[ambrafoxtrot]

Part 13 Reunion

Trying to relax his battered muscles, Lario hid himself as deep as he could in the miserable ditch hole he had occupied for the last half an hour. It was his official improvised OP.

“Cristo !!...what a fuc&ing disaster…” Lario glanced once more at the scenario in front of him. He grabbed the binoculars once more and gave the gloomy scene another scan.

It was pitched dark, but the glare of the raging fires in the square in front of him allowed a decent vision of his target area. Ignoring pains and aches all over his body and the overwhelming sense of prostration, he gave another good look at what was happening around.

People going in and out of a building and carrying….”What?; frames, pictures, paintings or something like that, out of a building very close to a fire. The recovery volunteers lined up the objects carefully on the ground differentiating them by type.

“Interesting”

Engine sounds came out from west of the position; some pickups appeared soon after, and people started to carefully load injured folks on them. Some of the drivers came out to confer with the people on place; others gave assistance to the wounded still lying around.

Blackened face glued to the binoculars, Lario started to think that the good guys had won the battle after all.
“Bad guys don’t give a damn about saving art from fires.” was his reasoning

“Godda%it…I understand less and less of this mess…what am I doing here anyways” thought Lario observing the gloomy scene in front of him. “I don’t even know who I am working for anymore and why”; he went back with his mind to his encounter with the 11th Bersaglieri up north and then with the Carabinieri in Brooksville. “I better get back to COMFOD or at least to Brigade as soon as I can, to see if there is still anything to do in this fuc/&ng war.”

After he saw the vehicles departing east, he decided to move out and go back to the hospital; he suspected that vehicles full of wounded were heading there anyway and he didn’t want to be too behind the locals in rejoining his party. Besides he’d better go back, before Goia got worried and decided to pack up and leave town alone. He reckoned he’d got enough intel on the battle scene, to understand what was going on.

“Vehicles approaching! Vehicles approaching from Summit Road” cried Goia, who brought is AR 70 to bear using the windowsill as a bipod for it.

Medic Lt. Frigerio dropped what he was doing and rushed at Goia’s side to look for himself. He tried to still give the image of the good perfect noble officer, but the shredded BDU, the body odor and an inch of dirt all over him, kind of showed otherwise.

Three or four pickups were heading towards the building from the right side very slowly, a white flag sticking out of the first one.

Goia anxiously looked at Frigerio. The medic put a hand on Goia’s rifle and moved it away from the sill. “Let’s wait”.

Two battered and long bearded civilians came out of the first vehicle, unarmed, peered around, and walked towards the main door. They stopped cold as soon as they saw the back of an APC sticking out of the spot where the door ought to be.

“Who arre you” was the simple question Frigerio asked to the newcomers.

The two men, who hadn’t spotted the Italians ducked behind the window, yet, turned their heads that way.

“Sir…There has been a battle down in Cortez Boulevard. We routed the marauders but we had a lot of casualties. We have some wounded here. We know the Italian military Hospital is the only facility still working around here.”

More people dismounting from the vehicles and starting to unload their sad cargo.

Frigerio turned his haggard face in direction of the convoy again and saw more vehicle headlights coming up the road. The vehicles approached and stopped in an orderly line behind the ones that were already there. The medic was tired, he was exhausted and he had almost finished all the medical equipment he once had, including everything the 79th logistic coy had left in town one week before.

Kate came up from the basement to see what was going on.

“Peoples…thiis ospital iss bout to bi evvacuated…we arre auttof supplise. Therre isnotte mutch we can du for yu.”

“You must be kidding me man…you can’t leave just right now…we just managed to liberate the town from the mob wave, but now we have relatives, here…friends who have been injured in the struggle…the hospitals south of town have been abandoned, there is nowhere we can go…you have to help us!! We saved also your ass you son of a bi%&c!!”

The crowd started to assemble in front of the hospitals carrying the wounded, some of them walking and some in such a pitiful state that it was doubtful that they were still alive. Some of the people gathering in front of the hospital were armed and they didn’t really look like they would take a no for an answer.

Frigerio felt the frustration mounting and the physical prostration overwhelm him all at the same time…it seemed to him that nobody in the fuc&/ng world was able to reason anymore. He looked again at the front row of people advancing towards the windows.

“Yu listen to me bastardi. I am tirred of yu…yu all and yor fucching cauntry. Some of yur solders yust tried to kill us all some hours ago okeeeey ?????? I don’t wont to bi here, I didn’t asked to bi here. They sent me understend ? They sent meeeee !!!!! Now yu discipline yursself and put all the wunded down utside, I dont have space left inside. Second…you stop your threatening attitude or I wont even look at any of them not even if yu kill me. Third I garanteeee you that I wuld take many of yu with me if yu tried to kill me, and fourth I come out with my assssistent and make prioritis for the worse wounded ok?
Line all yur frends outhere and get out of my way.

Goia petrified tried to keep his finger as far as possible from the trigger of his AR, while Kate, who miraculously managed to understand the main part of the Medic lecture, rushed downstairs to grab as many plasma units, sedatives, needles, and the like as she could still scavenge in the rapidly decreasing supply of the Carabinieri company.

“Discipline yourself??” Goia thought while looking at Frigerio with a puzzled expression. “Can you really say that to a population that lines up their vehicles in such a neat file in the middle of a fuc&/ing war zone.

“Don’t yu ever get tirred Ms. Bates?” Asked Frigerio while trying to start to sorting out that bundled mess of variable typology of wounded.

Goia tried his best to keep relatives, friends and fiancées out of the way while Doctor Frigerio attempted to establish who needed his skills first.

Kate looked at him, the beauty of her face mixed with dirt and sweat, but not defeated yet.

“Thank you Lieutenant” she just said.

Picture
Frigerio (center) and Goia (left) discussing inside with one of the American civilian leaders, about the situation in Brooksville during a much needed break.