Hike

"Hut one, hut two, hut… hut-hut!"

And with that, the ball was hiked and the game was on.

Kinch didn't pay much attention to it. He was far too busy. Rumours swirled around base that the 182nd would go up for the first time either tomorrow or the next day. And it was up to Kinch and his crew to make sure that the planes of the 110th squadron were ready to go.

It was a lot of pressure. Kinch knew everyone expected Kinchloe's crew of mechanics to fail, to foul things up. And if they did, the 'experiment' of entrusting Negroes with complex tasks could be dismissed and never brought up again. Kinch aimed to prove them wrong.

"Yo! Heads up!"

Something slammed into Kinch, knocking him to the ground before it landed right on top of him. His lungs collapsed, pushing all the air in them out, leaving him breathless and senseless. Had he just been hit by a jeep?

"Arg, dang nabbit. You made me fumble!"

The weight came off him and Kinch could breathe again.

"The hell you doing in my way, boy?!" a voice with a thick Texan drawl barked.

Kinch shook his head, trying to clear out all the stars.

"Lay off him, would ya, Bart?" another voice said. "You already flattened him; no need to yell. Hey, you all right?" Kinch blinked and looked up to see a blond airman with captain's bars looking down at him. Without waiting for him to answer, the captain grinned. "Yeah, he's all right." The captain reached down and, for a moment, Kinch thought it was to help him up. But, instead, the captain grabbed the football that had fallen to the ground near Kinch.

The captain straightened and turned. "Yo! Little Deer! Go long!" The captain snapped the ball across the field. Kinch tracked its movement to someone in the distance who caught it. "Hey, what do you know," the captain said, amused. "DOGPILE!"

Even from how far they were, Kinch could hear the catcher squawk right before twenty guys dove on him. The captain laughed.

"You're cruel, Park," the big brute, Bart, said.

"Come on, let's go dig him out." The two started towards the field, leaving Kinch to himself.

With a grunt, Kinch stood and brushed himself off.

"Don't let those two bother you; they're idiots," a nearby lieutenant with a scowl on his face said.

"They don't bother me, sir," Kinch said.

"Good. You one of the negroes assigned to my ground crew?"

"We're in charge of the 110th," Kinch said.

The lieutenant nodded. "Don't let me down, huh?"

"I won't."

It didn't matter how he and his men were treated on base. It didn't matter what their white counterparts thought of them. They were all Americans and they were in this war to fight the greatest evil the world might ever know. So, despite the slurs and the bullying and the total lack of faith in him, Kinch would make sure that the boys going up would do so with the best damn planes in the whole Eighth Air Force.

In reality, Kinch wouldn't be in this position. But we've gotta bend/break reality a little if we're going to write HH fanfiction. Sorry!

Potentially part of Kinch's origin story that is still in the research phase.