Posey found it difficult to believe she was ever as green as the replacements. Recalling that the likes of the veterans of Second Platoon had been that bright-eyed and bushy-tailed once upon a time, and not even very long ago, was somewhat jarring. When she watched the replacements fumble with their magazines at the rifle range or struggle to keep up during PT or mess up yet another training exercise because they just didn't know what they were supposed to be looking out for, she had to try hard to empathise. That had been her not so long ago, and how scared had she been before jumping into Normandy?
But it was hard to empathise with the replacements when they were just so naïve. She liked a few of them well enough but some of the things they came out with...
The replacements tended to be at the height of their greenery during manoeuvres training.
On these training exercises, they didn't work with real bullets. Naturally. And it was a good thing, too, because they'd all be dead if they did. After orders had been dished out and the rival platoon or squad had been located, Posey would ready her gun as if she was actually going to shoot it. It was always empty on these exercises, so she clicked off her safety and adjusted her sights as necessary. As soon as the order went out to shoot, she would rise from her crouched position and 'fire' where she saw fit.
The replacements, on the other hand, would fumble with their strap, or rush to click off the safety at the last minute, or drop the gun altogether, as was the case on one occasion with one particularly ill-prepared private. None of them ever adjusted their windage and elevation. Posey had to remind them every time as they trekked back to the meeting point.
"Always, always, always check your windage and elevation and adjust as you see fit before an attack," she would lecture. "Alright? The element of surprise only works to your advantage if you're quick, and it doesn't matter if you've got the best aim in the world, if your windage and elevation aren't right then the bullet won't do fuck all."
To their credit, the replacements hung onto her every word when she lectured them. This was the case when any of the veterans offered them a bit of combat advice; they'd drink it up like parched men exploring the Sahara, but then they'd forget all about it in the heat of the moment. They needed not to forget.
On this particular occasion, Posey had had enough of the messy gun preparations.
"Strap, windage, elevation, safety. Got it? You need to check all of them. How many times have I told you not to forget windage and elevation? These things are gonna save your life once you get into combat."
"We ain't in combat," muttered one of the replacements. Posey didn't turn back to see who it was, just continued following Bill at the front of their group on the way to meet up with the rest of the platoon again.
"Yet," she hissed. "When you get into combat and find your bullets swerving way past your targets, you're gonna panic. It doesn't take much to panic when there are bullets flying at you from all directions. Adjusting your sights before you're trying to outrun death may be the difference between you winning that race and losing it."
"Listen to 'im," Bill grumbled, turning back to look the replacements following immediately behind them in the eye. "He used to be a rifleman just like you. Got promoted to sharpshooter 'cause he knows his shit." He turned back around and, under his breath so only Posey could hear, said, "And if I have to listen to the gun speech one more fuckin' time..."
Posey grinned. "You're the one who put me up for a promotion."
Bill brushed her aside with a flick of the hand. "Buck agreed too. After that patrol when you had to get close to that sniper."
Posey nodded, recalling the event. "That seems a million years ago now," she commented quietly, just so that she could use her real voice and accent.
Bill glanced at her and watched her in profile for a moment. When she returned his look, he turned back to the front. "Yeah," he replied, nodding to himself. There was something cryptic in his eyes, something weighty lingering just beneath his words. "It does."
Posey studied him a moment, curious about his sudden thoughtfulness, before she decided that he'd forever be a mystery to her and, at this point, there was little use in trying to figure him out. Instead, she asked him, "Do you feel that maybe coming back here was a bad idea?" and searched his face as he took the words in. "I mean, I'm grateful for the break and not sleeping in a hole every night, of course. But I feel -" She shot a glance behind her, making sure the replacements separating the pair of them from the veterans in their squad were far enough away that they couldn't eavesdrop. "- almost more scared of combat now than I did before D-Day. Now that I know what to expect."
Bill glanced over at her, his eyebrows knitted tightly together over unreadable eyes. "You're scared?"
Posey shrugged, feeling bashful under his gaze all of a sudden. She didn't really know why she'd confessed this to him. Under the weight of his eyes she found herself wondering whether it had been a lapse in judgement. Finding her voice again after a moment, she bade him, "Don't tell anyone I said that."
Bill rolled his eyes and turned back to face the front, the rest of the squads of Second Platoon coming into view where they were gathered at the meeting point. "You're gonna be fine, Wells."
"How do you know?" she challenged, watching him closely as she worried at her bottom lip. The ghosts of tentative raindrops prodded at her skin and she only drew her eyes away from Bill to look up into the grey of the sky. "It's starting to rain," she said quietly, not entirely meaning to say it aloud.
"You'll be fine," Bill asserted, offering no explanation but also no room for argument. "You're a good shot. Now hurry up. I don't wanna get wet."
"How do you know I'll be fine?" Posey repeated, though she did pick up the pace. As the rain grew heavier, the entirety of their squad began to move faster across the field.
It became difficult to hear over the rushing of the wind and the sound of the rain falling over the top of it. Bill said something she couldn't understand. She had to squint through the rain to look at him. "What?" she asked, her accent and deepened voice making a reappearance now that she had to call out to him to be heard.
Bill leaned closer so that he didn't have to shout. "I said," he enunciated, his words coming out somewhat reluctantly now that he had to repeat them, "I ain't gonna let anythin' bad happen to you. Alright? Now hurry the fuck up."
Posey had to look away. She hid her smile in her shoulder. When she looked back at Bill he had his eyes set firmly forwards, charging through the rain with a purpose. That heart of gold of his liked to make an appearance at the most random of times, she thought. Yes, forever an enigma was Bill Guarnere.
When they got back to the barracks, they were told that the rest of the day's training manoeuvres having been cancelled due to the rain. As such, Posey dropped the superfluous amongst her pack and headed straight for the rifle range; heavy, constant rain was terrible weather for shooting with a scope and thus perfect weather for training. She was determined to go back into combat as prepared as possible.
She spent a good couple of hours at the rifle range, trying to work out ways to shoot using a fogged-up scope and ways to unfog it, both of which were mammoth tasks. By the time she was traipsing back to the barracks again, she was soaked to the skin and shivering. It was still summer, thank God, but there was definitely a bite to the air. Raindrops pricked her skin wherever they made contact and plastered her ODs to her wherever they didn't. She had to unstick the fabric lest her own anatomy should betray her.
Stepping back into the barracks, Posey found that everyone else had already changed out of their wet clothes and into dry ones. They'd also likely showered and were using their sudden downtime to rest before dinner and what would undoubtedly be a messy night in the pub later (because nights in the pub were always messy). Seeing them all comfortable, dry, and warm as she leaned her rifle up against the wall, Posey had never envied them more. She'd have to wait until the middle of the night until she could shower, or perhaps, if she was lucky, she'd be able to manage a quick one whilst everyone else was at the pub. Until then, she'd have to change in one of the bathroom stalls and pretend she'd showered, so as not to arise suspicion, all the while having to endure the grimy feeling of dried dirt and mud on her skin and grease in her hair.
Oh, to be a man.
Posey was immensely uncomfortable all throughout dinner. She'd managed to scrub all of the visible dirt and mud off of her skin using the sinks in the bathroom but she still felt dirty. She felt itchy. Every few seconds she'd shuffle where she sat, trying to ignore what felt like fifteen pounds of dirt caking her skin beneath her clean, dry clothes - clothes which, incidentally, she'd have to put back on even once she was clean. She hated this ruse sometimes. A lot of the time. Most of the time. More with each passing day.
As soon as the rest of the platoon were out of the barracks and on their way to the pub, she hedged her bets with using the showers. She kept her undergarments on, just in case someone else had had the same idea, although they'd have to have been mad to wait that long just for the showers to be free and endure hours of painstaking itchiness in the process.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life under the warm water of the shower. The water would've been hot earlier when the others were showering, she knew, but the boiler was about to time out since they only got hot water at certain times of day. Still, Posey hadn't showered with anything but freezing cold water since being in America. This was luxury. Usually, the water was so cold it made her ache all over. It had been hell during the winter months.
Not being able to stay in the warmth for long lest she be discovered about summed up her life in wartime: the good things were always being taken from her before long.
Once she had redressed and made it back to the deserted barracks, Posey found she didn't have any desire to spend another night down the pub, really. She'd only wake up the next day with no recollection of all the fun she'd had and instead be suffering from a pounding headache and a rotten case of nausea. After everything that had had happened today, Posey thought a night in was perhaps more coveted than she had imagined.
It was only around fifteen minutes into lounging on her bed that she got bored. The barracks weren't the same without the others.
Posey rifled around in her footlocker for a few moments, searching for something she might be able to do to make her life easier where secret-keeping was concerned - after all, having the barracks to herself was an incredibly rare commodity - when her fingertips grazed over the cover of Twelfth Night, the copy Mrs. Daniels had hidden in her bag before she'd gone away to boot camp for the first time. Posey picked it up and held it in her hands, smiling softly as she traced the words of the title on the cover and recalling her time with the elderly woman.
But between the nostalgia and the fondness and the warmth of happy memories - the kind that were made happier with the rose-tinted glasses of hindsight - there was guilt. Mrs. Daniels hadn't heard from her since she'd crossed the Atlantic.
Posey had been putting off writing to her since she'd found out about her family. On that first terrible day when she'd had her life pooled around her ankles, she'd known that, eventually, she'd have to write. But putting it into words made it real, more real, even, than visiting her brother and discussing it. And it also made her future real, or lack thereof; if she was lucky enough to survive the war, what then? Mrs. Daniels would want to know and Posey hadn't thought about it.
She sighed and retrieved a pile of paper she'd been saving for a letter-writing occasion along with a pencil. She sat back down on her bed and leaned back against the headboard, using her book as a makeshift table. The pencil spun round and round as she twirled it between her fingers. What to say, what to say, what to say.
'Dear Mrs. Daniels,'
How could she even begin to put into words all that had transpired since she'd seen her last, just shy of two years ago? How could she ever give voice to all she'd lost?
'I recall our time together very fondly. I hope you know that. In fact, it's one of the bright spots in a cache of memories someone seems to have turned all of the lights off in. But your home was always a safe, warm place and I smile every time I think of how kind you were to me. I appreciate that more than you could ever really know.
'I know it's been a while. I'm so, so very sorry I haven't written. I can't even say how sorry I am. I could explain myself and make my excuses but I won't, because they are weak at best. Instead, I'll say this: the world seems to have acquired a terrible habit for taking things away from me, and believe me when I say it's taken everything. But in the midst of that it's given me some things, too.
'I hope you won't worry about me when I tell you what I'm about to tell you because I'm surrounded by some of the most wonderful people in the entire world. And, yes, the world may also take these people away from me - in fact, it's highly likely that it will - but I wouldn't want to be apart from them in any of this for even a moment. When going through the worst, there's something to be said for going through it together. I don't know if that makes any sense.
'I'm a combat veteran now, and am waiting for imminent redeployment. By the time this letter finds you I'll likely be back out there. But you mustn't worry about me, for I'm rubbing elbows with the best. They're looking out for me. I like to think that I can say the same for them.
'Now that I find myself without a whole lot in the world, you see, my life is one of the only things I can safely say is my own. And I want to use what's my own to defend what still belongs to others: home, freedom, identity. Family. All of these things which are so, so fragile and thus all the more worth fighting for.
'Life is fragile but there's something in it, you know? There's something in it that's worth fighting for. I believe that and I'm holding onto it. I hope you believe it too.
'I've been missing you a lot. I hope you're okay. I think you'll be glad to know that my best friend from home is still with me - he's sitting beside me as I write this. We're facing it all together. I can't thank you enough for that.
'I'm running out of paper so I'll end this here, but I'll be writing more frequently now that this first letter is out of the way. I've been dreading writing it for a while. Words just don't cover it sometimes. I hope you'll understand.
'If you're still reading, I want to say sorry once more. I really, really am sorry. I hope you didn't think I'd forgotten you because I really never will.
'With all the love and reverence,
'J. Wells'