The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

29: A Less Than Discreet Lovers' Tryst

When the Americans came out on top at the Battle of Carentan, the field hospital moved into the town itself. Carentan was destroyed; blood stained the streets and walls of buildings, an echoing reminder of the men who hadn't lived past that day, and buildings stood half crumpled to the ground - if they even still stood at all.

The field hospital was moved to what had once been a grocery store. It was big - bigger than the restaurant they'd used before had been - though they didn't need the space. The Americans which remained in Carentan were an occupation force. There wasn't much push back from the Germans.

Still, they'd needed a building which was still mostly in tact, and the grocery store on the outskirts of the town fit the bill. The upper story, where Charlie thought the owners might once have lived, was gone, bricks scattered around the street below or else fading off into the sky above where they once would have converged in a roof. But the lower story had survived most of the damage. It still had four walls and a ceiling, at least, which was a lot more than could be said of most of the buildings in the town.

No one knew how long they'd be staying there. Each morning Charlie expected to wake up and be told they'd be moving back to England. The paratroopers had originally been told they'd only be needed for three days and three nights, so she couldn't imagine they'd be forced to stay too much longer.

She resented herself for how badly she wanted to leave. She hadn't even been in France a week and already she was desperate for the comfort and safety of England, even more so for the familiarity of home. Her hair was filthy, caked with blood and dirt and sweat. Her mother would have gagged if she could've seen her. Her skin looked even worse; at least her hair could be covered by a helmet. Covered in a thick layer of grime, the freckles which usually stood out so strikingly against the paleness of her skin were all but entirely concealed. Specks of dirt and streaks of blood had been painted over them.

Everyone was in the same boat, though. One would be hard pressed to find a nurse wandering around who wasn't covered in dirt and the blood of her patients. If she wasn't, one would have to wonder how much of her duties she was actually carrying out. Casualties had been pretty heavy. There was no real way of staying clean.

For her part, Charlie spent the next few days trying to stay out of everyone's way, especially Doctor Whitlock. The man was getting right on her nerves and, as much as he wasn't military, he was still her superior, and she knew being grouchy with him wouldn't go down too well. But she still hadn't forgiven him for abandoning her to the sea of casualties on the day of the battle, for leaving her to perform medical procedures which went way further than her training with little more than the equipment she'd brought with her and the few soldiers from Easy who'd stayed to help. If they hadn't have been there, she had no idea what she would've done. Lost all of her patients, probably. As it was, they were all now at the evac hospital, ready to be either nursed back to full health there or transported back to England.

It was by some miracle that Ed Tipper had survived. His bloodied face accompanied by Joe Liebgott's murmured words of reassurance now haunted Charlie's nightmares along with the men she'd seen on D-Day.

As a child Charlie had spent her time abroad collecting seashells, now she was collecting ghosts. Destroyed faces crying for help haunted her waking mind as well as her sleeping one, lingering in dark corners in her peripheral vision. They disappeared whenever she turned to face them, of course. But they lingered when she was too frightened to look.

"Charlie," someone called, pulling her out of her reverie.

Charlie didn't know how long she'd been sitting with her forehead resting on her knees, her helmet beside her in the dirt as she leaned against one of the walls of the grocery store turned field hospital. She might have even fallen asleep.