Posey got dismissed from battle clean up early, which was likely because she was covered in her own blood. Being in possession of a nose which was liable to gush, it seemed, was not all bad, though where the blood had now dried all over her face she felt it cracking and itching as she traipsed back to the CP.
After being so close to that final blast of German artillery fire, Posey's legs still felt a little bit weak. Her ears were still ringing and her nose still dripping blood, much less severely now but somehow it was still going. She picked up the pace as a truck carrying wounded skidded past her, presumably on the way to the aid station. All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep.
When she got to the CP - which the enlisted men were known to frequent in the hopes of resting on the hay as opposed to the hard ground outside - she found a group of Second and Third Platoons crowded around a radio. All eyes shot to her the moment she pushed the door open. She had to fight a smile as she thought about what kind of idea the state of her was going to give them about the battle that had just taken place; her face was streaked with blood, from her nose and down her chin all the way up to her hairline where she hadn't been able to keep from rubbing at her eyes or pushing the hair back from her forehead. Her hands were covered in it and so was the front of her ODs, and all this the result of a single nosebleed.
Let them think it was a massacre, though. That would be so much more fun.
In a way, it had been, just not for them. The thought gave her pause and ripped the smile from her face.
"Wells," Guarnere called the second the door had closed behind her. He was on his feet in an instant with Toye and Heffron right behind him. "What the fuck happened? Have you been to see the doc?"
"I'm fine," she told him immediately, and laughed when his face scrunched up in obvious disbelief. "Just a nosebleed. I was really close to one of the last blasts."
"Blasts?" Toye echoed, his voice gravelly and sounding as though he'd just woken up.
The thought of sleep reminded Posey of how tired she was so she nodded before heading for one of the hay stacks in the corner. She propped her rifle up against the wall and dropped her helmet before all but collapsing down onto the hay, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wall behind her. Wiping at her nose again, she let out a breathy sigh. "There was artillery fire on both sides. I'm surprised you didn't feel it. It was like an earthquake."
"You need t' get checked out by the doc," Bill insisted, his jaw set.
"What I need is to sleep for about eight years," Posey replied, peeking one eye open at him before relaxing back again. Then both eyes popped open as a thought dawned on her. "Oh!" She reached inside her ODs and pulled Teddy out, scanning him over for blood and dirt. Where before only the back of one of his legs had gotten bloody, now one of his ears was, too. Posey frowned. "My bear," she whined, fiddling at the wet ear, then clamped her mouth shut as she remembered what company she was in; Bill may have known she was a woman but Toye and Heffron certainly didn't.
"Heffron, go get a medic," Bill ordered.
Posey huffed. "I don't need a medic! It's just my nose. You remember back at Toccoa when Popeye got me in hand to hand? It's literally the same as that."
Bill grumbled something under his breath and sent Heffron off anyway. When he was gone, Bill sat down on the stack of hay beside her whilst Toye returned to listening to the radio and whatever reports were coming through on it, departing with the promise to update them on any news.
Posey shot a glance at Bill beside her, who was drawing out a pack of cigarettes ready to light one for a smoke, and smiled to herself. For all she complained about his worrying, she found she rather liked having him around. When that had happened, exactly, she had no idea, for she knew if she had said so to herself back at boot camp she'd have scoffed and rolled her eyes into the next century, but somehow it had become true. Bill Guarnere, she found, was a nice person to be liked by. She liked being liked by him. It was infinitely preferable to being disliked by him, as she had been once upon a time and for a long time at that. Now, though, there was something reassuring about his presence. Something safe. Even when he was swearing and berating her for not looking after herself properly there was still something inherently warm about having him there. Yes, by his side was rather a nice place to be.
By the time Roe came to see her, she was only half conscious. Toeing the line between awake and asleep, it took him saying her name three times over for her to respond. "Hm?"
"'M gonna check you over," Roe explained, straight to business. "Where's it hurt?"
Posey frowned. "I'm fine. It was literally just a nosebleed." Roe shot her a look - one which she was sure was perfectly mirrored on Bill's face, still sat beside her as he was - which made her relent. "I was close to the last explosion. Must have been the pressure or something, I don't know."
Roe nodded. "I'll take a look," he assured her, not that she'd been worried, and took a gentle hold of her face to check it. He started with her ears, testing their sensitivity, and then her eyes and how they responded to light, and then her reaction time and impulses. Roe nodded pensively after he'd finally examined her nose. "Pressure," he confirmed her earlier assumption. "Your reactions are a bit slow, ears a bit sensitive, but nothin's wrong other than that. You feelin' alright?"
"Feeling good, Gene," she confirmed, flashing him her brightest smile as she held onto Teddy in her lap.
Roe rolled his eyes but a slight grin gave him away. "Right. Just take it easy, hm? Stay outta trouble where you can."
Posey scoffed. "Trouble's my middle name," she said tiredly, shifting in place as she prepared to go back to sleep.
"I'll keep 'er outta trouble, doc, don't you worry," Bill piped up.
Posey laughed. "Have fun trying. You're more a magnet to trouble than I am."
"No one's a bigger magnet to trouble than you are, Wells," replied Roe.
Posey giggled. "Through no fault of my own I do seem to have adopted a habit," she confessed. "I'll take it easy, Gene," she went on, trying her best to sound genuine. She could tell by the look on his face that he didn't believe her for a second.
"Right." He shook his head and set about putting his medical equipment away. Casually, he informed them both, "Winters has been promoted, movin' up to battalion level."
Posey's jaw fell open. "What?"
Roe nodded. "Heard Sink tellin' him earlier."
"So who's gonna be our new CO?" she asked, dread filling her heart at the thought of another Sobel. They'd only ever experienced combat under Winters, after Meehan had been killed in his plane on D-Day, and she was more than a little bit reluctant for him to hand over the torch.
"Not sure," came Roe's reply, a shrug punctuating his statement.
Posey sighed, fiddling with Teddy's paws absentmindedly. She liked Winters. She trusted Winters. "The army should stop trying to fix what isn't broken," she mumbled, scowling as she stared straight ahead. She wasn't so tired anymore.
It didn't take long for the news to spread that their new commanding officer was Lieutenant Heyliger. He was a Toccoa man, at least - but had been with another company back then - and well-liked enough. He'd done D-Day and they knew him and he was good. He just wasn't Winters.
Even with a new CO, Posey's life didn't change very much. She was being sent out on more patrols, true, because Heyliger seemed to be fond of the idea of having a sharpshooter out on such outings, but beyond that she sat on the line or she cleaned her gun and waited. The old military adage 'hurry up and wait' had never rung more true, for oftentimes she'd find herself sat in the trenches with her gun aimed, peering through her scope at a line that was all quiet. After the assault on the two companies of SS the Germans didn't seem to be in any hurry to lose more men, which was good because, for their part, Easy weren't in a position where they were able to lose many more.
Posey received a letter from Mrs. Daniels a few weeks after the attack at the crossroads and almost cried when she first caught sight of the familiar handwriting. It was a sweet letter a fair few pages long filled with gushing words about how glad she was that Posey was alive and how happy she was to hear from her. Her own letter had been cryptic, had had to be with the military censorship on letters home, but Mrs. Daniels had seemed to decipher it well enough, for she promised over and over again, almost at the end of every paragraph, that Posey would always have a home with her. That part really did make her cry. Dutifully, Malarkey, who was sat beside her whilst she was reading it, didn't say anything.
The letter finished with Mrs. Daniels asking Posey what she would like for her birthday. The thought was jarring. It was October already and she hadn't even realised. She'd been so focused on the war and everything that came with being a soldier she'd forgotten about her birthday. She'd be turning twenty this year. She wondered what her mother would've gotten her if she was still alive.
"You're thinkin' real hard over there, Duckie," Skip observed as she stared at the last page of the letter, eyes unseeing. "Dear John letter?" he teased.
Posey rolled her eyes but her heart wasn't in it. "Thinking about my birthday," she said, shooting him a tight-lipped smile.
"Oh yeah?" Malarkey asked, his grin audible. "Gonna throw a party?"
"If sitting in a trench in the pouring rain and feeling sorry for myself counts, then sure."
"Sounds like fun," Skip commented.
Posey laughed.
"How old ya turnin'?" Penkala asked, looking up from where he'd been cleaning his M1. From where she was sitting, it looked incredibly dirty, which was strange considering it didn't get all that much use, what with him being a mortarman and all. She found her eyes focusing on his hands as he worked, her mind zoning out temporarily.
"Twenty," she answered promptly.
"Wait, that don't make sense!" Malarkey protested.
Posey grinned. "I lied about my age to get in."
"Of course you did," said Toye. "Why ain't I surprised?"
"I don't look that young -" Posey began, but was cut off by enthusiastic protestations on the contrary.
"Duckie, no offence, but if you'd have told me you were twelve years old when we first met, I'd have believed you," said Skip.
Posey laughed, finally dragging her eyes up if only to look between all of them. "You know what?" she said, her words coloured a warm yellow by her laughter. "Screw you guys. You're rude."
"Just keepin' it real, Duckie," Penkala said, smirking.
"Well, can you keep it real to yourself? I'm trying to live my life in peace over here."
"Good luck with that," commented Skip.
Posey couldn't help but laugh.
Not long afterwards, she was sent out on patrol. Their line was thinning by the day and the number of Toccoa men and officers was dwindling, heightening the need for scouting out the area for enemy activity. However, as a result, these patrols were generally filled out by replacements - as bleak as it sounded, they couldn't risk sending too many Toccoa veterans out at the same time.
On this particular occasion, Posey followed behind Bill, the two of them the only veterans in the group. Replacements who'd come in at the same time as Heffron and replacements from after Market Garden, too, filled out their ranks. The latest replacements made Posey nervous, for they were jumpy and loud and seemed to have no idea what to do with themselves in combat. They'd never experienced it first hand, after all, and while they liked to talk the talk about killing krauts, once they were out in the open they were terrified.
As they traipsed along the edge of a field the sky overhead began to weep at the state of the world, and for all she resented the rain, Posey could understand. Europe wasn't a very nice place to be right now, destroyed by Nazis and combat. Posey thought about home, ducking her head so the rain water would spill off of the rim of her helmet and onto the grass beneath her feet. She thought about how her house had looked, torn apart by bombs with nothing left but rubble and dust. She felt she'd exhausted her capacity for tragedy. Now, she felt numbed.
For the first time in a while she found herself dreaming of America, of Mrs. Daniels' quaint little home in Boston and how happy she had been to be there for that one Christmas during boot camp. Sitting at that kitchen table eating homemade cookies sounded perfect right now. Safety and warmth and dryness sounded perfect right now.
"Reminds me of Normandy," Posey said to Bill, keeping her voice quiet but just loud enough for him to hear her over the wind and the rain. "Patrols, the rain..."
Bill snorted. "Yeah, don't it just."
"This is my fourth patrol in two days," she mentioned idly, adjusting her grip on her rifle and watching the back of Bill's jump boots to make sure she didn't lose him with her head down. "Heyliger loves having sharpshooters at his disposal, it seems."
"Eh, gives ya somethin' to do," Bill replied, though his voice betrayed that he wasn't convinced by his own words. But there was nothing to do but do as told and pretend to be happy about it, and light had to be found even in the dark if one wanted to emerge again on the other side.
"You got me into this," she shot back, the weak accusation in her voice blanketed by the impact of her smile. "It was your idea to make me a sharpshooter."
"If you don't quit your yappin' it'll be my idea to get you demoted, too." His threat was empty. He was smiling, too. She could hear it.
"Yeah? And who'll take my place?" Posey fired back.
"Heffron's pretty good with a gun."
"Heffron's also pretty good at leaving his gun lying around. You'll have to pry mine from my cold dead hands before you give it to him."
A gunshot had her hitting the deck immediately. Without having to be told, she lifted her gun and peered through her scope, scanning the field for potential German snipers.
"Wells -" Bill began.
"On it."
Behind her the replacements began to fidget where they lay on the wet grass. Posey hadn't even acknowledged the unpleasant feeling of water seeping into her ODs until she'd heard them moving. She scanned the landscape a few further times and came up blank, her scope all fogged up due to the rain. With a huff, she lowered her rifle. "Sounded like it came from up ahead," she said, addressing Bill. "You stay here and I'll go have a look."
"Like hell -"
"I'll be careful!"
"You ain't goin' by yourself!"
"Fucking follow me then," she hissed, having had enough. That overprotectiveness could really irritate her sometimes, almost just as much as she found it endearing. "Stay back and keep quiet."
Bill mumbled something unintelligible as Posey army crawled past him in the grass, something she was certain was to the effect of 'who's giving the orders around here?' but she paid him little mind. A few meters ahead was the opening of a ditch and once she was in it she'd be able to crawl quicker, on her hands and knees as opposed to her stomach where grenades and her teddy bear were pressing harshly into her chest.
As soon as she was close enough, Posey rolled into the ditch and pressed further forwards. Bill had left enough of a gap between them that him and the replacements followed after her perhaps thirty seconds later. When another gunshot sounded, Posey didn't duck this time. Instead, she peered down her scope above the ditch and caught sight of a couple of German soldiers aiming their guns in the centre of a grove of trees.
"What the..." she began, muttering under her breath as she centred them in her blurry scope. Then it clicked. "Target practice." One of them must have been a replacement. The thought was sobering. These German soldiers, of the Wehrmacht and not the SS, weren't so different to them. Separated from them by comparatively small stretches of land, they too were living in trenches and eating rock-hard rations and having to train up hastily-brought-in replacements.
She held her breath as she shot them, a bullet in the head each before either of them even knew they were being watched. The moment the second body hit the ground, she shut her eyes tight and breathed in deeply through her nose. These kraut hunting patrols didn't feel like war, they felt like murder.
After a moment of steeling herself, Posey turned and gave the signal to Bill that they were both down. She remained silent for the rest of the patrol. When they returned, she threw herself onto the floor of the barn and got Teddy out of her pocket, holding him up to gaze into his eyes.
"You alright?" Bill asked warily, coming to sit beside her.
Posey shrugged. "They were young."
"They were krauts."
"They were people."
Whether she knew it or otherwise, Posey fell asleep clutching at Teddy with one hand and at Bill's sleeve with the other. One day, she thought as the darkness drew her in, she'd have to level this with herself. One day, if she was lucky enough to live that long, she'd have to look back on her army career and take accountability for all the souls she'd ripped from the world prematurely. But with the rain pouring heavily onto the roof of the barn and lulling her to sleep, her rifle on the floor in front of her and her platoon sergeant by her side, today was not that day.