Collaboration with @silmarilz1701
Svetlana knew how to play the game. She'd been caught in the political drama of Stalin's inner circle since birth. The only child of one of Stalin's closest friends, she grew up in the limelight, scrutinized by frie...
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Dick hadn't slept through the night since they arrived in Bastogne. He was fairly certain the exhaustion was apparent on his face, the only moments of rest he had managed to get were snatches of sleep in broad daylight. At night, he would stare up at where the stars ought to be, his mind too heavy with the men in his care, to close his eyes. They were seventy-five yards ahead of him and the shells shook the earth around him but there wasn't much he could do. Dick was stuck, motionless, yards from the front and he was helpless. He had a less than desirable CO running his company and he was losing fast the people he could trust Easy with.
Buck was gone now, sent from the field hospital to a more permanent position. Dick had made the decision for him, one of the only things he could do for a man who had taken care of Easy in Dick's own absence. Guarnere and Toye were off the field, their return to the fight unlikely, if not inconceivable. NCOs and familiar faces had been paraded by his foxhole, towards the field hospital and Dick didn't think he would see many of them again. Easy knew how to take a beating but Bastogne had taken more than any was prepared to give.
There wasn't anything Dick could do about it. All of the Allies were undergunned and undermanned. They could keep pushing but they were outnumbered and surrounded in this forest. The trees had started to get to Dick, their branches worming their way into his head. He could try to push forward, to keep pressing on for the men. Dick wasn't a betting man but he would have gladly put all his money on Easy. Time and time again, the men he had seen train and grow had shown a courage that he had never known.
His faith in his men didn't help wile away the hours of restless insomnia. These hours of virtual silence and utter boredom would have been an excellent time to write letters but with his penpal sent packing some weeks previously, Dick found he didn't have any words. Anyone he would want to talk to was in a hospital, drunk in a foxhole, or huddled among the debris and snow of the front seventy-five yards away.
It had been different in Holland and Mourmelon. His office had been the gathering place for his friends and fellow officers. This foxhole was very lonely and very small.
It was getting smaller too, as the trees stretched and groaned above him. Arms tight against his chest, hands tucked into his jacket, he cast his eyes to the walls of the dugout. Ice was frosting the sides, prickling his bare face with its cold knives. Bastogne had a way of getting to a soldier. Dick had seen it before, bloody knuckles and dark eyes. Maybe it was starting to get to him too.
These trees were really quite eerie. Forests had a funny way of making it sound like you weren't alone, footsteps echoed and voices whispered. Bastogne had a way of sending minds deep into the snow, somewhere between the fragments of shells and the splintered wood. This foxhole really was quite small and those ice shards were too sharp against his shoulders. The woods told him that there were voices between the naked branches. The forest told him there were soft footsteps scuffling against the snow.
That was more likely. Roe was known to wander between the lines at night. But Roe didn't obscure his footsteps. These feet, though in Army issue boots, managed to sound light against the snow. Maybe the woods were really getting to his head, or maybe there really was someone out there?
