We Were Soldiers

23. What happens in the foxhole…

"I feel like… I dunno. I guess now that I think about it, it's hard to put it into words without sounding like a crazy person. And I'm not crazy. Contrary to what some people might have told you."

"Nobody's told me you're crazy," the chaplain said. "Why don't you just start at the beginning? How long have you been feeling this way?"

Bucky cast his mind back. In the three days since the mission on which Danzig had bought it, he'd attended at least one of Lieutenant Olliver's sermons each day, and had been surprised—though in hindsight, probably shouldn't have been—to find Carrot already a regular there. He'd sat beside the corporal, listened attentively to Olliver's religious missives, and tried to find something in them to help him reconcile the conflicted thoughts and emotions within him. After three days of finding nothing, he decided he need a more personal touch. The chaplain had an honest, open face which lent itself easily to trust.

"When you say, 'talk in private,' how private do you mean?" Bucky asked him. "You're not gonna tell any of this to the brass, are you?"

"Unless you confess to being an enemy spy, I'm largely bound by oaths to keep anything you say confidential."

"Okay." Some small relief. At least Lieutenant Olliver wasn't gonna rush off to tell the colonels that one of their sergeants had frosty feet. Relaxing into a collapsible chair in the small chaplaincy tent, he tried to explain his feelings. "Well, I guess I've been feeling this way since we got to England. Since we got our orders to ship out here. Even then, the thought of shooting people, of killing them, it made me feel kinda queasy. Right before we engaged the Krauts on the mission a few days ago, I felt light-headed. Dizzy."

"That's a normal physical response to stress."

"But it wasn't the stress of combat that made me like that. In fact, once the shooting started, my head cleared a bit. But afterwards, I felt bad. Like I'd done a bad thing. Which I know is stupid, because I saved lives. The mission was a success. But I feel bad about it. That's stupid, right?"

The chaplain gave him a genuine, reassuring smile. "Not at all. I would be far more worried if you were killing without regret. Your feelings show that you have compassion, and your actions show that you are willing to put duty ahead of compassion when the situation warrants it. What advice did your family priest offer, after you signed up?"

"Oh." He toyed with a button on his shirt for a moment. Tried not to fidget. "I hadn't been to church much, before shipping out. I meant to. I used to go a lot as a kid. But… you know… distractions. I went when I could, but not regularly. I was just… kinda busy," he finished lamely. When had been the last time? Christmas. He was sure it had been Christmas. His family always went to late night Mass together. Since then, thoughts of church had fallen by the wayside. He'd been to the cemetery once or twice with Steve, to lay a wreath on his parents' graves… but that didn't count. Not really.

"Well, it's good that you're taking a renewed interest in the Lord now," Olliver said. "I'm sure that, in time, I can help guide you back onto the path. You'll feel much better."

Bucky sat up in his chair. It creaked ominously beneath him. "In time? I was kinda hoping you could help me feel better sooner, rather than later. And by 'sooner,' I mean, before the next mission. I don't wanna feel this way, Father. I don't want to doubt myself before every mission, and feel like cr—I mean, feel bad afterwards. I feel like I'm letting the rest of my team down."

"I'm afraid there's no quick fix for a guilty conscience, but you can rest assured that you have not fallen out of the Lord's favour. So long as you continue to walk in His light, you do not need to fear for your soul."

"It's not my soul I'm worried about," he sighed. He should'a known he'd be on his own with this. Maybe tonight, he'd write a letter to Steve. So far, Steve hadn't replied to any of his letters, but that probably just meant they were stuck in some V-mail censoring office. It wasn't as if they were routinely able to access post out here, either. He wouldn't get a reply from Steve before the next mission, but maybe just writing his thoughts to his friend would be the catharsis he needed.

He stood and offered a salute. "Please excuse me, Father. I have an appointment with Mr. Stark round about now."

"Of course. I hope to see you for service tomorrow morning."

"Unfortunately, I have guard duty tonight, so I won't be able to make the morning's service. But I'll ask Corporal Robbins for the highlights; he really enjoys your sermons."

After excusing himself, he returned to the 107th's tent, which was mostly unoccupied. Three or four soldiers were napping, their snores soft and slow, and Wells was on his bed, writing out a letter with painstaking precision. He glanced up as Bucky entered the tent, his blue eyes full of unspoken disapproval.

"Found God yet?"

"Several times," Bucky lied. "He says hello, by the way." He nodded at the paper on Wells' bed. "Letters home?"

Wells snorted loudly. "No."

"Then what're you doing?"

"Possibly making one of the world's biggest mistakes." He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and blinked several times in the fading light. "Gusty's got this thing for one of the nurses. Apparently he's been carrying a torch all week and has finally worked up the courage to do something about it."

"Okay," said Bucky, taking a seat on his bed. This convoluted story would, eventually, lead to an answer for his question, and he'd learnt the importance of patience by now.

"But Gusty, being Gusty, can't just go and talk to the woman, because that would upset his stomach, so he's decided to write her a letter. Something she can read in the fresh air."

"Lemme guess; he doesn't know what to say, so you offered to pen something for him?"

"On the contrary. He knows exactly what he wants to say. And here it is."

Wells handed a piece of paper over, and Bucky stared at the scrawl. It was like a dozen spiders had knocked over an ink pot and then assaulted the paper in a frenzy of scrabbling legs. Bucky's handwriting wasn't particularly flashy, but at least it was legible.

"What does it even say?" he asked, handing it back.

"That's exactly why I'm writing it out for him." Bucky glanced over the writing Wells had started to pen. The letters were neat, of uniform size, and the lines were perfectly straight. "First thing you learn when doing accounts is to write neat for official documents," Wells explained, before he could ask.

"Which nurse?"

"I'm not sure. All I know is it's not Nurse Sanders, and that's enough for me."

"Which one's Nurse Sanders?" So far, Bucky hadn't had the opportunity to talk to the nurses, except for that brief time when they'd been looking after Matilda. Perhaps it was time to go for a medical checkup.

"The one with the green eyes. And you stay away from her; I saw her first."

"What happened to Agent Carter?"

"A guy can't have a Plan B?" Wells grinned. "Speaking of, you missed Agent Carter about ten minutes ago. I spotted her passing by the tent. Asked her if she wanted to spend the night in a foxhole with me."

Bucky studied his friend's face. He couldn't see any bruises, which probably meant her response hadn't been too hostile… unless she'd aimed low. Some people were dirty fighters like that, and he very much suspected that Agent Carter was a dirty fighter.

"What'd she say?"

"Another scathing rebuttal." Wells shrugged, as if it was of no consequence. "I'll wear her down, eventually."

"And if you don't?"

"I will seek the comforting atmosphere of the hospital tent, of course."

"Of course." He reached beneath his bed's flimsy frame to pull out the SSR-01 in its case. "I gotta go get this serviced. Wanna come?"

"Naw. Stark hates me."

"You think everybody hates you."

Wells nodded, a solemn expression on his face. "It's a conspiracy. With Stark, I can't figure out whether he hates me for my higher than average intellect, or my luck with dames. It could be both."

"Maybe it's your ego."

"Maybe." Wells kicked another case that was propped up beside his bed. "Tex left this, asked me to ask you to get it serviced along with yours."

"Where's he gone?"

"Down to the river, with the rest of the regiment." Wells put the cap on his pen and propped himself up on his side. "The 69th challenged us to an old-fashioned tug o' war, and everybody who wasn't already asleep went to watch how it turns out."

"So why aren't you down there? You love wiping the floor with the 69th."

"In things that require actual skill, yeah." He offered a small, unconcerned shrug. "Brute strength isn't really my thing. We've already got Tex, Carrot and Biggs out there… besides, I wanted to try and get this letter finished before it got too dark to see."

"Oh, sorry. I'll go take these guns to Stark and leave you to it." He picked up both cases and halted by the tent flap on his way out, a smile creeping across his lips. "But it's nice to see you helping Gusty out. You must be going soft in your old age."

"Barnes, you insult me," Wells scoffed. "Gusty paid me in smokes for my translation services. You may be having a bad influence on me, but I'm not a complete patsy."

"Right," he chuckled. "Don't get too comfy; you've got a date with a foxhole in a couple of hours."

"Don't remind me."

Bucky left his friend to his writing and set off across the camp. Each time they set up the tents, Stark insisted on being in the middle of the camp. Claimed it was to make it harder for him to be assassinated; any would-be assassins would have to sneak past the guard posts, and the regimental tents, before making it to his location. Bucky suspected the real reason was that Stark liked to be in the middle of the things, close enough to get involved and hear any gossip that might be doing the rounds. Plus, it was far enough away from the latrine pits that there was no noticeable smell.

If only Stark had gone to watch the tug of war, too. For three days, Bucky had managed to put off seeing the guy. Now, his rifle was due for servicing, and he couldn't put it off any longer. He was finally gonna have to tell Stark that he'd made an excellent weapon with which to kill people.

: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :

"I'm going to gouge your eyes out!" growled Tipper, his face a menacing scowl. "And I'm going to send them to your wife, so that your eyes see her face one last time before I cut out your heart with a blunt, rusty bread knife."

"That's not very realistic," said Wells, over the radio."To get to the heart, you gotta go through the ribs. How's a rusty bread knife gonna do that?"

"Plus," Gusty chimed in,"when eyes are severed from the optic nerve, they don't keep seeing things."

"Ignore them," Bucky told the young private sitting opposite him in the foxhole. On the bare earth between them was one of Stark's short-range radios; the other was in the foxhole currently inhabited by Wells and Gusty. Bucky had 'borrowed' the radios earlier that evening, whilst Stark was distracted with routine maintenance on his SSR-01, to try and alleviate some of the boredom of sentry duty. If only he'd had these as a kid! He and Steve would've had so much fun with them. "What happens next, Tipper?"

"I dunno. I haven't got that far yet. But it's gonna be really horrific and bloody."

"Tipper, you can't start to tell us a horror story and then leave us hanging," Wells' disembodied voice complained. "It's unfair."

"I'll finish the story next time, Sarge. You can't rush the creative process."

"Well, it's a good start, " said Bucky. "Right, guys?"

"Right," Gusty agreed. "You send your script off to the U.S. Army Editions publishers, and your story could be in our pockets as early as next year."

"And it's exactly the sort of story guys serving in a war wanna hear." Wells voice was drier than an Arizona summer. "A psychotic madman stalking people, systematically torturing them, and chopping them up into little pieces."

"Maybe, at the end of the story, the guy wakes up and it's all been a dream," mused Tipper, oblivious to Wells' criticism. "Ooh, or he thinks it's a dream, but it's actually real."

"Alright Wells, your turn," said Bucky.

"Ugh. This is stupid."

"We could always play I-spy again," said Gusty.

"Rules are rules, Gusty," Bucky told the corporal over the radio. "We all gotta take our turns at coming up with some way of entertaining ourselves. You picked I-spy, Tipper told us the story he's working on, now it's Wells' turn."

"Fine. Let's see… If you could have any sort of magic power, what would it be?"

"Define 'magic power,'" said Bucky.

"Anything. It's magic. That's the point."

"Immortality!" Gusty said immediately.

"You can't be immortal, that's cheating."

"You said any magic power."

"Except immortality, you cheating bastard. That takes the fun out of it."

"I've got one," said Tipper. "I'd be invisible. Think of how much damage I could do behind enemy lines if they couldn't see me!"

"It's better than immortality. Good one, Tipper."

"Clairvoyancy," Gusty shot back quickly. "I'd have the power to see the future. Then I'd not only know the outcome of the war, I'd also make a killing at the dog tracks. And you can't claim that one's cheating."

"Fine, Gusty can see the future. What about you, Barnes?"

"Hmm. What about the magical power to stop other people from dying? Is that a thing?"

"Also cheating," said Wells. "No defying death, either for yourself or others. Though, I guess it would be okay if you made yourself bulletproof, or flame-retardant."

"Damn, I wish I'd gone with bulletproof," Gusty lamented.

"Or underwater breathing," said Tipper. "I bet there's loads of exciting underwater stuff to see."

"Like U-boats," said Wells. "Now, stop stalling, Barnes. Tell us what magical super power you'd like to have."

"Okay, okay." He racked his mind for something suitably exciting. Mind-reading had a certain amount of appeal… but he figured he'd get bored of the lack of mystery after a while. Suspense and spontaneity were too much fun to ruin them with mind-reading or clairvoyancy. Being invisible might be fun, but only if he could turn it on and off at will. Finally, he found something to settle on. Something he'd read in an article Steve had illustrated for some crazy science-fiction periodical. "Psychokinesis. Moving stuff with my mind."

"Aww, I wish I'd picked that one, too," said Gusty.

"You're just greedy, Gusty. What about you, Wells?"

"The magical power of flight," Wells replied. "I'd be up there with the birds, and nobody would ever keep me down. Your turn to entertain us, Barnes. And don't pick I-spy."

Bucky considered his options, and tried to come up with something entertaining. He'd finally decided it was time to let Tipper do a little more work. He couldn't keep the kid on the sidelines forever, and guard duty seemed a nice, safe way to get him involved. When Bucky told him he'd be spending his night in a foxhole, Tipper had worn a face-splitting grin for the rest of the day. Anyone would think the guy had just been told he'd won a thousand dollars. But then, Tipper was crazy.

"Your favourite good memory," Bucky said. "From a time in your life when you were at your happiest."

"That's easy," said Gusty. "When I turned nineteen, my dad bought me a car. It wasn't anything special, just an old, used, Tatra 57, the paint a little faded in places, but to me, it wasn't just a car; it was freedom. The night after I got it, I took it out for a drive and just kept going until the sun rose. I was two hundred miles away from home and running on fumes, but I felt like I'd just driven across the world."

"My first kiss," said Wells. "Amelia Short. We were fifteen, and she was painfully shy, but she had the nicest smile. Of course, it was kinda awkward—second kisses are always better—but at the time, I thought it was amazing."

"For me, it was going to California with my family when I was twelve," said Tipper. "That place is incredible. Real beaches that go on for miles, guys who can surf the waves, and the food was really different to anything you find in New York. Even though I was still in the U.S., everything felt so exotic. Much more exotic than Plymouth, anyway. And a hell of a lot more exotic than France."

"What about you, Sarge?" asked Gusty.

"Senior Prom," said Bucky. "Best dance I've ever been to. Graduated high school, had a pretty dame on my arm, and I even talked my best friend into going. He didn't dance because he swears he can't, even though he's never tried, but we still had a great evening."

A smile stole across his lips at the memory of that night. Toward the end of the dance, he and Steve had snuck away, to walk the corridors one last time and reminisce about the good old days. Over here, the lockers that Steve had been shoved into several times. Over there, the water fountain that the class clown had drenched Steve from. The corridor leading to the gym changing rooms, where Bucky had pulled Danny Cavanagh off Steve more than once. The English classroom, where Bucky had once tried to impress Jane Kapersky with his analysis of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. The math classroom, where he'd stood dumbfounded in front of the chalkboard, trying to figure out how x and y fit together with z. The art classroom, in which he'd sculpted a horse out of clay. It hadn't been a very good horse, but he'd given the finished project to his youngest sister, Janet, and she'd loved it like only a little girl with a clay horse could.

He and Steve had strolled through the school, excited to be moving on, sad about so many memories left behind, knowing that they would never set foot in the building again. It had been a night of bittersweet happiness, and a little regret.

"Um, Sarge, shouldn't we check for German interlopers?" Tipper asked, halting Bucky's casual stroll down the high school halls.

"Sure. Might as well."

He helped Tipper up, and together they peered over the edge of the foxhole. Everything was in darkness. If there were German interlopers out there, Bucky couldn't see them. Couldn't hear them, either. Only the chirping of nocturnal insects broke the peaceful silence of the night. He grabbed the radio and held it to mouth-height.

"Wells, Gusty, any sign of interlopers over your way?"

Fifty metres to the east, two helmeted heads appeared cautiously from the ground to peer at their surroundings. After a moment, they both turned to look over to Bucky's location.

"Negative on the interlopers," said Wells. "Also, I feel we should use callsigns. After all, if German interlopers managed to infiltrate your foxhole, how would I know that I was talking to you, instead of them?"

"I like to think the lack of a Brooklyn accent would be a dead give-away," Bucky pointed out. "But sure, if you want a callsign, I suggest yours be 'team bullshit.'"

"And yours can be 'team patsy.'"

"Um, I think I should be in charge of picking the names," said Gusty. "I think you two are biased."

"You don't get to name stuff, Gusty. Remember?"

"Oh."

"Anyway," said Bucky, as a nefarious smile tugged at his lips, "there's a serious matter I need to discuss with you, Gusty."

Gusty's voice came across quavering. "What's that, Sarge?"

"Tell us about this nurse who's caught your eye."

"Aww, Sarge, there's nothing to tell."

"Bullshit. The fact that there's a dame means there's something to tell. Now, spill it."

"I don't want everyone knowing about it, Sarge. Not yet. Not until I've got a response to my letter, anyway."

"Don't worry, Corporal," he replied. "Foxhole etiquette states that what happens in here, stays in here. We won't say a word. Right, guys?"

"Right!" Tipper agreed.

"And I already know anyway, so it's not like you're telling me something new," said Wells.

"You see, Gusty? Your secret is safe with us. Let's have it."

Besides, foxhole etiquette or not, teasing friends about girls was a time-honoured tradition—one that he intended to keep even when he was old and wrinkled.

Author's note: V-mail, short for Victory Mail, was a hybrid mail process used by America during the Second World War as the primary and secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad. To reduce the cost of transferring an original letter through the military postal system, a V-mail letter would be censored, copied to film, and printed back to paper upon arrival at its destination. The V-mail process is based on the earlier British Airgraph process. (source: Wikipedia)