The Bavarian Gate

18

A Very Strange AWOL

Under heavy pressure by the British 8th Army, Rommel pulled his Afrika Korps entirely out of Libya that winter, but it was a strategic retreat. The Desert Fox saw possibilities in the west: Drive through Tunisia into Algeria, take the city of Algiers, and the situation would become much more favorable.

Then in mid-February 1943, the Afrika Korps brushed aside the small American and French units and rumbled throu Gafsa toward Tebessa, which Rommel considered strategically vital. Between Gafsa and Tebessa lay the Kasserine Pass, which the Allied Command raced to defend. There the Afrika Korps savaged the green U.S. 1st and 34th Divisions. But it never quite reached Tebessa, because the fighting had taken a toll of Nazi men and armor, and Allied air forces had established dominance.

The 509th Parachute Infantry (nee 2nd Battalion, 503rd) played no part in any of this. The whole battalion was quartered in Boufarik. The Allied Command had decided that employing lightly armed parachute units in regular ground operations was to misuse a special tool.

Then, in early March, the battalion was put on trains and moved 380 miles west to Oujda, in French Morocco, where it was bivouacked outside the city. There it received replacements, and returned to intensive training.

But even in French Morocco, battles were fought. In early May, the new, highly trained but unblooded 82nd Airborne Division arrived, eager to prove itself, and was bivouacked near the 509th. Whose men took umbrage at the newcomers' cockiness, particularly when, in early June, the Allied command attached the previously independent 509th to the green 82nd as just another constituent battalion.

It might not have been so bad, had living conditions not been so lousy, both for the old hands and the newcomers. The training was brutal and unrelenting, humping equipment up and down the rugged hills, running, and especially training at night: They were to become the masters of darkness.

Which meant sleep time was not only short, but often came during the day. And they slept in pup tents-crawl-in shelters that by day were like ovens.

Nor were there mess-halls, or even mess tents. They took their mess tins to the kitchen, got their food (which was poor and monotonous), and sat on the ground to fight for it with swarms of flies. They soon gave up trying to shoo them away, or even brush them off effectively. They simply cursed, chewed, and swallowed.

On the occasional day off, there was little to do except go into Oujda, where keepers of cheap bars dispensed bad whiskey. And arriving in a less than Christian mom the troopers were inclined to truculence. In fact, the battles of French Morocco were fought in the bars of Oujda, notably between troopers of the 509th and those of the 82nd. In these, any reluctance to trade blows tended to be lost.

Not all troopers took part, of course. Bar brawls are not vital experience for young warriors, but for many at that stage they were inevitable, indeed for many a joy.

Macurdy, however, preferred to avoid brawls, and found quieter, more out-of-the-way bars, frequented by those who preferred friendliness to fist fights. He'd learned to drink in Phenix City, Alabama, and did it more gracefully than most. Having a rare ability to control his physiological processes, and being neither obsessive nor addictive, he didn't get drunk. Largely he drank wine-he hadn't learned to like hard liquorallowing himself at most a certain mellowness. Of course, he'd recently had his 39th birthday, but he'd have handled his trips to Oujda more or less similarly had he been ten years younger. In fact, he would probably have come through his Oujda months unscathed, except for a two-and-a-half-ton truck. He was with Cavalieri and Luoma, headed back to camp, not drunk or even tight. Over-relaxed perhaps, and less alert than might be. The truck was heavily laden, hauling ordnance from the docks at Mellilla. The driver said he never saw them, that a donkey cart had turned in front of him, and he'd swerved. Also, he'd been continuously on duty for seventeen hours. At any rate he knocked down a G.I. and ran over him.

MPs appeared as if by magic, filling out forms, taking names, ranks, serial numbers, units… The driver they hauled off in an MP jeep. The victim, who was taken away in an ambulance, was Staff Sergeant Curtis E. Macurdy, serial number 36 928 450.

Macurdy awoke in the base hospital, remembering nothing of the day. The heavy truck had run over his right leg, doing extreme soft tissue damage, breaking the femur, patella, tibia and fibula, but somehow missing foot, hip, and left leg. He didn't know this, of course. All he knew, vaguely, was that his right leg was in a cast and elevated, its shrunken aura a chaotic mess, and that he was doped to the gills.

He thought of doing something about it, but it seemed like too much trouble, so he fell asleep again, drifting in and out for an indeterminate period that seemed quite long.

The next day he awoke more or less alert. The ward was less than half full, but he had a neighbor in the bed on his left, his right leg also elevated and in a cast. The man was reading a paperback.

Macurdy lay quiet for a while, searching his mind for what had happened, and finding nothing. So he interrupted the reader. "Where am I?" he asked.

The man looked at him. "The base hospital in Oujda."

"What happened to me?"

"Damned if I know. A medic can probably tell you. How's your leg feel?"

Macurdy gathered focus and looked again at the aura around it, more clearly than before. It was still shrunken, but a little less chaotic. "Busier" now; the leg was trying to heal. It was also dark with pain, more pain than the hard-edged ache he felt. He was still doped up, he decided, but not nearly as much as he had been.

"Not too bad. I'd like to know what happened though. What happened to you?"

"I'm in the 505th Parachute Infantry. We jumped on an exercise in the hills east of Jerada, five days ago. It was pretty windy, and I came down in a ravine full of rocks." He paused. "What outfit are you with?"

"The 509th."

"Ah! One of those! See any combat, did you?"

"Not much. We took some shelling at Tafaraoui, and swapped shots on a night patrol I was on out of Gafsa, but the only real fighting I saw was when we drove the Germans off Faid Pass."

He paused. "Not all that much-some companies got more- but enough to get the feel of things. We had almost as many casualties jumping and training as we did fighting." He chuckled. "And barroom casualties here in Oujda. I stay clear of those. I'm basically a peaceful man."

The 505er laughed. "Me too. I'm thirty years old; I leave those bullshit brawls to the kids. My name's Keith. Staff Sergeant Fred Keith, from Gwynn, Michigan."

"Mine's Curtis Macurdy, from Washington County, Indiana by way of Nehtaka, Oregon. I'm a staff sergeant too."

They were interrupted by a nurse. "How are we doing, Sergeant Macurdy?"

"Could be better. What happened to me?"

"You were run over by a loaded truck. The surgeons spent several hours putting your bones back together. You have enough pins in your leg to make a magnet spin."

"Huh! How long do they figure I'll be in here?"

"Two months if you're lucky-if healing progresses the way we hope. Then another month or two in rehab."

Her aura told him she was withholding from him. "Then what?" he asked.

"You should be able to walk normally."

"What about jumping? Parachuting."

Her eyes evaded his. "The doctor can tell you more about that than I can." She sensed his awareness, and added: "I expect you'll get a non-combat assignment."

Inwardly Macurdy smiled. FU give them something to think about, he told himself as she left, and decided that complete recovery in ten days would be about right.

Meanwhile his neighbor stared at him. Two months! Keith thought. He didn't commiserate though didn't know how Macurdy felt about it. At any rate, his neighbor from the 509th seemed to have his attention elsewhere.

Actually, Macurdy was examining the aura around his good leg, imaging it mentally as a basis for working on the damaged one. If need be, he could heal by the feel, but he preferred having a base line. He couldn't get at it very well with his hands, but he could do a good enough job using his eyes and mind. And this project, he told himself, would improve that skill.

The next day, when a visitor arrived to see Keith, Macurdy was reading, and paid no attention till the man spoke. "How you doing, sarge? The guys said to tell you they want you back before we get shipped somewhere." It was the voice that grabbed Macurdy's attention, jerking his gaze from the page.

"Any rumors?" Keith asked.

"Nothing different than usual: Greece, Italy, Sicily, southern France… But one thing is real: Division sent a team of officers somewhere to set things up. Probably the place we'll invade from."

Macurdy stared. The man's broad back was to him, but it was a back he knew, and the bull neck was familiar. Both went with the voice.

"Anybody else hurt since I left?" Keith asked.

"Not bad. What does the doc say about getting out of here?"

"Four more weeks, then rehab. I'll be as good as new" Macurdy interrupted. "Damn it, Keith! I wish you'd get a pretty girl visitor, instead of a big mean Indian logger from Oregon."

Roy Klaplanahoo spun and stared. "Macurdy!" he said. "What are you doing here?"

The next twenty minutes was a three-way conversation that ended with Keith and Macurdy knowing one another much better than they might have without Klaplanahoo's presence. All three had been loggers, Keith mainly a pulper and tie hack from Upper Michigan; it added a bond between the two patients.

"Macurdy is a healer," Klaplanahoo told him. "I seen him heal a bad cut a guy got in a knife fight. In a hobo jungle outside Miles City, Montana. And a couple guys that got shot in a logging camp. He does it like a shaman, except he don't use a drum." He turned to Macurdy. "I'll bet you been working on that leg."

Macurdy grinned, and lowered his voice for privacy. "They told me I'd be here at least two months. I gave myself ten days at most."

Keith looked intensely at him, and lowered his voice too. "They'll never believe it. They'll keep you two months regardless."

"Maybe I'll get a little help from my friends. Maybe a hacksaw."

"There's no bars on the windows here."

"To get this cast off. A saw will go through it like nothing. Then I can break it off."

Keith's gaze went out of focus; he was thinking. "You serious?" he asked.

"Damn right."

"I could get a hacksaw," Klaplanahoo murmured.

And that just about finished the conversation. All three men had something to think about. Macurdy decided to give more time to his leg. Ten days had been a guess. Maybe he could shorten that a few days.

Later that day Keith murmured to him: "Macurdy, I'm worried my outfit will leave me behind. Can you really heal people? Broken legs?"

"I guarantee it."

"Guarantee is a pretty strong word." Macurdy nodded.

"How about healing me?"

"As tong as you're willing."

"How do you go about it?"

"If I can't reach it with my hands, I do it with my eyes." Keith looked doubtfully at him. "Show me."

Macurdy put his attention on the aura around the elevated leg, then the good one, then the broken one again, and began to manipulate the thread-like energy lines, working on them for several minutes with eyes and intention. The lines tended to slip back the way they'd been, but when they did, he simply readjusted them. After ten minutes they were behaving pretty well, and he could sense Keith's body cooperating.

It's as if, he told himself, the energy threads make a kind of template, an energy skeleton for the body-flesh, bones,skin and all. Fix the template, and the rest of it goes along. At east it acted that way. He wasn't going to ask the doctors what they thought of the idea though.

"That's enough for now," he said. "I'll work more on it after a while."

Keith regarded the leg uncertainly. It seemed to him he could feel a difference. By God, he told himself hopefully, maybe this'll work. It just might.

A number of times on each of the next several days, Macurdy worked both on his own leg and Keith's for about ten minutes each. Already on the second day, Keith felt enthused, certain he could feel it working. At the end of a week, Macurdy felt sure that either of them could get up and walk, but he knew the medics wouldn't hear of it.

Meanwhile all he had for clothes was a ridiculous little green hospital gown with his bare ass hanging out. By then he'd had visitors himself-the battalion didn't train the time- and when Cavalieri and Luoma showed up that evening, he asked them to smuggle a set of his class A khakis to him.

Their expressions changed from cheerful to unhappy. It was Cavalieri who answered him. "Jesus, Macurdy, I'd sure as hell like to, but-"

"But what?"

"They-they took your clothes. This morning."

"What! Who took them?"

"We weren't going to tell you, but you've been transferred."

"Transferred Where?"

Cavalieri could hardly bring himself to say the words. "To the MPs. It's in your records that you were a deputy sheriff, and the sawbones said you won't be able to jump anymore, or anything like that, so…" He shrugged. "They latched onto you. Your khakis went to your new outfit, your jumpsuit and CTs to supply. Maybe I could get your boots back though, and bring them to you."

Macurdy seemed to collapse for a moment. "Shit." He paused. "I've got to think about this." Then he changed the subject, asking what the battalion had been doing, an didn't mention the matter again, except to take up Cavalieri's offer on the boots. He'd like to have them for old times sake, he said.

The best thing he could do now, it seemed to him, was act resigned to it.

After Cavalieri and Luoma left, he wondered briefly if maybe he should resign himself to it. MP duty was unpopular-at least MPs were-but someone had to do it, and it was relatively safe. As an MP, he'd likely return alive to his wife, while as a paratrooper, his prospects were doubtful.

On the other hand, he wondered, not for the first time, if Mary might not be better off if he didn't come home. Their future as a couple held decades of relocations, while she grew old and he remained young.

But his decision didn't grow out of that. It simply seemed to him he was supposed to be airborne. For better or worse, he'd spent most of his life heeding his deeper feelings, and for better or worse, he'd follow them now.

So he had a serious discussion with Keith, their voices scarcely louder than whispers. When it was over, he gave some attention to Keith's leg again. The thread-like lines of energy around it looked pretty much normal, so he concentrated on increased blood flow. He didn't pay much attention to his own leg anymore. It seemed to him he didn't need to.

The next day the company supply clerk sent out Macurdy's boots, by a guy pulling fatigue duty; Cavalieri was off on a training problem. After checking the boots for a bottle, the duty nurse told him to put them under Macurdy's bed.

Roy Klaplanahoo stopped by that evening as early as he could. The three troopers plotted briefly in undertones, then he left. Two hours later he was back. He could never get away with bringing in a package; the nurses and orderlies would suspect booze, and search it. But inside his Class A khaki shirt required wear on pass-he wore a second, both tucked into the outer of the two pairs of khaki trousers he had on. He carried the hacksaw blade in two belt loops of the inner pair; Macurdy would have to make do without a frame for it. All in all, Roy felt both conspicuous and uncomfortable, but it was twilight out, and no one paid much attention to him. After looking around nervously, he took off the outer pants, then the outer shirt, and put them under a sheet. The blade he tucked under the edge of Macurdy's mattress.

"Can you cut off the cast yourself?" he murmured worriedly. "I'll manage. Later, when it's darker."

Both Macurdy and Keith shook hands with Roy then, and the Indian left.

It was after midnight when Macurdy did it. The leg didn't look as bad as he thought it might. His healing actions had done more than repair bone, muscle, and connective tissue; they'd reduced the discoloration to a pale greenish yellow, and atrophy was minor.

In the small ward, he was the only man fully awake. Roy's pants and sleeves were a little short, but beyond that, the fit was decent. After cloaking himself with his invisibility spell, Macurdy left carrying his boots. The saw blade he'd left with Keith. No one looked up as he padded barefoot down the corridor and past the nurses' station.

Getting out of the building was not so straightforward. The exit had a screen door, and a sentry was posted by it. If the door were suddenly to open beside him, it seemed to Macurdy the sentry would surely see through the spell. For just a moment he considered using a choke hold on him, but slipped instead into a quiet ward, unhooked a window screen, let himself out, and pushed the screen shut behind him.

Leaving behind a round-eyed patient, who despite seeing the screen open, then close, had failed to see anyone doing it. The spell was better than Macurdy realized, better than Varia's had been, or Maikel's.

Once away from the hospital, he deactivated his cloak, and following Roy's instructions, found the road to camp without any trouble. He didn't even need to walk far before an airborne lieutenant in a jeep picked him up. "What regiment, sergeant?" the lieutenant asked.

"The 509th, sir."

"Ah. Them." The officer shifted out of neutral and started down the road. "I don't smell any booze on you, sergeant. What's the story?"

"I've got a girlfriend, sir. She doesn't drink."

"Did you use a pro kit? We don't want men hospitalized with VD."

"She's the daughter of a French major, sir. We hope to be married." The lieutenant's eyebrows raised, and Macurdy felt pleased with himself. It wasn't the sort of lie he'd think of, ordinarily. He felt as if he could do anything that night.

At the company area, he walked into the orderly room-a tent-and wakened the CQ, who stared at him as if he were a ghost. "Manny," Macurdy said, "I'm back. Got my transfer cancelled. Can you get me into Supply? I need my jumpsuit and gear."

"Jesus, sarge, you took me by surprise! I can get you into Supply, but I don't know where anything is there."

"That's all right. Let me in and I'll find it."

He did. He'd been prepared to take anything that fitted, but there was his own jumpsuit and helmet, with his own name on them. After putting them on, he folded Roy's khakis, put them in a pillow case and left with it. Stopping at the orderly room tent, he thanked the CQ before leaving him mystified and unsure. He hadn't asked Macurdy about his leg, but Doc Alden had supposedly said it looked like a blood sausage the size of a duffel bag. And that had been only-how long? A week ago? Week and a half?

Macurdy then went to the 505th's bivouac-it wasn't far-went to the regimental CQ, learned where he could find Roy Klaplanahoo, then went there and woke him. As planned, Roy had gotten Keith's boots and a set of his khakis, which he gave to Macurdy. Macurdy gave Roy his khakis back, put Keith's in the pillow case, then shook hands with his old friend and started back to Oujda and the hospital.

It was a fairly long hike, with time to think. He preferred that Keith not know about the cloak; it might spook him, and the ward in the middle of the night was no place for explanations. Then he remembered Varia that first night: They'd walked hand in hand, and he could see her just fine despite the spell; they'd both been inside the cloak. So hopefully physical contact would do it; contact and his own intention.

By the time he got there, his right leg was tired, and it was getting daylight. He'd have to wait till the next night to spring Keith. Finding a place to hide out promised to be tricky, because he wasn't sure the spell would persist if he slept. He waited by the door until the morning shift came in, and went in half a stride behind an army surgeon.

Then he snooped some rooms that were not wards. One held big bags of clean linens, and on top of one, a surgeon was having sex with a nurse; they never noticed the door quietly open and close. When they were done, they tidied themselves, then quickly dressed, kissed, and departed. Watching them had stimulated Macurdy. He wished he was back in Nehtaka, in bed with Mary.

Apparently this room was reasonably private. He made a place for himself between a wall and big bags of linens, and went to sleep there. It was chancy, but he couldn't think of a better place. And there was a window not four feet away. If he was discovered, he'd leave through it.

Several hours later he awoke hungry, and drew energy from the Web of the World. It didn't help his grumpy stomach, but at least he wouldn't get wobbly from hunger. While he'd slept, someone had dragged out the bag of linens he'd been behind. Obviously his cloak had persisted in his sleep.

Meanwhile he wasn't sleepy any longer, so he meditated-it was the first time in years-and after a while, slept again.

Even so, it was a long day and evening. No more lovers came in, only orderlies a couple of times for linens. After 2200, everything was quiet, and he slipped down the corridor to the ward, where he wakened his friend and freed his leg from its cast. When Keith had dressed, Macurdy murmured to him not to worry about being seen. "Just hold on to the back of my shirt, walk softly and say nothing. I've got everything taken care of." Keith frowned. Hold on to the back of your shirt? But he did, and Macurdy activated his cloak. There was no reaction from Keith; apparently the man still saw him as before. They walked together down the corridor, then left by the same window Macurdy had used the night previous.

As Macurdy went through the window, he deactivated his cloak, and Keith followed him. Then they walked together to the road. They'd gone a hundred yards or so before it really struck Keith that he was walking. When it did, he just stood there and laughed, guffawed, for about a minute.

After that, they talked while they walked. There'd been a big flap that morning when a nurse discovered Macurdy was missing. "The MPs arrived quicker than you'd ever imagine, and before lunch a guy from the CID showed up, with lots of questions. I told him I'd assumed the medics had moved you, but that I wasn't surprised; those cocky bastards in the 509th would do anything." Keith laughed again. "He told me you'd gone back to the 509th and gotten your jumpsuit, or someone had gotten it for you. The guy who'd been on CQ there said you'd walked in as if you'd never been hurt. The docs here said you couldn't have walked anywhere, in or out, for three or four months. The CID guy thinks there was a conspiracy by your buddies to spring you, but where the hell they stashed you was a mystery. They're probably checking all the whorehouses in Oujda. That's where guys would hide somebody."

Macurdy didn't laugh. Keith had given him food for thought. He hoped no one got into serious trouble over this.

On the road back to camp, they'd thumbed a ride, in a jeep with two officers from the 504th, heading back to camp from a bout in a presumably better class of brothel. They'd drunk enough they weren't worried about anything, and if they heard any strange stories the next morning, weren't likely to remember the two sergeants, or at least wouldn't volunteer it. They didn't even ask Macurdy why he was in his jumpsuit, which in town was "out of uniform."

Meanwhile Macurdy and Keith learned something from the officers: the 504th's 1st Battalion was to ship out that morning, the officers didn't say where to-and the rest of the division was sure to follow shortly.

They were let out at the 505th's area, and went to Keith's pup tent. Keith crawled inside, but Macurdy sat outside briefly, and with his pocket stiletto picked away at his 509th "Gingerbread Man" unit patch until he got it off. Then both lay waiting for sleep, each silently considering the morning to come. Belatedly, both felt ill at ease about it. Getting out of the hospital had been the easy part; if the MPs had been at the 509th so quickly after Macurdy's disappearance, they'd be at the 505th by breakfast.

They should, Keith thought, have holed up somewhere for a day or two before coming here. Maybe they still should. But then he thought to hell with it; he'd stay and see what happened. Shitl Here he was, walking around. They wouldn't hardly take him back to the hospital and put another cast on him, for chrissake. Even the army wasn't that stupid. They might take him away, but he'd be back before the day was out.

Hell, he told himself, something like this is so weird, they won't even put it in my service record. They'll be afraid to.

Macurdy wakened at dawn, and went to Roy's tent to see if he could get hold of some mess gear. A guy in Roy's squad had gotten arrested in Oujda two nights earlier for slugging an MP officer, so Roy loaned Macurdy his.

They were sitting on the ground eating breakfast when the MPs arrived with the company commander, who spotted Keith and took the MPs to him. The three sergeants got to their feet as the C.O. approached, Macurdy wishing he dared cloak himself. As it was, there he stood, less than four feet from Keith, with the name Macurdy above his left breast pocket, and stenciled on his helmet. It seemed to him he might as well be wearing neon lights and an alarm bell.

But when the MPs took Staff Sergeant Fred Keith away with them, Macurdy was still there, ignored.

Except by the C.O. "Sergeant," he said ominously, "I don't believe I know you." He peered at the name on Macurdy's helmet. "What's your outfit, trooper?"

The name on the C.O.'s helmet was Szczpura, and he had a trace of accent. The scars on his face, and the broken nose, suggested years in the prize ring; probably, Macurdy thought, as a middleweight. And almost certainly he'd never seen West Point. OCS probably. His mien as well as his aura reflected not only competence but integrity, a man who acted according to his convictions.

So Macurdy sketched out the whole story for him, except for the invisibility spell, with Roy Klaplanahoo supporting the parts on healing. "It looks like the 505th could be leaving here without one of its platoon sergeants," Macurdy finished, "and I'm a good one. I jumped at Youks les Bains, and was in on the capture of Tebessa and Gafsa." He neglected to say there'd been no Germans at either of them. "I've done recon patrols of German and Italian outposts in Tunisia, fought at Faid Pass, and commanded a jump in German territory to rescue a couple of our people. And got them out alive." He paused, then added in German, "Ferner spreche ich ganz gut Deutsch"-(Also I speak rather good German)-hoping it would make him more attractive.

Szczpura laughed drily. "Das ist nicht gutes Deutsch. Das ist baltisches Deutsch," he answered. ("That's not good German. That's Baltic German.") The captain's German was a little rough but easily understood. "I was born in Poland, in Olsztyn. There are a lot of Germans around Olsztyn; I had a German grandmother that lived with us."

His gray eyes appraised Macurdy coolly, then Klaplanahoo spoke again. "Captain, Macurdy and I are friends from way back. We logged together in Oregon, on opposite ends of a saw, and got bonuses for cutting more than anyone else in camp. And I saw him kill a guy with a knife throw, a guy that had just killed a deputy sheriff and shot the logging boss. He's not afraid of anyone, and he's even stronger than me. He's somebody guys like and respect, and…"

Szczpura cut short the plaudits. "Where did you get that nose, Macurdy?"

"A couple of places, sir. Before I joined the army. I'm not a drinking man or troublemaker, sir."

"You're AWOL from the hospital and the MPs."

"Yessir, I am sir."

The captain pursed his lips thoughtfully, then said, "Come with me, Macurdy," and led him to the orderly room. Inside, the captain spoke to the 1st sergeant, who sat at a desk with his breakfast in front of him. "Sergeant Barker, this is Sergeant Macurdy; he just arrived as Keith's replacement. His transfer papers are delayed or lost, but they'll turn up sooner or later. Have someone take him to Lieutenant Murray, then post him on the roster."

He turned to Macurdy. "Glad to have you with us, sergeant." Then added softly: "I hope you don't make me regret this."

"Thank you, sir. Glad to be here, sir."

Almost the last thing Macurdy wanted to do was disappoint this man. As he followed the company clerk to meet his new platoon leader, it seemed to him that in the Army, this miraculous salvation could have happened only in the airborne, and even there, the odds against it had been heavy.

Though neither Macurdy nor Captain Szczpura realized it, Fred Keith might soon have returned, not that day as he'd hoped, but within three or four, and at worst with only a reprimand on his record. But it didn't work that way, not because of the MPs, who in his case didn't really care much one way or the other. But because of the surgeon in charge of his case, who insisted he be assigned to a month in a rehab company. As a physician with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he felt wronged and insulted that the trooper had made him look bad.