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nightdog_barks1,874 words, from December of 2008. This and Nor Any Voice of Mourning, both WWII AU fics, were vying for attention. The latter eventually won out. I was very much aiming for that particularly "gung ho/all-American" aspect of 1940s films of this era, so my apologies for the stereotyped characters, especially poor Corporal Thibodeaux. *g* Notes at the end.
12/31/44
06:00 hrs
Captain James Wilson, Army Medical Corps, sat with his feet propped up on the seat of the other office chair (if such a cramped little cubbyhole could properly be called an office), staring into the banked light of the small potbelly stove and wishing he had another cup of coffee. He shivered; it was breathlessly cold at six o'clock in the morning, and the snowfall outside hadn't let up since yesterday afternoon.
The weather guys in khaki all concurred; this was the most inclement winter in Europe in a century, and the latest surge of walking wounded reporting to Battalion Aid were proving it -- men straggling in with frostbite, blackened fingers and toes looking like gnarled and broken tree roots. It was quiet now, though, and Wilson wiggled his toes inside his boots, glad for the toasty warmth. What sounded like a convoy of Jeeps roared by outside; he sighed and snuggled a little deeper into his greatcoat. Between the fire's heat and the closeness of the small room, he'd dropped into a light doze when the office door opened.
"Cap'n."
Wilson struggled to sit upright. He blinked and hurriedly pulled his feet down.
"Sorry, sir," Corporal Thibodeaux said. "Need you in Triage -- bunch of boys from the 335th just brought in their C.O., says he's in bad shape, caught one in the gut from a sniper."
Wilson stood up, wincing momentarily at a hot spot in one boot sole. "What's Lieutenant Watkins say?"
The corporal shook his head. "The boys are all worked up, don't want anybody to look at their guy except the Head Doc." He held the door open as Wilson went through. "It's a madhouse out there, sir -- they got him so wrapped up, I can't even tell if he's a looey, a major, or General Patton himself."
"It's all right, Tibby," Wilson said. He frowned; the corporal hadn't exaggerated the level of chaos in the long, tented hallway that led into the OR. There were men everywhere, soldiers milling about, stamping the snow off their boots, crowding around a still form lying on one of the exam tables. They were muddy, melting snow dripping off their helmets, M1s slung over their shoulders.
"Doc! Doc!" the cry went up, and two of the men grabbed Wilson by his biceps and hustled him closer to the stricken officer. Wilson grunted as he wrestled free; he shrugged off his greatcoat and slipped off his jacket, handing both off to Corporal Thibodeaux. He rolled up his sleeves and leaned over the unconscious officer.
The man looked like so many of the wounded soldiers Wilson had seen lately -- covered in grime, unwashed hair sticking up in unruly tufts, probably a week's worth of stubble on his lined cheeks. His eyes were closed and the blanket his men had wrapped him in came all the way up to the base of his throat.
"What's his name?" Wilson snapped. He laid two fingers against the man's carotid -- the skin was warm, the pulse strong and steady. He glanced up. The officer's men were looking at each other, seemingly unsure of themselves.
"Name!"
One of the soldiers, a tall man with the shoulders of a bull, stepped forward.
"House," he said. "Captain House."
Milwaukee, Wilson thought, abstractedly trying to place the man's soft accent. He slipped his fingers beneath the wounded Captain's head, probing for trauma the worried soldiers might have missed.
"Captain House?" Wilson said loudly. "Captain House, can you hear me?" The din in the room was growing again. The officer's eyes remained stubbornly closed. "Okay, let's do this," Wilson muttered, and pulled the blanket away. It took him a moment to realize that something was extremely wrong -- his hands having gone on automatic pilot, yanking open the soldier's uniform, fingers poking and prodding, trying to find the entrance wound that should be there, the dried and fresh blood ...
Wrong, a little voice in the back of his mind observed calmly. Uniform's the wrong color.
Wilson's hands stopped moving.
The officer opened his eyes. They were blue, clear and bright and free of any pain.
Wilson jerked his hands back.
"What the -- "
The officer moved then, his right hand coming up fast. Wilson tried to take a step back but two of the 335th guys were there boxing him in, and then it didn't matter, because the officer kept moving, swinging his long legs off the exam table, and the gun he was holding in his right hand was right in Wilson's face.
Wilson froze. The barrel of the gun seemed to expand outwards, taking up all the space in Wilson's field of vision until there was nothing else in the universe but the flat-black muzzle of that goddamn gun.
The man in the German officer's uniform smiled.
"Good morning," he said. "Or, as we say in my language -- guten Morgen, Herr Doktor."
Wilson didn't take his eyes off the gun. "Corporal Thibodeaux?"
"Sorry, sir." The corporal's voice was low but steady. "Looks like the rest of these guys are Krauts too."
Wilson risked a glance around. The men of the "335th" were calmly ushering the other nurses and orderlies into a line-up against the far wall.
"I believe the proper term is die Deutschen," the German officer said. The gun hadn't moved. Wilson's hands clenched into helpless fists.
"Who are you?" he growled. "Is House your real name?"
The officer nodded. "Captain ... Hauptmann Gregory Haus."
"Then you should know," Wilson gritted out, "that the proper term is Geneva Convention. We are a medical aid station, and -- "
Haus's eyes narrowed. "I know exactly what this is, Doctor, and the fact is that your services are about to be in great demand." He slipped from the table and stood up, the pistol still looming in Wilson's face. "I require your surrender, sir."
"My what?" Wilson shook his head. "No. No. This is a medical facility. You shouldn't be here." He felt an increasing desperation, as if he were trying to shoo a troop of bullies away from a children's birthday party.
"On the contrary, Doctor," the German officer said. "We are already here. Leutnant Guenther, if you would be so kind ... "
Wilson watched as the soldier who had stepped up to identify Haus grabbed Corporal Thibodeaux's collar and shoved him roughly forward, out the Triage tentway. After a moment, when both men reappeared, the corporal wore an expression of dismay.
"I'm sorry, Captain Wilson," he said. "The place is crawlin' with ... Dachshunds. We're not just surrounded, we're infiltrated."
Wilson looked back at Hauptmann Haus. The German officer motioned with his pistol, a quick little flick of the wrist.
"Kapitan?" he murmured.
Slowly, reluctantly, Wilson raised his hands.
12/31/44
07:30 hrs
Haus sat at Captain Wilson's desk, going over the aid station's personnel records and patient reports while the American officer cooled his heels under Guenther's watchful eye in the mess tent.
It had all been worth it, Haus thought. The play-acting of the masquerade, the sudden unmasking, the American Captain's brown eyes widening in comical, shocked surprise. He smiled a little, then rubbed absently at his lips with the back of one hand. It appeared the American military was just as dedicated to collecting a ridiculous amount of detail on its erstwhile warriors as his own bureaucratic pen-pushers. Everything was here -- hair color, eye color, distinguishing scars, all the human minutiae down to blood type and religion.
He snorted as he regarded the last categorization. There had been some, in chains of command higher than Haus had any desire to follow, who had wanted this operation to include sending the Jewish prisoners further behind the lines, to a special camp in Germany. An insane edict, as were most of the orders emanating from Berlin these days. Sixth Panzer was going to need all the doctors they could get once the tanks started rolling, and it made no sense to send them away. Especially if -- Haus squinted at the personnel record he'd turned up -- the C.O. of this aid station, this Kapitan Wilson, had an "H" by his name. He slapped the folder shut and pushed back from the desk; he had better things to do than act as Inquisitor. If people chose to believe such blatant nonsense, it was their loss.
"Heinzmann," he shouted. He glanced out the window; the snow had stopped and the sun was out; it looked as if it were going to be a nice day. "Heinzmann," he shouted again, "get in here and give me a report!"
12/31/44
13:00 hrs
"I see your rations are of the same inedible quality as ours," the German officer observed. He picked at the K-ration tray one of his sergeants had opened for him. "What is this, anyway?"
Wilson didn't answer. He'd been sitting here all morning, drinking cup after cup of poisonously over-boiled black coffee with his stolid keeper.
"You can talk to me, you know," Captain Haus said mildly. "I really don't bite."
Wilson glared at him. The faintest hint of a smile quirked at his captor's lips.
"Get used to it," Haus said. "Whether you like it or not, we're going to be together for a while."
"You shouldn't be here," Wilson growled. Haus dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
"And yet we are," Haus responded calmly. "You would be much better off facing reality, Herr Doktor."
"And what reality is that?"
"The reality that you and everyone in this aid station are our prisoners."
"Then why don't you move on to your next objective, whatever that is? Ship us all east?"
The officer shook his head. "Because there are more layers to reality than are apparent at first glance."
Wilson stared at him. He believed he knew now what Alice must have felt when she'd fallen down the rabbit hole.
"I don't understand," he said at last.
"Our own aid station was destroyed in a bombing raid two days ago," Haus said. "We are in need of an aid station. Therefore -- " He speared a bit of unidentifiable meat with his fork and thrust it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, and made a small face. "Therefore, we have taken yours."
"No," Wilson said automatically. The German officer's right eyebrow arched.
"No?"
"The Geneva Convention," Wilson began, steadying himself, "clearly states -- "
"Would you rather my men begin shooting your patients in their beds?" Haus's voice had changed; no longer cheerfully conversational, it now carried a steely, menacing undertone. The fork dropped into the K-ration tray with a bright, metallic clang as he leaned forward. "Or perhaps we should start with the enlisted men. The corpsmen. Your Corporal Thibodeaux."
"What? No," Wilson said. He leaned forward too, suddenly, sickeningly aware of too much bad coffee sloshing in his gut. He was vaguely aware of his German keeper stepping forward behind him, but he ignored him. "Don't do that," he said. "Please." He settled back, slowly. The muzzle of his guard's machine gun wavered at the edge of his vision, and he swallowed back his bile.
"We'll do whatever you ask," he said.
"Good," Haus said. "That's good. I knew you'd see it my way."
*** playing ***
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Luck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Panzer_Division_(Germany)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nordwind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
http://home.att.net/~steinert/function_of_a_wwii_aid_station.htm
http://www.30thinfantry.org/medics.shtml
http://warchronicle.com/16th_infantry/officialrecords_wwii/medicalhistory.htm
http://www.feldgrau.com/main1.php?ID=2
************
So obviously this is based on the WWII Battle of the Bulge. I honestly can't remember what prompted the WIP, unless it was the shameless mental image of House in a German uniform. And him pointing a gun at Wilson. As to how it was supposed to end ... well, I wasn't too clear on that, either, but I know it involved a rescue by American troops and a shootout. Neither Haus nor Wilson was killed, though.
12/31/44
06:00 hrs
Captain James Wilson, Army Medical Corps, sat with his feet propped up on the seat of the other office chair (if such a cramped little cubbyhole could properly be called an office), staring into the banked light of the small potbelly stove and wishing he had another cup of coffee. He shivered; it was breathlessly cold at six o'clock in the morning, and the snowfall outside hadn't let up since yesterday afternoon.
The weather guys in khaki all concurred; this was the most inclement winter in Europe in a century, and the latest surge of walking wounded reporting to Battalion Aid were proving it -- men straggling in with frostbite, blackened fingers and toes looking like gnarled and broken tree roots. It was quiet now, though, and Wilson wiggled his toes inside his boots, glad for the toasty warmth. What sounded like a convoy of Jeeps roared by outside; he sighed and snuggled a little deeper into his greatcoat. Between the fire's heat and the closeness of the small room, he'd dropped into a light doze when the office door opened.
"Cap'n."
Wilson struggled to sit upright. He blinked and hurriedly pulled his feet down.
"Sorry, sir," Corporal Thibodeaux said. "Need you in Triage -- bunch of boys from the 335th just brought in their C.O., says he's in bad shape, caught one in the gut from a sniper."
Wilson stood up, wincing momentarily at a hot spot in one boot sole. "What's Lieutenant Watkins say?"
The corporal shook his head. "The boys are all worked up, don't want anybody to look at their guy except the Head Doc." He held the door open as Wilson went through. "It's a madhouse out there, sir -- they got him so wrapped up, I can't even tell if he's a looey, a major, or General Patton himself."
"It's all right, Tibby," Wilson said. He frowned; the corporal hadn't exaggerated the level of chaos in the long, tented hallway that led into the OR. There were men everywhere, soldiers milling about, stamping the snow off their boots, crowding around a still form lying on one of the exam tables. They were muddy, melting snow dripping off their helmets, M1s slung over their shoulders.
"Doc! Doc!" the cry went up, and two of the men grabbed Wilson by his biceps and hustled him closer to the stricken officer. Wilson grunted as he wrestled free; he shrugged off his greatcoat and slipped off his jacket, handing both off to Corporal Thibodeaux. He rolled up his sleeves and leaned over the unconscious officer.
The man looked like so many of the wounded soldiers Wilson had seen lately -- covered in grime, unwashed hair sticking up in unruly tufts, probably a week's worth of stubble on his lined cheeks. His eyes were closed and the blanket his men had wrapped him in came all the way up to the base of his throat.
"What's his name?" Wilson snapped. He laid two fingers against the man's carotid -- the skin was warm, the pulse strong and steady. He glanced up. The officer's men were looking at each other, seemingly unsure of themselves.
"Name!"
One of the soldiers, a tall man with the shoulders of a bull, stepped forward.
"House," he said. "Captain House."
Milwaukee, Wilson thought, abstractedly trying to place the man's soft accent. He slipped his fingers beneath the wounded Captain's head, probing for trauma the worried soldiers might have missed.
"Captain House?" Wilson said loudly. "Captain House, can you hear me?" The din in the room was growing again. The officer's eyes remained stubbornly closed. "Okay, let's do this," Wilson muttered, and pulled the blanket away. It took him a moment to realize that something was extremely wrong -- his hands having gone on automatic pilot, yanking open the soldier's uniform, fingers poking and prodding, trying to find the entrance wound that should be there, the dried and fresh blood ...
Wrong, a little voice in the back of his mind observed calmly. Uniform's the wrong color.
Wilson's hands stopped moving.
The officer opened his eyes. They were blue, clear and bright and free of any pain.
Wilson jerked his hands back.
"What the -- "
The officer moved then, his right hand coming up fast. Wilson tried to take a step back but two of the 335th guys were there boxing him in, and then it didn't matter, because the officer kept moving, swinging his long legs off the exam table, and the gun he was holding in his right hand was right in Wilson's face.
Wilson froze. The barrel of the gun seemed to expand outwards, taking up all the space in Wilson's field of vision until there was nothing else in the universe but the flat-black muzzle of that goddamn gun.
The man in the German officer's uniform smiled.
"Good morning," he said. "Or, as we say in my language -- guten Morgen, Herr Doktor."
Wilson didn't take his eyes off the gun. "Corporal Thibodeaux?"
"Sorry, sir." The corporal's voice was low but steady. "Looks like the rest of these guys are Krauts too."
Wilson risked a glance around. The men of the "335th" were calmly ushering the other nurses and orderlies into a line-up against the far wall.
"I believe the proper term is die Deutschen," the German officer said. The gun hadn't moved. Wilson's hands clenched into helpless fists.
"Who are you?" he growled. "Is House your real name?"
The officer nodded. "Captain ... Hauptmann Gregory Haus."
"Then you should know," Wilson gritted out, "that the proper term is Geneva Convention. We are a medical aid station, and -- "
Haus's eyes narrowed. "I know exactly what this is, Doctor, and the fact is that your services are about to be in great demand." He slipped from the table and stood up, the pistol still looming in Wilson's face. "I require your surrender, sir."
"My what?" Wilson shook his head. "No. No. This is a medical facility. You shouldn't be here." He felt an increasing desperation, as if he were trying to shoo a troop of bullies away from a children's birthday party.
"On the contrary, Doctor," the German officer said. "We are already here. Leutnant Guenther, if you would be so kind ... "
Wilson watched as the soldier who had stepped up to identify Haus grabbed Corporal Thibodeaux's collar and shoved him roughly forward, out the Triage tentway. After a moment, when both men reappeared, the corporal wore an expression of dismay.
"I'm sorry, Captain Wilson," he said. "The place is crawlin' with ... Dachshunds. We're not just surrounded, we're infiltrated."
Wilson looked back at Hauptmann Haus. The German officer motioned with his pistol, a quick little flick of the wrist.
"Kapitan?" he murmured.
Slowly, reluctantly, Wilson raised his hands.
12/31/44
07:30 hrs
Haus sat at Captain Wilson's desk, going over the aid station's personnel records and patient reports while the American officer cooled his heels under Guenther's watchful eye in the mess tent.
It had all been worth it, Haus thought. The play-acting of the masquerade, the sudden unmasking, the American Captain's brown eyes widening in comical, shocked surprise. He smiled a little, then rubbed absently at his lips with the back of one hand. It appeared the American military was just as dedicated to collecting a ridiculous amount of detail on its erstwhile warriors as his own bureaucratic pen-pushers. Everything was here -- hair color, eye color, distinguishing scars, all the human minutiae down to blood type and religion.
He snorted as he regarded the last categorization. There had been some, in chains of command higher than Haus had any desire to follow, who had wanted this operation to include sending the Jewish prisoners further behind the lines, to a special camp in Germany. An insane edict, as were most of the orders emanating from Berlin these days. Sixth Panzer was going to need all the doctors they could get once the tanks started rolling, and it made no sense to send them away. Especially if -- Haus squinted at the personnel record he'd turned up -- the C.O. of this aid station, this Kapitan Wilson, had an "H" by his name. He slapped the folder shut and pushed back from the desk; he had better things to do than act as Inquisitor. If people chose to believe such blatant nonsense, it was their loss.
"Heinzmann," he shouted. He glanced out the window; the snow had stopped and the sun was out; it looked as if it were going to be a nice day. "Heinzmann," he shouted again, "get in here and give me a report!"
12/31/44
13:00 hrs
"I see your rations are of the same inedible quality as ours," the German officer observed. He picked at the K-ration tray one of his sergeants had opened for him. "What is this, anyway?"
Wilson didn't answer. He'd been sitting here all morning, drinking cup after cup of poisonously over-boiled black coffee with his stolid keeper.
"You can talk to me, you know," Captain Haus said mildly. "I really don't bite."
Wilson glared at him. The faintest hint of a smile quirked at his captor's lips.
"Get used to it," Haus said. "Whether you like it or not, we're going to be together for a while."
"You shouldn't be here," Wilson growled. Haus dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
"And yet we are," Haus responded calmly. "You would be much better off facing reality, Herr Doktor."
"And what reality is that?"
"The reality that you and everyone in this aid station are our prisoners."
"Then why don't you move on to your next objective, whatever that is? Ship us all east?"
The officer shook his head. "Because there are more layers to reality than are apparent at first glance."
Wilson stared at him. He believed he knew now what Alice must have felt when she'd fallen down the rabbit hole.
"I don't understand," he said at last.
"Our own aid station was destroyed in a bombing raid two days ago," Haus said. "We are in need of an aid station. Therefore -- " He speared a bit of unidentifiable meat with his fork and thrust it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, and made a small face. "Therefore, we have taken yours."
"No," Wilson said automatically. The German officer's right eyebrow arched.
"No?"
"The Geneva Convention," Wilson began, steadying himself, "clearly states -- "
"Would you rather my men begin shooting your patients in their beds?" Haus's voice had changed; no longer cheerfully conversational, it now carried a steely, menacing undertone. The fork dropped into the K-ration tray with a bright, metallic clang as he leaned forward. "Or perhaps we should start with the enlisted men. The corpsmen. Your Corporal Thibodeaux."
"What? No," Wilson said. He leaned forward too, suddenly, sickeningly aware of too much bad coffee sloshing in his gut. He was vaguely aware of his German keeper stepping forward behind him, but he ignored him. "Don't do that," he said. "Please." He settled back, slowly. The muzzle of his guard's machine gun wavered at the edge of his vision, and he swallowed back his bile.
"We'll do whatever you ask," he said.
"Good," Haus said. "That's good. I knew you'd see it my way."
*** playing ***
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Luck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Panzer_Division_(Germany)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nordwind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
http://home.att.net/~steinert/function_of_a_wwii_aid_station.htm
http://www.30thinfantry.org/medics.shtml
http://warchronicle.com/16th_infantry/officialrecords_wwii/medicalhistory.htm
http://www.feldgrau.com/main1.php?ID=2
So obviously this is based on the WWII Battle of the Bulge. I honestly can't remember what prompted the WIP, unless it was the shameless mental image of House in a German uniform. And him pointing a gun at Wilson. As to how it was supposed to end ... well, I wasn't too clear on that, either, but I know it involved a rescue by American troops and a shootout. Neither Haus nor Wilson was killed, though.