All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

56: Desperation

Posey stumbled to her feet and got her bearings again, recalling where she was and why she was there. In one movement she bent down and picked up her rifle and helmet, slinging the rifle over her shoulder and putting the helmet on her head. She grimaced as she followed after the others towards the trucks that would take them across the makeshift bridge and into Eindhoven, praying they'd meet less resistance upon arriving at the city than they had upon arriving at the bridge.

The journey to Eindhoven was short, only about fifteen minutes or so, and Posey took the time to watch the world go by around her. Holland was pretty, for all the area they were currently moving out of was a little bit war torn. Once again she was reminded of how much darker things were on this side of the Channel. Things had been bad in England before she left, what with the German blockade and the consequential rationing and then the Blitz, where bombs had fallen from the sky like rain and destroyed everything she once associated with home. On the mainland, however, in the countries the Nazis had occupied, she knew things were much worse. Rationing was worse in the occupied regions even than it was in England and she couldn't begin to imagine what life was like under the iron-fisted Nazi rule. It was only really upon meeting those Resistance fighters in Normandy that she'd been fully able to appreciate it - how ordinary people had been driven to do extraordinary things out of desperation - and now she saw it everywhere she looked.

"After we've liberated Eindhoven," Posey said aloud, speaking to the occupants of the truck at large, "we should give the people some food. The rationing's really bad in the occupied areas."

"We ain't got that much to spare," Perco objected.

"Whatever we've got to spare is more than they have to start with." Posey shrugged. "You do what you want, but I'm gonna help."

"Yeah, lets just focus on liberatin' 'em first, huh, Wells?" Bill asked, already puffing on a cigarette.

"Of course," Posey agreed, and let the subject die there. She knew she was fighting a losing battle with them but hopefully when they saw what it was actually like they'd understand.

Posey sat quietly for the rest of the journey, thinking mostly about her brother. He'd been the first one to tell her about the price on the heads of downed airmen over occupied territory and how things were so desperate that the citizens were turning them in. She wondered about John's crew, who he'd not seen since bailing out of his plane, and considered the probability that any of them were still alive. She liked to hope that they were, and perhaps if she hoped hard enough they'd find their way home.

The trucks pulled up a little ways outside of the city and they were all quickly ushered into a ditch at the edge of a field. Posey was crouched beside Bill, ready to be one of the first to push into the city - such were the perils of being a sharpshooter. She knew Shifty would be one of the first in, too, wherever he was over with First. She wondered how he must have felt on D-Day, carrying the weight of all that responsibility, but pushed the thought aside as a squadron of Allied fighter planes flew overhead, likely on their way to take down as many German bombers as possible before any more bridges could be bombed.

Posey smiled as she watched them, filled with hope at the idea that some of the Luftwaffe planes were about to be shot out of the sky. Those ugly planes had taken so much from her it was about time they got some comeuppance.

Once upon a time, she thought, her brother would've been flying one of those Allied planes.

Bill gave the appropriate gesture and Posey, along with the rest of Second Platoon, rose to her feet. The plan hadn't been to cross the field they were crouched beside but, as she began to, she found the rest of the company all around her. There must have been some kind of hold up on their previous route.