We Were Soldiers
35. In Dunkelheit Wohnt
The dull khaki of the tent's roof filled Bucky's vision, and he immediately knew something wasn't right. He sat up in bed, cold air brushing against his skin as he pushed his blanket from his body. Pain, sharp and hot, travelled along his jaw and sent tiny stabs into his head, like someone had taken a sewing needle to his brain. Tentatively, he probed the inside of his mouth with the tip of his tongue. Everything felt pretty normal, except for a warm swelling of his gum at the bottom left side of his jaw near one of his back teeth. It hurt to touch, and he quickly gave over the probing. Probably just something stuck between his gum and his tooth; he would clean it extra hard, after breakfast.
A short time later, the rest of the regiment began to wake. Carrot was first, with his regular push-ups, followed in dribs and drabs by everybody else. Bucky listened half-heartedly to the early morning banter: Wells' complaints about Carrot's counting, Franklin's complaints about Hodge's snoring, everybody's complaints about Gusty's overnight flatulence. After Carrot had reached fifty, they dressed and headed out for breakfast.
Bucky had once thought that nothing could be worse than grits for breakfast, but in an amazing feat of one-upmanship, the Army had pulled out all the stops to ensure they beat the Navy in the category of Worst Breakfast Meals. It wasn't spam and beans. Spam and beans would've been a blessing. Spam and beans would have heartened the troops. Instead, every morning, they were faced with something that had quickly been dubbed 'S.O.S.'
Shit On a Shingle wasn't particularly appealing. In fact, it barely even looked edible. Slivers of chipped beef were added to a white sauce that was hopefully made from dried milk, water and flour, and the whole thing was served over hardtack biscuits that the Army had stolen from the Navy and somehow been made to taste even worse. The biscuits probably started out crunchy and tolerable, but by the time they'd been drowned in creamed chipped beef, they were soggy and gooey, like flavourless dumplings
The alternative to S.O.S. was starving, and Bucky was not particularly fond of that idea. He held out his mess try and waited for his meal to be slopped onto it, then grabbed himself a cup of coffee and retreated to a table where a few of the 107th were moving their food around their trays, trying to work up the courage to dig in.
"How does your throat feel after not being able to talk for all that time, Wells?" Gusty was asking as Bucky joined them. "Does it feel sore, from lack of use?"
"Hilarious, Gusty," Wells said drily. He scooped up a spoonful of lumpy creamed chipped beef, then tipped his spoon to let it all go splattering back into the tray. Bucky suspected he'd be tightening his belt again real soon. "Believe it or not, I'm actually a quiet guy. It's just that keeping you miscreants in line takes a lot of verbal interaction. Ain't that right, Barnes?"
"Mmm," Bucky agreed.
"What's wrong? Cat got your tongue? Or has Stark's anti-talking gas not worn off yet? I seem to remember you talking just fine last night."
"It's nothin',' Bucky said, and winced when his jaw burned as he spoke. "Just a bit of toothache."
"Oh. Well, you should get that checked out."
"Maybe later." Phillips had already ordered the camp to be moved straight after breakfast. There was too much to do before then, and he couldn't afford to be tied up all morning giving blood in the hospital tent.
As the rest of the regiment tucked into their breakfasts, Bucky picked at the bits of chipped beef in the cream. His first attempt at eating the biscuit, even in its soggy form, made his jaw ache, so he stuck to the bits that didn't need so much chewing and he grabbed himself an extra coffee to make up for the lack of biscuit. I really miss your cooking, Mom. I didn't think it was possible for food to taste this bad and still be edible.
After breakfast, they began to pack everything up. Footlockers were stacked in trailers pulled by the jeeps. Personal belongings were piled into backpacks, and sleeping rolls fastened on top. The flimsy bed frames packed flat for easy carrying. The tents were dismantled and wrapped up with their poles, to be carried in turns by members of the regiment. After weeks of practise, they had it down to a fine art; they could pack up the camp in fifteen minutes. Putting everything back up at the end of the march took considerably longer.
Grey clouds provided welcome relief from the sun as the company set off to their next campsite. Scouting parties from the 69th went ahead to recon the route, whilst the SSR's brass took point at the head of the column. Then came the 9th Infantry, the medical, engineering and communications staff, followed by the rest of the Infantry. They marched at a steady pace until midday, their feet eating up the miles until they stopped for a quick rest and a lunch of hard biscuits from their ration kits. Bucky had an even more difficult time with those than he had the hardtack at breakfast. Chewing just hurt too much, so he gave up after his first biscuit and stuck to water instead. Maybe dinner would be something soft. Hopefully it would be stew.
After an hour's rest, the order came to march again, and they didn't stop for another four hours. Despite the cloud cover, Bucky had never felt hotter. Everybody around him was sweating, because you couldn't undertake a loaded march in the Mediterranean heat and not sweat, but none of them seemed to be suffering like Bucky was. Every step was a challenge. Sweat poured off him in a way it never had before. The pain in his jaw had subsided to a dull throbbing, but now his head ached worse, and his mouth was so parched he thought it could soak up an entire river and still not be satisfied. Shouldn't have skipped those meals, he told himself. He'd feel much better when he had a bit of food inside him.
When they stopped to make camp, he sank wearily to the ground while the rest of the regiment began unpacking the tent. His plight had not gone unnoticed. Gusty, Wells and Carrot all came to check on him.
"You okay, pal?" Wells asked. "You don't look so hot." Bucky aimed an 'I hate you' glare at Wells, and he winced. "Okay, bad choice of words. You look very hot."
"Here, Sarge, have some water," said Gusty, holding out his canteen.
Bucky took it and drank the entire contents. "Just tired," he gasped, wiping his sleeve across his mouth as he handed back the flask. "Thanks. I'll be fine after dinner."
"Do you want me to get a medic, Sarge?" Carrot asked.
He quickly shook his head. God, no. The last thing he needed was special attention. He was just tired from the march, and hungry from not eating much. It wasn't as if he was the only guy who was tired. Everybody felt exhausted, at some point or other. Now, it was Bucky's turn.
"Thanks, but I'm okay, really," he told the other three. "You should make a start on getting the tent set up. I'll be along to help in a few minutes."
"No offence," said Gusty, "but I think you should take it easy while the rest of us get the tent up. It's not like one extra pair of hands is going to make much difference. We can handle tent duty."
"Yeah," Wells agreed, with a wicked grin. He gave Bucky a quick pat on the top of his head. "We'll do all the hard work. You just sit there and look pretty."
"Jerk," Bucky grumbled as the trio rejoined the rest of the group.
An hour later, the camp was fully functional, and Bucky was finally able to stand. He shrugged off his pack and sleeping roll, and wobbled to his feet when nobody was looking his way. He dragged his gear into the tent and sank wearily down on his bare bed. Sudden pangs of sympathy tore through him, not for himself, but for Steve. Constant health problems had kept him from not only joining the army, but also living an active life. Track and field didn't agree with Steve like thoughts of impending combat didn't agree with Gusty, only with Steve, it was worse. Bucky finally understood how his friend must have felt all those years, watching everybody else doing things that came so easy to them, whilst Steve suffered in silence.
"Dinner time," said Wells, poking his head through the tent flap to regard Bucky wilting on his bed. "Jeez, you look awful. Are you sure you don't wanna go see a medic? Maybe there's something wrong with you. After-effects from that gas we inhaled, maybe."
Bucky shook his head. "Just wanna sleep," he croaked. "After dinner. What's on the menu?"
"Spam stew. Y'want me to bring you some back?"
"Nah. I can walk."
"Could'a fooled me."
Despite Wells' total lack of sympathy, Bucky managed to make his way to the mess tent with his tray in hand. He was still sweating, though. Probably coming down with a bit of a cold. Seasonal thing. That's what happened when you continually had to spend time in soaked clothes. He'd be fine after a good night's sleep.
He drew a few stares in the mess, but nobody said anything. At the serving counter, he was given stew and a roll of bread, and then found a table to collapse onto nearby. He dumped his bread into the stew as Wells, Carrot and a group from the 107th joined him, and waited for the bread to soften enough to allow him to chew it.
"I heard we'll be here for a day or two," said Davies, tearing into his bread. Envy bubbled inside Bucky. He wished he could tear into his own bread, but he didn't think his jaw would give him permission. Stupid jaw. "It'll give us a chance to get the chickens out."
"Ooh, pleeeease let me see the chickens!" Carrot begged. "I promise I won't touch them. I just wanna see them. I've always dreamt about owning a few chickens."
"An' living off the fatta the lan'?" Wells asked, whilst Carrot's expression turned confused. "Oh, come on, Barnes, I set up the perfect rabbit joke for you there, and I don't even like the damn book."
Bucky merely waved a dismissive hand as he rolled his bread around in his stew. His brain was too tired and foggy for heckling, and joking, and thinking. He just wanted to eat, and then sleep. Too bad it wasn't rabbit stew. Spam stew was horrible. Better than grits, though. Better than Shit On a Shingle. Come to think about it, spam stew was just fine. Great, in fact. If only he could eat the bread, too.
He slurped down most of his dinner while everyone else discussed the merits of chickens vs. rabbits, and decided it was a decent enough hour to go to bed. He had no foxhole duty tonight, and no recon tomorrow, so this was a chance to get a solid eight hours of sleep. If he could do that, he would be fine by the morning. Fit as a fiddle, right as rain, and all those other cheery platitudes.
"I'm gonna turn in," he mumbled.
"You sure you don't wanna play poker?" Wells asked. "It's round three of the championship. We've got the 69th on the ropes."
"Nah. Need sleep."
"Pleasant dreams, Sarge," Carrot said, as Bucky pushed himself to his feet. "Hope you're feeling better in the morning."
"Mmph."
The walk back to the regimental tent took forever. Why did they always set up a million miles away from the mess tent? Why couldn't they set up closer to where all the important things were? He peeled off his jacket as he walked. Too hot. He glanced around for the shower block, but couldn't find it. Then he remembered why. No shower block out here. Damn. He would've killed for a shower. A nice, cold, refreshing shower. That was all he needed to feel better. That, and a good night's sleep.
In the troop's tent, he kicked off his boots and crawled under the blanket of his bedroll. His heavy eyelids fell shut as soon as his head hit the pillow, and within moments he was asleep. He dreamt of being back home, in Brooklyn, with a little place all of his own. Steve was there, and they raised rabbits. It was a nice dream.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
"Hey, Barnes, wake up. Barnes! Oh, god dammit… BARNES!"
Bucky opened his eyes, and immediately tried to close them again. Keeping them open was too much hard work, and his entire head throbbed like a pounding drum.
"You still with us, pal?"
Over-worked Muscles ached as he rolled over and found Wells poised to throw a pair of socks at him from his own bed. Maybe Wells was ill. He was never awake before Bucky.
"Yeah," he mumbled, but it sounded more like "Yurrr." He shook his head, to try and rid his ears of that cotton-wool feeling. Regretted it, when his mouth ached from the shake.
A hand came from nowhere, cool fingers pressing against his forehead. "I think he needs to go to the hospital, Sarge," Gusty's voice announced. "He's burning up."
"'M fine," Bucky insisted. He wasn't hot at all. In fact, he was cold. How had it gotten so cold all of a sudden? He pulled the blankets up around his shoulders, to emphasise the fact that he definitely was not burning up.
"Barnes," said Wells, "if bullshit was paint, you would be an artist. And judging by the picture you're trying to paint us, not a particularly good one."
"Really, 'm fine," he insisted.
"Then why'd you go to sleep in my bed last night?"
He looked at the neatly made beds around him. Come to think of it, he was in a slightly different position to normal. He'd thought he'd crawled into his own bed last night… but then again, he couldn't remember laying out his bedroll, or his pillow. Guilt took a stab at his gut.
"You should'a woke me," he accused.
"You were out for the count. Besides, it only took a minute to make up your bed, and you seemed to need the rest. But you don't look any better for it. In fact, you look worse. Like one of those little rodent things that shoves food in its cheeks."
A new face appeared, peering at Bucky with interest.
"You're right, Sarge," said Carrot. "He does look like a hamster."
"Y'want me to take him to the hospital, Sarge?" Gusty asked, as Bucky batted his hand away.
Wells sighed. "No. I see through your thinly veiled attempts to see Nurse Klein again. I'll take him. C'mon Barnes, we're off to see the wizard."
"You're not funny," Bucky told him.
"Slander and lies."
Dressing wasn't an issue, because Bucky hadn't bothered to get undressed before falling into some other guy's bed, so he merely pulled on his boots, loosely laced them up, and let Wells hover beside him as he left the tent. Bright morning sunlight assaulted his eyes and he quickly threw up a hand to shield his vision. Damn sun. Why did it always have to shine like that? It hurt his head, which hurt his jaw, and made him feel dizzy.
"Which way's the hospital tent today?" he asked. The days and camps seemed to bleed into one. Sometimes the hospital tent was to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes straight ahead. Sometimes he had to pass the motor pool, sometimes he had to trudge through the 69th's slice of camp-pie. Why couldn't people just leave things in one place? It made it hard for a fella to make his way around, when they kept changing things.
"This way," said Wells. "Just follow me."
"Follow the yellow brick road." An image of Judy Garland leading a coterie of unlikely companions through a brilliant Technicolor landscape sprang to mind. Sometimes, Bucky felt like Dorothy. Carrot would be the Scarecrow, and Gusty the Cowardly Lion. "That makes you the Tin Man," he said to Wells.
"Uh-huh. Sure. Tin Man. Right."
"And we're all off to see the wizard," he added. "You, and me, and Carrot, and Gusty, and Toto."
"You haven't been eating those mushrooms Davies has been growing, have you?" Wells asked. Bucky decided to ignore him, because he wasn't actually funny.
Nurse Klein had the early morning shift in the hospital tent. She took one look at Bucky, ushered him into a bed, then ran off to fetch a doctor. Bucky didn't have to wait long. A medic appeared after a moment or two, a spectacled, forty-something, dark-haired man with a stethoscope draped around his neck
"Hello, my name's Doctor Peacock," the man said. "What seems to be the problem?"
"Doc," said Wells, his face a mask of calm severity, "I think my friend's really sick. He keeps talking about going to see a wizard."
"I hate you," Bucky told him.
"And he thinks he hates me. He's obviously very unwell."
"Hmm. Open your mouth wide please, Sergeant," the doctor instructed, and Bucky obeyed. He was subjected to much poking and prodding in his mouth, and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to bite down on the fingers. When the doctor prodded the sore spot on his gum, a lightning-hot stab of pain sent him nearly leaping off the bed. "Hmm. I'm afraid you have an abscess, Sergeant..?"
"Barnes," Wells answered for him.
"Yes, an abscess. How long have you had the pain and inflammation for?"
"Since yesterday morning," Bucky said, once the fingers were removed from his mouth. An abscess? Was that bad? It didn't sound good. Kinda sounded like absence. Only, he suspected this was worse than an absence.
"You should've come to see me as soon as the pain started!" Dr. Peacock lamented. "Why do soldiers always feel it's their duty to suffer in silence? If you'd come to me yesterday, we might have saved the tooth."
"What?!"
"The abscess isn't just on your gum, it's underneath it. And judging by the swelling of your jaw, it's on the root of the tooth. Normally we would drain the abscess, but this one has gone too far. You'll have to take a course of antibiotics to bring the swelling down, and then we can extract the tooth and the abscess together."
He wanted to say, bullshit. To tell the doctor he was crazy, that he didn't need any teeth taking out. But when he thought of his tooth being ripped out of his jaw, another wave of dizziness assaulted his mind. The room spun around him.
"Have you ever had a tooth removed before?" Nurse Klein asked.
He shook his head.
"Oh. Well, don't worry, we'll make sure you're suitably medicated before we take it. And we'll give you some painkillers, to help you cope with the pain while the antibiotics get to work."
"Great," he mumbled, pushing himself up out of the bed. "Just gimme what I need, and I'll come back and have whatever taken out."
Dr. Peacock tutted and shook his head as he pushed Bucky back down onto the bed. "Oh no, no, no, no, no. You'll have to stay here, under observation, until twenty four hours after the tooth is removed. Do you understand what an abscess is?"
"No."
"It's a sort of pustule of infection sitting underneath your tooth. In your case, it's spread down into your jaw and is currently travelling along the nerves in your mouth, putting pressure on the whole area. Sometimes an abscess bursts on its own, but yours is so deep that even sticking in a needle to drain it will… oh dear."
He couldn't help it. The thought of that thing in his mouth, bursting, being drained, needles in his gums… His empty stomach lurched. Nurse Klein was one step ahead, handing him a bucket into which he dry-heaved nothing but acidic bile.
"Why don't I come and visit later?" Wells suggested. "When the antibiotics have started to kick in."
Bucky couldn't blame his friend for leaving. The whole 'abscess' business sounded awful. But if it stopped the pain, stopped him from retching, stopped his sides from aching as his stomach tried to find something to get rid of, perhaps it would be worth taking out his tooth.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
Pain ebbed and flowed like the tide. Bucky was conscious of it, but barely. The painkillers put him into a pleasant, sleepy haze, and he drifted in and out of a consciousness marred only by the throbbing of his jaw. He'd experienced pain before. Punches not blocked in time. Scrapes. Trips. Falls. The usual boyhood fortuities. But this was his first real experience with infection. Pain, his body could cope with. Infection seemed an entirely different game. A game he definitely didn't like.
The painkillers worked fast; the antibiotics, slower. By nightfall, Bucky was hungry, but felt too weak to eat. One of the nurses had brought him some stew, and fed it to him like he was a baby just weaned off milk. At any other time, he would've balked at the thought of a dame spoon-feeding him. Now, he was too exhausted to care. In his painkiller-haze he listened to several lectures about should've come to get it checked out sooner, as well as some thorough admonishment about skipping meals, especially when the camp was marching.
The food didn't seem to help. All it did was make him tired. So, after his dinner of stew, and after the nurses had given him a glass of water with a salt tablet in it, he drifted in and out of sleep, playing an elusive game of cat and mouse with unconsciousness. At some point in the early evening, a private from the 9th Infantry came in to have some boils lanced—a regular occurrence, judging by the comments from the nurses. The guy's whimpers as the boils were drained made Bucky's stomach rumble in complaint, but at least that guy's boils were on the outside of his body, not the inside of his jaw.
The night deepened and the oil lamps were dimmed. The calls of the soldiers in the camp, which drifted in through the canvas whenever a group passed near, finally ceased altogether. With no more patients, the medics and nurses called it a night, and finally alone, Bucky fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
He woke blearily some time later, to the darkness of night. Groggily, he tried to sit up, but his limbs were lead weights, his entire body aching and exhausted from fighting off the infection in his tooth. He closed his eyes, and sought the comforting embrace of sleep.
"—Ich glaube, wir sind bereit, uns auf die zweite Stufe zu bewegen."
Bucky's eyes flew open to darkness at the sound of the soft whisper. It was a feminine voice, low, made harsh by the language it spoke. A moment later, a man's voice replied, equally as quiet.
"Sehr gut. Haben sie ein thema im kopf?"
Germans! Heart racing, pulse quickening, he opened his eyes more fully, trying to pierce the darkness with his gaze, to make out something around him. It was useless; he could see nothing, and exhausted mind was so dull and foggy that he couldn't even determine where the voices were coming from. They sounded close, but they may have been outside the tent.
"Ja. Ich plane, es in drei tagen zu tun. Die ergebnisse sollten interessant zu sehen sein." The gloating pleasure in the woman's voice turned forced a shiver of gooseflesh across Bucky's skin.
"Ich freue mich darauf. Wir werden in einer woche wieder sprechen."
Breath held, heart going into overdrive, he strained to hear more. There was nothing. No cry of alarm or discovery at being overheard, no footsteps to tell him the speakers had departed… just the silence of the night.
He had to report this right away. If there were Germans in the camp—other than the Germans Phillips knew about—then they could be doing all sorts of nefarious things. Warning their leaders about troop movements. Sabotaging the camp's equipment. Or… maybe one of the Germans Phillips knew about was a triple agent, secretly working for Hitler, or Schmidt. That made more sense.
"Hey!" he called out, his voice feeble and weak even to his own ears. "Hey, nurse! Doctor Peacock! Can anyone hear me?"
They couldn't hear him. His calls were too quiet because speaking hurt his jaw. Just opening his mouth hurt his jaw. Instead, he tried to push himself up from the bed… but his sedated body refused to budge. Merely collapsed back. Annoyed and frustrated, certain that at any moment some German spy would come along and try to silence him permanently, he fixed a scowl on his face and decided to stay awake until morning, until he could send for the colonel.
Yes. He'd stay awake and listen for other Germans. And if he closed his eyes, it would just be to rest them. Just for a moment. Just until the drugs they'd given him wore off.
His heavy lids fell closed once more, and within moments he was dead to the world.