Chapter I. Casualties
November, 1944, Naples Naval Hospital, Naples, Italy, the cold sea breeze blows the hospital gown on Elrond with a grin.
He, however, was unaware of it and was admiring the warships moored within the military harbor with a look of awe. It wasn't that these warships were so advanced and majestic, it was just that the final splendor of these huge ships and cannons did give him enough shock.
"Elrond, what are you doing out here, Mr. John Clark is looking all over the hospital for you!" The young nurse who could make out the freckles on her face was full of urgency.
"Ms. Lilith, you look beautiful today." Thankfully, Elrond's twenty years as a seaman had allowed him to communicate with the young nurse in basic terms in his rusty Italian.
"Thank you for the compliment, but that doesn't convince me to agree to your continuing to be out here in the cold. Come on in, the sea breeze is cold outside! Have you forgotten that you even fainted suddenly yesterday while standing?" Lilith was clearly used to Elrond's compliments.
Ever since the U.S. Army landed in Italy, it had commandeered this naval base and the surrounding outbuildings, including, apparently, this hospital. And American GIs are notoriously free-spirited, and surely haven't done much to molest the little girl in front of them.
"Okay! If you'll be gentle with me when you get your shots, I promise I won't run out again." Elrond said with a playful look on her face as she walked inside the hospital.
"You mean I'm not gentle enough, don't you? Trust me, you'll soon see what it means to not be gentle." The little girl milked her ferocity.
"No, believe me, the only reason I ran out into the cold is because I was afraid I would fall into your tenderness and never get out again, so I had to let the cold Mediterranean breeze keep me sane." Elrond forgot Lilith with a deep look on his face, making Lilith blush.
"Haha ..... Elrond, should I hide away and not interfere with your confession." A figure across the corridor, also dressed in a hospital gown and draped in a U.S. Army jacket, leaning against the wall with a cane, teased.
"Hey ..... John, now that you know you're not supposed to make a sound, hide and don't interfere with my confession."
"Haha ... Dude, you don't stand a chance, it's obvious that Lilith likes me, don't you see?" John said with a confident look on his face, not forgetting to raise an eyebrow at Elrond.
The two men's teasing made Lilith a little sheepish, but she took on the tone of the older woman in the hospital, "You two assholes, neither of you stand a chance, get your asses into the hospital room, I'm going to give you your shots."
Elrond laughed out loud after a gentle hug with John and walked back to the ward.
In fact, the hospital never figured out exactly where Elrond was injured; he had been in a coma when he was brought to the hospital, and the front-line doctors felt that he had suffered brain damage from the shockwave of the explosion, and the man had fallen into a coma, and hadn't awakened for a week, and had been thought to be hopeless. It was only after John's strong urging that Elrond was taken from the front line field hospital to the Naval Hospital in Naples.
The reason John wanted to bring Elrond out was very simple, Elrond was wounded in order to save him, if Elrond hadn't desperately dragged John, who was wounded in the leg, out of the trench at that time, John would have been blown directly into cinders by the shell that flew in afterwards. And Elrond was lifted nearly ten meters by this shell before he was injured and fell unconscious.
What John doesn't realize is that Elrond is long gone from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force Staff Sergeant who dragged him out of the trenches at the time.
Elrond only remembers that he was supposed to be the chief engineer of Cosco Shipping, a 100,000-ton container freighter, and that he encountered a typhoon while crossing the Drake Passage, and that he, strapped to his safety line, was checking the tightness of his equipment in the middle of a violent storm, when he flew out of the gangway directly hit by the waves, was dragged by the safety line, and lost consciousness after he crashed into a container.
Waking up again as Elrond, a soldier of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in the Italian War of World War II, Elrond spends the first few days feeling like he is in a chaotic state, with the memories of two different people intertwining and repeating themselves.
Until now Elrond's head still goes down suddenly, but when he wakes up, the whole person's spirit is significantly elevated, and, gradually, many of his original memories are added, including some memories that Elrond had already forgotten in the original, such as even the chalk words left on the blackboard by the teacher in the elementary school classroom can be clearly remembered.
"Elrond, my father found me." John couldn't tell what he was feeling, John had never talked to anyone about his father.
"What do you mean are you a runaway?" Elrond didn't really know John well; John had barely crossed paths with John as a major liaison officer placed by the U.S. Army with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, and Elrond's original body was just a Staff Sergeant Squad Leader with the 1st Brazilian Expeditionary Force.
But the two men fought in the same trench and Elrond saved John's life, which made John, an American cowboy, grateful; a comrade he had never met risked his life to save his, and John felt he had to repay him.
"Of course not, except that my father and I were not on good terms. We would fight when we saw each other, and he wanted me to go to the Navy, but I wanted to get away from him, so I came to the Army."
"Hi! What's wrong with that, our old man and I, we don't always talk back to each other, he always wants to control me, let me take over my father's business and manage the family farm, geez! It's not like we're in a feudal society now. I have my freedom, don't I? So I secretly signed up for the army! I don't know if he's pissed off at home or not."
John couldn't have imagined that the two men would have had a similar experience. "So does your father know you've come to Italy?"
"I wrote to him before I left, but I haven't received a reply until now, so I don't know if he knows where I am! Thinking about it more or less makes me feel a bit ungrateful." Elrond also didn't understand why the original body had a brain cramp joining this Brazilian expedition of some kind.
As far as Elrond knew, it seemed that only Brazil in the whole of South America had joined World War II at the instigation of the United States, and it seemed that there were only 20,000 to 30,000 men in the whole of Brazil fighting in the war. If it was to fight Little Japan, Elrond would have definitely done it without saying a word, but to help the United States run to Europe to fight the war, this must have been a brain cramp.
John patted Elrond on the shoulder and said, "Don't feel bad brother, I can go ask our logistics department if they got a letter from you."
Because the Brazilian Expeditionary Force is actually a unit under the U.S. Army, the logistical transportation of equipment supplies, even mail and allowances are taken care of by the U.S. Army, which is why John said to ask if there was any mail for him.
"It's useless to think about that now that you're on the battlefield. You said your father found you? What does that mean?" Elrond didn't want to keep thinking about facts that couldn't be changed either.
"His call came into the hospital today saying he had arranged for his adjutant to come over to me. Wants to transfer me to the Navy's logistics department. But I don't want to work under him at all, damn it." Obviously John was not happy that his father wanted to transfer him to his command for protection.
"Hey! Dude, you have a nice father who is trying to protect you, get it?" Elrond heard that John's father was transferring John to the logistics department under his command and realized that his father must not be an ordinary man.
"I understand, but I don't need protection, I'm an adult and he still treats me like a child." John's brainwiring really cleared Elrond's mind, it was amazing that he didn't know how to use such a great resource when he had it.
"Hey! Man, from what you're saying, your Excellency's father is a great big man right?" Elrond was really rather curious as to what kind of character John's father was. Originally, he thought that John's situation in the American army would be similar to his situation in the Brazilian army.
Because, John is not a white man, from his yellow skin, black hair, and black eyes, you can tell that he is definitely an ethnic minority. The percentage and status of minorities in the US military should be about the same as Elrond, a Chinese, in the Brazilian military.