Easy Does It

Follows "Allies" and "Burnt Offerings"

Night had come, and only a few hours remained until D-Day plus One. The absence of any moon or starlight went unnoticed, with the distant flares of artillery and heavy explosives ripping across the horizon like lightning.

Private JD Dunne of the 82nd Airborne should have been asleep- or, at least, those were the orders given to him after an unexciting dinner of cold C-rations. Vin Tanner and Lieutenant Larabee had first watch over the small town they’d informally called Four Corners, and they would be calling down for JD and Buck to relieve them in another couple of hours. Nathan, their medic, and Josiah kept an eye on their small bag of prisoners incarcerated in the cellar of a small house nearby.

JD knew, intellectually, that he had to sleep, or he’d have a hell of a time staying awake and alert enough to watch for trouble. His body, though, had other ideas- adrenaline pumped through him and JD wondered if he was going to jitter out of his seat sooner or later.

“Hey, kid! You read to ship out?”

“Yeah, Buck... I mean, yessir.” JD looked away from his radio to stare up into the earnest face of Sergeant Buck Wilmington and blushed a little at being so familiar. “My regiment should be here around 0600 hours tomorrow, sir.” He tried to keep the disappointment from his voice at the thought of packing up and heading out with the 509th PIR, instead of going with Buck and all them.

There ain’t an ‘all them’, Dunne, for Chrissakes, he told himself firmly. Nathan’s goin’ back to his artillery battalion, probably, and Vin and Josiah... well, God knows what they’re gonna do or where they’re ending up... and Chris and Buck... I mean, Lieutenant Larabee and Sergeant Wilmington are heading out for Carentan first thing.

Strange, though, how quickly it seemed like he’d fallen into a group, where he felt like he belonged. Just his luck that he’d be leaving it in a few hours.

Buck swiped his left hand across JD’s helmet, knocking it forward on the younger man’s head. “It’s ‘Buck’, kid, not ‘sir’ or ‘yessir’ or ‘yessirSergeantWilmingtonsir’. Just Buck.” Wilmington shook his head as he loomed over JD, who tried to re-fixate himself on his radio. “Hell, maybe I should just formally order you to call me Buck, but then again, you’re so damn intent on disobeyin’ my orders anyhow...” Buck gestured to his shoulder and the bandage peeking out from under the collar of his uniform shirt.

JD flushed a little, remembering his defiance from earlier that day, when he’d refused to leave an injured Sergeant Wilmi- Buck- to the mercies of the Germans. He thought, suddenly, of the German soldier he’d shot to save Buck’s life- he’d barrelled into the house just as the German pulled out and aimed his weapon at Buck’s chest.

And JD, before he even got a chance to think clearly, had pulled his sidearm from its holster and shot the German in the back.

The man had dropped like a rock- unceremoniously, with only the sharp, abbreviated THUNK of his helmet on wooden flooring as his fanfare.

I wasn’t supposed to kill anyone, JD thought dully. I just came along to string the damn telephone wire and lug radios around. Basic weren’t anything like this... He thought about camp in Georgia, learning how to fire weapons at paper and sandbag targets, but spending most of his time dissecting radios and telephones, jamming or tapping into code, encoding his own transmissions... He was in awe of the rest of the paratroopers- tough kids from the backcountry of the South and West who could have taken him apart with their bare hands.

But he, JD Dunne- the Kid, the commo wimp- had killed a man today. It didn’t matter to him if all those other guys had offed a dozen Jerries each by now- he, JD Dunne, had killed a man today.

So why didn’t he feel any better about it?

“Kid?”

“Kid?”

“PRIVATE DUNNE!”

JD jumped and almost knocked the SCR-300 off its perch on a rickety table. He spun around, heart thundering, and felt foolish when he saw Buck grinning down on him. Some detached part of his mind wondered how Buck could grow his facial hair so fast- JD knew their last review had just been a few days ago, but the man already sported an impressive, if fledgling, moustache.

“YessirImeanBuck!” he blurted out, eyes wide.

“Just checkin’ to make sure you’re payin’ attention,” Buck said serenely. “I could have been a Kraut, y’know, an’ blown you to hell with you starin’ off into the tenth dimension or wherever.”

“Sorry, Buck,” JD whispered remorsefully.

“Hell of a day, huh?”

JD blinked at the rapid change of subject. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Uhh... sure, yeah. Yeah, I guess it’s been a hell of a day. Yeah.”

Buck laughed. “Not what you were expectin’?”

“Not really,” JD confessed. “I was expectin’ to be with my regiment’s HQ company right about now, over in Canquigny. Thought I was going to be running wire... didn’t really think I’d be here with you all.” He paused and then added quickly, “Not that that’s a bad thing, or anything like that.”

“Well, I guess a few years ago you were expectin’ to be startin’ college, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess I was.” Thinking on it, JD was pretty sure that back before Pearl Harbor, his scrawny fifteen-year-old self would never have even considered the possibility of ending up in a rural French town. Fighting people, killing people. Buck’s words helped him put at least that much in perspective.

“Did you ever think about ending up here?” he asked the sergeant, who frowned thoughtfully.

“Well, not here exactly, but I s’pose I always figured I’d end up in the Army sooner or later. When you’re a broke kid from Oklahoma there really aren’t a whole lot of places other than the Army to end up. I would have liked to go to college, but the Depression sorta changed that, I guess, and my family never even had a lot of money to begin with.”

JD felt a little ashamed hearing that; he’d never had a lot of money, either, but at least the things he took for granted- the chance to go to school, not having to work on a farm or do anything that would cut into his studies... He cursed inwardly, thinking about the contempt directed at him from his fellow volunteers at basic.

“Hey, Wisenstein!” shouted a lanky private as he jogged up behind JD, twisting around to run backwards and to leer into the shorter boy’s face.

“Whataya want, Summers?” JD demanded, staring right into Private Tom Summers’ eyes, determined not to look away.

“I wanta kick your ass, Dunne. I think Robert Joseph an’ Billy Bob want to, too. Don’tcha, Billy Bob?”

“Yup... think Dunne’s ass needs a whuppin’.”

JD sometimes got away clean from those scrapes, sometimes not. He’d head off to the medics, who cursed his clumsiness at falling over railroad tracks for the third time that week, or bumping into a door. They didn’t much like him, either- and nobody liked medics in basic.

Quietly, with a jealousy to which he never wanted to admit, he watched all the other paratroopers form into squads and forge friendships among each other. Whenever they went to town on nightly passes, JD would watch as some guy and his friends got into it with some recruit from the regular infantry, or with some other paratrooper from the 101st. They’d bang up the bar some, then go home cursing, singing, and embracing.

And JD would follow them home or, failing that, be designated driver.

It didn’t help that his regiment’s commanding officer, reading some of JD’s test scores and tactical worksheets, had said, “Well, Private Dunne, you seem like you got a good head on your shoulders.”

“Uh, guess so, sir. Thank you.”

“What company are you in, Private?” The CO peered at JD alertly, a hot gaze which made the younger man acutely uncomfortable; even worse than that, though, was the steady and hostile silence behind him.

JD’s mind went blank. “Um... B Company, sir.”

“You’re with Headquarters from now on,” the CO informed him and, whirling around, walked out.

And all of this in front of half the goddamn barracks. JD had wanted to die right then, because the abuse he endured while cleaning out his footlocker had made him actively wish for death. For the first time, he thought about going to the line infantry, figuring that it had to be at least a faster or more certain way of dying than hiding behind lines and stringing wire for some goddamn officer’s comm system.

JD gulped a little at the thought of going back to the 82nd. He remembered Buck telling him about transferring to the 101st. Would they let him do that? JD wondered.

Even so, he didn’t much want to end up with another bunch of hostile strangers- best stick with hostile people he actually knew. Part of his mind spun a fantasy in which he might be able to hang out with Buck for a bit- not that he wanted a father figure or anything like that, but because the man seemed to like him.

“Kid? You’re headin’ off to the tenth dimension again.” Buck’s voice brought him back to earth.

“Oh... uh... um... just wondering if maybe we’d ever run into each other again,” JD said. “Kinda weird, that we all ended up here, y’know?”

“Well, it worked out okay, didn’t it?” Buck asked. “An’ who knows? Maybe we’ll run into each other soon- might even end up at the Big Jump together, goin’ in ta kick Hitler’s ass in person.”

JD grinned. “Hope that’s comin’ up soon.”

“Easy does it, kid,” Buck laughed, and then unexpectedly sobered. “I think we’ve got a ways to go before then. This is gonna be a helluva long war.”

“Ya think so?”

Buck shrugged. “War’s never as easy as the brass would like ya to think it is. Everything’s pretty damn clear on paper, but when you’re down here where the action is... hell, seems like an eternity gettin’ through a day, much less a week or a month.”

“Damn,” JD sighed. “You sure know how to depress a guy, Buck.”

Wilmington grinned. “Never made that a specialty of mine, but look at it this way- you’re a veteran now, JD. Hell, two days from now, when they’re haulin’ in replacements? There’s gonna be kids your age who think you’re about the scariest thing on the face of the earth, all dirty an’ not havin’ had a shave in a week. Not,” Buck added slyly, “that a week’s gonna make a whole hell of a lot of difference to that peach fuzz ya got the nerve to call a beard.”

“Buuuuck...”

“Ah, quit yer bitchin’,” Buck groused good-naturedly. “Even with your carryin’ on, I wouldn’t mind havin’ ya in my squad.” JD stilled at that, but his heart gave a convulsive leap; Buck noticed the change in the younger man and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “You mind sharin’ the reason why you’ve got this look on your face like someone’s just offered ya a million dollars?”

“Just thinkin’,” JD said slowly, “I mean, just thinkin’ about you transferrin’ to follow Lieutenant Larabee.”

“Yeah, well, Chris needs someone to keep his ass on the straight and narrow. You... you need someone to keep your ass from gettin’ shot next time you get it in your head to stand in a doorway.”

“I don’t think they need a lot of those kinds of people in headquarters, Buck.”

“Huh,” Buck mused as he stood and stretched. JD expected the sergeant to say nothing more on the subject, but Wilmington reached out and grasped the younger man’s shoulder in a comradely grip. JD’s hazel eyes flickered from Buck’s hand to Buck’s eyes and suddenly held, staring into an earnest, unshaven face.

“They’d be damn fools to let you transfer, JD,” Buck said solemnly.

And walked out.

THE END