pre-op, the patient suddenly sat up on his stretcher and pointed out to something across the compound.

"What a funny looking deer!" he jeered. "Looks like he's had a bad hair day!"

The nurse and BJ looked to where the patient was pointing, but couldn't see any sign of a deer. The patient then promptly fell back on to the stretcher and passed out. As he was rushed into Pre-Op, BJ scrutinised his surroundings ominously, but there was no sign of the evasive deer.

Several hours later, after the more serious cases had been dealt with, BJ came back to examine his patient. He was surprised to see that a black husk had formed round the infected finger, almost as if it was giving it some protection. The swelling and bruising appeared to have reduced and didn't seem to have spread too far up the patient's arm. BJ decided not to go ahead with the amputation. After a couple of days of observation, the husk split and peeled off. The soldier's finger was fine. It appeared to have gotten better all on its own! Or had there been some sort of divine intervention?

Another time, Colonel Potter was confronted with a patient who had just been brought in from the frontline. His sergeant was convinced he had some sort of psychiatric problem. Despite the fact that he didn't appear to have sustained any injury, the soldier was convinced that he had been hurt.

The Colonel examined him and indeed, he didn't appear to have any serious injuries. But the soldier definitely was showing signs of stress and discomfort. As he put his shirt back on, Potter glanced out of the window, hoping to find some inspiration to help him make some sense of his disturbed patient.

His eyes were drawn to a figure, which was cavorting playfully with his horse, Sophie, in her outside paddock. Straightaway he recognised the little deer from the bald patch on his hind leg. As the deer stopped his play, he turned his head towards the Colonel. Potter could have sworn that he saw Bambi give him a little wink!

"Well, would you lookie at that!" he exclaimed, to no-one in particular. The soldier glanced at the Colonel, briefly caught up in his animated excitement. He looked out the window to where the Colonel was pointing, but didn't understand his ramblings about a deer called Bambi playing with his horse. He turned away from the window and continued to do up his buttons.

It was then that Potter's eyes were drawn to a small tear in the solder's shirt.

"Bingo!" thought Potter to himself, as a theory to the soldier's injuries hit him like a ton of bricks! It had to be a chest wound with no internal bleeding – he would stake his reputation on it.

A quick chest x-ray confirmed Potter's diagnosis was correct. Arrangements were made with Pierce to get him into surgery pronto. It didn't take long to discover that the wound was rapidly filling his chest with blood. Pierce and Potter drained his chest and gave him a blood transfusion. The operation not only cured the soldier of his psychosis, but also saved his life.

Back in Post-OP, the soldier joked with the Colonel, that perhaps he had his own case of psychosis to deal with. Potter looked at him blankly for a moment. The soldier reminded him of his vision of an "imaginary deer". The Colonel glanced at Pierce, both thinking exactly the same thing. Perhaps they hadn't been the only ones who had helped save the soldier's life.

And so the sightings continued all throughout the summer. Each sighting ended in more or less the same way, with either someone narrowly escaping death or coming into good fortune.

It was now December and the biting Siberian wind replaced the previous summer haze. On a particularly cold afternoon, the Swampmen had congregated in the Mess Tent - with probably the whole entire camp - as they huddled round the stove to keep warm. The stoves could prevent frostbite, but they couldn't actually keep the tents very warm!

Even though they were all wearing several layers of clothing, the cold chilled them to the bone. All except Charles, who was snugly cocooned in a padded green parka with a fur-rimed collar. No doubt another present courtesy of Mother Winchester!

Just as they were finally beginning to feel their fingers and toes again, Radar stood up, listening intently.

"Here they come," he yelled. "And they're loaded!"

The familiar drone of in-coming helicopters made everyone groan in protest. It wasn't only the ever-present feeling of the unknown that filled them with dread, but also the fact that they would have to endure the bitter sting of the freezing wind in their faces.

As well as the choppers bringing in the wounded, several ambulances also rolled into the compound. One of the Calvary units had been overrun by the Chinese, who had shot the men whilst they were trying to keep warm in their sleeping bags.

Maybe it was more by luck than judgment, but the Chinese apparently shot more to wound than to kill. The survivors, consisting of about 30 men, were brought in all at once – still in their sleeping bags. They would keep the doctors and nurses busy until the late hours of the night.

Weirdly, the topic of conversation amongst the wounded all centred around one subject. Before the Chinese had attacked them, 29 out of the 30 soldiers claimed they saw a deer with a bald patch on his leg walking amongst them. Even more bizarrely, the one person who hadn't seen the deer (a trip to the latrine had beckoned) was the only casualty who didn't survive the shooting.

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The next morning the Swampmen were back in their tent, deliberating the events of the night before. Winchester still conceded that it was purely coincidence. BJ, ever the optimist, insisted that there had to be more to it than that.

Hawkeye, not being a great believer in anything he couldn't prove, was very much on the fence. He was sitting on his cot, nursing a hot cup of coffee as he stared out of the Swamp window. He listened to Charles and BJ ranting and raving at each other, as they tried to make a valid point to both sides of the argument.

It was a stormy morning and the cyclonic clouds were discharging a few specks of snow into the air. Hawkeye watched the flakes as they fell in a quiet, carefree manner to the ground. As the precipitation began to get heavier, he noticed a figure emerging from the white blanket that was beginning to cover the ground.

Hawkeye put his cup down next to the still and stared back intently at the image. A pair of bright eyes returned his gaze. As the deer began to totter towards the Swamp, there was no mistaking the bald patch on the deer's hind leg.

Hawkeye jumped up off the cot and swung open the Swamp door. BJ and Charles stopped their conversation and immediately shouted at Hawkeye to shut the door as they were met with a cold blast of air.

All of a sudden a sniper's bullet zinged into the Swamp through the window that Hawkeye had just moved away from. It hit the still and splashed into his cup of coffee. Hawkeye slammed the door shut and all three men hit the deck. They could hear a few more shots going off in the distance and then there was silence. They could only presume that either the infiltrator had escaped, or had been shot down by the MPs.

The guys heaved a sigh of relief as they picked themselves up from the floor. Hawkeye opened the door and this time all three men saw the shape of a deer, fading into the swirling snowflakes until finally it disappeared from view. Somehow, they had a feeling that they weren't going to see the deer again.

Hawkeye shut the door. BJ walked over to the cup of coffee and fished out the bullet. All three men stared at it, in a reverenced silence. They knew how close Hawkeye had just come to biting the bullet. It was one of those accepted things that it didn't pay to dwell on too much. But there was no doubt in everyone's minds, that Bambi had probably just saved Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce's life.

The end

[Thank-you for taking the time to read. Please feel free to leave a review or share your thoughts/constructive criticisms ]

[AN: Please don't quote me word from word on the surgical stuff. I did a little bit of research, but some methods may not be medically correct. ]