The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

19: A Pile of Helmets

The ward was empty when Charlie pushed through the door, all of the beds pristine and the floors shining after she'd had to make sure everything was cleaned thoroughly before leaving the day before. Charlie removed her jacket and laid it on the bed closest to the door before heading over to the cabinet they kept their bandages in. She withdrew the notebook and pencil they kept in the cabinet along with them and began to take inventory of their number, even though they'd not had to use any since the last time inventory had been taken. But it was a welcome distraction; it gave her mind something to focus on that wasn't how utterly stupid she felt, and how humiliated by extension.

By the time she was finished with the bandages, Charlie still didn't feel like she'd calmed down enough, so she moved onto the morphine. Then the sulfa. Then the medical equipment. When she left the hospital it was mid-afternoon and the sky was even more overcast than it had been when she'd arrived. It was the darkest she'd ever seen the sky at this time of day, a foreboding charcoal grey blocking out the sunlight and casting the world in shade.

It started to rain when Charlie was waiting for the bus, lightly at first and then heavier. She waited there for forty-five minutes before she decided that no bus was coming, and that was when the thunder started.

With no choice left but to walk if she wanted to get home this side of midnight, Charlie began traipsing her way back to Aldbourne. She was already soaked through, her uniform plastered to her skin, so the rain didn't bother her anymore. The gaps between each rumbling of thunder were long enough that she figured she didn't have to worry about getting stuck in a storm just yet.

The weather continued to worsen the closer she got to Aldbourne. The wind threw the rain right into her face so that she had to squint as she walked into it, the droplets stinging her cheeks as they slapped her over and over again. The clouds overhead darkened with every step closer and the clapping of the thunder was coming more and more often. Charlie shot frequent glances at the fields to either side of her, wondering when it would be wise to either find a farmhouse to seek refuge in or flatten herself to the ground.

When the first flash of lightning lit up the sky, she ran.

Charlie kept her head down as she sprinted through the rain, her feet slamming down hard on the dirt road and sending shockwaves up through her legs. Her breath came hard and wheezing, putting an ache in her chest and the back of her throat. Her cheeks and ears both stung with the cold and the slapping of the rain.

The storm reminded her starkly of the one that had raged outside her bedroom window on her last night back home. It seemed such a long time ago that she'd been tucked up in her childhood bed, watching the light dance around the cracks in her curtains and wondering what the future would entail.

She'd always loved thunderstorms. But she had to admit that they were not quite so nice when you were stuck outside in the middle of one.

At one point during her run Charlie had to slow to a fast walk, winded by exertion, but she quickly picked up speed again. The lightning strikes were either getting brighter or closer and she didn't much want to find out. Eventually, a barn rose up around a bend in the road and she pushed herself as hard as she could to reach it.

The door opened easily under her hands and she slammed it closed behind her. Leaning back against it, she pressed a hand to her chest and breathed hard. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to catch her breath.

"It's comin' down hard out there, huh?"

Charlie's eyes flew open and her back went ramrod straight. The skin on her shoulder blades itched where her sodden uniform jacket had rubbed up against a nail in the wood of the door but she paid it no mind. In front of her, she found what looked like an entire company of paratroopers staring back at her, their faces displaying a scale of reactions from shock to sympathy to joy.

The boy who had spoken, she found, was Don Hoobler. She managed to pick him out of the crowd when he stepped forward and unzipped his jacket, quickly slipping out of it and holding it out to her.

Charlie smiled shyly. "It'll get wet," she said, a final chance for him to change his mind before she took it.

A chorus of what must have been at least a dozen boys answered her, "You can have mine!" before Hoobs batted them away.

"Get outta here, ya feral bastards," he told them with good humour. "Here." He approached her and wrapped the jacket around her shoulders, pulling the edges of it together to keep her warm. "All better."

She smiled, her breaths still heaving. "Thank you."

"Ay, Charlie!" called someone on the other side of the barn. When he ambled into view with a wide grin clutched around a lit cigarette she recognised George Luz. "Where're the others?"

Charlie turned to George with a smile, though her stomach dropped just slightly thinking about the other nurses. "At home."

"Why ain't you?"

"I was at the hospital," she answered airily. She didn't have any intention of informing him, or any of the others for that matter, that she'd been working on one of her days off, reluctant to answer all of the questions that were sure to be thrown at her afterwards.

"Freckles!" greeted Floyd as he emerged from the gathering crowd.

Charlie's stomach dropped.

"What's the occasion?"

George all but cackled. "Gee, Floyd, I don't know. Maybe she stopped by for a tea party."

Floyd rolled his eyes and jostled George with a reluctant smile. Charlie avoided having to look at him or reply by slipping Don's jacket from her shoulders.

"I should be going," she said to no one in particular. She held out the jacket to Don, who she saw was frowning when she glanced up only briefly, before a chorus of protests cut off any of her further words.

"Aw, come on, Charlie, you just got here!" Don exclaimed. He tucked his hands behind his back to avoid having to reclaim his jacket.

"You can't go back outside in a storm," Floyd told her. He approached her with furrowed eyebrows.

"It's not that far to go..." She trailed off, avoiding his eyes.

"Come on, sweetheart, we don't bite!" called a voice from the crowd.

A few boys called their agreement with the sentiment but all it took was a sharp, "Shut up," from Floyd and they quietened down. The pressure of his eyes on her disappeared and she looked up to find him gesturing with his head for the other boys to return to their business. She turned away to avoid meeting his gaze when he looked back.

Charlie focused on a pile of helmets all lumped together in the corner. She wasn't quite sure why, but seeing those helmets made the war so much more real to her. Sure, the boys walked around in their ODs all day and wore their dress uniforms to go out at night, but before now she hadn't really seen them as soldiers. Now, she was startlingly aware of the fact that when she went overseas to start properly working as a nurse, it would be these boys she was stitching back together. It would be their organs she tried to shove back into their bodies, their blood she tried to stem.

When she finally met Floyd's eyes it was with reluctance but far less uncertainty. She may have felt silly for confusing his intentions with Mabs but he was still her friend, and she wouldn't take that for granted.