Chapter Text
Being a medic, Webster had thought, was one of the best ways to experience the war. All of the action and less of the danger - the Geneva Conventions guaranteed medical neutrality, at least if the Germans were a shred of the respectable people he'd once thought them. He hadn't volunteered for it, but when they'd taken his M-1 and replaced it with a satchel of bandages and morphine, he was more or less relieved.
He'd thought that to save lives instead of taking them was a more noble cause.
He soon realizes that there is no nobility in war. There is only life and death and the lonely road he walks between them.
He first meets Joe Liebgott after the crossroads battle at Schoonderlogt.
He’s seen the Corporal within Easy Company before, heard banter about “The Barber” and his sharp tongue, sharper bayonet. But somehow Webster hasn’t much interacted with the man before.
Perhaps it has something to do with how the cut of his jaw makes Webster want to reach out and glide his fingers across it. Or how his dark curls remind Webster of the chocolate he’d given that little boy outside of Nuenen, rich and precious and oh-so-tempting.
If there is a reason as to why Webster has not much spoken to Joe Liebgott before, he refuses to put it into words.
The weather on October 5th, 1944 is much too lovely for the combat they’ve just gone through. Faint puffs of red smoke still emanate from the grenades they’d thrown, dissipating in the clear Holland air as a breeze sweeps across the field. Paratroopers are scattered in the vicinity, unwinding and licking their wounds after the battle.
(Dukeman was gone before anyone could reach him.)
“‘Ere ya go,” says Eugene Roe with a short exhale, wrapping the tail end of a bandage around Webster’s leg. “You ain’t gon’ get hit again, are you, David?”
“It’s not as though I did it on purpose,” Webster grumbles, both irritated and in pain. At some point he’d been shot, though it was just a graze; as indignant as he is about being injured, it is unlikely that he was targeted on purpose. And even if he were, who would he complain to? The Germans?
He winces as Roe pulls the bandage a bit more snug. He could patch himself up, but he doesn’t mind letting Roe do it for him, not after identifying the worry in those dark eyes. Medics have to stick together, after all.
“But no, I’ll try not to get hit again,” Webster continues, rolling his eyes. “Same to you. You’re the one that landed on a barbed-wire fence. Do we match now?”
“Naw, mine’s on the other leg.” Roe shoots him a hint of a smile. Webster laughs.
Their muted conversation is disrupted by cheers; it seems Dominguez has finally begun to dole out coffee and rations. Roe stands and walks away, murmuring something about taking some to Captain Winters.
Webster struggles to his feet as well. His well-trained eyes scan the men, a now familiar and endless process of searching for pained expressions or undisguised blood.
He finds both on Joe Liebgott.
“Corporal!”
The man turns as Webster approaches, enough for him to see that the bandage around his neck is soaked through with blood, and crimson has spread from the bottom of his ear to the collar of his ODs. The scowl he wears is evocative of exactly how Webster feels at the moment. When he speaks, his accent is harsh and nasal. “The fuck you want, Private?”
“Sit down and let me look at that. Why haven’t you gotten checked out yet?” he demands.
Liebgott’s expression only grows darker, if that is possible. "'Cause I was taking the fuckin' prisoners back to Battalion HQ, dumbass," he sneers, amber eyes glaring bayonets at him. “I’m fine. Don’t need no stinkin' medic.”
It isn’t uncommon to have a soldier rebuff his attentions, but it is rare that they do so with such a temper. Webster isn’t about to put up with it. He reaches out and Liebgott smacks his hand away like an unwanted ex-lover’s touch. “Get away from me, Webster.”
“With all due respect, Corporal Liebgott, if you’re injured, you don’t get to fucking tell me what to do,” Webster responds in due kind, matching his glare with one of his own. “Your wound opened up again, didn’t it?” No response; Webster seizes hold of the man’s uniform and bodily pushes him down to the ground, daring him to fight back. Liebgott stares up at him, eyes wide. “A bit of free advice: listen to your medics or next time you get hit, you’ll be yelling for a while, sir .”
“You wouldn’t fucking dare ignore somebody callin’ for you,” says Liebgott.
He’s right. “Try me,” Webster says anyway, half-falling to the ground when his injured leg buckles as he bends. He catches himself, pebbles digging into his palms, and rights himself to find Liebgott staring with an unreadable expression. “What?”
The man scoffs and looks away petulantly. “Nothin’. Just get on with it.”
“Fine.” Contrary to his exasperated tone, Webster makes sure his movements are careful and measured as he slowly unwraps the bandage around Liebgott’s neck. His knuckles brush the underside of the man’s chin and he can feel his Adam’s apple bob.
The wound looks worse than it really is - it’s barely more than a graze, the heavy blood flow a result of its location and the muscle’s continued usage. Webster cleans the area as well as he can with the soiled cloth and a bit of water from his canteen. Then he fishes out a half-used sulfa packet and begins to sprinkle it into the wound.
Liebgott hisses and flinches away, stilled only by Webster’s hand on his neck. He lets out a string of curses in German, to Webster’s surprise.
“Shit- fucking- pretty boy medic needs to watch where his fucking hands go, ‘s gonna stab me with a fingernail,” the man gripes, glancing about anxiously, though he shows no sign of worrying that he will be understood. “Ow. Shit. Needs to shut his mouth, too, or I’m gonna do something fucking stupid.”
Webster blinks. He hadn’t realized that his mouth was open, but he closes it now.
“Thank fuck,” Liebgott sighs, rolling his eyes. “Kid’s got a real pretty face ‘til he opens his mouth.”
Webster’s heart skips oddly in his chest, though he keeps his eyes and hands focused solely on their work. What could Liebgott mean by that? Is it possible he…
No. There is no point in conjecture, especially not of this sort. It will only garner him pain.
He shakes the thoughts out of his head, wrapping a fresh bandage around Liebgott’s neck and smoothing it with steady hands. “There. Don’t fucking agitate it,” he says, using Liebgott’s shoulder as a crutch to stand. “Find me if it bleeds through again.”
“Sure, whatever.”
Piqued by the man’s dismissal, Webster turns to look over his shoulder. “Don’t forget what I said, sir,” he says in German, childishly relishing the way Liebgott’s mouth falls open in shock.
There’s a speck of fear in his eyes and Webster turns his lips up in a reassuring smile. “You’ll be fine,” he adds. “What is spoken in German stays in German.”
He walks away, heartbeat pulsing in his ears and his wounded leg, wondering if there is more to Joe Liebgott than he’d thought.
“Uh… the fuck?”
They’re heading into the Ardennes, to hold the line around a town called Bastogne. A gentle snowfall has begun to obscure the landscape, reminding Webster of lazy nights spent staring out his dorm window as he failed to focus on his studies.
But the Private Webster of Belgium and the David Kenyon of Harvard could not feel further apart.
The men shuffling past them are little more than ghosts in uniforms, empty-eyed and dull-hearted. Webster gapes as he sees unbandaged wounds, olive fabric dark and stiff with blood, on what seems like every one of the men. Just what sort of a hell are they walking into?
Across the sluggish parade of soldiers, he sees Heffron and Guarnere begin to pester every retreating man they can for whatever they can scrounge: ammo, grenades, winter gear. Webster’s eyes meet Roe’s and they both spring into action.
“Morphine! You got morphine? Scissuhs?”
“Hey, give me your aid kit,” says Webster to the first man he sees.
He frowns, spits a mouthful of dark something to the side, and says, “Ah, ye don’t fuckin’ need it. All gonna die out there anyway.”
Something foreboding curls at the bottom of Webster’s gut, hot and heavy like a dragon making its den. He growls and responds perhaps too callously, “Hey, your buddies are already dead. Give me your aid kit and maybe I can save some of mine.”
The soldier glares at him, but there is little more than an aching sadness behind his eyes as he hands over the aid kit.
Webster takes it. He pats the man’s shoulder and moves on, always forward, plying whatever meager supplies he can out of the retreating company, from bandages to drugs to even a carton of smokes when he can. The private who hands it over has only death in his eyes.
Webster looks around at Easy Company, catches Liebgott’s gaze as he wrenches someone’s ammo bag from them. The Corporal’s eyes are a void flecked with orange firelight, and a single moment of troubled understanding wavers in the air between them, as invisible and yet unstoppable as radio waves.
The days ahead of them are going to be long and cold and hard. Reflected in Liebgott’s eyes, Webster sees his own resolve harden.
They’re going to do what they must to survive. There is no other option.
He can only hope it is enough.
Once, when Webster was a child, he’d snuck out of the house during his scheduled Latin lesson to play in the heaviest snow of the year. While his governess searched the library high and low for him, David frolicked in the white blanket smothering the gardens, imagining himself in a fantasy world where letters and Latin were left behind.
When he’d finally gone inside, it was only because his woolen coat was soaked through and he couldn’t feel much of anything. He was bedridden for two days to recover from hypothermia.
But here, in the freezing wasteland of the Ardennes, he cherishes those memories of silent, soft isolation more than anything.
"Medic!"
"What the hell are you doing without your boots on, Corporal?" demands Webster as he skids towards the foxhole, mud and snow scraping up his already-grimy ODs as he slides inside. "Gordy" Carson is shaking so badly he can barely hold up his wounded leg, so Garcia props it up on his own knee.
"I was massaging my feet! Like you told us to!"
"Oh, Jesus Christ."
Trees and shells explode around them in a deafening cacophony of artillery, so loud that Webster can barely hear himself think. One shell had struck the tree above their foxhole, sending wooden shrapnel down to pepper the man's leg like skewered meat. Webster takes stock of the wounds for a mere second before moving into action.
"Okay, Carson, hold steady," he says. Then he starts to pluck out the largest splinters, ignoring the fresh blood that oozes over his hands and into his cuticles, ignoring the man's pained howls, ignoring the muffled shouts for a medic across the line. Roe or Spina will get to them.
He gets the biggest pieces out, but his tweezers were lost in Holland and the risk of infection is too great if he bandages Carson up as is. "It's not too bad, but I'm sending you back to Bastogne," says Webster, ripping open a sulfa packet with his teeth.
"Off the line? Fuck, Web!"
"Hey, you can come back as soon as one of those pretty nurses pulls all the twigs out of you."
"Aww, but no nurse'll have your baby blues, Web," Carson jokes, strained as his voice is.
Webster rolls his eyes. "Do you have any morphine, Corporal?"
"Uh, yeah, one syrette I think."
"Good, because I don't have any for you."
It is a lie of omission; Webster has one syrette left, same as Roe and Spina. But as much as he likes Carson, something warns him to save the painkiller. There will be worse wounds than this.
Carson fumbles for his own aid kit and then to his surprise, hands the morphine over. "I don't need it, Web. Maybe they'll give me somethin' in Bastogne."
Webster doubts it, but he takes the syrette nonetheless. "Thanks, Gordy. You wanna help him back and find him a Jeep, Garcia?"
The soft-spoken private agrees. The world has stopped shaking apart, calm beginning to reknit the fractures of their psyches as Easy takes stock of its condition in the wake of the shelling. Webster hears First Sergeant Lipton calling names in the distance.
He makes sure Corporal Carson gets picked up and then goes to convene with his fellow medics.
"Who got hit?" asks Spina, deepening the foxhole he shares with Roe.
"Carson," Webster says, simultaneous with Roe's reply of "Penkala."
"Shit, they ok?"
They fill each other in, slumped together in the half-finished foxhole. Carson was worse off than Penkala, whose wounds are relatively minor, but each casualty is a drain on their already-scarce resources.
"This is bullshit," Spina gripes. "No surgeon, no fuckin' aid station, no drops. How do they expect us to hold the line when we ain't got the shit to do it with?"
"David," says Roe, "y' got any scissuhs?"
"Uh, only my pair, sorry, Gene."
Roe curses under his breath, brow darkened with frustration. He's about to speak again when the voice of the company's nemesis snaps the silence.
"What's this? All three medics in one foxhole?" Lieutenant Dike's footsteps could probably be heard all the way to the German line; it seems the man doesn't quite get the point of treading lightly. Roe and Spina both avert their gaze, unwilling to talk back to their CO as the man chastises them.
Webster barely resists an eye roll. "Sir, we're just discussing our supplies," he says, adopting the innocent expression that works on all commanding men as insecure as Dike. He'd perfected it at Harvard. "We won't be sharing this foxhole permanently." At least, not all three of them - Webster is bunking with Hoobler, but what the Lieutenant doesn't know won't hurt him.
"W-well," Dike stammers, robbed of his momentum, "fine. Where's my foxhole?"
Thankfully Lipton appears to lead him to it, disdain hidden by all but the slightest twitch of his mouth as they walk away.
Webster sighs. Spina mutters some choice insults into his collar. Roe smiles, but it's wan and tired.
"Somebody's gotta make a run over to Third Battalion and see what they can get," he says. "Beg if ya have to. You know what we need - plasma, morphine, bandages, some goddamn scissuhs if y'can get 'em."
He and Spina meet eyes and the Philly man shrugs. "I don' mind going. I'll take Heffron with me, just in case shit goes south."
"A'ight. Stay safe."
When the medic leaves, Webster turns to Roe. "Do you think he'll be able to get anything from them?"
"Can only hope."
And just like the rest of their resources, hope seems to be in increasingly short supply. Spina and Heffron return with a hilarious new inside joke featuring the lost Hinkle, but little to offer in the way of actual supplies. They share what they can before going their separate ways, each to make rounds through the men.
Webster finds Hoobler in an enduring good mood, pulling fallen branches over to reinforce his foxhole cover. “Hiya, Web,” he grins. “How’s my favorite medic?”
“Would you like the United States Army approved answer, or the real one?”
“Oh, I know what the Army’s tellin’ us. I was just hoping your Harvard imagination could come up with something better than that.”
Webster rolls his eyes. “When we get out of here, I’ll write you a goddamn book, Hoobler. For now, I got three words for you: everything fucking sucks.”
Hoobler cackles, his toothy grin coaxing a half-hearted smile out of Webster as well. If there is one thing he can count on in this frozen hell, it is that the men of Easy Company will cling to humor as a damn lifeline for their morale.
Some men, of course, are livelier than others. A rasping cough from a figure in the distance seizes his attention; Webster pats his friend on the shoulder and goes to check on the soldier.
He recognizes Liebgott by the slant of his thin shoulders, hunched over as he is. The man is digging his foxhole with a single-minded ferocity punctuated only by his occasional cough.
“You alright, Liebgott?” Webster calls softly, announcing his presence so he doesn’t whip around and inadvertently shoot him.
The man glances at him, scowl permanently etched into his features. “Ah, Christ,” he mutters, rolling his eyes skyward. “Whaddaya want, Webster?”
“How long’ve you been coughing?”
“Fuck, I dunno. I’m fine.” He stabs his entrenching tool into the dirt, jolting when it hits a rock and bounces off. “Ain’t nothing you can do ‘bout it, anyway.”
He’s got a point; Webster frowns, concern overlapped by his irritation. “Well, it doesn’t sound too bad. Find me if it gets worse, though.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t give me that shit.” He hops into the shallow foxhole, forcing his way into Liebgott’s space. Their boots thump together as Webster stares the man down, absently struck by a thought - white as snow, red as blood - but determined to make Liebgott listen. “It gets worse, you come to me. Last thing we need is for you to get pneumonia out here. Okay?”
“Geez, fine,” says Liebgott. They meet eyes and something shifts, the deep lines of his scowl softening into an almost fond resignation. “I will, Web. You… you lemme know if you need anything, too, got it?”
Webster blinks, taken aback. He needs a lot of things, none of which Liebgott can obtain for him. But it is the thought that counts here, and the flicker of warmth in his eyes is worth more than he can say; it sparks a slow, smoldering heat in the pit of his belly, a familiar pleasure that makes him flush and slip away.
“Uh, right. I’ll do that,” he stammers. “I have to… go. People to check on, you know.”
He can feel Liebgott’s gaze on him as he flees.
Days pass, each one marked by the same horrors: a cold so biting that extremities go white in minutes, long periods of peace interrupted by earth-shattering artillery fire, songs and screams blending together until Webster can barely tell the difference.
That night, it snows twelve inches. He wakes up in the middle of the night when the world seems to drop ten degrees in temperature, and finds Hoobler shaking snow off of their shared blanket.
Skinny Sisk gets hit.
Then Lieutenant Peacock's disastrous patrol goes out, and they come back one man short and one man wounded.
Smokey Gordon is paralyzed from the neck down on Christmas Eve morning.
Lieutenant Welsh's fire earns him a million-dollar wound.
The list of names grows longer in tandem with the lessening of their supplies and their morale. Webster does his best to keep his pessimism to himself, but the chances of any of them making it out unscathed seem to be shrinking exponentially. Colonel Sink's visit and message from General McAuliffe is a welcome message of resistance, but its effect wanes in the presence of a cold cup of white bean soup and lemonade snow for dessert.
It is not the first time Webster has missed home, but it is the most poignant. He tries to imagine the scene - a three-course meal in their sparkling dining room, Christmas trees in every possible corner, a nightcap of the finest port and a four-poster bed - but it seems as far away as the Pacific and its sweltering holidays. The details escape his memory; would Mother wear red or green this year? Does his brother have leave to visit or is his CO as draconian as Sobel?
"Hey, Web." Hoobler pulls him out of his thoughts, clicking their boots together.
"Hmm? Oh, hey."
"Not to leave ya stranded or anything, but me 'n' Rader are gonna take the OP for tonight, give everyone a night off, yanno?" He pulls an apologetic expression. "Think you can find another foxhole buddy?"
Webster shrugs. "Sure, Hoob." He's not sure who he could bunk with - Roe had gone back to Bastogne with Harry Welsh, and who knows where Spina is. Probably with Heffron. But he'll figure something out.
Hoobler claps him on the shoulder. "Thanks, Web. Merry Christmas, yeah?"
"Merry Christmas, Hoob."
Shivering and lonely, Webster walks the line. He passes the mortar squad's foxhole, faint tendrils of smoke seeping from the corners of their tarp. Talbert is chuckling quietly as Shifty Powers recalls the entirety of "The Night of the Bayonet" from memory. Curled up in Sergeant Randleman's foxhole is he and Sergeant Martin, whose dark curls are barely visible above the blanket that covers them both. Webster meets Bull's eyes and returns his slow, careful nod of recognition; what happens in foxholes stays in foxholes, and he will be the last to judge if the feelings go beyond that.
When he reaches Liebgott's foxhole he pauses. Something between the two of them has changed, ever since they'd arrived here in Bastogne. Where there once was animosity there is now a strange feeling of kinship, forged by the frozen hellscape they share. He finds himself gravitating to the man despite the dangerous feelings that arise whenever Liebgott smiles, because if either one of them could die any minute, who is he to deny himself that pleasure?
Sometimes Webster catches Liebgott staring out of the corner of his eye. He never says anything, but the one time he'd looked back Liebgott had seemed almost… embarrassed.
He shakes the corner of the tarp and peeks in. Liebgott is alone.
"Get in here, don't let out all the fuckin' warm air," the man gripes without looking.
Webster needs no more encouragement. He slides beneath the tarp, cold snow seeping through the back of his jacket, and presses their shoulders together. "Hey."
Liebgott jolts, an involuntary noise of shock escaping him that makes Webster chuckle. "Sorry, were you expecting Marlene? I'm afraid her schedule is full."
He gets a wide-eyed stare in return. "Uh, Alley, actually."
"Oh. Well, I can go -"
"Nah, stay," says Liebgott, snagging his arm before he can move. "Alley can find another hole. He's good at that."
Webster snickers, allowing himself to relax back against the dirt wall. Liebgott angles himself away, which gives him a lovely view of his too-sharp cheekbones but deprives him of their shared body heat.
'Merry Christmas' is on the tip of his tongue but he catches himself. Liebgott is Jewish.
"Happy Hanukkah," he says.
Liebgott blinks, and then he's laughing, perhaps too loud for their noise discipline, but there's a genuine delight in the sound that almost warms Webster. "Oh, man, Web. Thanks, but Hanukkah ended the day before we got to this shithole.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, fuck. You’re the only person that’s said that to me, ‘cept Captain Winters, and he’s a goddamn saint if I ever believed in one. You seen him doin’ his ‘French wash’ in the mornings?”
Webster rolls his eyes. “I’ve told him multiple times that the importance of being clean does not outweigh the risk of hypothermia, but the only person he’ll listen to is Captain Nixon, and he’s too busy running between regiment and battalion CP to stop him.”
Speaking of hypothermia, he’s freezing, neither of them have blankets, and the point of sharing a foxhole is to share warmth as well as company. Webster scoots closer, reaching out to stop Liebgott when he flinches away.
“Hey, stop it,” he complains. “It’s fucking cold.”
This time Liebgott doesn’t shy away as Webster moves over, leaving them pressed shoulder-to-thigh, helmets clicking together. He does mumble under his breath, “Should’a figured you’re a cuddler, Web.”
He snorts. “Your dates must be quite disappointed if this is what you consider cuddling, Lieb.”
The nickname slips off his tongue casually, but they both pause. It is a common enough shortening of his name, but they both know what it means and Webster has always made a concerted effort not to use it.
But what happens in foxholes stays in foxholes, and something in Liebgott's eyes sparkles.
"Betcha I'm a better date than you are, college boy," he quips. "How many birds you slept with? Two?"
"That's a bit of a loaded question, isn't it?" asks Webster, one eyebrow quirked.
Liebgott smirks and his stomach flip-flops. "Only if you're ashamed of the answer," he goads.
Is he?
"Four," Webster admits. Liebgott's eyes widen, obviously not having expected an answer. "Four women. One in high school, two at Harvard." One in Georgia as he tried to convince himself he wasn't queer. It hadn't worked. "What about you?"
A beat of silence is followed by Liebgott's, "Seven," though he sounds less triumphant than would be expected. Another beat of silence, and then, in soft German: "What about men?"
Webster inhales sharply. “What?”
At first he panics. Has Liebgott figured him out? Sure, a lot of the men’s banter could be considered homoerotic, but Webster rarely partakes in the joking, too afraid that someone will see through him and realize where his heart lies. But there is a curious spark in Liebgott’s eyes, accompanied by a vulnerability rarely seen on the older man.
He is not the only one taking a risk here.
What happens in foxholes stays in foxholes, and what is said in German stays in German, but there is no denying the danger of a court-martial or firing squad should this conversation stray beyond their ears.
Yet, Webster’s gaze traces the curve of Liebgott’s chapped lips, and he cannot resist.
“Just one,” he whispers. “He was a senior at Harvard. I was a freshman."
His eyes are nothing but black in the half-moon light. When the words come out, they are low and almost filthy. “Did he fuck you good, Web?”
Webster shivers regardless of the cold, memory flung back to a night on a squeaky bed, bruised hips and disappointing pillow talk. A half-amused smirk pulls at his lips. “Not as good as it could’ve been.”
“Aww, how unfortunate, princess.”
“What about you?” he asks, determined to subvert the interrogation, confident now that they’ve cracked the ice. “You ever have someone fuck the bastard out of you?”
Liebgott laughs. “Not possible. A couple guys tried, cooled off when they realized I don’t take kindly to being pushed around.”
“I’ll bet you scared them off.”
“Eh, not before we had a real good time," leers Liebgott. His features are almost sharklike in the near-darkness - a flash of white teeth and dilated eyes. He reaches over to where Webster's bare hands are tucked between his legs for warmth (can't work with gloves) and takes one hand between his own, stroking it much too sensually for a foxhole setting.
"I could show you a good time, Web," he whispers, voice pitched just this side of wicked, and Webster wants.
He pictures what it'd be like to let Liebgott fuck him. He’s slight, but Webster’s seen him put men on their backs in hand-to-hand training, seen him absorb the recoil of a M-1 effortlessly; it would be a fight for dominance, if Webster wanted to fight. He imagines Liebgott pinning him down, whispering all the things he’d like to do to him with that silver tongue of his, and an artillery burst of lust flares up in him.
“You thinking about it? You want it?”
“Yeah," Webster murmurs absently. Liebgott leans a bit too close and he jerks away, returning to his senses. “Hey, not here!”
“What?”
“I’m not doing it in a foxhole, Lieb. What if we’re caught?” The risk is too high.
“What, you a screamer?” Liebgott teases. Webster rolls his eyes.
“You wish,” he retorts. “I - seriously, hands to yourself.” He bats away Liebgott’s wandering hands and the man pouts, looking like a spurned teenage boy rather than the hardened soldier they are all pretending to be.
“You know, either one of us could die any day,” he says. “Don’t you want your last memories of little ol’ Joey Liebgott to be good ones?”
“If you’re trying to spoil the mood, it’s working. Look, maybe when we get out of here. Gives us something to look forward to.”
“Sure, Web,” Liebgott mumbles, exhaustion showing now that his hope for sex has been crushed. His eyes slip shut, head tilting onto Webster’s shoulder; his warm breath fans across his jaw. “We get outta Bastogne and I’ll fuck ya ‘til you can’t walk.”
Webster sighs and closes his eyes. The feel of Liebgott pressed flush to him is as comforting as it is unfamiliar. “I look forward to it, Lieb.”
On the 26th, the Third Army breaks through the German lines to reach Bastogne. Their severely wounded are evacuated, and they are resupplied, but none of it is enough.
Webster holds his tongue when his comrades gripe that they were not in need of rescue. He has the utmost faith in Easy Company, but to him it is clear that they could not hold out for much longer. The Battered Bastards of Bastogne are still alive and kicking, but at a cost.
Everyone hopes to be pulled out to Mourmelon-le-Grand, but they hold the line.
On New Year’s Eve, their mortar squad joins every gun in Bastogne in a holiday shelling of the Germans for everything they’ve got. Skip Muck hoots every time they set off a round. Sergeant Guarnere is leading a group in a rendition of “Auld Lang Syne,” which may perhaps be a competition as to who can sing the most off-key; if so, Joe Toye is undoubtedly winning.
Webster watches the commotion from a ways off, smiling faintly. He wishes he could take out his journal and immortalize tonight in its pages, but his fingers are too frozen to be dextrous enough to hold a writing utensil. It is snowing, moreover, and his journal’s pages are wet and smeared enough.
The crunch of a footstep alerts him to Liebgott’s presence; Webster glances up just in time to see the Corporal lean down and press their lips together in the slightest of kisses.
He pulls away just as fast. Webster gapes. “What was that!?” He looks around semi-wildly, but no one pays any notice to them.
Liebgott shrugs. “No dames around, figured you were the next best thing, college boy,” he bluffs, the self-satisfied look in his eyes belying his flippant tone.
Webster rolls his eyes, heartbeat too fast, lips twitching into something that is decisively not a smile. “Thanks, Lieb. Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year, princess.”