The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

118: All Over Again

Eventually, Charlie tired of pretending concentration and shut her book. Wordlessly, she placed it on the coffee table in front of her. She turned to face Floyd and said, "Three years ago right now I was dragging wounded men out of the church in Bastogne."

Floyd nodded, watching her closely. "I figured that's what's on your mind."

Charlie managed a small, sad smile. "That's what I think about when I see the snow." Her eyebrows furrowed and she shook her head. "Well, it's one of the things I think about. But I'm sure you can guess at the rest." Limb amputations, gaping wounds, shoving men's organs back inside their bodies. Men going to sleep in their foxholes and never waking up, killed by the cold, or else men taken off the line with dead extremities - frostbite or trench foot or shrapnel. Friends killed by gunshots or shells. Skip and Alex with nothing left of them but a broken rosary. A cold so cold she would never forget it and a place so bleak it would haunt her forever.

"Do you regret it?" Floyd wondered after a beat. "The war? Training to be a nurse?"

Silence followed the question. Charlie thought long and hard about her answer. It was a question she'd asked herself before, of course, but she'd never come to a solid conclusion. On the one hand, some of her favourite memories were from the war, and all of her best friends were people she'd met during her time in the service. On the other, how much suffering had she brought on herself by asking her parents to get her into training early? Even now, over a year after returning home, she was still suffering because of it. What she'd seen and done. What she'd experienced. It all got so much sometimes that she could hardly breathe.

"No," Charlie replied at length. The word emerged quiet and unsure, so she cleared her throat and repeated herself, "No, I don't regret it. It haunts me and will continue to haunt me for the rest of my life, but I still believe it was what I was meant to do at the time. And I'm glad I met all the people I did during my time overseas."

She hadn't just meant Floyd, hadn't really intended it as a compliment, but a smile quirked at her lips as she watched him brighten anyway. And she didn't elaborate, either, to list the other names she was glad she'd known and loved; he was on the list anyway, and she liked knowing he was proud of that.

"Floyd," Charlie said seriously.

He turned to her and she could tell he had an idea of what was coming.

"I won't ask you again why you didn't write back to me," she began quietly to ease some of his worry, "or what happened after I left Austria. But I hope you'll be able to tell me sometime. Maybe not now, or even soon, but sometime. And whenever you're ready to talk, I'll be ready to listen."

"I want to tell you," Floyd replied, a note of defiance in his voice. "I just - it's..." He trailed off.

"It's hard," Charlie finished for him.

He nodded with a bitter laugh and a shake of his head.

"Do you regret breaking up with me?" she asked next.

At this, he let out a surprised laugh. "I didn't break up with you, Charlie, we broke up with each other."

Charlie rolled her eyes. "We absolutely did not 'break up with each other'. You broke up with me and I tried to stop you, and eventually I relented and let you."

Floyd furrowed his eyebrows. "That's how you remember it?"

"That's how it happened!" Charlie exclaimed quietly. "As I recall, I all but begged you not to do it."

"As I recall, it was a mutual decision."

Charlie scoffed. "Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?"