Posey kept her gun close to her and wished she had more ammunition. They hadn't had any to spare back on the line but what she had with her now, now that she was on her own in Wehrmacht-occupied territory, was pitiful. She'd have to use her bullets sparingly. She was hoping she wouldn't have to use any at all.
It was beginning to get light by now. She'd walked all through the night. Her legs ached fiercely, her lungs burned with freezing cold air, and her heart beat lethargically against her ribs. She recalled all of the marching they'd had to do back at boot camp and was grateful for it now; she'd never have been able to walk for so long otherwise.
Thinking of boot camp made tears sting in her eyes. She'd pitied herself so much back then when, really, things hadn't been so bad. It was both the gift and the curse of hindsight that the past could seem so rosy. She'd had problems back then, sure, but problems nowhere near the scope of her current one. This was a full on nightmare, and as much as she prayed and prayed she'd wake up soon she knew she never would.
Light was beginning to spill through the trees, painting the snow orange. The world was still asleep, everything quiet and somewhat hazy in the early morning, but Posey was wide awake. Even though she hadn't had any sleep she didn't feel tired. She didn't know that she'd ever be able to sleep again - not until she got somewhere safe, at least.
She'd passed the aid station hours ago in her trek. It had been Nixon's idea to follow this route - he'd said it was her best chance at survival. Up on the line they were surrounded by krauts on all sides but the wounded were getting to the aid station somehow, and from the aid station some of them were getting sent to evacuation hospitals. Posey followed the route Nixon had mapped out for her, the one the jeeps took to transport wounded back from the line, and when a truck left the aid station, carrying battered soldiers off to a hospital, she hid behind a tree and watched it leave. She had a general idea of where the evacuation hospital was, and wherever it was would be somewhere the Germans weren't occupying. If she could just get there, she'd be safe. Then she could go to Reims, hitch a ride or something, and go find George in that bookshop again. He'd know what to do, for he'd done it himself before.
Posey stopped very suddenly, startled as she realised she was in a very similar position to the one he'd been in when his plane had gone down - to the one John had been in, too. The stakes had been higher for them because back then France, where they'd landed, had been occupied by the Nazis. Posey wasn't in Nazi-occupied territory but she was in Wehrmacht occupied territory, and there would still be a very hefty price on her head if the Germans found out she was out here, wandering around on her own. They'd make her a POW, undoubtedly, and when they found out she was a woman...
It didn't bear thinking about. She couldn't let herself think about it. There was only one thing that came of thinking the worst and that was a downward spiral from which she'd never return. No, the only thing to think about was putting one foot in front of the other and walking as far as she could for as long as she could. Nothing else mattered right now.
It had been hours since she'd passed the aid station and she hadn't seen a soul since then. She startled when she saw one now. He was American, that much was clear from the colour of his ODs and the shape of his helmet, but she had no idea what he was doing all the way out here. Perhaps he was a deserter - perhaps they could travel on foot together. Then again, did she really want to find herself associated with a deserter, knowing of how the US Army was hunting them down and pinning them with a death sentence?
Still, she approached, slowly but letting her footsteps crunch loudly in the snow. She was confident there were no Germans around here and she didn't want to startle him.
"Hello?" she called out warily when she was a good, safe distance away in case he was trigger happy.
She didn't get a reply. The man didn't even move. Where he sat slumped against the tree, his back to her, he may even have been asleep. She called out to him louder, "Hello?" and still got nothing back.
Posey glanced around her, checking in all directions, before approaching. She kept her gun close and her safety off, just in case, before skirting around the tree and coming to crouch before the soldier, still a sizeable distance away.
"Hel-" she began again, and the word died on the air. He was dead. He didn't have any visible injuries, no blood or bandages or anything of the sort, but looked as though he'd frozen to death. Snow had collected on his eyelashes and ice was crusting over his face, turning his skin a pale shade of blue. His lips were a bright blue, his hair frozen solid.
Posey wrapped her free arm tighter around herself, feeling colder just looking at him, and backed away. As she turned her back on him, ready to carry on walking, an idea struck her.
The aid station was taking wounded to an evacuation hospital, and the evacuation hospital was taking the wounded back to England. England. If she could only convince the nurses and doctors and orderlies that she wasn't Joseph Wells, if she had evidence to prove that she wasn't, then she could be sent back to England and save herself an awful lot of time and danger.
She was uneasy as she approached the man again. Clicking the safety back on on her rifle and slinging it over her shoulder to free up her hands, she felt doubly uneasy about being without a weapon for however long it took her to do what she needed to do.
Still, she sucked it up and crouched before him, closer this time, and gritted her teeth before tugging at the frozen fabric of his ODs.
It was as hard as ice, frozen solid by the cold. He must have been sat there for a while, left behind, perhaps, by his unit. Long enough, in any case, to make the fabric utterly immovable.
Posey leaned forwards and blew warm air on his collar. She didn't have much warmth to spare, herself, her teeth chattering and her entire body shaking with the impact of her shivers, but she had little choice. Now that she'd come up with this plan there seemed little for her to do instead.
She had no idea how long it took her to get the collar of his ODs warm enough that she could move them; time could have been passing rapidly or leisurely and she'd never have any idea out here. She supposed it didn't really matter as long as she got them free. As long as, of course, a kraut didn't stumble upon her in the process, too. She spared another cautionary glance all around her, checking for movement or voices, and came up empty, so she turned back to the American soldier to focus on her next job.
If she'd thought his ODs were a problem his dog tags were an even bigger one. Wearing metal out in this cold seemed a stupid idea but one did what they had to and they had to wear dog tags. Trying to pry the metal away from him could have been an Olympic sport, but at least he had an undershirt keeping it away from the skin of his chest.
The second she got the tags free she took off her own and swapped them over, draping hers over his head and tucking them back into his ODs before blowing on his, trying to warm them up before having to put them on. There was something wrong, something unnatural, about all of this, and when she finally got home she'd write to this man's family - Ralph P. Raymond was his name, apparently, she read on his tags - and let them know what had happened to him. For now, she could only whisper her thanks to him and hope he heard it from somewhere kinder than here before putting on his dog tags and tucking them into her ODs.
As an afterthought she ripped off the patch on her bicep, the patch of the 101st Airborne, and placed it in one of Ralph's pockets. She ripped off his own insignia - a black circle with a bright yellow talon stepping in the centre - and tucked it into her pocket. They wouldn't ask, she was sure, but if they did she'd tell them it had come off in the middle of a barrage.
She nodded to herself once, encouragingly, before standing and heading back the way she'd come.
She needed to get herself wounded now, she realised. How she'd forgotten about that before she had no idea. She needed to get wounded and it needed to be bad enough for her to be sent back to England for recovery.
Pulling her gun off of her shoulder and clicking off the safety again, Posey considered it as she walked back towards the aid station. How could she get herself wounded out here without accidentally killing herself? What made a soldier unfit to be sent back out on the line?
She thought about shooting herself in the leg but knew it wouldn't work - her gun was made for long distance shooting; up close the shot would be too intense and she might cut the artery. She considered her bayonet and thought about Tab getting sent back to England after Smith had stabbed him in Normandy - it seemed a good idea, but how would she know she wasn't hitting something important, an organ or an artery or something?
She wished Gene was here, wished it so desperately she almost started to cry. She wished, really, that she wasn't in this position at all, but she was and there was no point in crying over spilt milk. But how much easier this would have been if she'd gotten Gene to wound her and go with her to the aid station and send her off that way.
It wouldn't have worked, of course, because then Joseph Wells wouldn't have been KIA and the army would be tracking him down, but it was a nice idea.
With every footstep back towards the aid station Posey became steadily more anxious. She whispered to herself under her breath, watching it fog out in front of her, and begged herself not to panic.
When hours had passed and the world had started to wake up the Germans began to barrage. Even from this far away from the line she felt she ground shaking with the impact of the shells and sent up a prayer for her boys back out on the line, that they'd be safe and alive by the time it was over. The barrage seemed to go on forever but still she kept walking, not affected by it so far away as she was now. Instead, she was able to hear it as an outsider would have been hearing all of the barrages she'd endured when out on the line. Perhaps, she thought, this was what the Blitz had been like to those on the outskirts of London: close enough to hear, close enough to fear, but not close enough to send you running. She smiled bitterly. Her life would be forever haunted by bombs.
A squadron of German bombers flew overhead - she recognised them, knew she always would - seemingly heading to bomb either a nearby town or the line. The bombs they dropped were so close the blasts sent Posey to the floor, her hands clasped over her helmet and her face buried into the snow.
They seemed to drop bombs forever, one after the other in such close intervals her ears didn't have time to ring. The ground shook violently beneath her and all she could do was lay there and hope the end was near.
Eventually, the silence returned, and she was left to lay flat and motionless, the only sounds the ringing in her ears. For one perfectly still, silent moment, Posey believed that she was the last one left, not only of the men surrounding her but of the entirety of humanity. A blast of that size would surely take everything with it. She lay curled in on herself, limbs clutched desperately against her in a bid to keep them attached, very much believing herself to be completely alone, the last human being left.
And then, in the wake of the stillness, came the chaos.
The blasts were closer, as close as they'd felt when she'd been on the line, and one of them was so close it knocked the breath out of her. She was distantly aware of a tree on her left being torn up, its bark thrown up into the air and crashing down to the ground like so many arrows. Still, she lay motionless, her hands clasped over her helmet and her bottom lip trembling as she wondered whether this would be it, whether she really would end up dead like everyone thought she was.
When silence returned all Posey could think of was what was likely happening back on the line. They'd all know by now. That was, they'd all think by now that she was dead. At any given moment, she might be. She bit onto her bottom lip hard. Don't think about it. She didn't want to imagine what Bill was thinking, didn't want to imagine him sat alone in their foxhole with Teddy thinking her gone forever.
One day, she thought, she'd go find him. After the war, maybe. She'd go to Philly and she'd visit him, and then she'd go and visit Johnny and George and Gene and Bull, too. She tried to imagine how they'd react to finding out that she was alive, how shocked and happy they might be. She tried to convince herself that she would be alive to experience that, otherwise her secret would die with her and Gene would think she'd never wanted to seek him out after getting home.
She couldn't think about it, not just now. She lay on the ground, completely still apart from her trembling limbs, until she thought she was safe. When she tried to stand, her abdomen burned.
The snow beneath her was stained red and her stomach was on fire. Her breathing became laboured as she panicked, her head starting to ache and spin. She'd been hit. How hadn't she realised she'd been hit? How long had she been laying there, motionless, letting herself bleed out?
She dragged herself to her feet and started back towards the aid station, knowing she needed to cover as much distance as she could while the shock was still handling most of the pain. She felt tingly - numb, almost - but whilst her stomach was burning the pain wasn't debilitating, not yet. She had a harder time of forcing her head not to spin, of forcing herself to think straight and not look down.
She pressed her hands to her stomach to slow the bleeding and felt the wound for the first time. She felt her face go pale as the blood rushed from her; a piece of bark, perhaps multiple, had hit her and were piercing her right through her side. She didn't let herself think on how much she was bleeding, couldn't think about how she was probably leaving a trail. All she could think about was putting one foot in front of the other and following the path back to the aid station, she'd worry about everything else afterwards.
For now, she needed to move, and quickly, back towards the place she was supposed to have left behind for good.