We Were Soldiers

47. The Deep Woods

Bucky had always thought of himself as a fairly congenial guy, but he was swiftly coming to dislike what was left of the south of France. The closer they got to the Italian border, the more difficult the terrain became to pass. There was plenty of stunning scenery, most of which Bucky didn't see, because the brass made them travel predominantly from dusk till dawn. The nights they spent stumbling up and down hills which were swiftly starting to edge into mountain territory were nightmarish not only for the difficulty of the climb, but also because of the additional punishments France inflicted on them, as if kicking them as they left to discourage them from coming back.

Chiggers, the medical staff called them. It started first with the 69th. A few of the men complained of itchy, blotchy welts on parts of their body. Soon, everybody was running to the hospital tent for calamine lotion to soothe their itches; the chiggers spared no-one, not even Agent Carter, who tried to pretend she wasn't surreptitiously scratching her shoulder and arm when she thought no-one was looking.

They got Bucky worst on the backs of his legs and underneath his belt, and he constantly had to fight the urge to scratch. Though itchy and annoying, the welts weren't particularly painful, and most people were back in their own tents as soon as they'd been doused in calamine.

Unfortunately, Gusty went and asked Nurse Klein what exactly chiggers were. Franklin and Hawkins were nearby, being doused in soothing lotion. Franklin, like most of the 107th, was a city boy born and bred, and when heard the welts were caused by mites biting the skin and releasing digestive enzymes so they could suck up the pre-digested skin cells, he freaked out. Claimed he could feel insects burrowing under his skin, crawling up his arms. Tried to remove them with a scalpel. He spent the next forty-eight hours heavily sedated and restrained to a hospital bed.

Then, the first case of malaria broke out.

One of the kitchen staff fell ill first. He was taken to the hospital tent shivering and shaking, and diagnosed with flu. When eighteen more people fell ill, the diagnosis was shifted to malaria. Not a severe form, according to Dr. Peacock, who was rather red-faced after his initial misdiagnoses, but an aggressive one. He guessed most of the infected men had been caught afoul a couple of weeks ago, when they'd camped on the edge of a boggy area, right next to a lake.

It's a wonder we didn't all drop dead of malaria the moment we landed in that swamp on day one, Wells had grumbled. He'd been particularly miffed that there was no vaccine for it. Back at Last Stop they'd all been stuck with needles till their arms went numb, but there was nothing that could be done to prevent malaria.

Poor Franklin got malaria, on top of his chiggers. Davies and Hodge came down with it, too, along with half the 107th, two-thirds of the 69th, and a quarter of the 370th. Two of the nurses were infected, along with members of the other groups within camp. With so many men hospitalised for treatment and rest, the brass had no choice but to call a stop to the forced marches. Twenty klicks west of the foot of the Alps, they set up camp, and waited.

Three days after the brass ordered the camp to be set up while the men recovered from malaria, Bucky found himself involved in a poker game with members of the 69th and the 370th. Half the usual players were missing, confined to their beds because there was no more room in the hospital. He was up on chips and had a good hand, but his usual enthusiasm for winning had been curbed by the knowledge that some of his friends were suffering.

"How's Captain Banks?" he asked one of the 370th—a dark-skinned young private named Jones. He was a regular at the poker table.

"About as well as anyone else," Jones replied as he threw two cards from his hand. "At least he's keeping food down. I hear some of the worst cases in the hospital haven't eaten in days."

"That'll make Hawkswell happy," Wells grumbled. "He's already ordered the mess staff to starve us; imagine how much food they'll save if some of the sick men aren't eating."

"At least it's not a serious form of malaria," said Dugan, puffing on his pipe. He'd won the thing in a poker game against the Engineers. Claimed it made him looked classy. The smell of pipe tobacco was strong whenever Dugan was around. "Could be worse."

A private from the 9th appeared from behind the 69th's tent, and offered a quick salute as he stopped in front of the poker table.

"Excuse me," he said, "but Colonel Hawkswell wants to see Sergeant Barnes and Sergeant Wells in the command tent right away."

With a sigh of regret for his wasted hand, Bucky folded. "Looks like it's back to work."

"I bet he'll have you digging new latrine pits," Dugan grinned.

"Then what would there be left for you to do?"

Bucky left the table and set off towards the command tent with Wells in tow. His friend rolled his shoulders, cracking them in a way that sounded painful.

"Maybe he'll send us fishing again. Like we don't have anything better to do," Wells complained.

"We actually don't have anything better to do right now."

"Speak for yourself; I was planning to win that pipe off Dugan."

"But you don't smoke! And you were down by a considerable amount."

"Of course I don't smoke," Wells agreed. "Terrible habit. But I could'a deprived Dugan of his beloved prize, and that would've been worth it. And I wasn't down, I was getting the rest of the players to lower their guard before I made an amazing comeback."

Bucky was spared any further bullshit by their arrival at the command tent. They stepped inside, saluted, and waited for their orders. Both Hawkswell and Phillips were standing in front of the large map of Italy, their faces thoughtful as they studied the topography.

"Sergeant Wells," Hawkswell said, a vulturous gleam in his eyes, "I've recently been informed that you speak French. Is this correct?"

Wells cringed. "Reluctantly, sir."

"You reluctantly speak it, or reluctantly admit it?" Phillips chimed in.

"Both, sir."

"Hmph," Hawkswell puffed. "In that case, you're now our Italian translator."

Wells' face turned a shade paler, and Bucky's sympathy went out to his friend. But he didn't open his mouth to volunteer for the role instead. Better Wells than him.

"But sir, I don't speak Italian!"

Colonel Hawkswell grabbed a musette bag from a nearby chair, opened it up, took something out from it, and handed the 'something' over to Wells, who accepted it with as much reluctance as he'd admitted to speaking French. It turned out to be a book.

"Now you do."

Wells read the title aloud. "Italian Words and Phrases." There was a subtitle beneath it. "For the casual Italian holiday-maker. Sir, is this a joke?"

"Do I look like a man who makes jokes, Sergeant?"

Hawkswell's face was only one step away from a scowl, and Wells possessed enough sense to stay quiet at the rhetorical question. Phillips stepped in to elaborate.

"Sergeants, we're sending you on a vital mission. In order to get our company through the Alps, we need to know which routes are accessible, which are too dangerous to attempt to take tanks and the plane through, and where enemy emplacements might be located. It would take too long to perform our own reconnaissance, but luckily, one of our allies has come through for us.

"Several kilometres over the Italian border is the village of San Vinadio. There, an informant from the anti-fascist Italian Resistance will be waiting in a bar named 'Basilico' on the evening of September 7th. He'll meet you there, and you'll escort him back to camp so that he can provide us with the best route through the mountains."

"Sir," Bucky spoke up, "wouldn't it be easier to bring whatever maps he has back here?" Easier than bringing a whole man back, at least.

"Due to the nature of the information the man holds, and its importance to either side in the war effort, the accessible routes through the Alps have not been written down. The information is in his head, and we need his head attached to his fully functioning body to get the intel from him."

"I trust we needn't stress any further how important this mission is," said Hawkswell. "You'll have to cross into the Alps to reach the village, and we've calculated this should take you four days. If you leave first thing in the morning, that will give you five days to reach your target. Take a squad of men, and see the quartermaster for a couple of changes of civilian clothing; you'll need to keep a low profile once you reach the village, as our intelligence indicates a Nazi presence in the area."

"What's the contact's name?"

Phillips shook his head. "We don't know. But he'll recognise you by these scarves you'll wear underneath your civilian shirts." Hawkswell dug into the musette bag again, and brought out two lengths of cornflower blue material. "He'll join you at your table, you'll ask him if he'd like a drink, he'll tell you he's already had three that evening, and that's how you'll know who he is."

"So, he speaks English?" Wells asked cautiously, hopefully.

"Not a word," Hawkswell replied. "Why do you think we need a translator?"

"The going won't be easy," Phillips continued, further lowering their mood as he raised the challenge. "We'll give you rough maps and coordinates to the area, but you'll need to requisition additional supplies and ammo from the quartermaster. Ask him for some of the shelter half tents, too, in case the weather turns whilst you're travelling."

"Anything else, sir?" Bucky asked. From the expression on Wells' face, he ought to be chewing rocks. Still, it was better than sticking around camp listening to Franklin complain that he could feel insects crawling under his skin, or watching Dugan puff obnoxiously on his hard-won pipe.

"You have as much information as we have, Sergeant Barnes," said Phillips. "We'll be waiting your return in no more than ten days. Good luck."

As Bucky saluted, his hopes of being granted a jeep or two died. Maybe the brass didn't trust him with a jeep, after he'd already lost one. Maybe they didn't have enough gas to supply two jeeps on such a long-range mission. So far, whenever they needed gas, members of the 9th had been sent to trade in local towns and villages, but those times were rare, and as they crossed into the Alps, Bucky suspected they'd become much rarer.

Out of the command tent, and far enough not to be overheard, Wells finally vented his anger.

"I'm gonna kill somebody."

"Calm down," Bucky told his friend. "It's not like you're being asked to go storming some German facility all by yourself. It's just a simple translation mission, and I'll have your back."

"There is no such thing as a simple mission where this company is concerned," his friend scowled. "Or have you forgotten our simple mission to catch fish, or our simple mission to recover a missed supply drop?" Bucky winced. Wells had a point. "I don't even speak Italian, and this book is a joke. Literally, a joke. I learnt French by listening to it and speaking it, not by reading it. I can't learn how to speak a foreign language from a book. Especially not some stupid holiday-maker book." He turned to a page at random. "I mean, how many times will I have the opportunity to ask what sort of cocktails are available, or where I might find the best local beach? Europe doesn't have beaches, it has swamps. Swamps and chiggers and malaria and Nazis. I wish we'd been assigned to the Pacific; at least we might glimpse a beach from time to time, and I wouldn't have to do any translating at all. But no, we got Europe, which is vastly overrated. And the bits that aren't overrated are rubble. You say 'Europe' and people think of lazing around drinking wine, and the Louvre. I don't see the Louvre here. Do you see the Louvre? And the closest thing I've seen to wine is Davies' moonshine, which somehow manages to taste of potatoes even though it should be largely tasteless."

Bucky switched off midway through the rant, and Wells kept up the long diatribe of complaints until they reached the 107th's tent. There, he planted his hands on his hips until men began to wither beneath his malevolent glare.

"Alright, which of you bastards told the brass I can speak French?"

Nobody owned up to it, but Gusty paled and sat up from his bed. "Um, I might'a mentioned it to Audrey. See, we were talking about foreign languages, and she said how her family were Dutch but she didn't even speak a single word of it, then I told her about how you spoke French really well."

"Well, that's it. You told Nurse Klein, Nurse Klein told Agent Carter, Agent Carter told Colonel Phillips, and Colonel Phillips told Colonel Hawkswell. And as punishment for flapping your lips, you're now on the mission, Gusty."

Gusty paled further. "Err, what mission, Sarge?"

"We'll tell you when we've picked the rest of the team," said Bucky. He nudged Wells back towards the tent flap. "C'mon, let's figure out who we want to take, then we can requisition our supplies from the quartermaster."

Still grumbling, Wells let himself be led out of the tent, and the rest of the regiment watched them go. No doubt they were wondering what insane new events they were about to be thrust into.

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At sunrise the next morning, eleven men assembled outside the 107th's tent, fully kitted out for a long hike through rough terrain. Each man carried his haversack full of equipment, ammunitions and rations, topped with his sleeping roll and his half of a pup tent. Sidearms and knives were worn on the belt, bandoliers across the chest, and rifles were carried. Both Bucky and Wells had copies of the maps provided by Phillips, and their own backpacks had civilian duds shoved right at the bottom. First aid kits and cooking heaters rounded off the list of equipment.

Weighed down like a pack mule, Bucky suspected he'd be in trouble if he got into a firefight so heavily burdened with equipment. But there was no other choice but to take everything he needed and more. When he'd arrived in France, he'd thought it would be a walk in the park. Fifty days of marching and fighting had taught him that it wasn't so much a park, as a slightly more polite jungle full of its own particular dangers. Instead of lions and tigers and snakes, it held Nazis and land mines and enemy tanks.

He and Wells had spent several hours discussing their choice of men for the mission. Some had been picked out of familiarity, some because they possessed particular skills, and others because they seemed the most healthy and least tired of the regiment. Tex was their first choice, and he brought with him the SSR-01 that was deadly in his hands. Despite the minor injuries he'd acquired earlier in the mission, Biggs was fighting fit and as strong and steady as ever, so they'd included him, too. Mex had proven himself a quick and capable scout, and he had a way of keeping morale up whenever it dropped low. Gusty had a grudge to settle, and as much as Bucky wanted to keep him from gettin' too fond of killing, he couldn't justify leaving such a capable man behind. Hawkins, though still given to bouts of withdrawn quietness, was dependable and fit, unaffected by the malaria that had swept through so many men borne on tiny, blood-sucking wings. Baker, who'd been with Sergeant Weiss in England and had been on a couple of missions with Bucky, was their next choice. Finally, they selected Privates Pearson, Stoller and Marsh; three men who'd come over to Europe on the Monty with the rest of the 107th, and who were quiet, hard-working guys—at least as far as enlisted men went.

They set out as soon as there was enough light to see by, their bellies full of breakfast the kitchen staff had cooked up for them. The troops had begun to wake up around that time, and a few had shouted out requests at the departing men. A mechanic from the motor pool wished them a speedy journey. Private Jones from the 370th asked them to bring him back a more comfortable bed. Dugan asked them to bring him a more comfortable bed and a comely dame to put in it.

The weather stayed fine and bright all morning, and after an hour they had all taken off their jackets and slung them across their backpacks. The September sun lacked the intense heat of its July counterpart, but that didn't mean the days didn't get hot. The brass had given them five days to reach their target, and Bucky didn't want to arrive too early. Eleven men hiding on the outskirts of a village might be seen; it would be best if they arrived no more than twenty-four hours in advance of their rendezvous, and for that reason he kept them to a pace that didn't push them too hard.

At lunch time they stopped for a half-hour break to refill their canteens from a small stream—which they duly treated with halozone tablets—and eat some of the hardtack biscuits from their ration kits. Everybody but Hawkins grumbled about having to gnaw like a rodent on the hard, tasteless biscuits; Hawkins grumbled that they couldn't have the hard, tasteless biscuits more often.

After lunch, Wells took point and Bucky fell back to the middle of the line, to keep an eye on their surroundings. They'd made the men march in a strung-out line, in case of land mines or ambush, but so far the Alpine terrain had been suspiciously quiet. Though the route became more rugged as the passing hills grew into mountains, there was no sign of civilisation, and no indication that this part of France been sullied by so much as a single Nazi boot.

Evening fell, but their higher altitude extended the duration of dusk, so that when they finally found a sheltered area to set up camp for the night, they'd marched for almost eight hours straight. The temperature remained high even after the stars had taken the sun's place in the sky, so they brought out the cooking stoves to make a meal of their tinned rations, then settled down in their sleeping rolls without bothering with the shelter half tents.

The second day was like the first, only steeper, and Bucky began to wish he'd pushed the pace a little harder the day before. He considered himself fit, and all the men were used to marching, but none of them had much experience marching up hills and mountains. New York was pretty damn flat, and each climb made the men sweat anew. Downhill slopes were a welcome reprieve from the leg-aching uphill stretches.

At midday, they stopped for lunch and to review their route, to see if they could find a less mountainous path. They couldn't, and so resigned to their struggle, they soldiered on. That night they made camp in a deep depression—Wells called it a 'ditch', which was technically accurate—in a shallow-sided valley, their view of the stars obscured by broad-leaf trees which reminded Bucky of the trees that lined the sidewalks of New York and proliferated in Central Park. With his belly full of baked beans and his legs aching in new and unpleasant ways, he closed his eyes and tried not to think about the next two days' worth of rigorous marching.

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Birdsong pulled Bucky's mind from sleep, and he opened his eyes to the pre-dawn murk of the woods. Quiet snores issued from the uncomfortable ditch. Behind him, Gusty's snores were the loudest. In front of him, Wells slept silently, his eyes roving beneath his closed lids. It seemed a shame to wake men who were sleeping so soundly, but he didn't have to check the time with whoever was on watch to know that they'd need to get moving soon. Daylight was precious, and wasted on dreaming.

"Wells," Bucky said quietly. "Wells!"

Goddammit. Wells might not snore, but he was one of the deepest sleepers Bucky had ever known. The guy could probably sleep through a blitz.

He reached over to shake his friend's shoulder. "Hey, Wells, wake up."

Wells blearily opened his eyes and looked at Bucky for a moment, his gaze unfocused. When his eyes finally did focus on Bucky's face, he shot upright practically out of his sleeping roll and let out a yell of alarm that had everybody else up and reaching for their weapons while they were still half asleep.

"Wus goin' on?" Tex drawled. His pistol was drawn, his eyes searching the ditch for an absent attacker.

"Jeez, don't do that to me, Barnes," Wells said as he gasped for air.

"False alarm," Bucky told the rest of the team. "But now that you're all awake, let's get packed up. Breakfast on foot today." The men grumbled and glared daggers at Wells, and Bucky turned to his friend. "Don't do what? Wake you up? I do that every day. It's not my fault your lazy ass could sleep through anything." Wells shook his head a couple of times, his blue eyes watching Bucky warily as he sank back down into his bed roll. "Why so jumpy?" Bucky asked him.

Wells ran his hand through his hair, working out the kinks from sleep, and took a deep breath. "Bad dream. I was being chased by this big, hairy, German fräulein. Woke up, saw you, thought you were a big, hairy, German fräulein."

"Lucky for you, I'm not."

"Yeah. Lucky for me." Wells grimaced and kicked off his blanket. "Wish there was somethin' to eat worth hunting around here. I'm fed up of rations."

"Have you ever hunted anything before?" Despite Wells' talk of spending time in Wyoming on his uncle's ranch, he didn't think his friend had done much in the way of shooting before joining the army.

"Other than Krauts?" Wells shrugged. "No, but Tex has. Maybe he could shoot us a pheasant or something."

"Ah'm not rightfully sure ah'm comfortable doing that, Sarge," Tex spoke up. "It's not right, people eatin' people."

"Pheasants, Tex," Bucky said. "Not peasants."

"Well, if you see a pheasant, point him out t' me and ah'll see what ah can do."

Within fifteen minutes, every man was awake, dressed for the march, and fully packed up. They waited patiently while Bucky brought out his compass and map and checked their bearings. Finally happy with their direction, he nodded to himself and put the map away.

"I'll take point. Tex, I want your sharp eyes on the lookout for enemy troops. First sign of movement, call it out, but nobody shoots unless we're being shot at. We don't know who else is out here, and I don't wanna go hitting any friendlies."

Wells stepped forward. "I'll take the rear. I mean, err, I'll cover our six."

Bucky shot a questioning look at his friend. It wasn't like Wells to hang back; he liked to be up front, or right in the middle of the action. 'Last man out' wasn't something he had a problem with, but it wasn't a role he usually volunteered for. But Wells was too busy checking the clip his rifle to notice Bucky's glance.

"Alright," he agreed. "Let's move out."

Bucky took lead file and set a pace he hoped the men could keep all day. The going was no easier than it had been the day before. Whenever they were forced to cross open fields, he pressed the pace harder when he had a good feeling and a clear view of everything around him. When the views were less clear, when the feelings were less benign, he made them move in a crouch, keeping below the skyline where they had to crest hills.

For almost two hours they marched, until they came to a short, steep rise terminating in a rugged summit. At the top, he dropped to the ground and signalled the men to do the same. Together, they crawled forward, looking down into a densely wooded valley. Wells stopped beside him and pulled out a pair of field binoculars. After a moment of looking through them, he handed them to Bucky, who did the same. The only thing he saw were trees. Trees as far as the eye could see, an interminable carpet of green, their trunks so close, their canopies so dense, that the whole of the undergrowth was in heavy shade.

He handed the binoculars back. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," he said, as Robert Frost's poem sprang to mind.

"And probably crawling with Germans. Not exactly what I'd call lovely." Wells sighed. "Damn forest looks too wide to circumvent. Guess we're going through it, huh?"

"We'll go quick, quiet and careful," Bucky assured him. "A couple of hours, and we'll be out the other side."

"I'm gonna hold you to that."

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The sun had long since begun to sink and was kissing the horizon by the time Bucky called for a stop. By his reckoning, they were on the edge of the forest. It had gone on for much further than he'd anticipated. Now, it would be their bed for the night. An uncomfortable bed of gnarled tree roots and moist, compacted soil covered in the remnant of last year's layer of dead leaf litter. He instructed the men to look for a suitable place to sleep, and Biggs found a flat bit of land not far from a small stream, which was screened off by a thick cluster of prickly briar bushes. They broke camp, washed the sweat from their aching bodies in the stream, then began bartering for food from their ration kits.

Bucky made his way over to Wells, who'd rolled out his sleeping bag and blankets on the edge of the group and was currently sitting cross-legged atop them, his Italian Phrasebook in his hands and a faraway look on his face. When Bucky sat down next to him, the faraway look vanished, replaced by a blank mask.

"Y'okay?" Bucky asked him.

"Sure."

"You've been quiet all day."

Wells scowled at him. "Needed head space. That a crime?"

Bucky shook his head. He'd learnt better than to argue with Wells when he was in a pissy mood. Instead, he nodded at the phrasebook. "How's it going?"

"Badly. Do you know why I became an accountant, Barnes?" Bucky shook his head. "Because my brain works with numbers. Not words."

"I don't recall you ever havin' a problem with words before."

"In my language, yeah. This?" He held up the phrasebook, then hurled it at the ground a few feet away. It hit the dirt and sent fallen leaves flying. "Fuckin' useless."

Bucky offered no argument. He merely got up, retrieved the book, dusted it off, and sat back down, holding it out to his friend. After a moment of glowering contemplation, Wells snatched it back.

"Whaddya need?" Bucky asked.

"Someone who speaks fuckin' Italian."

Bucky winced. Two cusses in two sentences, on top of an act of irritated annoyance. Wells was either in a foul mood, or faking it real well. Part of Bucky wanted to sympathise, but the other part of him knew that the bigger a fuss Wells made about the difficulty of his task, the more prodigious his success would seem. And really, how different could the two languages be?

"'Hello' in French is 'bonjour,' right?" he asked. Wells nodded. "What about in Italian?"

"Ciao."

"And 'my name is' in French?"

"Je m'appelle."

"Italian?"

Wells thumbed through the book until he reached the right page. "'Mi chiamo.' See? They're nothing alike. But it's not just that… this book is a goddamn dictionary. It doesn't tell me anything about grammar and syntax or about the composition of sentences or any of that past-tense bullshit. Any goddamn monkey could read phrases out of this thing, but phrases aren't enough to establish a dialogue. Useless piece of crap." He closed the book and gripped it tightly, like he might throw it again at any moment. "I should'a gone to officer training school. I could'a been a captain by now."

"You'd still have to do the same shit jobs," Bucky pointed out.

"Yeah, but I'd be getting paid a lot more for doing 'em. It's not fair. I shouldn't have to do this. Davies should be here; his dad's mostly Italian, he probably speaks enough of it to get by. But no, Davies just had to go and get malaria, the selfish bastard."

"I don't think he would've chosen to get malaria, if he had a say," he assured his friend. "But like I said, if you need anything, just let me know. I can't do much about the Italian, but maybe I can find some way to make things a little easier for you whilst you're reading that book. For example," he offered, "I could cook you a hearty meal of beans."

Wells wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Hodge told me the last time you cooked beans, you burned them. I don't trust you to supply food."

Bucky sighed and pushed himself to his feet. "Alright, fine. Be stubborn, if you like. I was just trying to help."

"I don't need your help," Wells called after him, as he made his way back to where Tex had set up a cooking stove. "I'm perfectly capable of screwing this translation thing up on my own."

He didn't bother responding. Wells seemed to be itching for an argument, probably to distract him from trying to learn Italian, and Bucky thought the last thing the guy needed right now was somebody to distract him more than he already was.

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By the end of their fourth day of travel, Bucky had seen all he ever wanted to see of the Alps. The air was clean, the countryside was beautiful, and at night, the stars sparkled like diamonds cast roughly across a cover of black velvet. Despite the picturesque views that he wished he could capture on film and send home to his family as evidence that not all of Europe was a muddy, blitzed war zone, he was tired of the Alps. Tired of walking up steep mountainsides, and then scrambling down the scree-strewn slopes. Tired of crossing meadows of tall grass that could've hidden whole squads of Nazi soldiers. Tired of making the men sleep in shifts, so that there was always somebody on watch. And he was tired of eating food that was cooked over a tiny stove.

A couple of miles out from San Vinadio, Bucky called a halt and the men sank wearily down. It was late afternoon, and they'd made good time, but despite their lengthy march, there was still work to be done.

"We need to reconnoitre the area between here and the village," he said, as Mex pulled off his boots and began rubbing feeling back into the soles of his feet. Bucky was as dog-tired as any of them, but he was still trying to be a good sergeant, as well as a good man. The good man in him would give them a short break. The good sergeant would send them out to get the lay of the land and allow them to plan an exit strategy for if things went sideways. "Five two-man teams. I want to know how much traffic comes and goes from the town. How many Nazis are stationed there, if any. I want to know what all the buildings are, and how rough the terrain is between here and there. Wells, you'll stay here to continue working on that book, and the rest of us will rendezvous back here at seventeen-hundred."

The men began to pair off and move away; all except Biggs, who waited behind for Bucky like the last kid to be picked for a side in dodge ball.

"Gimme a couple of minutes," Bucky said.

When Biggs moved away, Bucky checked over his rifle as he eyed his fellow Sergeant. Wells had dumped his sleeping roll on the bare ground and was sitting atop it with his back against a wide tree trunk. He held the open Italian phrasebook in his hands, but his eyes roved vacantly over it.

"Look, I know you don't want to do this, but we're counting on you to pull off the hardest bit of this mission."

If anything, that made Wells look even more miserable. "I wish you wouldn't," he said, his blue eyes fixed on the foreign phrases before him. "I'm not very trustworthy. Inherently unreliable, in fact."

"I don't believe that."

"You'll see," Wells said sullenly.

Bucky crouched down in front of his friend. He had no idea what Wells' problem was, but he suspected it ran deeper than having the weight of the mission put squarely on his shoulders. After everything they'd been through, all the combat ops, the adventures, the madness, Wells had never buckled under pressure. Maybe the whole Italian translation business had been the start of his ill mood, but Bucky was willing to bet it wasn't the end of it. Right now, he couldn't afford for Wells to be in a mood.

"When I was drugged and paranoid and ran off looking for my best friend, you came after me, unarmed, tied up Agent Carter, threatened to shoot her, and then saved my life and practically carried me all the way back to camp. If you're trying to convince me that you're not trustworthy, you're going to have to do a better job than that."

Wells refused to meet his gaze. "I just mean you shouldn't count on me. I'll let you down. Maybe I won't mean to, maybe I don't want to, but I will."

"You haven't so far. But so what if you do? You're only human, just like any of us. I've lost track of how many times I've let myself—and the regiment—down. That first mission, when we lost Danzig, I froze. Couldn't see a way through, until you pulled us out with your crazy 'surrender' plan. And what about our last mission? I nearly ruined your plan and got myself shot. I also picked a path that was too close to a ridge with a sheer drop, and we lost someone else for my mistake.

"I could go on. My point is, you don't have to be perfect. You're allowed to make mistakes. In fact, I insist on it. And if this translation business is too much, then don't sweat it. Just do the best you can, and whatever happens, we'll deal with it, just like we dealt with everything else so far, because you know I've got your back. Right?"

"Yeah." Wells sighed and finally looked up, his gaze guarded. "Guess I've just had a lot on my mind."

Bucky nodded. It had been harder to get a joke outta Wells since Carrot died, and he didn't have to be a mind-reader to know that the young corporal's death had hit Wells hard regardless of how much he tried to deny it. But Wells didn't have the chaplain to talk to, so he was probably sitting on whatever was bothering him, hoping he could get through it on his own. He probably didn't realise that he didn't have to.

"You better get going," Wells prompted. "Sun'll be gettin' low soon."

Bucky shouldered his rifle as he stood. "Alright, but keep an eye on your surroundings, as well as that book. I don't wanna get back and find some sausage-eating Kraut's got the drop on you."

That elicited a snort of disdain. "Barnes, please. I'm not some buck private who can't tell which end of his rifle to hold and which to point at the enemy. Now, go henpeck Biggs for a change; I've got a lot of reading to do."

He joined up with Biggs and they set out in the direction of San Vinadio. Hopefully Wells' mood would be improved by the time they had to interact with the locals tomorrow. If not… well, he'd deal with that later. For now, he had a village to scout.