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They got their Christmas mail in early March, and no one in Easy Company complained, because it was the first they'd gotten in months. Dugan got a stack of letters and a couple packages, and a box of stale and busted cookies from his sister.
He was headed for the mess, flipping through his letters, when the clerk said, "Sgt. Rock! Letter for you!" and that stopped Dugan right in his tracks.
Just days after he'd joined Easy Company, a guy named Nichols had died while Dugan was talking to him. One minute he'd been wistfully describing his wife's roast beef, and the next his face had just exploded, turning to nothing but a helmet full of raw meat as he fell over with a soft thump. Dugan still had dreams about it, and in the dreams Nichols kept talking, even though he didn't have a mouth anymore.
The only reason Dugan thought about that right then was because Nichols getting his face blown off mid-sentence was only slightly more shocking than Sgt. Rock getting mail.
Dugan hadn't really paid much attention, but he couldn't remember the sarge ever getting a single letter or package. It seemed to him like Rock must have always been in the Army, like he must have always been here, barking orders and keeping everyone in line. It was a bit of a surprise to think of a civilian version of the sergeant existing outside of Easy Company.
But of course he did. He had to have come from somewhere, had family. Maybe even a wife, though that seemed unlikely. Women liked you to talk to them, and notice their new dress, and tell them they were pretty, and Dugan couldn't picture the sarge doing any of that.
No one knew much about Rock, and the stuff that went around was exaggerated and contradictory. Dugan doubted even half the stories were true. That he'd come from the steel mill, that he'd come from the boxing ring. That he'd been at Pearl Harbor. That his old man had died in World War I, and that was why he pushed everyone so hard.
Those were just stories, though, stuff that got circulated whenever new guys rotated in. A letter ... that was something. That was proof the sarge had left a life behind when he crossed the ocean, just like the rest of them.
Rock didn't seem surprised to get a letter, but he didn't look at it, either, which was odd. Every guy who got a letter looked to see who it was from, and then looked at the date on it. The sarge just stuck it in the breast pocket of his shirt and kept walking.
Dugan watched him until he went into the captain's tent, and then Dunn and Walker came over with their care packages, looking to trade candy and cigarettes for some broken cookies, and he forgot all about it.
The sarge spent most of the afternoon with the captain, who had spent most of the morning with the colonel, and the rumor was that they were going to take over an airfield somewhere.
The guys in Easy Company weren't all that interested in speculating about it, because it was Christmas. It was the wrong time of year, but it was Christmas, and not just because of the mail. They were at the tail-end of five days of luxury, what most of the other guys called mobilization. Five days in a real camp, sleeping in honest-to-God tents instead of some damp hole in the dirt. Showers, and a mess tent with hot meals, and cots. Heaven to guys who'd been living on K rations and adrenaline for weeks.
There was a nice bonfire in the middle of the camp, with a crowd around it every night. Someone had a harmonica, and someone else had a decent singing voice, and everyone else had the good humor that came from being able to sit around a fire and not worry about getting shot.
There were a couple bottles being passed around, too, so Dugan grabbed a seat on an old tire and took a turn. It was dark already, and some of the guys were pretty well liquored, clapping each other on the back and swapping increasingly unlikely stories. Warm and dry and drunk and safe -- you couldn't ask for more when you'd spent the last seven weeks with dirt in every crease of your skin and your feet in socks that were always wet.
Easy Company had picked up a couple new guys on this stop. They were there, too, huddled together, trying to look stoic. Too nervous to even get properly drunk.
You asked any guy, he'd tell you hell yes, he wanted to be part of Easy Company.
Most them were liars.
When Dugan got his transfer orders last year, he'd been shocked, and his buddies in Baker Company had looked at him with a mixture of envy and sympathy. Everyone knew Easy lost more guys than any other outfit. They also saw more action, and that egghead Rogers over in Baker had insisted that when you crunched the numbers, they actually lost fewer men per skirmish. Dugan wasn't sure he believed that. It seemed like Rock spent a hell of a lot of time collecting dog tags.
He remembered what it was like, being new. How you stuck with the other joes who'd just transferred in, until you figured out where your place was. If you lived long enough to find it.
Dugan'd long ago given up trying to figure out who would make it and who wouldn't -- a man's size and the steadiness of his jaw didn't say much about his gut, or his ability to follow orders, or his luck. Those were the three things you needed most to survive Easy Company.
The new guys spotted the sarge coming, and were already getting to their feet before Dugan saw him step into the circle of light around the fire. Rock said, "Keep your seats, fellas," and sat down on an empty oil can. Walker hesitated, then handed him one of the bottles that still had an inch or two of whiskey sloshing in the bottom, and the sarge nodded his thanks before taking a drink.
Dugan sat blinking in surprise. He couldn't ever remember when Sgt. Rock had sat around with them, much less shared their booze, and he suddenly thought of the letter.
It was still in the sarge's pocket, an inch of white sticking up out of the khaki.
Rock lit a cigarette and sat staring into the fire, and put off Dunn's single feeble attempt at conversation with a one-word reply. After a bit, the rest of the guys went back to talking to each other, and a little while later pretty much forgot he was there at all.
Dugan couldn't really forget, though, because it seemed like everything the sarge had done that day had been a surprise to him. He tried not to stare, but he couldn't help glancing over every so often. Just the fact that he was sitting there felt strange.
Rock watched the fire as it burned down, taking slow sips off the bottle. Every once in a while he reached up and touched the letter, running his fingers along the edge. It didn't look like he'd even opened it. Most of the guys tore into their mail right away, except for Mason, who only read one letter a day until they were all open, and then started over again with the oldest one.
When the bottle was empty, the sarge set it down next to his foot and lit another cigarette. Then he reached up and took the letter out of his pocket, and Dugan saw he'd been right -- he hadn't read it yet. He looked at it, turning it over, always careful to keep it out of the way of his cigarette, but he didn't make a move to open it.
Maybe he knew what was in it -- sometimes stuff got screwed up and you got a letter out of order, after one or two that had been written later. Maybe he'd been expecting bad news. A father with a bum ticker, or a girl he didn't think would wait for him. Those letters were hard to open, and after a while you got a sixth sense about them, and could tell it was full of bad news just by the feel of the envelope.
It was hard to imagine someone could write anything in a letter bad enough to scare Sgt. Rock.
Somebody nudged Dugan, and he realized Bulldozer was calling his name. "Hey, Dugan! What was the name of that guy who played the bagpipes?"
"Duncan," he said. He always remembered it because it was so similar to his own name. Bulldozer couldn't remember it to save his life, and had to ask someone every time he told the story.
Dugan watched everyone's reaction to Bulldozer's Duncan story, which picked up steam as it progressed. It was one of the more interesting things that had ever happened to Easy, and Dugan had actually been there for it. Bulldozer always did a good job in the telling, once someone reminded him of the bagpipe player's name.
He looked back over at Sgt. Rock just in time to see him toss the letter into the fire, still unopened.
Dugan almost dove for it without thinking, because letters were more valuable than gold out here, and it hurt to watch this one turn black and curl in on itself, to know that whatever news it held was gone forever. The sarge was watching it, too, not one muscle in his face so much as twitching as the paper wilted into a heap of pale ashes.
Dumbstruck, Dugan glanced around the fire. No one else was paying attention. No one else had seen it. Maybe no one else even knew about the letter, except the mail clerk and the person who had written it.
The sarge got up and threw his cigarette butt into the fire. It hit the rectangle of ash that had been his letter, scattering it.
"Enjoy yourselves tonight, boys. We're heading out tomorrow."
Dugan watched him walk away, and thought that maybe the sarge wasn't so different from what he'd imagined after all. Maybe he was only Sgt. Rock. Maybe he couldn't afford to be anyone else while he was here, because that was what kept them all alive, and he knew it.
Dugan wasn't sure he liked the way that thought made him feel better.
When he stood up, he nudged one of the logs with his boot, and it rolled over the spot where Rock had dropped the letter, and he couldn't even tell it had been there at all.
The End