We Were Soldiers
6. The Tea Party
After five days aboard the Monticello, routine had quickly devolved into boredom. Bucky no longer got lost looking for the galley, and he came to hold a special sort of loathing for the showers; they used seawater, which meant the water was cold, soap didn't foam, and the dissolved salt scoured coarsely at skin, chafing and drying it. Everyone tried to make the days between showers stretch out as long as possible, but the delays made for unpleasant living in close quarters. The space 'tween decks was small, and enclosed, and with so many men inside it; hot. They may not have been getting much sweating done through exercise, but the lack of windows meant no fresh air could circulate, and life in the tween quickly became ripe.
On day five, he and Gusty bullied Private Hawkins up onto the outer deck, though Gusty was too nice for bullying, so he mostly cajoled, Carrot-style. Bucky was worried about the young private; Hawkins rarely went outside voluntarily, had to be reminded to go to the galley to eat, and spent far too much time in his hammock staring listlessly at the grey wall. He wished, now, that he'd tried harder to convince the young man to go home. The guy might be mourning his brother, but he was forgetting to eat and pulling away from the rest of regimental life. Bucky only knew one way to deal with a man who was mourning a loved one, and now he called upon the experience he'd gained with Steve, when his mom had died, using the same tactics to try and get Hawkins back into the thick of things.
It was a beautiful blue-sky day, gloriously sunny with a cool breeze. He and Gusty ushered Hawkins around the crowds of soldiers, towards one side of the ship, where they could stand and look down at the waves. Bucky had suggested that they look for dolphins. He had no idea whether there were dolphins out here, but Gusty had jumped at the idea, and together they'd managed to bring Hawkins out of his melancholy for at least a few minutes.
Despite the calmness of the day, the sea was anything but. The waves continuously rolled, and where the ship slid through them they crashed against the bow in white thunderheads which sent up plumes of salty spray. Compared to the ripeness of the tween, it was actually quite invigorating. Pity that the men were only allowed up for half an hour at a time. Some of the soldiers—and Bucky suspected Wells was one of them—managed to get more than their fair share of half-hour slots every day, but he had no idea how his friend was doing it. Probably didn't wanna know, now that he thought about it.
"Hey, is that a dolphin?" Gusty asked, pointing at something near the prow.
Hawkins squinted. "No, it's a wave."
"Oh. Damn."
"Are you okay, Hawkins?" asked Bucky. Out here, in the sunshine, the young man didn't just look pale… his skin had a noticeable green tinge to it.
Hawkins nodded, then changed his mind and shook his head. "I feel funny, Sarge. I think I'm sea-sick. It wasn't too bad, below deck, when I could just feel the motion of the sea a bit. But now that I can see it, and the rolling waves, and the swinging horizon…"
"Is that why you've been avoiding the galley, and spending all your time in your hammock?" Hawkins nodded, and the young man's admission brought a wave of relief to Bucky's mind. Thank God! Hawkins was just suffering from sea-sickness. "Alright, Private. Let's get you back down below, where you don't have see the ocean."
He and Gusty led the very green Hawkins back towards the door to the lower deck. Before they could get there, however, they were headed off by Pfcs. Davies and Franklin, the latter of whom looked very worried.
"Hey Sarge, what do you make of this?" Franklin asked.
Bucky instructed Gusty to take Hawkins back to the troop quarters, then the pair directed Bucky to the other side of the ship, where Franklin pointed at something on the distant horizon. It was hard to say what it was, but it looked like a thick line of grey. The only things which could look so grey, at such a distance, were land or clouds, and from what he could remember of his geography lessons, he didn't think there was much in the way of land out in the middle of the Atlantic.
"I think we might be in for a rough ride," he said. Poor Hawkins.
As the three made their way back towards the door, they were met by Wells, who approached with an expression of undiluted happiness on his face.
"Hey guys, I just heard from one of the sailors that we're probably gonna hit a storm later tonight."
"And yet you seem suspiciously happy about it," Bucky pointed out.
"A little rough weather never killed anyone!"
"Yeah, but a lot of rough weather did," Davies replied.
"Better a storm than a U-boat."
"You may not think that when you see the colour of Hawkins' face," Bucky told his friend.
Wells hand-waved the comment away. "Got any plans for this evening, Sergeant Barnes?" he asked, while the two privates disappeared below deck.
"Hmm, well, I thought I might start off with a little light dinner of rock-hard potatoes in the mess, maybe play a few rounds of poker afterwards, and then depending on the weather, perhaps be violently ill."
His friend gave a quiet laugh. "Oh, don't worry, you'll be fine. But keep your schedule free!"
Before Bucky could even consider asking Wells why he needed to keep his schedule free, his fellow sergeant disappeared in the throng of soldiers making the most out of the nice weather. Whatever Wells was planning, it couldn't be good. Nobody in their right mind should be glad for a storm.
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By late afternoon, the rolling of the ship had intensified. The crew seemed to think it would be hours yet before the storm hit them, but already the effects could be felt in the waves that tossed the ship around like a child's toy in a churning bathtub. Even the soldiers who'd found their sea-legs found it difficult to stand upright and still.
Dinner was a difficult affair, because every once in a while a particularly tall wave would roll the ship to one side, and with it went the dinner trays and all of their contents. Meals were lost, the floor was dirtied, and mop-toting crewmen grumbled incessantly about 'land-lubbers with no damn sea-legs.' Hawkins wasn't the only one to become ill, and before too long, a string of men had lined themselves up outside the latrines, whence came many moans and groans and some rather unpleasant sounds and smells.
Nobody was much in the mood for poker, and by six o'clock Bucky had retreated to his hammock, to try and make a start on the book he'd traded Gusty Of Mice and Men for. Gusty hadn't had The War of the Worlds in his collection, but he had White Fang, which sounded interesting, so he'd settled for that. Two chapters in, and he was enjoying it more than his previous novel.
When a shadow fell across his book, he looked up and found Wells loitering in front of his hammock. There was a sparkle in his blue eyes that Bucky had never seen before, and if he didn't know better, he would have thought his friend was eager.
Wells glanced at the book cover and gave an approving nod. "Good story. Now, come on," he instructed.
"What? Where?"
"You'll see."
He knew that was the only answer he'd be able to get out of Wells, so he closed his book and left it beneath his hammock as he pushed himself to his feet. A week at sea had done wonders for his sense of balance, but with the storm brewing, he found it more difficult to stay upright. As he followed Wells, he had to make a concerted effort to walk straight, to not bump into guys in hammocks and earn their ire.
Moving through the bowels of the ship was easier. Some of the well-used corridors had hand rails, and with a hand out to either side he could stop himself being rolled into the walls. The route Wells took was a familiar one; it led to a parting of corridors, one leading eventually down to the showers, and the other up to the galley.
"We're not going to the showers, are we?" he quipped.
Wells gave a quiet snort. "That might be your idea of a night fun, Barnes, but it ain't mine."
"Then where are we going?"
"It's a surprise."
Bucky's strongest feelings over his friend's cageyness were unease and intrigue. The former came from the knowledge that Wells was enigmatic and unpredictable, as liable to burst into laughter as he was to respond with cut-throat sarcasm. The latter came from… the same place, really. Life was never boring, with Danny Wells around.
At the crossroad of corridors, Wells didn't turn left, towards the galley, nor right, heading down to the showers. Instead, he went straight on, up a flight of stairs, and then along another familiar path which would take them up to the next deck. Very quickly, the war between unease and intrigue swung swiftly to 'unease'. The only place the troops were allowed to go from here was outside, but not even Wells was mad enough to go out on deck with a storm brewing.
Was he?
Up ahead was a door, on which a bored-looking sailor stood guard. As Wells approached, he drew a pack of smokes from the pocket of his jacket, and Bucky's unease deepened further. Wells didn't smoke, which meant he couldn't be planning to go outside, but Bucky didn't think his friend had brought him up here just to witness some trade.
"How's the weather out there, crewman?" Wells grinned, handing over the packet of cigarettes.
The sailor gave an unamused snort. "You're mad. You won't see it."
"That's what you think," Wells replied, completely unperturbed. "My brother Tim's in the Navy, and he's seen it twice."
"Your brother's as mad as you."
"Maybe."
"I've been doing this job for over ten years, and I've never seen it even once."
"Well, I'm lucky. Now quit stalling; I paid your fee."
The sailor handed a life jacket over to Wells, then thrust one into Bucky's arms, with a quiet grumble of, "Mad, completely mad."
"Uh, we're not going out, are we?" Bucky asked his friend.
Wells gave him the happiest smile he'd ever seen on the guy. "Sure are! Button up, it will be rough out there."
Bucky looked to the crewman for help, but the sailor merely watched him with that same bored expression despite the fact that he was possibly watching two men go to their deaths.
"Is this safe?" Bucky asked the man.
"Hell no."
"Uh, Wells…"
"We'll be fine," his friend said as he tightened the buckles on his jacket. "C'mon Barnes, don't make me dress you, I'm not your mom."
A thousand excuses crossed his mind, and he even considered point-blank refusing and going back to the tween deck to resume his book. But one thing was certain; Wells was going out there. He'd just paid a guy a packet of cigarettes to be allowed out on deck in a brewing storm. Whatever madness he was suffering from wasn't just going to evaporate because Bucky wasn't playing along. If he let his friend go out there alone, and anything happened to him…
He pulled on his life jacket and belted it up whilst Wells bounced excitedly on his heels. When Bucky was ready, he nodded at the sailor, who pushed the door open and was almost blown right off his feet. Bucky grabbed the nearby hand-rail and sent a silent prayer to God.
"This way!" Wells shouted cheerfully above the din of the crashing waves.
Bucky aimed a silent curse at his friend, then followed him out onto the deck. The wind immediately tugged at him, and he grabbed a hold of the waist-high rail which ran around the entire vessel, the only thing between the deck and the sea. Wells seemed to know where he was going; he moved swiftly, one hand on the rail, before cutting across the centre of the deck to the middle of the ship.
As the ship pitched and rolled and listed and did other nautical things, Bucky pottered unsteadily after his friend. Overhead, the sky was light grey, but those huge black thunderclouds had grown a hell of a lot closer over the past few hours, and the front end of the storm was starting to make itself felt.
"In here," Wells yelled, gesturing to a sheltered spot between the thingumajig and the gubbins—two nautical terms for parts of a ship which nobody knew the actual names of. In this case, the thingumajig and the gubbins were solid metal structures about three feet apart which were boxed off at one end by a thick sheet of steel.
Wells stepped into the sheltered bluff and sat down with his back against the steel sheet, bracing himself with his feet planted in front of him. The ship pitched again, and Bucky hurriedly sat beside him, adopting the same posture, essentially wedging himself in to the small gap. His army jacket did little to stop the chill wind from biting his skin; it simply blew into every nook and cranny. Beside him, he could feel Wells shivering with the same coldness.
"What the hell are we doing out here?" Bucky asked. Out of the worst of the wind, he didn't have to shout.
"Waiting for the show to start," Wells grinned, gesturing out at the view in front of them.
It wasn't much of a view. They were barely above the flat of the deck. He could hear waves, but he couldn't see them. The kiss of the ocean against the sky on the horizon was obscured by a large mass of steel superstructure; chimneys spewing smoke, the bridge and artillery turrets, and the towering communication masts which bowed and swayed under pressure from the wind. In fact, the upper parts of the ship towered so high, and so close, that he could barely even see the sky at all.
He glanced at his friend. Wells' eyes were fixed on the communications masts, and there was a sort of focused intensity on his face, as if merely by watching the sky he could will it to happen. But Bucky had no desire to will a storm to life. He'd seen enough storms to know that he didn't want to be out here in this one.
"Look," he said, "much as I appreciate you involving me in your actual, honest-to-God insanity, I think I'm gonna go back inside. I've seen dozens of storms, and I don't wanna wait out here for another."
"Storm? We're not here for the storm. No, we're here for something much better. You ever read Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll?"
"Yeah, once." To his little sister, Janet, when she'd been kept off school with the chicken pox at ten years old.
"You remember that white rabbit Alice kept chasing?"
He did not like the way this conversation was going. "Yeah."
"Well, we're here to chase a white rabbit of our own."
There was no doubt about it. The guy was insane.
"Have you been inhaling that nitrous gas from the hospital ward?" Bucky asked him.
"They have nitrous here?" Wells grinned, and the wind tried to whip his words away. Maybe he sensed how close Bucky was to losing his temper and leaving, because he dropped the grin and gestured up at the ship looming above them. "Sailors call it St. Elmo's Fire. It's something to do with the charge in the atmosphere, in stormy weather. When the conditions are right, the pointy thingumajigs on a ship glow with a sort of blueish purple nimbus, which lights up the sky for miles around."
"That's fascinating," Bucky admitted. "But why the hell are we out here looking for it?"
"Because ever since my brother Tim told me about the first time he saw it, right before a storm, I've wanted to see it for myself. Sailors say it brings good luck."
"Shit, Wells, if you wanted good luck, I would have bought you a lucky rabbit's foot before we left NYPOE."
"This isn't just about luck. This is about seeing something rare, and unique. Something we may never get the chance to see again."
That made sense—at least, it made sense in the mad world of Danny Wells—but it left one burning question. "Okay. But why the hell am I out here chasing your white rabbit?"
"Because I need someone to alert the crew if I get swept overboard," his friend smiled. "Or, better yet, jump in and save me."
"But then who would jump in and save me?"
"Why've I gotta think of everything?"
A condolence letter from General Marshall to his parents appeared in his mind, neatly typed and personally signed.
'Dear Mr & Mrs Barnes, it is my deepest regret to inform you that your son James Barnes was tragically lost at sea, after being convinced to chase a white rabbit into a storm by a man of questionable mental faculties. We all mourn your terrible loss.'
"Maybe your brother was bullshitting you," Bucky suggested.
Wells shook his head, his teeth chattering with cold. "He wouldn't. Besides, I looked it up in the library. It's real."
"Did those library books say how long we gotta wait out here?"
Another head-shake. "I was kinda hoping we'd've seen it by now."
Bucky turned his gaze up to the comms masts and joined Wells in willing the atmospheric phenomenon to appear. He didn't care about seeing it himself, but the sooner Wells saw it, the sooner they could go back down below. Back to safety, and heat, and the smell of five-hundred unwashed bodies… actually, maybe being out here wasn't that bad, for the moment. At least the air was fresh.
Had his dad ever had to put up with crazy guys like Wells, or oblivious guys like Carrot, or nervous guys like Gusty? Dad had never really spoken about the Great War, except to say that the tactics of the U.S. brass had been outdated and relied on throwing large numbers of soldiers at a target in the hopes of overwhelming it, and that with thousands of fresh American troops landing in Europe every day, it really had come down to a matter of maths. Even with high mortality rates, the U.S. had been able to replace its soldiers faster than the Germans could.
Now, Bucky could only hope that those 'win by numbers' tactics had been abandoned and updated for something more effective. Certainly, if they had to go up against some German assault courses, Bucky felt adequately prepared; those assault courses didn't stand a chance. He just wasn't sure about German soldiers. He'd done alright at shooting targets for practise, but those targets hadn't been moving, and they hadn't been people.
"Where'd you do your basic training? he asked Wells.
"Camp Ashfort, North Dakota."
"What was that like?"
Wells considered it for a moment as his lips turned a deeper shade of blue in the cold wind. "Hell. You?"
"Camp McCoy in Wisconsin."
"Gotta love those northern states for winter training, huh?"
"Heh, yeah. Wish I could'a gone to Arizona, or New Mexico. At least it would've been a bit warmer during the day."
"And probably at night, too, even in the middle of the desert."
Overhead, immense black clouds rolled across the sky, completely blocking out the evening sunset and turning their entire world as deep as night. Bucky felt a more violent shiver pass through his body, and it had nothing to do with the coldness of the air. The darkening sky reminded him of a story his mom had read to him, when he'd been much younger. A story about another ship that had met with its own natural disaster.
"Call me Ishmael," he mumbled to himself.
"What'd you say?" Wells asked.
"Nothing. Wells, we can't stay out here, it's too cold!"
"It's brisk, I'll give you that."
"Your lips are blue, your teeth are chattering so hard you can barely talk, and you're shivering even worse than me."
"Just excited," Wells objected feebly.
At that moment, a piercing flash of blue lightning tore the black sky in half, followed seconds later by a roaring of thunder so loud that it shook the deck of the boat. And now, a new unpleasant thought made itself known. Bucky looked up again at the comms masts, and tried to see past the afterimage of the lightning that had seared itself across his vision.
"Uh… those are metal, right?"
Wells nodded. "I suddenly think it would be a great idea for us to get back inside."
"You're a goddamn genius."
Just as they were hauling themselves to their feet, fate threw its last unpleasant trick at them. Rain began to fall through the tear the lightning had ripped in the clouds, but this wasn't rain like you got in New York, which generally came down vertically and under the influence of gravity, like good, proper rain ought to do. No, this rain came in at a diagonal that quickly started to become horizontal as the howling wind shifted direction without warning.
The deck, which had once seemed so sturdy, now dipped alarmingly each time the ship rode a new towering wave, and to make matters worse, each time it dipped, the side of the ship hit the waves and sent up spray so high that it came arching over the deck in a tidal-wave of saltwater. Standard issue army boots were not designed to grip well on a salt-water soaked deck, and they both slipped and slid as they tried to make their way back to the rail, where they could at least have something to hold on to. A half dozen times Bucky lost his footing and was pulled to his feet by Wells, and a half dozen times Wells lost his footing and was pulled to his feet by Bucky, so that as they reached the rails, he really had no idea which of them was helping the other, or whether they were both accidentally dragging each other down.
By some miracle, Bucky made his frozen fingers grip the rail like they'd gripped the safety bar of the Cyclone on Coney Island, that time he'd made Steve ride it with him. Steve had been sick, and now Bucky knew exactly how Steve felt. He wasn't scared; he was terrified. The rain and the sea-spray brutally battered him, assaulting his eyes so he couldn't see where he was going, and he only knew Wells was still behind him because his friend kept bumping into him. Clothes which had once been the only source of warmth were now sodden and heavy, so that every step felt like walking with a thousand lead weights tying him down. And each time the ship dipped towards the waves, he had to stop walking and hang on for dear life as he was nearly toppled over the rail and into the hungry maw of the sea.
At last, by some great act of fortitude or providence, Bucky reached the door down to the lower deck and hammered on it with his fist as he clung to the handle and Wells clung to his life-jacket. The sailor on duty opened the door, and they both went tumbling inside in a deluge of water. The sailor closed the door, and watched them slowly pick themselves up.
"Told ya you wouldn't see it," the man said, in that same bored tone.
Wells was too cold to talk, so he gave the man the two-fingered salute; it was rendered less effective by the violent shaking of his hand. Bucky tried to unfasten his life-jacket, but his fingers had gone beyond cold and into numb territory. He just couldn't get them to work, and at last the sailor took pity on them, helping them take their life-jackets off. Bucky managed to stammer out a thanks, then set off back to the tween with Wells in tow. As they left, he heard the sailor mutter, "Dumb-asses," just loud enough to be overheard.
No journey had ever taken so long as the one which Bucky took back to the tween, and they encountered not a single soul during their chthonic lurch to troop quarters. Had it been a normal day at sea, the corridors would have been filled with troops stretching their legs for visits to the galley or the showers, or to the other troop quarters to engage in a little light barter and perhaps some fraternisation. But nobody was dumb enough to be moving around in this; nobody but Bucky and Wells. The ship's crew were undoubtedly occupied battling the storm, or safe in their bunks, waiting it out in relative comfort.
The worst thing about walking in wet gear was how much it chafed. And the worst thing about walking in gear soaked through with salt-water was how it chafed even more. As Bucky's body began to warm, the shivering increased in intensity, and he actually wished he was still cold enough to not feel the chafing, because every step was agony, and he chafed in places he didn't even know it was possible to chafe in.
When they reached the tween deck, everybody was at once sympathetic and—because neither of them had died—very amused. The 107th were mostly sympathetic, and they rallied immediately to get their comrades out of their completely sodden clothes. It was a measure of how cold and miserable Wells was that he didn't offer a single word of complaint when Gusty stripped him down to his underwear.
Hammocks were out of the question; they were both shivering too intensely to get into them, much less stay in them, so they sank down in the aisles between the duffel bags and backpacks whilst the 107th buried them alive with blankets, and the rest of the regiments in the tween came over in turn to laugh at the dumb-asses who'd been stupid enough to go outside in a storm. Bucky had thought the cold would be the worst thing he would experience; he quickly learnt that the tiredness was worse. It stole over his mind time and time again, pulling at his heavy lids, trying to make him sleep. But each time his eyes closed, Carrot poked him until he opened them again, and told him not to go to sleep because he might die of hypothermia. Bucky wanted to tell him that it wasn't possible to die of hypothermia now that he was actually out of the cold and warming up, but his teeth were chattering too hard to form words.
It took half an hour for Bucky's teeth to stop chattering, forty-five minutes for the feeling to return to his extremities, and a full hour before his body finally stopped shivering, and by the end of the hour he felt completely and utterly exhausted. Worse, he could now feel everything. He could feel where his wet clothes had chafed his skin raw, he could feel the blisters on the backs of his heels where his boots had rubbed, and the blisters on the palms of his hands where he'd gripped the rails. He could feel where the saltwater had scoured his cheeks and his forehead, and his eyes stung and burned like they had acid in them. Part of him wanted to ask for a mirror, but when he looked at Wells, the rest of him decided his friend was all the mirror he needed.
"Just like boot camp," Wells mumbled drowsily, some time later. Most of the 107th had gone to watch a poker game between the Engineers and the Signals, a little further up the tween deck. Carrot was still loitering nearby; he seemed to be taking his role as chief-prodder very seriously.
Bucky gave his friend a snort of disbelief. "You're actually mad."
"Barnes, we're soldiers on a transport being shipped to fight in a war thousands of miles away from our homes, and we're doing that on twelve weeks of basic training and in spite of the fact that none of us has ever—hopefully—shot at a living soul before in our lives." The look Wells gave him from his bloodshot eyes was very sober. "We're all mad here."
Author's note: It's also an excellent song.