Heart Of A Hero
by John O'Connor
Disclaimer:  Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the
property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom,
 MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko 
Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes
only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright
 infringement is intended. The original characters,
situations, and story are the property of the author.
Rating: PG-13.
Note: This is an Alternative Universe story inspired
by Tom Brokaw's excellent book "The Greatest
Generation."  It's dedicated to all who have taken up
arms for our country and our freedom.
Captain Samantha Carter, a staff officer with the
101st Airborne, crouched low behind a broken rock
wall, gripping her Thompson tightly. Peering over the
top, the captain could see dozens of enemy corpses
dotting the snowy expanse between the wall and the
dense trees of the Ardennes. There was, for a change,
no movement.
Sam sat back down behind the wall and pulled off the
heavy steel helmet to scratch at the matted blond
hair. 'Be nice to get cleaned up sometime,' the Army
captain mused.
Just a few days ago, the captain was with the rest of
the 101st Airborne in France on R&R following a long
stretch of combat after Operation Market-Garden in the
early fall. When German Panzer divisions began to
smash through the weak Allied lines in Belguim, they
were called in to help defend Bastogne, an essential
crossroads village in the heavily forested Ardennes.
Shortly after arriving on the scene, the town was
cutoff by advancing German forces as they pushed west
towards Antwerp. The divisional commander, General
MacAuliffe, took overall command of the Allied forces
in the pocket and set up the defense of Bastogne. He
asked all staff officers for help and Sam quietly took
up a rifle and a helmet and went to the front lines.
That was on the 20th.
On the 21st, the captain in charge of the outfit she
joined was killed during a firefight with the enemy.
She, being the ranking officer, took charge. The men,
at first, were unwilling to let a woman command them
but that changed when she showed she was just as
willing to fight and die as she was to order her men
to do the same. It was now the afternoon of the 25th,
Christmas Day.
Sam wasn't concerned with the larger aspects of the
situation: the attempt by the Germans to divide the
Allied forces and force a ceasefire in the West and
the determination of the Allies to defeat the Nazi
menace once and for all. All she knew was that she was
cold, dirty, and afraid. While her family was probably
sitting around enjoying a hot Christmas dinner, she
was freezing her ass off with her company behind a
stone wall with death all around.
This was not what the recruiting posters had shown
when she signed up after Pearl Harbor. But the
military tradition in her family was strong in her, so
sign up she did and she would fight to the best of her
ability. She knew deep down that the cause was just
and noble and worth the sacrifices demanded.
She glanced to her right and saw Jackson, the young
lieutenant who had been assigned to the company just
before their orders came through. He was a young,
bookish man but he seemed to have what it takes. He
also helped the men accept her as their commander.
Right now he looked back at her through his glasses,
the ones with the cracked left lens. His eyes asked
the unvoiced question.
"No, no sign of the Krauts. Just the dead and the
snow," she reassured him.
From her left came a deep bass voice saying, "That is
good. We could use a break."
Sam looked towards her sergeant Thomas Luther Carter,
who got the nickname Te-alk because of his initials.
He was one of the few black men fighting in a mostly
all white outfit. He was a large imposing man whose
complexion made him a natural for night patrol. His
forays after sundown had saved her people's bacon on
more than one occasion. The late captain had
personally recommended him for the Silver Star after
Normandy.
"Shit, it's snowing again!" Sam lamented. The low
skies and poor weather hampered any air support and
any supply drops. Ammunition was beginning to run low
as was morale. "Danny," she looked at her lieutenant,
"Go back to HQ & brief the colonel on our situation.
See if you can get some more ammo too."
He nodded and got to his knees. "Sure thing, Cap. I'll
be back in a flash. Too bad I can't fix these," he
replied gesturing to his glasses. He didn't salute,
that was the ultimate sin in a combat zone. He got
into a crouch and sprinted for the burned out
farmhouse to their rear. He knew she sent him because
he wouldn't blab that a woman was in command of
frontline troops and she also knew he could scrounge
needed material.
"Te-alk, get some rest. Unless this weather breaks, we
may be here for a while," Sam ordered. 'Easier said
than done in this icebox,' she reflected.
Time seemed to stretch out endlessly. That was the
problem with combat. The actual fighting, while
seeming to last forever, was often a short burst of
activity followed by long stretched of tension and
unease. Sam felt herself remembering London and the
months before D-Day.
She had been on leave and met a young doctor attached
to the 3rd Army. They had a brief, passionate affair
before she was ordered to report to the staging area
in the south of England prior to the Invasion. She
oftened wondered what became of the medic.
What if they'd met back in the States? Then they could
be having a warm Christmas with friends and family
around them. She hoped the doc was enjoying the
holiday.
She was thinking this when she fell into a light sleep
sitting in the frozen mud outside a small Belgian town
most people had never even heard of before.
The distant crump of mortar fire brought Sam wide
awake. She slowly relaxed when she realized the
bombardment was to the north of her position. She felt
sorry for the dogfaces under that lethal rain but she
was more concerned with her people.
As she looked over the wall again in the late
afternoon light, she thought she saw some movement
beyond the treeline but with the snow and the shadows
she couldn't be sure.
"Te-alk, psst!" she hissed. "Get them on their toes, I
think we have company."
"Yes, Captain," the sargeant whispered in reply.
Jackson came back at that moment, skidding to a stop
in the slushy ground. "Cap, guess what?"
"Danny, this is neither the time or the place for
games. Just give me a report, please," Sam said,
exasperation obvious in her voice.
"Okay, Colonel O'Neill is going to see about more ammo
for us. Grenades are getting scarce but I managed to
'stumble across' a satchel charge and some stray
bullets." Jackson was holding back a smile while he
related the next bit of news. "The Germans, under a
white flag, asked for our surrender. The general sent
back his response."
He grinned as he saw both the captain and the sarge
glowering at him. "He said, 'Nuts!'"
Sam felt a smile spread across her face. Te-alk
started to laugh low in his chest as the rest of the
men began slapping each other on the back and
laughing.
Finally joining in the general laughter, Sam asked
rhetorically, "Wonder what the Krauts make of that?"
She realized she may have a chance to find out first
hand as she heard the roar of a Tiger's engine.
"Danny, keep that satchel charge handy. We may need
it. Heads up, people! It's about to get pretty crowded
around here," Sam told her soldiers.
The roar of the German tank increased but there still
was no sign of it. The GIs could hear trees and
undergrowth splintering as the tank made it's way
through the forest. Glancing at each other with a grim
intensity, they all tightened their grips on their
weapons.
Sam looked around at her troops. They were all kids.
They should be home going to school or sitting in soda
shops with their girlfriends. They were farmboys, city
kids from blue collar and white collar families,
laborers and students. The oldest, outside of herself,
Jackson, and Te-alk, couldn't be much more than 20.
They were being asked to give so much but they were
willing to do so, and gladly, to keep their homes
free. She felt a big bubble of pride rising in her
throat.
She peeked over the wall just as the large German tank
crashed through the trees in front of them. The
machine gun mounted in the front of the beast began to
fire, the slugs ricochetting off the wall just as Sam
ducked back down.
"Shit! This is going to be harder than I thought.
Sarge, take some men and head for the far side of the
field. Try to draw the krauts but keep your heads
down. Danny, take a couple of guys and head the
opposite way. Okay, go," she commanded. 'If we can
distract the Tiger and take it out, we might just
survive this little tea party,' she thought.
As her people spread out, the Tiger stopped, it's main
turret arcing back and forth. It almost appeared as if
the machine was trying to decide whether to waste a
shell on the scattered troops. The MG had a much
smaller field of fire and had to concentrate on the
area almost directly in front of the tank.
German troops began to creep out of the trees. Sam was
not surprised to see they were Waffen SS, some of the
hardest fighting German troops. Fortunately, the Aryan
Ubermensch was a myth of the Nazi hierarchy and the
enemy began to drop from the American fire coming from
the sides.
Sam ventured another look over the wall and saw the MG
directed away from her position. She opened fire on
the advancing troops, watching several fall to the
frozen ground.
What she saw next filled her with dread. Danny Jackson
was sprinting across the field with the satchel charge
in his hand. His team was giving cover fire but he was
horribly exposed as he raced towards the tank.
He fell just before the tank as he was hit several
times. He dropped into a furrow and lobbed the smoking
pack under the tank. The charge went off, piercing the
soft underbelly of the Tiger. Smoke started to pour
from the veiw ports as the Tiger began to burn. The
upper hatch opened with a large gout of smoke as the
tank commander tried to crawl out.
Danny leaned up past the lip of the furrow and fired,
killing the German. He fell back as enemy fire began
to strike the dirt around him.
Sam called for cover fire, grabbed a first aid kit,
and sprinted across the field to Danny's position.
Just as she got there, she felt hard impacts slamming
into her in several places. She spun around and fell
next to the wounded lieutenant.
She lay there in the dirt in shock. She knew the pain
would follow shortly. She looked at Danny and saw that
his glasses were missing and he was bleeding from
multiple wounds in his leg and arm.
"How are you doing?" she gasped.
"Okay, I guess. Just a flesh wound," Danny lied. "Why
the hell did you race over here?"
"I came to help you but I seem to have lost the first
aid kit," she explained apologetically.
She fell back as the pain began to flow out from her
wounds. She could feel fire in her left shoulder and
in her chest. She was pretty sure she'd been hit in
the leg at least once.
Danny yelled, "Medic! Medic! Over here! The captain's
been hit! Hang on, Cap. You'll be okay." He was almost
crying in his frustration.
Sam forced herself to stay conscious as a medic raced
across the field, ignoring the various crossfires. He
ignored her instructions to take care of the
lieutenant first, damnit. As he sprinkled sulfa powder
on her wounds and bound them with bandages, she
finally fell into unconsciousness.
While she lay unconscious in a blasted church in town,
elements of the 4th Armored Division broke through and
the US 3rd Army came in to relieve the tired defenders
of Bastogne on December 26th.
Doctors with the 3rd pitched in to help the wounded
soldiers and civilians. One doctor in particular found
Captain Carter and, although thoroughly exhausted,
gave just a little bit more to keep the brave officer
alive.
Days later, just before the wounded were evacuated,
Sam woke up to see Colonel O'Neill scowling at her.
"You should be in big trouble, Captain. If I'd known
you were at the front, I'da pulled you back so damned
fast... Hell, I don't even know why you were anywhere
near the front." Then his face softened, "But thanks
to you and your men, the German attack in your sector
collapsed. Good job."
As he walked away, he muttered to himself, "I still
don't know whether to courtmartial her or put her in
for a citation."
Sam smiled and looked to her left. Danny smiled at her
from his cot. "Why did you do it, Cap?"
"I owed you, I guess," Sam said tiredly. "You helped
the men accept me and gave me a chance to prove myself
in combat. Just my way of saying thanks."
"Well, thank you. Next time, send flowers." He gave
her a boyish smile, "By the way, we only lost three
men in the fighting. You did real good, Cap." Danny
smiled and lowered himself. "Oh I forgot," he added,
"Te-alk and the men are real proud of you. They said
they'd fight for you anytime, any place."
"Thanks, Danny. That means a lot to me," Sam lay back
on her cot. 'My men,' was almost her last thought as
she slipped into darkness again.
When she woke up again, she was looking into those
large brown eyes that she never forgot, the eyes she
dreamed of as she fell asleep every night. They were
full of concern. Sam smiled, "Hey, how are you?"
Doctor Janet Fraiser smiled back saying, "That's my
line. Ready to go back behind the lines?"
"Sure, if you come to."
"Not yet, but I'll be due some leave soon and who
knows," Janet said as she stroked Sam's forehead.
"Maybe we can pick up where we left off."
Sam smiled again and said, "I'd like that. I'd like
that a lot."
 (c) John O'Conner
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