Chapter 1

Snow sifted down from the treetops as the darkness fell over the valley below, behind me, the ticking of cooling metal, and rattles of various equipment and weapons. Quiet conversations, each detailing some task to be preformed, something to be checked again before the night came. We sat across a small paved road, halfway up the mountain, backed into the woods, combat parked, as it was called, halted in our mission by rules which said no matter the battle, movement ceased at night. Looking out over the town below us, scurrying figures moved about busy with evening chores. Cold wind blew from the north into our faces, as if seeking to rob all heat from our bodies, chafing and bitter. "What's she doing now", I wondered, "Can she sense me? thinking of her, missing her?", an ache that encompasses the entire body, gnaws at the insides of a man, love, lust, uncertainty, jealousy, all the emotions that a solider can muster at the same time, yet must crush away so as to endure the separation and still function. Best not to dwell on that now, too many days till we get back, not even sure when we'll get back, Damn.

Abruptly the snow started again, large damp flakes, clinging to everything, cloaking the sounds of a Mechanized Scout platoon settling in for the evening. Slowly hiding our tracks up the mountain, erasing the mechanical scar we'd inflected upon the earth. Darkness swept faster over the land now, blanketing the scenery with a gray black mask, broken only by the yellow glow of a phone booth. A phone! Contact so close, yet denied even without asking, as if the Army gave a damn whether you had a family or not, "did they issue you one? Hell no, so don't ask."

I climbed back into the vehicle, a large cold chunk of aluminum, personnel beaters we called them. Inside it was a jumble of military gear, scattered hither and there, dirt, snow, mud covering the floor, the air reeked of diesel fuel, oil, cordite and unwashed bodies, stale, stagnant yet somehow alive. You could feel it creep under your clothes and coat you like a second skin, nasty, evil, yet so familiar that you accepted it unthinkingly. Even after you had scrubbed yourself down in a cold helmet bath, and put on that last clean uniform, it was still there.

The interior lights cast their red glow, illuminating and at the same time masking the inside of the vehicle, making everything a shade of black or brown. Chosen by some genius at Dept. of Defense because you can't see blood under red light, now can you? Only thing it really did was make it impossible to read a map because contour lines are drawn in red. I once tried to follow a "road" on a map for an hour before I realized it was a river instead, I couldn't tell it was a blue line.

Reaching past the bulk of Sergeant Neals, I grabbed my rucksack. Ah, time for dinner, or supper, or what ever you wished to call it. It really didn't make a difference anyway; you ate the same thing for every meal. In theory, with combat rations, you got twelve choices, but in reality, you got a choice only when you were first at the trough, or had a fair minded sergeant issuing them. And let's face it, like weekend passes; there are only a few of them, not near enough, to go around. Closing my eyes, I reached into my ruck and pulled out one of the packages among the three there, the moment of truth. I read the label..."joy joy, beef with spice sauces." A year or so before, when combat rations came in cans, I had opened my very first can of "Beef with Spice sauces", and thought it resembled the dog food in the "Mighty Dog" commercials. All that was missing was the Chihuahua and the branding iron, "MIGHTY DOG". In my years in the Army, I yet had found anything that would both cover the taste of it and still be edible. Still, you had to eat, so I ripped into it, indigestion, here I come.

"Gawd amighty Private", this from Sergeant Neals, "you gonna eat that crap cold?"

It was a question that no answer was expected or needed; we had had this conversation a hundred times on as many field problems before. You spend enough time living and working side by side with someone and you came to know them better even than you knew your own family. I thought to myself, "you gonna open up two or three meals and leave them scattered around for me to clean up? Hell yes, so why ask a dumbass question?" But aloud I merely nodded. Privates, at least ones who dislike extra duty and other nasty forms of non judicial punishment don't give smartass answers to Non Commissioned Officers. A fact I learned the hard way due to an overactive jackass gland.

Finishing my meal, I rounded up the trash readily at hand, shoved it into an empty ammo can, and stuck it back under the radio. Looking over at Sgt. Neals, I asked," what time I got radio watch?"

"Yer on at 24 hundred, wake up Fiest"."Make sure you start it up for 30 minutes or better and charge the batteries too." Another way to break up your sleep, stare at a radio for an hour in the middle of the night, just in case the Colonel decided to call.

I climbed back out the hatch into the cold, and found that in the few minutes I'd been inside it had went from dusk to night. Straining my eyes, I could make out the form of the other vehicles along the road way. I dropped down to the ground, sinking nearly a foot into the snow beside the tracks; it would be deep come the morning. I spotted the Platoon leaders vehicle, and started towards it, the first order of business was to find Specialist Fiest, and make arrangements about radio watch, then plan the assault on the phone. Reaching the vehicle, I rapped on the back hatch door, and then opened it. A wave of warm air rushed out at me, followed by a terse command from the Lieutenant, "Either get your ass in, or close the damn door, yer letting my heat out."

Mumbling Yessir, I clambered into the hatch, and shut the door behind me with a clang. "Sorry sir, looking for Specialist Fiest". "Mind if I wait here for him?" "You can wait until the NCOs get here for the Operations Order, then you gotta get out" he scratched his head, and then asked, "Your heater broke again?" I nodded; it was a problem from long back, one hard to understand too, how could a sorry ass mechanic fix anything from thermal sights to a jet turbine tank engine, yet couldn't make a simple fuel oil heater stay running? Unless of course, it was the ones they had jury rigged in their tool trucks. We had to wait for months when one of ours went out, yet they had sometimes as many as two or three mounted illegally in their vehicles.

Mulling over this, I nodded off into a slumber, only to be awaken too soon by Spc. Fiest opening the hatch door. He looked in, and motioned for me to come outside. "Back in a min. LT" he said.

I climbed reluctantly out of the warmth and into the biting cold, buttoning my field jacket up to the neck as I turned to him. He lit a cigarette and passed it to me, knowing I wanted one, but wouldn't ask. You don't bum in the field, you take what you figure you'll need, and if that isn't enough, you do with out, unless a friend offers. Fiest was a friend, best I had. Reaching in my ammo pouch, I pulled out a small bottle I'd been saving, and passed it to him. "Enjoy". Comfort is where you make it, and a little schnapps always helps. He turned it up, and drained it.

In a fluid motion he brought the bottle down and without slowing, flung it across the road and into the valley below. Smiling he turned to me and asked "Got plans for the evening? " "Do what??" "Like a nice warm bath dumbass, a bath? You know... , water... , soap... , clean... , remember clean?" "What the hell you planning on?" I asked, "We gonna slip off to a guesthaus or something?"

In the back of my mind, I was counting my meager stock of German marks, not near enough to get us into a guesthaus for a bath, but man, would one feel good. A bath was something you didn't think about either, along with wife, kids, decent food, warm, etc., you could tolerate the dirt and funk better if you ignored it, stuck it in the back of your consciousness until you rolled thru the gates of the kaserne. And even then, you'd wait till every weapon and item of equipment was accounted for, washed, inspected and reinspected. Then, maybe then, could you think of one. A bath... , now... , why hell yes, But... as likely as a snowman making a road march thru hell with a 50 lb rucksack.

To Fiest I said,"Ok, I'll play your silly ass game, sure, lets take a bath." "What time I got radio watch tonight?" he asked. "Right after me, one to two." "Perfect, roll up your soap and a towel, be ready after my watch." He started towards his vehicle, then stopped, "and for God's sake, keep this quiet man". Nodding I turned and headed back to my vehicle, I didn't know the what or the where, but six months of association with Fiest had taught me that if he had a plan, I wanted in. You never knew exactly what you were getting into, but it was never a dull moment. With some luck, I might even get to use that phone.

Still wondering, I climbed in the hatch, rolled up in my sleeping bag and dropped off to sleep.

A hand shaking my shoulder woke me a few hours later, "Get yer ass up, radio watch in 5 minutes." The voice belonging to the hand reminded me not to go back to sleep. He turned back to his novel, as I climbed out of my bag and moved over to the radio bench. Once on another field problem, I had grabbed the microphone and stayed in my sleeping bag only to wake up at daylight in a world of crap, never again. "You can go, I got it" I told him.

"Suit yourself, I'm outta here" came over his shoulder as he climbed out the back hatch into the night. Through the open hatch I could see that it had quit snowing and the moon was out. The snow had a bluish glow to it from the moon light, and the air seemed almost to crack. A cloudless night meant a cold night, don't ask me why, but it was a fact. I reached over and took the microphone, keying it, I waited until the fan on the radio reached full whine, then spoke into it, calling the battalion radio operator. "Whiskey 44 this is Papa 25 over."

Silence, and then a metallic, sleep laden voice, "Last station calling, this is Whiskey 44 over."

Gotcha! Last station! Why don't you just say, "Uh I was asleep with the mike in my ear that's why I don't know your call sign." Battalion radio operators were notoriously sorry anyway. But, never fail, when you needed something in a hurry, you'd get the one who insisted on exact letter perfect radio procedure, and would not budge from it on threat of death. Many a time I'd seen a Platoon leader, eyes red with fury, try to crush a microphone while dealing with an idiot over the radio.

I keyed up again, "This is Papa 25, I will be off the network for 5 mikes (minutes)."

As I switched the radio off in preparation for starting the engine, I could hear the voice of the battalion operator telling me not to leave the net.