We Were Soldiers

130. Support

"I really don't think this is necessary," said Monty, for at least the fifth time that morning. "I'm perfectly capable of supporting my own weight. Just get me something to use as crutches."

Bucky finally crouched down in front of him and tried to channel his inner-Nurse Klein. "Is your leg still burning?"

"I wouldn't say burning, exactly. More of like… well, a general warming and itching."

"Earlier you said burning."

"I was tired."

He sighed. Monty had woken in the early hours and spent ages shifting around and trying to get comfortable, claiming his leg felt like it was on fire. Jacques, whose sensitive stomach meant he had no desire to do anything medical, had hurried to fetch Bucky, who'd prescribed an immediate dose of the new Sulfadiazine tablets that had been supplied in the aid kits in preparation for this mission.

"If your leg is burning, warming or itching," he said patiently, "it's likely got infection in it. These new antibiotic tablets may help you fight the infection off, but the more you move around, the faster your blood will pump, and the more the infection will spread. You're no good to us if we have to hack your leg off because you wouldn't just sit on your ass and let us carry you for a couple of days." Really, the English were the worst patients ever. All that stiff upper lip garbage that'd been fed into them with their mothers' milk, probably.

"The Sergeant is right," said Captain Stone. "Now is not the time to be stoic. We'll carry you, and you can be an extra pair of eyes for us. Or we can dose you with more morphine to shut you up, and you'll be useless."

"Alright, I get your point. I can at least keep watch and carry a rifle."

An hour later, after Morita had returned from reconnoitring the next leg of their journey, they set out again in the same format as the day before. Morita on point, Jacques and Stone carrying Monty, who himself carried a rifle, and Bucky covering their six. The optimist in him was hopeful that German activity would calm down over the next day or two, but the realist pointed out how unpredictable war was. If anything, things would calm up.

Before midday, they'd dodged two tank units and a foot patrol. But it seemed the invasion at Normandy was posing a real threat to German control; neither the tanks nor the patrol were on the lookout for enemy forces, and moved swiftly through the area. Once more it gnawed at Bucky that all he could do was let them go on their way, but he was one man down and needed to make his rendezvous so the rest of the mission could proceed. This wasn't the time for going rogue, much as it galled him.

As morning passed to afternoon, and the burning sun began to bake them to a crisp, Bucky asked Morita to find them a place to rest up for a couple of hours. He and Morita weren't coping too bad, but Jacques was looking weary after hours of helping to carry Monty, and Captain Stone—who wasn't use to such rigorous physical activity—was seriously flagging. Monty's forehead, nose and cheeks were red with sunburn. They definitely needed to find shade soon.

A short time late, Morita returned, and he could tell right away that something was wrong. Morita always got a sort of pensive expression on his face when something was troubling him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Found a real nice resting spot," Morita said.

"So what's the problem?"

"You better come see for yourself."

They went on together, but this time Bucky joined Morita at the front of their small group. Whatever it was, he wanted time to deal with it and process it before the others saw. And he was glad for that decision, because Morita took them straight to the resting place he'd found. It was a bridge over a river that was running low due to drought, casting shade over the cracked river banks below. Its arches formed tunnels that provided not only shade from the sun, but visual cover from the road above. And just a short distance upstream, partially obscured by the sweeping branches of a mature weeping willow, was another eight-strong Kraut patrol. Like the one they'd found in the house, this had also met a grisly end. Bucky tensed his grip on the SSR-03.

"Same MO?" he asked quietly.

"Exactly the same," Morita confirmed.

At that moment, the others arrived, and stared at the scene of carnage before them.

"I believe in coincidences," said Captain Stone, surveying the bodies calmly. "But I don't trust them."

"Sacré bleu," said Jacques. "What do you think did this?"

"That would be me."

Movement accompanied the gruff voice, and a man stepped out from behind the trunk of the weeping willow. Bucky raised his weapon at the same time as Morita; the others fumbled with trying to reach their pistols without dropping the stretcher. He pulled the trigger of his rifle taut against his finger, but long hours of practice stopped him from pulling it completely.

"You boys wanna lower your weapons before you do somethin' stupid that you'll regret?"

None of them moved. The stranger was not a tall man, but he was broader across the shoulders even than Dugan, and he appeared to employ the same barber. His black hair looked like it had started off slicked back, then decided to just do its own thing, and the beard covering both cheeks was definitely not in keeping with US Army regulations. The uniform he wore was like those of British infantry soldiers, only a darker shade of green, and his shoulder patches contained both the Canadian flag and the rank of Captain. Other than that, he was the most heavily armed person Bucky had ever seen. He carried a rifle that looked well-used, and had two more strapped across his body. He wore multiple bandoliers, but carried not a single first aid kit. The front of his uniform was spattered with blood, but none of it looked to be his.

"You did this?" Bucky asked him, tilting his chin in the direction of the dead Krauts without moving his gaze from the stranger. The man's rifle was fully loaded, but not currently raised for firing. "Why?"

Instead of answering, the stranger reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a cigar. He bit off the end, spat it out, then brought out a lighter. It looked to be silver, and would've been nice if not for the Swastika emblazoned on it. He took a deep draw on the cigar, then blew a cloud of smoke straight at Bucky's face.

"Don't know if you've realised this yet, but we're at war."

"But why these men?" he insisted. "You've been…" What? Following them? How could the guy have been following them when they'd found two patrols ahead of where they were about to be? It was as if the guy had been anticipating their actions and then taking out obstacles in their way. "You've been following us from the front," he finished lamely.

The stranger shrugged and blew out another puff of smoke. "Saw your plane go down. Nice bit of piloting; shame about the fire. Figured I'd jump ahead a bit, get the lay of the land, deal with a few problems along the way. You're welcome."

"That doesn't explain who you are. Or how you got here." He glanced at the guy's shoulder insignia again. "I don't recognise your unit emblem."

Another shrug. "I don't have a unit. I am the unit. A few of us were dropped in along with the regular airborne infantry. Shock troopers. Our only mission is to do as much damage to the Nazis as possible. Hit 'em hard, hit 'em fast, and don't stop hittin' 'em until they're all dead. When I saw your plane go down, I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone."

"I don't believe you've been shadowing us since yesterday morning," Morita said, eyeing him up. "I would've known about it."

"You're good," the stranger agreed. "But not that good."

"A lot of those patrols were stabbed, not shot," Bucky interrupted before Morita could start shooting out of sheer annoyance. "You got a bayonet hidden on you somewhere we can't see?"

"Something like that," the stranger agreed. "Anyway, you should be safe here for a couple of hours. Eat and get some shut eye if you can; I'll head out and see if I can find more targets."

"Wait, Captain!" he called, as the stranger turned to go. "You still haven't told us who you are."

The stranger wrinkled his nose. "I'm not a big fan of the chain of command. For now, you can just call me Logan."

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

The rising sun painted a gruesome scene across the entire length of the beach as far as Steve's enhanced eyes could see. Bodies, left where they had fallen because nobody could spare a moment to move them. Metal skeletons of mangled jeeps hit by mortar fire, their crews dead along with them. Tanks half-submerged in the sea as the tide that had stranded them finally withdrew. Landing craft sunk on the sandbars, sometimes by accident, sometimes intentionally done to create a wave-break for additional craft coming in. And watching over it all, the anti-aircraft barrage balloons attached to steel cables that had gone up across the beach as their forces advanced. Steve wished the sun would go away. That it would take away the light that shone on the rising death toll. But strong as he was, he couldn't turn back time. He was just a man.

Dugan dropped down beside him in the shade of the pillbox they'd managed to take from the Germans on the bluff above the beach. The big man lit his pipe and puffed thoughtfully on it as he surveyed the damage below. He said nothing, which was fine by Steve. It didn't feel like a talking moment.

He'd found Dugan, and Freddie along with him, a little further up the beach, where they'd taken shelter in a natural gully along with a dozen other soldiers. Together they'd continued their slow trench-advancement, which had finally allowed Steve to scale the side of the cliff above and put paid to the machine gun inflicting such heavy damage against their forces. The pillbox had fallen an hour later, as they lost the last of the daylight, and Steve had ordered those with him to rest until morning.

It was only now, as he looked out across the beach, that he realised how disorganised everything was. The men with him, and those with Dugan, were from a half-dozen different regiments, who'd all either lost their commanding officers, or become separated from their regiments when their landing craft dropped them too far away from their landing zones. Half of them had never seen combat before; the other half were veterans trying their best without any real direction. They'd followed Steve not because he was Captain America, but because he was somebody giving orders, and they needed to be told what to do.

So he'd grouped them up. Small units of four men, two veterans to two green recruits. Given them minor objectives. Instructed them to cover and support each other as they advanced. They'd picked up another dozen troops as they continued pushing up the beach, mainly combat engineers who'd been dropped without any of the equipment they needed to clear the beach obstacles, along with a couple of rangers whose entire unit had been lost in the landing.

Right now, something was happening down at the water line. A landing craft was trying to disembark something big, but the men were having trouble with a sandbank. It took a few minutes for them to roll it down into a place it wouldn't immediately sink. Straight away, enemy snipers started shooting at it. One of the men with it was hit and went down; the others took refuge behind it. The snipers were a problem. They weren't in pillboxes, so they were harder to find. Steve would have to do something about them real soon. For now, he needed to rest. Not for his body, but for his soul. And for his ears, which were aching after a full day of artillery fire.

Dugan squinted at the water line, his eyes not capable of seeing as far as Steve's. "That a howitzer?"

"Yeah. Looks like we're finally getting some artillery support."

"Good. We could use it. Want me and Jones to go get it?"

For a split second, his mind went to those snipers. "No, leave it for the troops down there. It'll be too difficult to drag it up these narrow cliff paths." Besides, soon they'd have to start making their way inland, to find VII Corps and assist with the attack on Cherbourg. The howitzer would just slow them down, without a jeep to tow it.

"Captain Rogers!" Jones trotted up to him with someone else in tow. The young soldier wore the combat dress of the British Army. "This is Private Nelson, he's come from Gold Beach."

"Sir," the young private saluted. "I've been asked to locate Major General Lawton Collins to update on our situation."

"We're on our way to rendezvous with the General ourselves," he said. "You're welcome to join us."

"Thank you, sir."

"Are you able to give me any sitrep?" he asked. It would be good to know what was going on elsewhere.

"I haven't been instructed not to, sir." He took a deep breath before continuing. "We linked up with the Canadian forces at Juno Beach late yesterday evening, and established a continuous beachhead stretching over ten miles long and five miles deep across the coast. We're a mile or two out from Sword beach, but expecting to link up with forces there within the next day. Field Marshal Montgomery is drawing up plans to send V Corps though Gold Beach to reinforce the troops here."

"Some support would be nice," Steve agreed. "But that's not my decision to make. Any word on how things are going over on Utah?"

"I'm sorry, sir. I haven't been made privy to that information, if it's even available."

Steve nodded. The American forces landing at Utah were more remote than the rest of the invasion. It was the closest beach to Cherbourg, and it was where they would find VII Corps and its general. Now that the sun was rising, it was time to go.

"Dugan, tell off half the combat engineers, plus the rangers," he said. "They'll remain behind to keep control of this pillbox and provide support for the troops coming up from the beach below. The rest of them need to be prepared to move out within a half-hour. We're going to Utah."

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

After a two-hour rest in the shade, with access to fresh running water to refill their canteens and cool their blistered feet, Bucky's small team was ready to move out again. Monty was no longer able to hold a rifle. In the two hours of resting, he'd gradually become more and more delirious. Bucky had forced another antibiotic into him, then dosed him with another syrette of morphine tartrate. He didn't dare remove the bandages on his leg in case he introduced more infection; he would just have to hold on until they could reach safety.

Morita led the way once more. The north of France was not much like the south. The south had been all wild marshes, dry hills and craggy ravines, where the settlements were few and far between. The north was much more civilised. More settled. Much flatter. It was similar to the agricultural lands of England, with its small fields separated by hedgerows. In a way, it seemed almost familiar, but it was much more difficult to travel unseen.

After a few hours of marching, and dodging the occasional patrol, their new friend returned. Merely dropped back into the group as if he'd been walking with them all along. He took a brief glance at Monty before falling back to walk beside Bucky, who still carried his SSR-03 loaded for immediate use.

"Your man isn't looking so good," he remarked.

"Morita says we'll reach our rendezous point tomorrow morning," Bucky countered. "There's nothing we can do until then."

"You could debride and cauterise the wound."

Bucky's stomach flipped at the thought. Luckily, he hadn't eaten much today. He'd never considered himself someone with a sensitive stomach, but there were some things he just knew he wouldn't be able to handle.

"I'd rather leave it to the professionals," he said. "I don't wanna make things worse. We'll stick with the antibiotics until then. But if you're worried about him, you could always help carry the stretcher for a while."

"Ain't my job to carry people," Logan replied. He patted his chest pockets until he found another cigar, then withdrew it and lit it up. "Meant to ask you earlier; are you friends with the guy in the cape?"

"What guy in what cape?"

Logan shrugged. "Saw him watching you from a way back. Saw him yesterday, too. Just standing there, watching you go."

Morita immediately dropped back from his position a few feet ahead. "Is he talking about Steve?"

"Steve doesn't have a cape," said Bucky. "And he should be far away from here." A terrible thought sent shivers across his skin. "Wait, he didn't have a red skull, did he?"

"Naw. It wasn't Schmidt."

Bucky stopped dead in his tracks. "How do you know Schmidt?"

Logan offered a grim smile with no humour in it. "Met him once before. Slippery bastard got away from me. Won't happen again. Next time I come across him, I'm gonna slice him into a thousand little pieces and scatter them across the Earth. He's tough, but he can die."

Morita aimed a concerned look at Bucky's face, which he swiftly returned. Of course Schmidt could die; everything died. More worrying was the fact that somebody else had been shadowing them. It was bad enough that Morita had missed Logan, but now he'd missed someone else, as well?

"What'd he look like, this guy with the cape?" Morita demanded.

"Tall. Kinna Machiavellian. Wasn't armed, or I would'a dealt with him right there."

"Why didn't you mention this before? I could've gone back and looked for his tracks!"

Another shrug from Logan. "Thought he was with you. But even if you'd gone looking, you wouldn't have found anything. I looked myself. Found a pair of footprints. Just one."

"Well yeah, if it's just one guy—"

"One pair of prints, and nothing more," Logan clarified. "No start. No end. As if he stepped outta nothing and disappeared into nothing."

"Okay, now you're just shittin' me. Nobody arrives from nowhere and goes into nowhere unless he's got some sort of really advanced air support to lift him in and out. Hey, Stone, you know anything that could do that?"

I'm afraid not, Private Morita," said Captain Stone. Guy's face was sweatier than a pig in a sauna. He really wasn't used to the hard life. "In any case, I'd much rather concentrate on our current dilemma of being miles out from our rendezvous point, surrounded by Nazis, and carrying a man who's growing increasingly feverish."

"You're right, Captain," said Bucky. Pointless speculation would get them nowhere. "Logan, if you see cape-guy again, will you tell us? Discreetly?" He patted the SSR-03. "I'd like to get a look at him for myself. Morita, resume point. We need you to lead us to our rendezvous location. Jacques, Captain Stone, I need you to keep going for a few more hours. We need to make use of the daylight while we have it. You can sleep as soon as we find somewhere safe for the night."

"When was the last time you slept?" Logan asked him.

It was a good question. How long had it been? The night before the jump, he'd had a few hours of shut-eye before heading to the runway, but that had been in general quarters with a bunch of other paratroopers, so the quality of sleep hadn't been great.

"That's what I thought," said Logan, when Bucky failed to answer. "You'll sleep tonight, and I'll keep watch."

"But—"

"No buts, bub. Tired men make bad decisions. They make mistakes. You'll sleep. That's an order, Sergeant."

There was nothing for him to do but salute and accept the order. Tonight, he would sleep. Tomorrow he would deliver Monty to someone who could help him, and the campaign to retake Caen would begin.

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

"Has anybody got eyes on that sharpshooter?" Steve yelled over the loud barrage of heavy gunfire. They'd set out in earnest, aiming to reach the Pointe du Hoc in the afternoon, but met heavy resistance along the high coastal path and been forced to retreat to safety several times. Now, pinned down by a machine gun and under fire from a sniper who could've given Bucky a run for his money, all Steve could do was try to figure out where the sharpshooter was aiming from before he lost any more men.

"Don't ask me," said Jones. A bullet had grazed his helmet, leaving a long score mark in the metal. Just an inch to the left, and Jones would not have made it.

"I can't see anything," Private Parker yelled back.

"Maybe we should just toss out a few grenades and hope for the best," Dugan suggested.

Steve shook his head. The grenades might deal with the machine gun, if they got real lucky, but the sharpshooter could be hundreds of metres out. He really could'a done with his own sharpshooter there, to counter the guy, but that was a luxury he did not have right now.

Two bombers suddenly appeared overhead, their droning engines the most welcome sound he'd heard in a long time. "Everyone hit the deck!" he yelled, and the dozen men in the trench with him flattened themselves to the ground and covered their ears with their hands. Was it his imagination, or did he hear somebody gleefully shout "bombs away!" from far above?

Steve felt the bombs hit as the ground trembled with the concussive impact. Clods of earth and grass rained down on them, and only stopped as the drone of the bombers began to fade away. He sat up, but kept his head below the lip of the trench, conscious the sharpshooter might still be out there. "Is everyone alright?"

They tentatively pushed themselves up. Private Parker spat out a mouthful of dirt, and Freddie quickly checked that his camera hadn't been damaged when he'd pressed himself to the ground. A round of "yes" and "all in one piece" came rippling down the line. Thank God the bombardiers had been accurate; a few degrees off target, and Steve and his team might've been the ones on the receiving end of that bomb.

"We could really use Stark's face-onna-stick right about now," Dugan grumbled, picking soil out of his moustache.

"What's that?" Steve asked him.

"It's basically a paper mask on a stick designed to draw fire. Sounds stupid, but it was actually effective when the 107th were dealing with HYDRA last year."

Jones reach down into the trench and pulled out an old, gnarled tree branch that'd probably been down there from the day the trench had been dug. "What about hat-onna-stick?" he asked, pointing at the bowler hat peeping out from under Dugan's helmet.

"Not a chance! This isn't just my favourite hat, it's my only hat!"

"It's for the greater good, Dugan," said Steve. "We can always buy you a new hat when we get back to London. Maybe you could ask Lizzie to take you hat shopping."

"Well, when you put it like that, who am I to hoard my hat when it might save the lives of my comrades-in-arms?" He very generously removed it and refastened his helmet, then passed it over to Jones.

"Everyone stay down," Steve warned. "If the sharpshooter's still around and takes the bait, that bullet's going to go straight through the hat and hit the ground behind us. When he fires, I'll try to calculate his trajectory." He lifted his arm, with the shield held over it. "Maybe I can throw hard enough to take him out with this."

They quickly obeyed—except for Freddie, who forewent ducking down low in favour of rolling his camera and pointing it at Steve. But there wasn't much he could do about that. Sooner or later, Freddie would run out of film. He just had to be patient until then.

"Ready, Jones? Okay, on the count of three. One, two, three!"

Jones lifted the hat slightly above the trench line and moved it a little as if someone was walking slowly across. A few seconds later a loud crack tore through the air, and something went thwack in the dirt behind Jones. Steve's recently enhanced eyes tracked the bullet as it went past, and his ears picked up the first 'crack' before it had time to echo around the area. Taking a deep breath and coiling every muscle in his arm, he stood and launched the shield with as much power as he could muster. It flew straight and true, right into the bushes a couple of hundred metres off to the east, and a few seconds later it bounced off something and made its way back.

"I swear that thing has a mind of its own," said Dugan.

"We need to make sure it didn't actually hit a tree or something." To Jones, he said, "Try the hat again."

So he did. He moved it a bit, wiggled it a bit, and even lifted it a little higher. Nothing. Of course, that didn't mean the sharpshooter wasn't out there biding his time. There was only one real way of finding out.

"I'm gonna go check it out," he said. "Wait here until I get back. And keep your head down, Freddie. You've got enough footage for today."

He lifted his shield above the trench and stayed centrally behind it as he jogged towards the bushes. A small part of him whispered about the danger of land mines, but right now he had to worry about the situation as it was, not as it might be.

In the bushes, he found what he was looking for. A German sniper who'd disguised himself with black paint for his face, and sticks and leaves over his uniform. Simple but effective. The man was still breathing, so Steve removed his jacket, used his knife to tear a few strips from it, and bound the soldier's arms and legs behind his back. That done, he emptied the bullets from the rifle's chamber and took hold of the long muzzle in both hands, bending it around so it formed a U-shape. That weapon would never be used to hurt another soldier.

He jogged back to the men waiting for him in the trench and called them out. "We're gonna have to be careful about sharpshooters as we advance," he said. "We'll keep the the trees and bushes as much as possible. Avoid the open roads. Walk spread out, in case of mines. And every single man stays on high alert. That goes for you too, Freddie. I want you focused on your safety, not your camera. There'll be time enough for filming when we reach Cherbourg. I'll take point. Private Jones, you'll cover our six. We'll travel until we lose enough light to see by, then find somewhere to rest up for the night. We should reach Pointe du Hoc by morning, and then hopefully Utah beach by the evening. If you need to drink, do it on the move, but we don't eat until we bunk down. Let's move out."

They followed his orders to the letter, spacing themselves out in a long line, keeping their eyes up as they scanned their surroundings, and Steve felt a small flare of pride inside his chest that they did as he asked without even a grumble. A year ago, the thought of commanding troops wasn't even a dream, and here he was now, giving orders and saving lives. He looked up to the sky, and hoped his dad was proud of everything he'd done until now.

Author's note: Super sorry for the delay in updating, everyone! I don't normally release a chapter until the one written after it is complete, but Ch. 31 is quite complex and taking a suuuuper long time to write. So please enjoy the additional cameo of Ch. 30 while I work on the next one! :)

kayleesj - glad you asked! Wells likes A Tree Grows In Brooklyn so much because he empathises with the protagonist (Francie) and her situation. Even though he didn't grow up poor, he can relate to her struggles and feels it's somewhat symbolic of his own life. On a slightly deeper level, I wanted to add some subtle connections between my Bucky fic 'Running To You' and this story (if you read or re-read 'Running To You' and they will probably be super obvious now that you're aware of them). Though, I should probably point out that the 'tree' referred to in 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn' relates to Ailanthus altissima, also known as 'Tree of Heaven', which may help!