We Were Soldiers
30. Resting Place
They found the cargo in the bottom of a deep valley, where it had finally come to a sliding halt. Five crates in total, and one of them had split, spilling its contents across the hillside. At first, Bucky almost missed them; his eyes slid over the lumpy, olive drab parachute that was draped over one of the crates, and it was only when Tex called out for a stop that he realised the Texan's sharp eyes had picked up something incongruous.
The pilots who'd made the drop may have missed their zone by some considerable distance, but at least they'd managed to drop the crates in the same area. Two were immediately visible from the road, two more were less than a hundred metres downhill, and the last was balanced precariously over the gully of a narrow stream.
Bucky hopped out of his jeep and pulled off his helmet, wiping the sweat from his forehead before donning it again. His limbs had gone numb from holding himself tensed against the jolting in the back of the vehicle, and movement was a welcome relief.
"Wells, Carrot, stay in the jeeps and keep watch. We don't want anyone crashing the party before we're finished. Everyone else, unpack the crates. Go through everything. Take food, medical supplies and ammo. Start a 'might be nice' pile for anything you think we might squeeze onto the jeeps if we've any room left over. The rest, dump in another pile. Anything we don't take, we'll burn. No point the Nazis getting their hands on it."
He and Tex gave Carrot and Wells their SSR rifles, and joined the rest of the team at the crates. It was heavy work in the blistering heat. Crates of tinned goods had been tightly packed together, and they quickly found out that loading a jeep without care for where the crates were placed put too much stress on the vehicles' suspension. After the second of the jeeps starting listing dangerously to one side, Bucky set Franklin and Davies to be in charge of distributing the loads more evenly.
"Hey, Sarge," called Hodge. He jumped down from the side of the crate he was pillaging and held up a bottle of amber liquid. When he got closer, Bucky realised it was Scotch. He didn't know anything about Scotch, so had no idea whether it was a decent vintage, but since it was probably intended for the colonels, chances were it wasn't cheap swill. "Are we classing this as 'essential foodstuff,' 'might be nice,' or 'everything else'?"
"That, Private Hodge, is most definitely 'essential,'" Bucky said. Spoils of war. And if the brass asked any questions, the bottle had simply been smashed during the drop.
They managed to get all of the medical supplies, most of the ammunition, and a surprisingly large amount of the food into the jeeps. Every inch of available storage space was used up, and once the men got back into the vehicles, more boxes were loaded onto their laps. Their legs went in at odd angles, because the foot-wells were full of sealed tins. Finally, when the sun was halfway to the horizon, Bucky deemed their work done. He and Tex wrapped everything that was left into one of the used parachutes, doused it with a little gasoline taken from one of the emergency jerry cans they carried aboard the jeeps, and torched it.
It was well into dusk by the time Bucky halted the laden convoy. He'd found a clear, sparkling stream, shaded by a wide stand of tall evergreens, and it looked too nice an area to pass by. After checking the area for signs of life, and finding none, they made camp for the night.
Bucky made only a half-hearted attempt to keep order and discipline; a sort of holiday spirit had entered most of the men, and he was loathe to quash it. For the first time in three weeks, they had a night away from the bulk of the company. A night away from the disapproving eyes of the officers and the restrictions of camp life.
The first thing they did was get a fire going. Then, before anything else, they bathed. The water of the stream was cold, but pleasantly so. It didn't take long for the splashing to start, but the men settled down when Bucky brought out some of the soap he'd salvaged from a supply crate. Soap, like smokes and chocolate, was in high demand. Until now, Bucky hadn't even realised how much he appreciated the simple pleasure of being clean. He scrubbed himself from head to toe until his skin was pink as a newborn baby, and then he scrubbed himself a little more just to be sure. They had no towels, but after weeks of living with hundreds of other men in quarters so close that they were practically on each others' laps, Bucky had re-evaluated his interpretation of the word 'modesty.' Sitting out to air-dry, doing nothing but letting the occasionally cloud-hidden sun dry his bare skin, was actually quite pleasant—until the biting, early evening insects sent them all scrambling for their clothes.
When the men turned to their ration kits, Bucky told them to open up one of the food crates from the supply drop instead. They dined on spam and tinned vegetables, which they warmed up over the fire. After that, they found a tin of cake wrapped in waxed paper, and heated a couple of tins of custard to have with it. For the first time since he'd left Camp Shanks, Bucky ate dinner and did not feel hungry immediately after. In fact, he felt like a bloated pig.
With the important business of bathing and eating safely out of the way, the men shook out their groundsheets and sleeping rolled and settled down to play cards, or throw die, or read pocket novels. Bucky brought out the bottle of Scotch they'd redistributed from the supply drop, and tiredly dropped onto his sleeping roll beside Wells.
"How're your arms?" he asked, as he broke the seal on the bottle.
"Better." Wells was lying on his back, a coin in his hands which he flipped over his knuckles, like Tipper used to do. He wasn't as good at it as Tipper, though, and the coin kept dropping from his grasp. "I'll be fine, by tomorrow."
Bucky nodded. Nobody wanted to admit to being hurt, because that meant a visit to the hospital tent, which invariably ended with a blood donation.
Laughter fell on his ears and he saw Tex, Hodge, Jones and Franklin gambling over dice not far away. A poker game had sprung up, governed by Davies. Carrot and Gusty were reading quietly, whilst Mex was entertaining a couple of men with impressions of the camp's officers; he did a very convincing Colonel Phillips.
A feeling of something warm bubbled up inside Bucky's chest. It might have been contentedness, or perhaps pride. It was a similar feeling to the one he'd felt at Last Stop, that night when Carrot had been overjoyed to get a note from Samantha, following the rose incident. They'd been through a lot since then, and they hadn't all come away unscathed, but together, they'd made it this far. If they stuck together, there was nothing they couldn't do.
Except save each other from death.
The elated feeling quickly sank. When he'd imagined war, he'd thought that he'd always see death approaching. That he'd have time to react to it, or at least prepare for it. He'd thought there would always be a way to defend against it. But Danzig had been taken so swiftly that there was no saving him. Tipper been there one moment, and gone the next. Today, one tiny misstep had caused them to lose another man, and it was only through an act of sheer luck or divine providence that they hadn't lost more.
Guilt added its weight to his shoulders. He knew he ought to be as sad about Nestor's death as he was about any other. But his first thought, on reflecting over the events of the day, had been, Thank God it wasn't Carrot or Wells.
"Somethin' on your mind?" Wells asked, his blue eyes far too attentive. Bucky shifted a little on his bedroll before answering.
"I was just thinking about Lieutenant Nestor," he admitted. "When I saw that jeep missing, my first worry was for you and Carrot. It's like my brain didn't even give Nestor a second thought. Does that make me a terrible person?"
"No. It makes you a good friend. And you can trust me on that, because I know all about friendship. Practically an expert. You said so yourself, remember?"
"Are you going to hold that over my head forever?"
"Yes. Yes I am. Forever and ever." Wells smiled and threw the coin at him; it hit him on his forehead, then bounced and rolled away. "Now, are you gonna stop wet-nursing that bottle of Scotch, or do I have to teach you how to drink liquor?"
He chuckled. "In your dreams, pal."
The fumes from the Scotch made his eyes water as he brought the bottle to his lips. The swig of liquid burned his throat, and then set fire to his stomach. But he managed not to cough, or splutter, as he passed the bottle on.
The promise of real alcohol put a halt to the games, though Mex kept up his impressions as the bottle was passed around. His Agent Carter was even more impressive than his Colonel Phillips.
"Drink up, Corporal," said Hodge, passing the bottle to Carrot.
Carrot's eyes narrowed in his pale face. Bucky suspected the guy was still a little in shock from his near-death experience.
"My mom says alcohol is the Devil's water, Private, and awful sinful."
"Carrot, after the day you've had, God won't mind how much you sin," Wells told him. "What's the point in being afraid of death if you've never really lived?"
It was a measure of how shaken up Carrot was that he let himself be talked so easily into taking a quick swig of the whisky. He coughed. He spluttered. He took another sip which went down a little easier, then spent a moment staring at the bottle.
"Remember when Tipper necked half his beer in one aboard the Monty?" he asked. "I think he was afraid someone was gonna take it off him if he didn't drink it fast."
"I still don't know how he managed to do this coin thing," said Wells. He tried to demonstrate the trick with a new coin, flipping it over his knuckles… but it dropped again. "Guy must'a had really small fingers."
Bucky took a deep breath. Seven days ago, Tipper had died. Now, his death was finally real. It wasn't just an absence of a person… it was a memory of who he had been. A memory that those who had known him finally felt able to discuss. Enough time had passed that the anger, and grief, and loss, had stopped being so raw that it hurt to think of the kid who was no more.
"I'll never forget that day on the Monty when he asked someone to go shower with him." A smiled tugged at one corner of his lips as the memory of Tipper interrupting the poker game played out across his mind.
Those who'd not known Tipper so well offered their own memories; the times they'd seen him bouncing excitedly around the camp, the way he begged everybody to let him take on a little more responsibility.
Finally, Gusty said, "I wish he'd told us an ending for that story he'd started writing. Now we'll never know how it ended."
"Maybe we can end it for him," Bucky suggested. "Let's see…"
"The guy woke up, and his nightmare was just a dream," said Wells. "Everyone was still alive, and they all lived happily ever after."
The ending received a toast. They toasted so much that they ran out of Scotch. Bucky tossed the empty bottle into the fire and watched the flames try to claim it. Every drop of alcohol burned hot for a brief moment, and then the fire settled back down. He knew how it felt; he wanted to nestle down into his bedroll and sleep until dawn. But first, he had one last duty to fulfil.
"We need to keep watch. Two-man sentries, an hour per pair. Jones, Hodge, you take the first shift. Uh… maybe don't bother trying to wake Carrot."
Unused to the effects of alcohol, Carrot had already been asleep and snoring for twenty minutes. Bucky hoped the guy wouldn't wake up with a hangover. He was never gonna convince the brass their Scotch had been destroyed in the drop if his team returned hungover.
With his final duty complete, he slid between the two layers of blankets and used his arms as a pillow beneath his head. The rocky ground wasn't particularly comfortable to sleep on, but it was nice to lie beneath the sky, to see the stars twinkling behind the spindly pine branches above. It was even nicer to hear the crackling of the fire, and smell the burning wood. It reminded him of the old wood burning stove, in the living room back home.
He let his thoughts drift back there. Because of the time difference, the folks back home were probably just finishing work. Maybe sitting down to dinner, discussing their respective days. The traffic, the office gossip, the way the price of bread had been hiked once again. But none of those days would have involved losing another man. None of them would have involved a guy going over a cliff, taking an army jeep with him.
Could Bucky ever go back to that? After having days where men died—where friends died—would he ever be able to go back to caring about the traffic, or the price of bread? Could he go back to being the guy who tried to sneak in the back door of the cinema with Steve, to dodge the ticket fee? Or was this his life, now? Was the army all he would have, because going back would be too difficult?
He looked around the impromptu camp, at Carrot who was out cold, Gusty who was nose-deep in a book, Wells who was still trying to flip a coin over his knuckles without dropping it, and the rest of the men he'd come to know as friends and respect as comrades. At least if this was to be his life, he was in good company.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
It was early afternoon by the time the convoy reached the main camp. Bucky had picked a different route back, to avoid the unstable knife-edge ridge… and so that the men didn't have to see what was left of the wreckage. As the jeeps pulled up by the mess tent, there was no shortage of hands to help them unpack the contents. Bucky instructed the corporals to oversee the unpacking process, then set off to the command tent with Wells in tow.
"If you want to get out of this, you could probably do with having a doc check you over," he offered.
"Thanks, but I'd rather face the colonel's wrath than get groped in the medical tent." He rolled his shoulders and did his best not to wince. "Besides, my arms feel much better, now."
Bucky snorted, but allowed his friend the lie.
"Doubt we'll get a commendation this time," Wells added.
"I don't even deserve the last one." Bucky held up his hands to stall the objection he saw rising in his friend's eyes. "I know, I know, I should quit my griping and accept it. And I do accept it, no matter how undeserved."
"I like that I don't even need to have my half of the conversation anymore."
When they reached the command tent, they found both colonels, Agent Carter and Howard Stark discussing the location of the next campsite. As soon as they were admitted, Bucky and Wells saluted. How the hell was he gonna explain how another lieutenant had died?
"Report, Sergeants," Hawkswell barked.
"Sir, we found the cargo and recovered all medical and ammunition supplies, plus over seventy-five percent of the foodstuff," said Bucky. He rushed on before Hawkswell could ask why Nestor wasn't reporting this. "But… there was an accident, en route. The jeep carrying Lieutenant Nestor, Sergeant Wells and Corporal Robbins hit loose ground, and went over the side of a cliff. We managed to save Sergeant Wells and Corporal Robbins, but we lost Lieutenant Nestor. And the jeep, sir."
"I'm sure Lieutenant Nestor's family will be grieved to hear of his loss," said Hawkswell. "I'll add the condolence letter to the others, ready for sending at the first opportunity. Do you have anything to add, Sergeant Wells?"
"Only that if it wasn't for quick thinking on behalf of Sergeant Barnes and the rest of the men, Corporal Robbins and I wouldn't be here."
"Noted. What about the rest of the supplies?"
"We torched them, sir," Bucky said. "Didn't want the Nazis getting their hands on them."
"Very well. We'll be moving camp in three hours, Sergeants. Tell your men to get something to eat before we march. Dismissed."
Bucky's knees almost collapsed in relief. He'd been expecting a chewing-out over the lost jeep, and an even bigger one over Lt. Nestor. Did this mean the jeep and the lieutenant were counted as acceptable losses, or was the colonel's need to move the camp ASAP greater than the need to lecture his sergeants about losing equipment and men?
"Err, if I could temporarily rescind that dismissal, for just a moment," Stark said, making a somewhat furtive approach. "I don't suppose you found a bottle of Scotch amongst the supplies, did you?"
"There was a bottle," Bucky said, opting to sandwich a lie between two truths, "but it was smashed in the drop. At least the Nazis didn't get it."
"Damn. That was a two-hundred dollar bottle of Balvenie. I knew I should have instructed them to wrap it more securely."
"It was a glass bottle dropped from a plane," Wells pointed out. "Very likely, no amount of wrapping would have saved it."
Something thoughtful and fleeting passed across Stark's eyes. From his pocket, he pulled out a pad and pencil, and scribbled something down. Reading it upside down, Bucky thought it said, 'Invent gravity-proof wrapping.'
Bucky took the opportunity to make a hasty escape, and as he left the tent, he felt momentarily light-headed.
"We drank a two-hundred dollar bottle of Scotch!" he hissed.
"We wasted a two-hundred dollar bottle of Scotch," Wells groaned. "I thought that stuff was too smooth. And it got drunk by a bunch of guys who wouldn't know how to appreciate decent whisky if it fell out of the sky and hit them on the head!"
Wells had a point. But then, the Scotch had been something to share. It had opened the door to sharing other things, such as their memories of Tipper, and their sadness over his death. For a night, they had managed to keep Tipper's memory, and therefore his spirit, alive. It may have cost a two-hundred dollar bottle of Scotch, but as far as Bucky was concerned, it would have been cheap at twice the price.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
"Hey Carrot, wait up!"
Bucky trotted after the young man and caught up to him just out of sight of the regimental tent. The camp had moved twenty klicks overnight, and most of the 107th were still abed, exhausted from the walk. Bucky had been woken by the sound of Carrot's push-up count, but he didn't mind. In fact, he'd been counting on it.
"What's up, Sarge?"
"Are you heading to the morning service?" Carrot nodded. He never missed a service when he wasn't on a mission. "Great. I'll walk there with you, if you don't mind."
"Of course I don't mind. I'm sure Lieutenant Olliver will be glad to see you, Sarge. He was asking after you, a few days ago."
"Oh." The priest was probably worried about Bucky's state of mind after that whole holy-water incident. He'd been avoiding the lieutenant, since then. Hard to keep a straight face around a guy when he'd blessed your canteen.
"Are you gonna stay behind after the sermon and confess your sins too, Sarge?" Carrot asked, as they set off across the camp. Today's location was less campsite and more crampsite. The company had stopped in a valley between two steep, rocky hills, and the tents were wedged in so close together that there wasn't much walking room between them. Things were definitely a whole lot cosier than they had been yesterday.
"Uh, I wasn't going to. Why? Are you?"
Carrot nodded again. "Yep. I hope Lieutenant Olliver has time to hear about my sins today. I have to tell him about that Scotch. Mom would want me to ask forgiveness for that."
"Um. Carrot. Maybe it would be best if you didn't mention the fact that we drank Stark's two-hundred dollar bottle of whisky." He wasn't afraid of Stark physically; the guy was beanpole-like, leaner than Wells even after his overly dramatised weight loss. But Stark had lots of interesting and worrying inventions. Bucky didn't want to wake up to find that his mouth had been sealed shut, or something.
"Don't worry, Sarge, Lieutenant Olliver told me he keeps everything in the strictest confidence. Unless I'm a German spy, which I'm not, so it's fine."
Bucky wasn't convinced that the lieutenant's oaths of confidentiality extended that far, but he could hardly deny Carrot the right to confess his sins. Rightfully, Bucky ought to be confessing, too. He was the one who'd opened the bottle and shared it out. The food was another matter; they would only have burned it as excess. But the Scotch? That had been pure, undiluted desire. Unfortunately, he quite liked desire. It was a very sinful thing to like, but he couldn't help it. And besides, the men had deserved it. He would never have kept the bottle for himself.
Maybe that was part of the reason he found the sermons do hard to sit to. Even before signing up, he'd only truly gone to church when emotionally blackmailed by his mother. Not because he didn't believe, of course, but because his folks had raised him to be self-reliant, and to own up to his own mistakes. His dad had taught him, from a very early age, that part of the measure of a man was how he accepted his own failings and took responsibility for his wrong-doings. It was a lesson Bucky had taken to heart. But doing things wrong, making mistakes, and then going and asking for somebody else's forgiveness—even if that somebody was God—well, it seemed to take away the idea of personal responsibility.
In school, he'd been taught the Lord's prayer. Taught how to pray for God to watch over his loved ones. For the Holy Father to take care of his parents, and his brother, and his sisters. The problem was, he saw those things as his job. He was the eldest of four children. He was the older brother. It was his job to take care of his younger siblings, not God's. If Bucky had to ask those things of God, it meant he himself was failing in his responsibility to his family. And he liked that idea not one bit.
"Hey, Carrot. When you pray to God to watch over you, do you think he actually listens?" Bucky asked.
A bemused smile slid across Carrot's face. "Sarge, I don't go to church every day to ask God to watch over me. I ask him to watch over everybody else. You know, my folks back home, and Samantha, of course. And all the other guys in the 107th who don't go to church and don't know how to ask for themselves. And even the ones that do."
"What, even me?"
"Especially you, Sarge." Carrot elaborated at a questioning look from Bucky. "You, more than anyone else, have to put up with Wells."
Carrot's selfless act of prayer brought a lump to Bucky's throat. Never would he have imagined that Carrot was praying for him. It wasn't that he felt he wasn't worthy of it… there were just better things for the guy to be praying for: an end to the war, or a safe return home, for example. A long and happy life with those four kids Samantha wanted. A generous pension plan.
"Thank you, Carrot," he said, clapping the taller man on the shoulder. "For praying for me. For praying for all of us. It's very generous of you to remember everyone like that in your prayers."
"It's just the right thing to do, Sarge."
He nodded. The right thing to do. Maybe it was time for Bucky to start praying more genuinely again. At the very least, prayers for his family back home couldn't hurt, especially because for the first time in his life, Bucky wasn't able to be the big brother his siblings needed.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
He made his way back to the regiment's tent, the weight of the service—and Carrot's selfless admission—heavy on his mind. He'd never considered the idea that other people might be praying for him. What about his mom and dad? Did they sit in church every week and pray desperately for his safe return? Did his mom wake up every morning fearing the postman's arrival, conscious that even if the worst happened, it might be weeks or months before she received news?
When he'd shipped off to England, he hadn't thought about what sort of hell his family might be going through. Hopefully they'd received a couple of his letters by now. Hopefully they weren't living with the constant worry of losing a loved one.
More of the men were waking when Bucky returned to the barracks, and some beds were empty. Wells was on the edge of his bed, lacing up his boots with a gleam of eagerness in his blue eyes. He beckoned Bucky over.
"I had a dream last night, about this girl I had a crush on back in high school; Meredith. She was a red-head, and drop dead gorgeous."
"I would be very happy not hearing about your dreams," Bucky told him.
"But I haven't even gotten to the best bit yet!"
"There is such a thing as sharing too much, y'know."
"But you'll like this dream."
Bucky shook his head, and Wells continued.
"So, in this dream, I was in class, and daydreaming up ways of asking Meredith out—"
"Daydreaming within a night-dream? That's gotta be a first."
"—and the teacher was droning on and on—"
"I think they call that 'educating',"
"—and that's when the realisation hit me. Where I'd heard the word 'hydra' before: my high school biology class!"
Answers were dangled seductively in front of Bucky, like a worm on a hook. "Great. So, what did your high school biology teacher have to say about hydra?"
Wells shrugged. "Damned if I know. I spent that whole class daydreaming about playing skeeball with Meredith."
The worm was snatched away before he could even take a nibble at it. "That's not so useful."
"I know. But you know what this means, don't you?" Bucky confirmed that he did not in fact know what it meant. With a grin, Wells threw an arm around his shoulders. "It's time for us to donate blood, pal."