We Were Soldiers
44. A One-gal Guy
"Our intelligence indicates this bunker processes an unusually high amount of communications traffic," said Phillips as he pointed to a red pin on the map tacked to the cork board in the command tent. "We think it might be some sort of focal point, or central relay, for HYDRA's bunker network. We've suspected for a while that HYDRA has long-range communications facilities in other countries Germany has occupied or allied with, and this bunker may have a link to those networks."
"Which is why," Stark stepped neatly in, "I'll be accompanying you on this mission. The opportunity to get the jump on any additional HYDRA intel is too good to pass up."
"Have you ever seen combat before?" Bucky asked him.
"Of course. I was almost killed on three separate occasions." Howard grinned. "Four, if you count that brunette who just wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Then again, the 'no' came after a whole bunch of 'yes', so maybe I had that coming."
"So, the real answer is 'no'," said Wells
Stark gave Wells what was probably supposed to be a friendly punch on the shoulder, and ended up shaking his hand to rid it of the sting. "Come now, Sergeant Sceptical, I'm sure I'll be safe with you and Sergeant Scowlsalot to keep an eye on me. After all, you've been in France for four weeks now, and you're still alive, so you've already beaten the life expectancy for green soldiers on the front lines. As far as infantrymen go, you're not entirely incompetent."
"That's probably the most back-handed compliment I've ever received," said Bucky. "Did it physically pain you to say those words?"
"They didn't come easy."
"Men," said Phillips, recalling their attention to the mission briefing, "you'll be leaving after lunch. The target is a five-klick march from our location, so I expect you there and back again before nightfall. Camp will be moving first thing in the morning."
One of Bucky's eyebrows arched upward. There and back before nightfall was a pretty tight schedule. It usually took several hours just to dig the graves. In the past, Phillips had given them a fairly loose rein, as far as timetables were concerned.
"Is there some sort of need to hurry, Colonel?" he asked.
"We've had a number of setbacks and we're behind schedule." Phillips' response was gruff. Guarded. When Bucky glanced at Wells, he saw the same question in his friend's eyes: Whose schedule were they behind? "Now, Stark, I want this mission to go as smooth as the skin on a baby's behind. Let the soldiers do their jobs, and try not to get in the way. Sergeants, I would like my lead scientist back alive. Keep an eye on him."
"Does he have to come back alive and in one piece?" Wells asked. The only response was a withering stare. "Right. One piece it is."
"You're dismissed," Phillips told them all. Bucky and Wells saluted. Stark merely ambled off in the direction of his tent.
"So," said Wells, when they were clear of the command tent, "should we assemble the usual suspects?"
Bucky shook his head. "I wanna switch Carrot and Hawkins for Baker and Hall."
"Huh? Why? We've got a good team. The men know what they're doing."
"Exactly. I've been thinking about what Weiss said, about giving the men more experience. I always thought of there being two groups in the 107th—Weiss' group, and ours. But it's not like that, not really; we're all from the same regiment, and now Weiss is gone. I wanna get a measure of some of the other men."
Wells offered a non-committal shrug. "Fine by me. I'm sure Carrot won't mind sitting one out; he can use the opportunity to get some extra praying done, or whatever."
"Y'know, he spends most of his time praying for everyone else, you included."
The news was met with much eye-rolling.
"Yeah, he would. He's a patsy. Anyway, let's get breakfast."
Most of the 107th were awake and getting fed in the mess when Bucky and his fellow sergeant arrived. They collected a serving of shit-on-a-shingle and joined a group at the least crowded table. The conversation seemed to revolve around a bet, and Bucky let his mind tune in as he tucked into his less than appetising breakfast.
"I could do three, easy," said Hodge.
"Now taking bets on whether Hodge can do three at once," said Davies, reaching into his pocket for his notepad.
"Before I put down a bet that Hodge can't even do one at once," Wells said with a grin, "tell me what Hodge is actually trying to do."
"Juggling," said Gusty. "He thinks he can juggle three balls."
The comment earned a round of childish snickers.
"I said anything," Hodge scowled. "I said I could juggle three of anything."
"Bet you couldn't juggle three knives," said Wells.
Hodge's eyes danced uncertainly over the faces of those at the table. Bucky could tell he didn't like the idea of juggling three knives—probably because he wasn't a complete idiot—but he could hardly say that aloud. Not after claiming he could juggle three of anything. In the end, he got around the subject by turning it a hundred and eighty degrees.
"Yeah, well, I bet you couldn't juggle three knives."
"Five bucks says I could."
Davies began scribbling in his notebook. "Now taking bets on whether Wells can juggle three knives."
Not many people were willing to take that bet. Only Carrot put money on Wells being able to pull off the feat of bullshit, but then, Carrot really was kind of a patsy. A nice patsy, of course. Bucky abstained from voting either way; he knew he'd only feel bad profiting from his friend's eventual suffering.
"It's gotta be sharp knives," Davies said. "Not ordinary blunt butter knives."
"No problem," Wells smirked.
"Wells," Bucky said. If there was even a slim chance of talking his friend out of this nonsense, he had to try. "This is a bad idea. I can feel it in my gut."
"That's not a bad-idea-feeling; it's the shit-on-a-shingle that your stomach's protesting against." Gusty dashed off to borrow three sharp knives from the kitchen staff. "Don't worry, Barnes, I'm gonna take these guys for all the money they own. Me and Carrot are gonna split the winnings sixty-forty."
Carrot's brow lowered as he did math in his head. "Wait, why not fifty-fifty?"
"Because I'm the one doing all the hard work, of course. But if you wanna juggle knives instead, I'll happily split it forty-sixty."
"I don't think I could juggle one knife, Sarge, never mind three."
"And that, Corporal, is why we're splitting the winnings sixty-forty."
"If you don't take your hands clean off," Bucky pointed out.
"I won't. When I was a kid, I had this grand plan to run away and join the circus, so I practised juggling every day. Three knives aren't much different than three apples; it's just a matter of tossing them the right way to catch them by the flat of the blades."
"Whatever happened to that plan?" Hodge asked. Smug was written all over his face; Bucky could see him mentally spending the money he hadn't yet won.
"I'm here, aren't I?"
Word of the wager had spread by the time Gusty returned with three particularly sharp-looking knives. The men at the surrounding tables had abandoned their lumpy, floaty, SOS breakfasts in favour of witnessing either a miraculous act of juggling, or a horrific accident of digit-dismembering. Never one to shy from a crowd, Wells took a bow and climbed onto his chair, so those further away could see him. Bucky ushered everybody at the front a couple of paces back; no need for the audience to be harmed by Wells' idiocy, no matter how much some of them might deserve it for their wanton and frivolous gambling.
"And now, for my next trick, I'm going to juggle three knives for a minimum of thirty seconds," Wells announced to the growing crowd. There were a few cheers, but they didn't sound particularly hopeful. More like the cheers of men looking forward to entertainment. Any entertainment. "How big is the pot, Gusty?"
"Twenty-eight dollars."
"Last chance for you all to lose your money by betting against me!" The pot grew to thirty-five dollars. Bucky shook his head. Carrot and Wells were about to lose a small fortune.
"Are you actually gonna do it?" Hodge asked. "Or are you just gonna talk about doin' it until we all get bored and leave?"
"Alright, here goes," said Wells. He hefted each of the knives, felt their weight, turned them over and over in his fingers a couple of times. Then he held one in his left hand, and two between the fingers of his right hand, and threw the first knife in the air to a collective "Oooh."
Bucky wanted to close his eyes as the knives began flashing through the air like wicked metal teeth, but he forced himself to watch. He suspected this was going to be one of those stories he'd one day tell his grandkids, and those grandkids would probably appreciate a blow-by-blow account of how it had all gone sideways. Kids liked that sort of bloody, visceral detail.
Besides, somebody would need to tell the brass what had happened, too.
Bucky's face wasn't the only one to show surprise when Wells actually managed a solid ten seconds of knife-juggling without losing any fingers. But judging by the concentration on his face, it was taking every ounce of focus he possessed to keep those knives flowing freely. Soon the jeering and whistling began as men who had money riding on Wells injuring himself tried to put him off his stride. Carrot's was the only voice which didn't encourage Wells to drop a knife or slice off a part of a finger.
"ARGH!"
The jeering stopped when one of the knives came tumbling down too fast and slipped past Wells' fingers to land point-first in his right hand. Bucky was on his feet immediately, followed only a heartbeat later by Gusty and Carrot. They helped Wells down from his chair; his face had gone decidedly paler as his blue eyes stared at the blade sticking out of his palm. There was surprisingly little blood. When he moved his left hand to grab the hilt, Bucky stopped him. Emergency aid training came rushing back into his head from boot camp.
"You aren't supposed to pull out embedded objects."
"Y'want me to take him to the hospital tent, Sarge?" Gusty offered.
Wells grabbed the front of Bucky's shirt with his left hand, his eyes turning pleading. "Please don't let Gusty take me to the hospital. The sight of him and Nurse Klein making calf-eyes at each other across the tent will make me hurl, and I already feel kinda queasy."
"We don't make calf-eyes," Gusty said, a blush warring with a scowl for domination of his face.
"Alright," Bucky sighed. "It's my turn to carry you to the hospital, anyway. Please tell me you can walk; I don't want to literally have to carry you."
"I can walk. But could we take it slow? I don't want this thing jiggling around in my hand."
"Slow it is." He wrapped an arm around Wells' shoulders while Wells held the blade still with his free hand. It didn't seem to be buried too deeply, but Bucky suspected it would bleed like hell when it was pulled out. "Alright folks, show's over," he said, as he directed Wells out of the mess. "Go find things to do, or I might find them for you."
"Hey, Wells, don't forget about my money," Hodge gloated as they left the tent.
Luckily, the mess wasn't too far from the hospital. They wound their way around a couple of regimental tents, and drew more stares than usual. The other regiments were used to the 107th's antics by now, but they didn't usually end in injury. They strode past the 69th's tent, where a few of the men were servicing their rifles in the morning sun. Dugan's blue-eyed gaze came up, and the big man grinned.
"Hey Wells, didn't your mommy ever tell you you're supposed to hold the knife by the handle and stick the pointy end in your food?"
"You're fuckin' hilarious, Dugan," said Wells. But Bucky could tell his heart wasn't in the profanity; he seemed more concerned about keeping the knife from wiggling around and opening a wider hole in his hand.
Sympathy at the hospital tent was more forthcoming. Nurse Klein was the admitting nurse, and she leapt to her feet as soon as she saw the knife, ushering Wells towards a nearby bed and practically hauling him onto it.
"What on earth happened?"
"I had a kitchen accident," Wells lied. A little of the colour had returned to his cheeks now that he wasn't standing upright, but his blue eyes told of pain he was trying to hide. "Can we take the knife out now? It kinda smarts."
"Just wait one moment whilst I grab some gauze and fetch Doctor Peacock. He'll want to take a look while the wound's fresh."
Nurse Klein bustled to the far end of the tent, and Wells leant back on the bed, his lower lip chewed nervously between his teeth. When he realised what he was doing, he stopped and looked up. Tiny beads of sweat began to prickle his brow.
"I nearly had that money, too. You should'a bet against me. You could've won your money back with interest."
Bucky pulled up a chair to sit by the side of the bed, and offered Wells a small smile. "I'll never bet against a friend, not even if it makes me rich or gets me ahead. Not my style."
"You didn't bet for me, either."
"Yeah, I'm not an idiot."
"There's the vote of confidence I've been in need of," Wells scoffed.
"You know I would'a voted for you if it was darts or poker or somethin', but juggling knives is a whole different kettle of fish." And Wells had actually compared juggling knives to juggling apples. That fact alone would've made him wary about betting.
Dr. Peacock arrived with Nurse Klein in tow. The man's assessing gaze took in the knife, and he shook his head. "Did somebody stab you, Sergeant Wells?"
"Of course not! Who would stab me?"
Dr. Peacock did not answer that particular question. "Alright, let's see the damage. Nurse, I'll perform the extraction, so please be ready with those bandages."
Perform the extraction, Bucky mentally snorted. More medi-babble to make things sound better than they were. Perform the extraction sounded much more technical and challenging than pull the knife out.
Wells winced as Dr. Peacock 'performed the extraction,' and Nurse Klein immediately pounced with the gauze, shoving it into the pool of blood forming on Wells' hand and holding it there with enough pressure to start to stem the bleeding. Bucky gave his friend a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"Now, Sergeant Wells, please curl your fingers," Dr. Peacock instructed. Wells obeyed. "Very good. One at a time, now. Excellent. It doesn't appear the knife has sliced through any tendons or ligaments; it's likely just muscle damage. We'll stitch it up and apply a cold compress to bring the swelling down."
"Take good care of this guy, Doctor," Bucky told him. "I need him for a mission in about five hours."
"A mission?" Dr. Peacock removed his glasses and wiped them on his white jacket. "Oh no, no, no, no! There will be no missions for Sergeant Wells for at least a couple of days. He'll need to rest that hand, and by the time we've bandaged it up, he won't be able to hold a rifle, much less pull a trigger."
"Sorry, Barnes," Wells sighed. "I just hope it isn't too hard for you to find someone to replace my skill, and expertise, and—"
"I'm sure Carrot won't mind filling in for you," Bucky said. He pushed himself up from the chair. "I better go report your 'accident' to the brass. I'll see you when I get back… and please don't juggle any more knives whilst I'm gone, okay?"
"I promise I will never juggle knives again," said Wells, his tone solemn and pained. Bucky nodded. He suspected his friend had learnt his lesson from this, and that was about the most he could ask for.
: - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - : - - - — — — - - - :
Bucky kept alert as he led the fifteen-plus-two man team to the location of the next bunker. Stark still didn't trust Bucky with an SSR-01, so he carried his M1 instead. At the back of the column of men, Tex was suffering one of Stark's in-depth descriptions of exactly how he'd managed to make the sniper rifles so successful… in painful detail.
A few hundred metres out, Bucky called a halt. The men gathered around, but they didn't need much in the way of instruction. Everybody except Baker and Hall had done this before, and Bucky had put Baker on Jones' team, and Hall on Gusty's team, so they each had a corporal to show them how it was done.
"Once we've got the door open, I'll lead a four-man team into the bunker," Bucky said. "Carrot, Franklin, Biggs, you're with me. The rest of you set up a defensive perimeter and start digging holes. Colonel wants this done fast, but I want it done right. Okay?"
"Yes Sarge," they all agreed.
"Good. Get into position."
"What about me?" Stark asked, as the rest of the men moved away.
Bucky gestured at the man in the Kraut uniform. "You stay back with our German friend."
"Don't I get a gun?"
"Not unless you brought one."
"But what if we're attacked?"
"Well, how'd you handle that brunette who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer?"
"I ran away and let my butler handle her."
"In that case," Bucky said, with another sweeping gesture at the stony-faced Kraut, "meet your new butler."
"Great," Stark grumbled quietly to himself. "And I thought we'd left the sarcastic one back at the camp."
Bucky put Stark out of mind as he followed the rest of the team. Jones and his small group were already peeling off to the east to take a different approach, whilst Gusty took the west approach, leaving Bucky and his team to approach head-on. The forest here was thicker than he was used to seeing so far; the small olive and cypress trees were interspersed with larger pine, and more familiar deciduous trees. The ground was a carpet of pine needles, herbaceous shrubs and bushy ferns, some of which came over knee-height.
"Enemy soldiers!" someone yelled, just as a spray of bullets tore through the trees. Reflexes, made sharper through nervous tension, kicked in immediately, and Bucky dropped to the ground, lowering his profile as German machine guns screamed death wails into the air. Where bullets hit ground, they sent up a violent spray of dry, dusty soil and sharp brown pine needles, and Bucky had to briefly close his eyes to stop himself being blinded by the dust.
Shit.
The thought ricocheted around his head as the earth in front of him was torn and shredded by the metal spray. All around he heard the other men in the small company from the 107th drop and return fire. Bucky lifted his own weapon and fired at at spot he thought he saw gunfire flash from, but the summer foliage was so dense, the air so choked with dust, that he couldn't tell whether he was actually hitting anything.
Where the hell had these machine guns come from? This bunker wasn't supposed to be so heavily fortified. Phillips would have said something. Would have sent the team in better prepared. Would have sent the heavy artillery to back them up. Unless… had HYDRA known they were coming? Was there another spy in their midst? One who had communicated the impending attack? The thought was enough to send a cold sweat along Bucky's back.
He emptied his clip and kept his head down while he reloaded. Kept his breathing shallow to prevent inhaling too much flying dust. On the verge of opening fire again, he stopped, listening to something on the edge of his hearing. It sounded like a moan. Like somebody in pain. Carefully, he lifted his head and scanned the ground.
There was a body not far to Bucky's right, lying supine. The groan came again, more quietly this time.
Shit.
He crawled towards the sound of pain, dragging himself with his elbows, pushing forward with his knees. As he reached the body, he saw a bright shock of auburn hair beneath a helmet that had fallen askew. A lightning bolt of fear tore through him from head to toe.
"Carrot!" he hissed, reaching out and shaking the man's shoulder.
A pair light of blue eyes opened, full of pain and fear. "Barnes?" His name came out in a quiet, pained gasp that made Bucky's stomach turn. When Carrot coughed up a spray of foamy blood, it turned again.
"Yeah, it's me."
"I been hit, Sarge."
Bucky didn't need telling. A crimson patch had blossomed on Carrot's stomach, and it was spreading across his uniform. With a trembling hand, Bucky reached out and tried to put pressure on the wound, but it was like trying to stem the flow of a dam with a wine cork. The only way he could generate enough pressure would be to press from above, with his weight behind him. If he did that, he'd make himself a magnet for the bullets still flying.
"How bad is it?" asked Carrot.
"A flesh wound. You'll walk it off." The lie fell easily from his lips. There was too much blood. And worse, Carrot was coughing it up. Bucky was no medic, but he knew that could only mean one thing. Something was wrong, inside. Something no amount of pressure could fix.
Carrot coughed again, struggling for words. "You… you're so full of shit, Barnes."
"Don't talk. Save your strength."
The corporal ignored him. "Should'a been… faster."
"You will be. Next time. Now shut up and save your strength like I said. That's an order, Corporal."
A bubble of bitter laughter escaped Carrot's lips. "You're pulling rank, Sarge?"
"That's right. And I'm gonna bust you back to Private when we get back to camp if you don't start following orders."
"Sorry, Sarge. Don't think…" he coughed mid-sentence, bringing up more blood, "…you'll get chance to carry on your power trip. Will you… will you do something for me?"
Bucky felt his chest tighten, like someone had just come along with a vice and they were squeezing, and squeezing, and any minute something was gonna give.
He wanted to say 'no.' He wanted to say 'do it yourself.' Those were the proper things to say. The tough, soldier things to say. If he refused, Carrot would have no choice but to hang in there and see to his own final requests when he recovered. Years from now, after they'd kicked the Nazis blubbing all the way back to Berlin, he and Carrot would meet up in some bar to reminisce about the time Carrot got hit and asked Bucky to do something for him, and how Bucky saved his life by not giving his friend permission to die. And Carrot would thank him for not giving in, for giving him a reason to cling on to the dim spark of life, and he'd show him pictures of his first kid, which would undoubtedly be named after Bucky.
"Anything," he replied.
"There's… a letter to Samantha, in my footlocker… back at base camp." Carrot coughed again, and it was the only sound Bucky heard. The noise of gunfire, of men shouting, of orders yelled above the hubbub, fell away. The forest fell away. The entire world fell away. "Make sure she gets it?"
"I'll post it myself as soon as I get back. I promise she'll get it."
Carrot nodded, his eyes roving the treetops as if searching for something. "Gettin' kinda dark out here."
It was a beautiful summer day. "Sun's going down," Bucky lied again.
"Barnes?"
"Yeah?"
Carrot took a deep breath, or tried to. It ended in another coughing fit. When Carrot's eyes found Bucky's face, he tried to make it neutral, to wipe away whatever feelings it was betraying.
"Don't want… your ugly mug… to be the last thing I see. Want… to see Samantha again. She's… she's in my breast pocket. Closest… I could get… to my heart."
Bucky reached for the man's pocket. Every night since arriving at Last Stop, USA, Carrot had brought out the picture and just looked at it, as if afraid he might forget what she looked like if he went a day without seeing her. Samantha was a beautiful girl, her blonde hair styled into loose curls, her eyes sparkling with so much life that it seemed to flow out from the photograph. The other men had joked that she must be blind, to be engaged to Carrot, but he took the teasing in good stride, knowing what everyone who'd ever been in love knew: that he was the luckiest man in the world.
Carrot didn't have the strength to lift an arm and hold the picture, so Bucky held it for him. He did his best to hold it still, to make his hand stop shaking, to keep the picture high enough for Carrot to see, high enough to keep it away from the blood.
A smile appeared on Carrot's face, the pain disappearing from his eyes as they fell on the girl he'd made a promise to marry. For the first time since arriving at the front, Bucky was glad that he hadn't found 'the one' yet; that none of the girls he'd danced with and kissed had ever had that special something that made him want to stop chasing. That when some of the other guys in the company talked about their loves waiting back home, he could only listen with a little envy. At least if he didn't make it back home, he wouldn't be breaking a heart.
"My angel," Carrot whispered. "Tell her…"
The words died with him. The person he had been faded away, leaving behind an empty shell.