The Undaunted

C-Rations and Good Luck Charms

"What the hell? Did Eisenhower just arrive behind us?" Jenny asked as she jumped out of the jeep to rowdy applause. She made a show of looking around for the celebrated supreme commander of the Allied forces.

Jack grinned at her. "You really don't know, do you?" he asked.

Jenny's brows shot up. "Know what?"

She could see nothing worth applauding and didn't understand until a second later when two GIs she knew, Owens and Casey, stepped forward and grabbed her in a huge tight double embrace. Owens wore a bandage on his hand. He had sliced his palm with a knife, he explained bashfully, and Jenny smiled at his obvious proneness to fortunately minor accidents.

"My girl is prouder of me now than when I was shipped over here," he said, looking as if he was at last growing into himself. He was taller and more filled out, despite the rations, and using more words than he had ever managed with her before. "Every time she shows her friends the picture of me in Vogue, they just about die of envy and wish I was theirs instead!"

Casey, who obviously hadn't had his confidence shaken out of him by the war was grinning, his sea blue eyes full of mischief as he erupted into laughter at the thought of Owens being so in demand, and Jenny smiled. Then another man pressed to the front of the group and embraced her. His face looked somewhat familiar.

"I was on the mountain at Easter," he said, and Jenny realized she had photographed him, the look on his face so fervently prayerful, her camera having caught, in that moment and in that one man, what every other man there had been feeling. Several other men came forward and either took her hand or patted her on the back and she offered them smiles all around, overwhelmed at the flood of attention and adoration. Jack stood back, arms crossed, watching the whole tableau unfold with amusement and satisfaction written plainly on his face.

Then Casey said, rather unexpectedly and seriously for once, "One of those graves at Omaha belongs to one of my high school buddies. His mom was happy to know he had been buried with friends."

All Jenny could do was squeeze his hand. As each man clamored to tell her about the picture she had taken of him, or his brother or friend or neighbor, or of the story she had written him into, she was swept off to the mess tent by a wave of admiring men, deposited at a table and given a tin mess tray.

"C-rations," Jenny said, breathing in the smell of meat and vegetables she was sure she would never have eaten two years ago but that now looked better than caviar. "And bread with real butter! I haven't seen anything other than a K-ration in two weeks!"

"Then you should have this to go with it," Jack said passing her a mug with what she assumed might be coffee and discovered was cider when she took too large a swallow. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Geez Louise!" she exclaimed, much to Jack's delight.

He gestured behind him to a cider barrel. "We found it and thought it would be a shame to waste it. Especially now that we have a week off."

He handed her a cigarette.

"Ahhh, Lucky Strikes," she sighed delightedly as he lit her up. "They only have Chesterfields at the hospital. You know, I might never leave here," she declared, stretching her long model's legs out in front of her and crossing her booted feet.

At which the men cheered, as if they'd be more than happy to have her stay. While she chatted over dinner with Jack and the other men and put the Rollei into service, all Jenny could think was at last she had found a place where she felt she belonged.

***
After dinner, Jack stayed true to his word and took Jenny out to a spot not far from camp but far enough to safely practice shooting her new Colt. As Jack explained the intricacies of the firearm to her, Jenny suddenly found her palms sweaty and her heart pounding nervously in her chest at the idea of actually having to use it to defend herself, to take another human life.