The invasion of Foy. They'd all known it was coming. Easy had cleared the woods to the east and the west of the town, and been posted on the hill overlooking it for the better part of a month; it had always only been a matter of time before they were sent in.
Today was that day.
Although nerves swirled around in Charlie's stomach, she couldn't say she was sad to be leaving their stretch of woods in the Bois Jacques, or their other stretch of woods in Bastogne, behind. She had no real attachment to the place she'd been calling home for the past month, only resentment and disgust. The sooner they could get out of their foxholes and work to set up a field hospital in town with whatever supplies they had left, the better.
The nurses remained in their foxholes while the men prepared for battle. It had been a while since they'd had to stay behind. Ever since the Island they'd been on the front lines with the men, lucky if they even got to be a ways back, and now they were being separated again, no longer one big company but instead Easy Company and the 23rd Field Hospital on their own, attached but not together.
Charlie tried not to think about the battle and how she wouldn't be able to help pick up the pieces until afterwards. She didn't even dare to hope her favourite soldiers would make it out safe.
Instead, she thought about the letter she'd write to her parents once they were in the town, when she got set up in a house instead of an icy hole and could actually use a pencil and paper.
But she couldn't avoid acknowledging the start of the battle. The noise was too loud for that.
Somewhere close to the treeline Captain Winters was shouting something at the top of his lungs, trying desperately to be heard over gunfire and artillery.
"Sounds like it's goin' well," Mabs muttered under her breath.
Charlie gritted her teeth as she sighed. "Dike should never have been allowed to lead men into combat." For she knew without having to look, without having to be told, that Winters would be shouting about Dike crumbling under the pressure of heavy gunfire, mortars, and artillery. There was no way he would be able to give out competent orders in those conditions, not when he'd been doing his best to avoid the front line the entire time they'd been in Belgium.
The battle went on and on. Suddenly, what had once seemed like a relatively easy manoeuvre was anything but that. No longer was their success guaranteed.
Winters continued shouting, getting louder and louder, until he got so loud Charlie could make out his words. "Speirs, get yourself over here!"
Charlie's eyes flicked to Mabs. She was already looking back at her.
"Get out there and relieve Dike, and take that attack on in!" ordered Winters.
Charlie let out a breath of mixed shock and relief.
"Speirs?" Mabs asked. "As in Dog Company Speirs?"
Charlie nodded. "Must be."
Mabs whistled. "Did not expect that, but I'll take it."
After that it wasn't long before the battle died down. Charlie and Mabs sat crouched in their foxhole, waiting for the all clear, until Henry approached to let them know they were moving in.
"We won?" Mabs asked.
"Yeah," Henry said, giving them both a small, weak smile. "We won."
When they made it into the town of Foy the men were already taking prisoners and cleaning up after the battle. Charlie, Mabs, and Henry, along with Boo and Autumn, headed for where Gene and Spina were gathering the wounded and got to work cleaning them up.
There were mostly bullet wounds to see to. The men who'd been hit by artillery had died on sight. A lot of men had died from gunshot wounds during the battle. But those who had survived and were waiting on further treatment before being delivered to the aid station were generally not doing so badly. Charlie tended to wounds in legs and arms, mostly - that was, until Bull carried Frank in.
"They got me in my fuckin' ass, Charlie," he told her as Bull laid him down in front of her. "Fuck, it hurts like a bitch."
"You had morphine?"
"Yeah."
"Then you'll just have to suffer, I'm afraid."
Frank grumbled as he lay on his front but he let Charlie clean him up anyway. By now she was immune to even blushing at having to touch a man's behind; it seemed the men of Easy Company had adopted a tradition of sorts for being shot in their backside, and she'd had to tend to so many wounds there she no longer batted an eye.
Frank finally settled when she finished tying the bandage. He was out of the way enough that she let him lie there to wait to be taken to the aid station. So, now finished with all of her wounded, Charlie pushed herself to her feet and went to stand with Henry and Autumn, who had both also finished.
"Will we be setting up in one of the buildings?" she asked, wiping the blood on her hands off on the trousers of her fatigues. They were already so filthy that the colour didn't change for being covered in yet more blood.
"I'm still waiting to find out," Henry replied. "Not sure how long we'll be staying."
Charlie didn't bother hoping to be sent back to Mourmelon for R&R. She didn't trust the Army to care enough about them to go to the effort. Instead, she nodded and accepted that wherever they moved to next it would probably be just as bad as this, but found some small shred of comfort in knowing it couldn't be any worse.
Autumn didn't say anything. She'd been talking more but still not a lot since Hoobler's death. Now, Charlie understood well enough not to try to cheer her up. She herself was sick of people trying to make her smile, trying to take her mind off of things, and tended not to speak unless it was necessary, so she wouldn't push any of those things on Autumn, either. Not anymore.
Over by the entrance to the town a group of men had hoisted themselves up to sit on a German panzer. Charlie watched idly as they began to sing and clap, playing up their mirth for the camera that had been following the company around as of late. Charlie had made sure to avoid the camera and its owner at all costs - she knew it was there for the purpose of raising morale back home and she had no place in trying to raise anyone's spirits anymore - but some of the men had found enjoyment in playing up for the people back home. Now, the men in front of the camera were grinning at each other as they sang, swaying and flinging arms around each other and making the most of being aboveground.
One of them had a sling wrapped around his arm and was swinging it a little too enthusiastically. Charlie was about to call out to him when she caught sight of Mabs stalking towards him, a scowl on her face.
"Mellet!" she shouted. "Put your arm down 'fore you -"
The sound of gunfire.
Mellet fell, and so did Mabs.
"Sniper!" someone shouted.
"Take cover!"
"Mabs!" Charlie cried.
"Take cover!"
Charlie shook off Henry's grip on her shoulder and sprinted towards Mabs, then dragged her around to the other side of the panzer.
"Oh, fuck, Charlie," Mabs groaned as Charlie gave her morphine.
"Stop moving," Charlie demanded, stress making her short. "Let me see."
As the morphine started to work Mabs started to relax, her writhing easing and allowing Charlie to rip a hole in her ODs where the blood was staining them sodden.
"Checking for an exit wound," Charlie informed her, then lifted her up enough that she could check the back of her shoulder. Charlie hissed. "Bullet's still in there, Mabs, I've got to get it out."
"Yeah," Mabs said with a lazy sigh.
"Stay awake," Charlie demanded.
"Damn," Mabs mumbled.
Shots continued to ring out around her as she worked to remove the bullet from the hole it had made in Mabs' shoulder. In the shadow of the tank there was limited light and the sulfa only worked to slow the blood flow somewhat.
Cheers erupted and Charlie guessed someone had shot the sniper. Probably Shifty. He was the best shot in the company. But Charlie didn't look up. She kept on digging into the bullet wound, prying the bullet out bit by bit.
"Fuckin' God damn, Charlie," Mabs hissed.
"I know," Charlie attempted to console her. "It's almost out."
"Hurry up." Mabs groaned.
Charlie rolled her eyes and kept at it.
When she finally managed to get the bullet out she held it up for Mabs to see.
Mabs held out a hand for it and looked down at it with a wry grin when Charlie handed it over. "The first bullet I ever got hit with," she said with an almost dreamy sigh.
"And the last," Charlie pointed out.
Mabs breathed a laugh. "Yeah, yeah."
"Come on, we need to get you with the other wounded so you can go to the aid station."
Mabs scoffed. "I ain't goin' to no aid station -"
Henry approached, then, with Autumn and Boo behind her. As soon as she'd taken in the scene Henry sighed. "How bad?"
"Bullet wound to the shoulder. No exit wound, so I had to dig it out."
Henry shook her head. "You'll be out for weeks, Mabs."
"I ain't goin' to no -" she began to repeat herself.
Henry cut her off. "You're going to the aid station whether you want to or not, and that's an order, Lieutenant. We can't afford for the wound to get infected and out here the chances of that are too high." She sighed once more. "We can do without you for a few weeks so long as we get you back when you've recovered. We couldn't withstand you getting taken off the line permanently with an amputated arm because you stayed away from the aid station too long."
Mabs huffed and leaned against the panzer with her good shoulder. "Fine."
Charlie went with Mabs to the aid station and stayed until Mabs fell asleep with her second dose of morphine. She didn't want to leave her. It was awful in here, nothing more than a green tent over-filled with bloodied bodies groaning and screaming in pain. But the nurses from Dog Company were working in here, now, since their field hospital had been hit back in the Bois Jacques, too, so at least she knew she was leaving Mabs in good hands. Otherwise she was sure she never would have left her at all.
"We'll take good care of her, Charlie, don't you worry," reassured Viv, one of Dog's nurses. "We'll have her back with you in no time."
Charlie nodded. "I'll come and visit when I can. Looks like you guys could use the help."
From the next bed over, Ellie, another of Dog's nurses, gave a small laugh. "Ain't that the case everywhere?"
"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "Great time to be a nurse."
"Ain't that the truth," Ellie agreed.
Eventually, Charlie was forced to leave the tent when more wounded from the battle at Foy started to pour in. She made the walk back feeling so much more alone than she ever had. She'd shared a foxhole with Mabs every time they'd seen combat, had always spoken to her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. In Aldbourne their rooms had been beside each other, in Normandy they'd slept on the floor side by side, in Holland they'd shared a tent, in Paris they'd shared a room, and in Belgium they'd shared the same hellish hole in the ground. How was she supposed to get by without Mabs?
Skip and Alex were gone, so were Bill and Joe, so were Frank and Hoobs and James. What was she supposed to do with Mabs gone, now, too? She had Boo and Autumn, sure, but it wasn't the same; they'd always had each other, and Charlie had always had Mabs.
But now?
Really, she only had Floyd.
And Don. Who she hadn't spoken to since she'd found out about Skip and Alex. She hadn't been able to bear looking at him, much less talking to him. She'd always spoken to him with Skip and Alex around, always known him as one third of a trio. Speaking to him alone... well, she'd just been certain it would tear her up inside even worse. It would surely only remind her even more of how much she missed Skip and Alex, of how permanent their absence was.
But he'd lost them, too. And he'd lost Lieutenant Compton. And he'd also lost Bill and Joe and the others. It wasn't fair to shut him out just because he reminded her of all she'd lost. And now she felt she was starting to miss him, too. In a different way to how she missed Skip and Alex, in a way that ached less, since she knew he was still around, and she couldn't help but wonder now just what she'd been thinking with all of this; she'd lost Skip and Alex and mourned how much time she'd lost with them, the things she'd still wanted to ask and say, and Don was still here and she was avoiding him on purpose?
So stupid. So very, very stupid.
She couldn't take things like the survival of her friends for granted anymore.
Charlie found Don sitting on an old doorstep back in Foy, watching a group of the men smoking and laughing together. She sat beside him in silence.
"So, Lieutenant Speirs is taking over Easy now?" she asked quietly, the first thing she could think to say.
"Looks like it," he replied.
"That's good."
"Yeah." He shook his head numbly. "He's already doing better than Dike."
Charlie followed Don's gaze to where Speirs was speaking with Captains Winters and Nixon. Even that was more than she'd seen Dike do for the duration of their time in Belgium.
"Mabs was shot," she said next. She looked down at her lap. "In the shoulder. She's been taken off the line."
"No shit?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry to hear that."
"Thanks," she said, though she hadn't told him for sympathy.
"I think we're moving out soon," Don said after a while of silence.
Charlie glanced up from her chapped, blood stained hands. "To Mourmelon?"
"Don't think so." Don laughed once, bitterly, and glanced at her sidelong. "We should be so lucky, right?"
"Yeah." Charlie sighed. "We should be so lucky," she agreed.