"In times of war, you do what you must, become what you must. Some embrace it, some try to resist it, and others abuse it. I am guilty of all three."
Virginia Carroll has been fighting her whole life, against herself and against what she is drawn to...
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D-Day plus 4
For all their appreciation for my assistance on the night of Operation Overlord, or as they began to call it D-Day, it seemed that the Airborne had little use for me. They had their own explosives to dispose of anti-aircraft and with the sun shining down on their helmeted heads, they had no need for my guidance at night. 2nd Battalion had no use for me now and I was but a passenger on their trail to the south.
On D-day plus two, they took Sainte-Come-Du-Mont, a town I knew little about other than a few contacts merely by name. There we were told to stay as watchdogs to the regimental HQ that Sink established in the largest home, making it vacant in a matter of minutes. Here, we would stay for the next three days as the Allied forces pushed on.
For the men of Easy, Fox, and Dog company of 2nd Battalion, they seemed more than content with the moment of respite. The trek through the flooded fields and wasted towns had been a long one, even if I had been given the rear of the group. Three days meant they could loot, pillage, and rest.
My perch was the steps of the church, a nest safely removed from the bustle of the occupying forces. The hobnail bootprints of the Germans were still fresh in the mud but the Americans might as well have won the war. They paraded the village with pomp and vigor that made me sick, showing their prizes to their peers.
I had spent my formative years in the company of rough men and soldier types. With my father's work in the Bureau of Prohibition and my own mother's taste of adventure, it attracted a certain type of person. I could see glimpses of them in the men of Easy Company. The drag and puff of cigarettes with a swagger that only men who had faced death and won could muster. The heartless approach to the bodies around them, German or American. Anything was fair game to Easy Company.
I watched as the paratrooper, Liebgott's thin shoulders shook with triumphant laughter as he showed his prizes: rings stolen from the fingers of dead Germans. I didn't pity the SS. God knows I had done my fair share of destruction, adding to the death toll. I wasn't proud of it though.
The possessions that I had kept concealed in that lockbox against Felix's and my own better judgment had been removed in lieu of my new position in the American army. The charm that my mother had strung around my neck to ward off the evil spirits and the ghosts of her own past was tucked neatly into my shirtfront, the chain hidden by the collar of my neck and the blue hamsa cold against the skin of my sternum. The one intangible protection my mother had provided. I carried her with me, in my mind and now, chained around my neck.
My father's lighter had been the one memory he had shared with me of his time on the front. In the deep ruts between enemy and wasteland, even the barest pinprick of light would give away a position but the soldiers still dared. Shored down in the mud among trench rats, he would pass around the lighter. Carved with his initials, a gift from my grandmother.
I knew more about my father's life before and after the war. The little house in the mountains, the memories of his mother and sister who were lost in the Spanish Flu, and the harrowing journey (his words, not mine) to Chicago where he met my mother on a liquor bust. He wanted to spare me the desolation and shellshock he had seen and faced. He had wanted me to live in a kinder world. He had prayed that the war would leave me unmarked. Miriam didn't bother offering wasted breath in prayer. She sought to prepare me to face her own prowling demons.
