The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

89: Worse Than Any Worse

Charlie nodded, so confused she couldn't even think what question to ask next, and climbed back into the truck she'd arrived on, closely followed by Mabs and then Autumn, Boo, and finally Henry.

The smell they had all noticed and complained about when they'd arrived in town got steadily worse as they drove towards the suspicious opening in the trees. It took them longer to get there than it might have if they'd gone on foot, since they'd had to go the long way round, but even that didn't give them respite from the stench.

When, eventually, the trucks started to slow, Charlie turned to look behind her at where they'd ended up and couldn't make sense of what she was seeing.

There were two sets of barbed wire fences, an outer and an inner, and behind the inner fence were people. Only, they all looked the same - had been made to all look the same.

All of them were men, and they had all had their heads shaved. They wore the same striped clothes, long shirts and pants, and were thinner than any human beings Charlie had ever seen.

Many of them clung to the barbed wire fences, interlocking their fingers with it or simply leaning their weight against it, too weak to stand. And for reasons Charlie couldn't yet understand, she knew this was where the smell was coming from.

The five nurses departed the trucks and, upon Henry's order, headed up to the front of the gathering company of soldiers to stand among the officers. If anyone was needed more than the others right now it was medical personnel, and all of them were doing their best to greet the responsibility about to be thrust into their hands head on.

Here were more people than they had ever had to care for in one go before - more, even, than on Utah Beach. But there would be no triage. Not this time. These men would all get the help they needed.

There was smoke in the air, blowing with the wind, all of it emerging from behind the men in the... uniforms? Was that what they were? There were wooden towers further into the place beyond the fences - watchtowers, perhaps - and huge gates close to where the men were gathering, with a wooden building right beside them. It looked like some sort of camp, but the men in no way looked like they were here by choice.

Captain Nixon approached Gene while Winters headed towards the gates and ordered for them to be opened.

As Frank and Pat Christenson cut the chain on the gates and pushed them open, Charlie saw more men making their way towards them. Most of them were in pairs or threes, leaning on or carrying each other, and only a few were walking upright.

Charlie couldn't look away even as she heard Mabs ask Henry, "What do we do?" Her voice sounded a million miles away.

Henry spoke to Gene and, together with the medics, the nurses entered the camp ready to help in whatever ways they could. Charlie walked forward as though she was wading through water, feeling like she was in a dream.

The men who watched them enter the camp were skin and bone, so thin they were emaciated. Their eyes were sunken in with deep, dark circles beneath, their cheekbones razor sharp. They had symbols sewn into their shirts, all of them different colours; some she recognised as Stars of David, and others were simply triangles turned upside down, sometimes with a letter in the middle or a line overhead, but most often just the triangle or the star.

Hands gripped Charlie's sleeves and at some point she lost her helmet. She saw it all as though from behind a thick screen of glass. Up the path ahead were more people, emerging from tiny buildings which could only be described as huts, and the enormity of the situation still wouldn't register in Charlie's mind. So many people, all of them so sick...