Gas & Blood (Damned of the 2/19th Novella) - Rough Draft Finished

Command Decisions

FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
17 April, 1986
0935 Hours

I hadn't gotten enough sleep. Between the meds and my injuries and Stokes waking me up every hour or so to check my pupils, the seven hours I had allotted myself to sleep had done little to take the edge off the exhaustion that filled me. My chest hurt from where they had reinflated my lung, my arm itched around the break as well as being filled with an aching throb, and half of my face was swollen up from where I'd smashed into the bottom of the blast ditch.

Still, Cromwell, Nagle, Foster, and Stillwater had all lived through the night. Nagle, Cromwell, and Stillwater were all still out. Stokes and Farley, our two medics on loan from other crews, had put in IV's and kept all three of the badly injured soldiers unconscious. Sometimes while I was asleep either Farley or Stokes had put catheters in all three.

The other six privates had done a bang up job cleaning The Fort. I could still smell the blood, but at least the smell of bleach overlay the stench of rotting blood. They wouldn't be able to get the smell out, the blood had soaked into the concrete cinderblocks used to build The Fort, and we'd just have to deal with the smell of rotting blood being added to the smell of BO and Atlas.

Still, I was tired, which was making me cranky, which was why I had slammed down the phone as hard as I could to cut off the whining droning voice of the idiot from 18th Transportation Battalion who had been whining at me that his troops were all at Wednesday Training and couldn't be tasked to haul the big semi trucks out here. It didn't matter that I had wreckage that needed towed away, all that mattered is he didn't want to do his goddamn job and kept trying to push my request back a day.

Goddamn paper pushing REMF's.

I groaned and leaned forward, putting my good arm on the desk and resting my head on my forearm.

"Problem?" Stokes yawned. She was sitting in the chair in front of me. I'd thought she was asleep, having stayed up all night to check on everyone, but now she was looking at me from under the brim of her softcap.

She had beautiful green eyes.

"Just... holy shit, it's like nobody wants to do their fucking job," I snarled, sitting up and jabbing a finger at the phone, "As soon as they hear I'm an E-4 they basically start throwing around excuses."

"That's probably why Stillwater is such a dick," Stokes chuckled, "People have a tendency to do what you say when you act like he does."

I shook my head, "Ain't my way," I told her.

"Call Corps," she suggested. V Corps would have someone at the ChemCorps liaison office even though Wednesday was used for training all day. Well, bullshit classes nobody wanted to take until lunch, then going to the motor pool to pretend to work on vehicles till close of business.

I shook my head, "I've called them three times already. Once to get 54th Engineers out of their fucking barracks, again to get Delta Company 108th MI out here, and the last time to get some EOD guys out to blow this ammunition," I shook my head again, "I feel like the class snitch running to daddy to tattle."

"When's Delta supposed to get here?" Stokes asked. The Rangers that were currently providing security were on loan from God only knew where, and I needed to get them back in case someone needed them, but at the same time, I needed the Rangers from Delta 108th to provide security until we could get some more guys from the West German Army to provide security. Right now the Rangers were just sitting in the middle of the road closest to the 1K Zone, with orders to try to avoid getting into anything, since the surrounding area was full of MRLS bomblets and unexploded artillery shells. I needed to sweep and clear the area, get guards out, and get the Army Corps of Engineers, or some Combat Engineers, out to rebuild the damaged and destroyed bunkers. That meant making sure they were guarded in case that psycho from Mieningen tried to jump us again.