The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

44: The Way of War

The final call went out for the men to load onto the trucks and her smile faltered. She wondered whether it would ever get easier, seeing her friends off to war, or whether it would always be this hard to say goodbye knowing it very well could be the last time.

Brushing the thought aside, Charlie stepped into Floyd's arms at the same time as he opened them, both of them thinking to initiate the hug at the same time as each other. They both laughed into each other before pulling back, and with one final long, hard look and one final smile, Floyd turned and climbed onto the troop truck to join the men in his squad.

Mabs found Charlie, re-emerging from the crowd after having said her own goodbyes, and together they went to stand in the grass on the side of the road. As they leaned against the wooden fence separating the cobbles from the field, Boo and Autumn were soon to join them, and together they watched as the drivers booted up the truck engines and began to peel away.

As the first truck left, Boo clasped onto Charlie's hand. Charlie glanced over to find Boo already looking at her, trying for a smile even in the midst of her palpable worry about George, so she gave her hand a squeeze before reaching for Mabs' hand on her other side and taking hold of it, too. So the four of them stood in a line, all of them holding hands, and stayed and waited and watched while each and every one of the trucks left Aldbourne, bound for the airfield that would see them off to France.

Except the jump was called off almost as soon as they actually got to the airfield.

Charlie didn't know this at the time, of course, and spent the rest of the day getting her things organised for the inevitable last minute deployment of nurses, or else worrying relentlessly about the men in the company. It was when the four nurses were sitting outside eating dinner that they got the news, alerted by the sound of banging on the front door loud enough to be heard in the backyard.

Autumn went to answer the door, the most curious and least unnerved of all of them as they wondered who on Earth would come knocking that viciously. In the back of her mind, Charlie worried that it was Henry coming to tell them that they were being deployed immediately, that the men's mission had turned into a colossal failure and they needed medical support over in France right now.

But when Autumn reappeared in the yard, she was followed by George, who was grinning like he'd won the lottery.

"George!" Boo exclaimed as she shot to her feet. She ran faster than Charlie had ever seen her move to close the distance between herself and her sweetheart, then promptly leaped into his arms to give him a hug.

Charlie rested her elbow on the table and her cheek in her hand as she watched them, unable to hear what they were saying but simply awed by their adoration for each other.

When they finally pulled apart, George wrapped an arm around Boo's shoulders and lifted his hand in a wave to greet the others. "Nice set up you got here," he said, gesturing to the garden table they'd set up to use as a dinner table in the heat.

"You're welcome to join us," Autumn said before shovelling a mouthful of rice into her mouth.

"You gotta bring your own food, though," Mabs added, not bothering to look up from her plate.

Charlie felt she was about to burst with all of her questions. The moment there was a gap in the conversation, she demanded, "Was the jump cancelled again?"

"Eh, I decided I didn't feel like goin' back to France after all," George replied.

As Boo giggled, Charlie rolled her eyes jovially.

"Yeah, it was cancelled," George conceded after a beat. "Had us all loaded up into the damn planes 'fore they decided to let us know it was called off. And I don't know if you guys know this, but it takes fuckin' forever to load into the planes. It takes, like, five minutes per guy with all the shit we have to carry."

"Has it been rescheduled?" Charlie wondered.

"Nah," George answered. "When they reschedule they make us stay on the airfield."

"Well, that's good news, then." Charlie felt her nerves ease and her heartbeat settle. They'd be staying in Aldbourne for a little while longer after all.

"We live to see another day," Autumn agreed, which was probably a poor choice of words but she didn't seem to care.

All of a sudden, Mabs sat up straight with a mischievous grin on her face. "Y'know what we should do?"

"Oh no," said Boo.

"What?" asked George.

"We should throw a party."

"Here?" Charlie asked, her face scrunching up in confusion.

"Why not here?" Mabs countered. "We won't invite everyone. Just our friends. We got a couple bottles of wine and someone can go pick up more if we need 'em, and it's plenty warm to stay outside for a while yet."

"We can use the record player!" Boo exclaimed, bouncing once in place in her excitement.

George grinned down at her as she thought it over, enamoured by her love of music and dancing even when she wasn't so much excited about the thought of so many people coming over.

"Who should we invite?" Charlie inquired.

"We'll write a list, that way we won't invite too many," Autumn said decisively. She rose from her chair and went into the house, then re-emerged with a piece of paper and a pencil. "Give me names."

"How many?" Mabs asked.

"We'll say... three each," Autumn decided. "That's twelve total, which seems like a good number."

Boo rattled off her names first, being George, Frank, and Malarkey. Mabs' choices were Shifty, Bill, and Joe Toye. Autumn picked Joe Liebgott, Don Hoobler, and Alton, with a wink at Charlie as she declared that last name, letting her know she'd picked him for her sake. Charlie thanked her for that, for she'd had too many names swirling about in her head and no clue how to choose between them, but Autumn had made her decision easy: she chose Floyd, Skip, and Alex.

"What about James?" Mabs asked, tapping her finger against the paper in Autumn's hands. "Don't you wanna invite him?"

"There are no other replacements on the list," Charlie said, attempting to fight her blush. "He won't have fun."

"And she's embarrassed," Autumn supplied, not sparing a glance up from the paper as she folded it but smirking all the same.

"I'm not embarrassed!" Charlie insisted, but she knew she was. After James had kissed her in front of everyone earlier - which the girls, predictably, had all teased her relentlessly for when they'd gotten home - she felt she needed respite from her romantic entanglement. She liked James, this much was true, but for tonight she just wanted to have fun and not worry about propriety and whether she was being too forward or not forward enough, whether she'd scare him off with her eagerness or make him retreat with her lack thereof.

No, the whole thing was very confusing, and while there was a certain exhilaration wrapped up in all of the uncertainty, after the stress of the day she just wanted to have fun with her friends. She'd see James tomorrow, she told herself.

Satisfied with the list of names they'd collected, the four nurses sent George back to the barracks to be the bearer of good or bad news, depending on whether or not you were invited, and then began clearing up the backyard. The table they'd used for dinner was cleared and bottles of wine were placed atop it instead, and the chairs they'd used clumped together along with the chairs from inside the house in each corner of the yard.

By the time the next vigorous knock at the door sounded, each of them was pleased with their work and hadn't actually given a thought to their appearance. Which, Charlie thought to herself, was probably a good thing. Because tonight was about having fun, being together, feeling grateful to be alive, and wondering whether she looked pretty was the absolute last thing on her mind.