Hitler had shot himself in Berlin, and Easy Company was moving out of Thalham to a Nazi town named Berchtesgaden.
Charlie was not sad to leave Thalham behind. So many dark corners concealing so many haunted faces from everyone, it seemed, except her.
On the journey to Berchtesgaden, however, everything was all sunlight.
They had left Thalham that morning and travelled for six hours, and though it was mid-afternoon by now the sun was just as bright and hot beating down on them as it had been at noon.
A long line of trucks was parked along a road that curled up and around the mountain leading to the town of Berchtesgaden, and currently they were locked out. When the Nazis left it seemed they had expected Allied forces to want to get in, and so they'd left behind a huge pile of boulders and whatever else they could find as something of a housewarming gift. Just in case entering might have been considered too easy for them.
"If they don't hurry up we're gonna have to find Autumn some shade," Mabs said, lying back on one of the benches in the nurses' truck and sunbathing. It was the first time any of them had spoken in about forty-five minutes. "She's gonna bake out here," Mabs explained. "Must suck to be a ginger."
"I probably do need to get my scar out of the sun," Autumn conceded, too hot to even protest Mabs' teasing. "It burns easier than the rest of me."
Mabs snorted. "And that's sayin' somethin'."
"I'll go see what's happening," Charlie declared, pushing herself up from the floor between the truck benches where she'd been sitting with Autumn. Boo was mirroring Mabs' stance and lying back on the other bench, sunbathing while they didn't have any other duties to attend to, while Henry had told them she would be getting information when she'd left a while ago. She hadn't come back since, and Charlie knew for a fact she hadn't gotten any information; she'd gotten distracted talking to Don.
Charlie crawled down the centre of the truck and swung her legs over the edge before hopping down. She left her helmet and her bags behind her and longed to change into something airier - she was sweating beneath her fatigues - but pushed the thought from her mind. Her eyes were squinted against the sunlight, her mouth dry as she picked her way through the many soldiers sitting or lying on the ground and up to Floyd.
"Do you know how much longer we're going to be out here?" Charlie asked, using her hand as a visor to keep the sun out of her eyes. "The gingers among us will probably start to burn soon."
Floyd cracked a smile at this. "Well, the engineers were supposed to be here a half hour ago, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic."
Charlie sighed dramatically and threw her head back, even knowing it would only make her feel hotter, and shut her eyes against the sunshine. "I'm so bored," she complained, smiling when he laughed.
Another loud bang rang out, similar to the hundreds she must have heard over the course of the past three quarters of an hour as the men with bazookas and mortars attempted to break the barrier themselves.
"What do you want me to do about it, huh?" Floyd asked when the noise had ceased once more.
Charlie tipped her head back down to look at him and stamped her foot into the ground. "I don't know!" she exclaimed. "Entertain me!"
He grinned. "Is that why you keep me around?" he wondered. "For your own entertainment?"
She shrugged. "Among other things."
"Like..?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," she replied coyly.
"Aw, Freckles, don't be that way," he teased.
She reached for his hands and he let her take them, and then she started to tug him along with her back towards the nurses' truck at the back of the line. "Come do a puzzle with me," she requested, and was delighted that he didn't protest, just let her continue to tow him along with her.
"Will Autumn let us borrow one of her puzzles?"
"We'll be careful."
Autumn did, in fact, let them use one of her puzzles, but only because she saw a good opportunity in wearing the lid of the box like a hat to keep her face out of the sun. She looked positively ridiculous, sitting there with a long, rectangular box on her head, but she also looked so much like herself, a free spirit through and through, that Charlie couldn't even laugh. She could only think of how much she loved her.
Autumn kept watch as Charlie and Floyd did the puzzle, presiding over them like some sort of medieval king with a lid hat for a crown, making sure they didn't lose any of the pieces. After a while Henry returned with Don following behind her.
"I wanna join," Don declared as soon as he saw what Charlie and Floyd were doing on the floor, so their duet became a trio while Henry climbed back up on the truck and informed the others about the delay.
"Don, you've put that piece there like ten times," Charlie said a little while later, batting his hand away. "It doesn't fit! It's the wrong shade of blue, anyway."
"Shut the fuck up, Charlie," Don returned with no real bite to his words. "You and Tab would've taken a year to get this far without me."
Floyd scoffed. "Malark, you ain't done shit."
"Hey, a puzzle!" exclaimed Lieb as he came over. "Autumn, why didn't you tell me?" he demanded as he threw himself on the ground between Floyd and Don and leaned over the pieces. He didn't even give Autumn's lid hat a second glance.
More of the men joined in after that, initially coming over to see what was going on and then staying so they could help with the puzzle.
"Hey, Skinny, look - it's a train!" Frank said as the picture started coming together.
"Yeah, you oughta like that," Lieb added.
"Bringin' back happy memories, Skinny?" George joked.
"What was the punchline to that joke again?" Charlie asked. All she could remember was not understanding it the first time and she wondered whether she would get it now.
George smiled wide as he did an impression of Skinny and recounted for her, "Well, sir, she was comin', I was comin', and the only one who had any control over the brakes was the damned train driver."
Everyone laughed and Charlie sighed. "I still don't get it," she mumbled, and went back to doing the puzzle.
"Which part?" Floyd asked from beside her as conversation resumed around them, the only person who had overheard.
"All of it," she answered. "I don't see what's funny."
"Skinny was coming, his girl was coming, and so was the train," Floyd attempted to explain.
Charlie shook her head. "Don't get it."
"What's not to get?"
"It makes no sense!" Charlie exclaimed, frustrated, and if the conversations continuing around them hadn't been so loud everyone would have overheard. "He wasn't coming, and neither was she. The only thing coming was the train."
Floyd didn't reply for a moment. Instead, he simply looked at her, a wolfish grin spreading slowly across his face. "You don't know what coming means."
"Yes, I do."
"Then what's it mean?"
"If something is coming then it's approaching," she explained prosaically. "Which is why the joke doesn't make sense."
Floyd tipped his head back and laughed, the sound just as bright as the sunshine above him. "Oh, Freckles," he said when his laughter faded and he tilted his head back down. "Oh, Freckles, Freckles, Freckles. What are we gonna do with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'll explain the joke to you later," he said, turning back to the puzzle while chuckling under his breath.
"Explain it now," Charlie demanded.
"If I explain it now you'll wish I waited until later."
"Easy Company!" shouted Captain Speirs. "Load back up into the trucks!" he ordered. "First Sergeant Talbert!"
"Later," Floyd promised her before jumping up and heading over to Speirs.
Easy Company were ordered to outflank the French on their way up the mountain, so they took a different route. And they did end up beating the French soldiers along with General Leclerc into Berchtesgaden.
When they got there it was a ghost town.
All of the architecture was quintessentially Bavarian. The whole town looked quaint, like a village from a fairy tale, but there was something eerie about it in the absence of civilians. Of course, Charlie knew it would have been even eerier if there had been civilians, knowing who its inhabitants had once been - and all of them staunch Nazis - but even so, the fluttering of scattered paper in the wind made everything feel somewhat spectral.
Her ghosts would surely thrive here.
Flags and banners bearing the Nazi flag fluttered in the light breeze as they hung down from balconies and windows, declarations of the people who owned the houses' allegiance even when they'd fled their sinking ship. The sight of the red, white, and black made Charlie feel sick. These people had lived their pretty little lives up here, all while knowing and encouraging what Hitler had been ordering his soldiers to do in camps all over the continent, torturing and killing millions of innocent people. How could anyone be that vile inside? That sickeningly evil?
As they progressed further into town, however, the flags lost their red and black and became purely white. Flags of surrender.
Good.
The trucks pulled up outside a grand hotel named the Berchtesgadener Hof, and its façade was covered in huge Nazi flags. The company's officers, along with Winters and Nixon, went inside, while the enlisted men and the nurses remained outside.
Charlie took the time to look around.
"I want to stay in that house," she decided when she laid eyes on a building to her left. It had a pink balcony, its iron wrought to look like lace, stretching out of its second story, and a pink front door to match.
Mabs turned to follow her gaze and Charlie pointed to help her out.
"Pretty," Mabs said. "Who takes care of organising houses?"
"Floyd, I think."
Mabs gave Charlie a small smile. "Then I think we can consider that our house."
Charlie laughed and looked back up at the pretty house.
"We're takin' the Eagle's Nest, boys!" Alton shouted as he emerged from the hotel. Charlie hadn't even seen him go in.
The Eagle's Nest was, Autumn informed the other nurses, a chalet on top of the Obersalzberg mountain which was considered the jewel of Hitler's empire. Being the first of the Allies to invade it would be a big deal, symbolic, and even though she wouldn't be going up there herself, Charlie started to feel herself getting antsy for the men to do it in her stead.
"Alright, let's get set up," Henry announced, starting to pull down some of their equipment from the truck.
"Charlie wants that one," Mabs said, pointing to the house with the pink balcony and door.
Henry shrugged. "Alright. We'll go there." She smiled. "None of the men care right now."
"I don't think they'd want this one anyway," Mabs remarked.
The front door was locked, because of course it was, but Autumn managed to get it unlocked easily with one of the pins she'd had in her hair.
The interior of the house was almost just as pretty as the exterior.
The walls were white and the furniture dark wood, with pink accents here and there. Couch cushions, candles, and paintings on the wall all added small hints of rose, and Charlie felt like she was in a dream.
"You sure this ain't your house, darlin'?" Mabs teased as she came to stand beside her in the living room.
Charlie simply smiled.
Since she'd been last to choose her room back in Stürzelberg, Charlie forewent heading into the kitchen and instead ascended the stairs. Whichever room had the balcony was the room she was having, and she was delighted to find there were two. One room on one end of the upstairs hallway had the balcony she'd originally coveted, looking out over the street, but the one at the other end had a balcony looking out onto the mountains, with no Nazi flags in sight.
Yes. This one. It was slightly smaller but much prettier, with white gauzy curtains and a white comforter with pink roses embroidered on it on the bed. Perfect.
Charlie left her carpet bag in the open doorway, so the others would know this was the room she'd claimed, and hurried down the stairs to help the others bring in the equipment for the field hospital. They deposited all of the necessary boxes in the dining room before they all headed back upstairs, the others to pick their rooms and Charlie simply to marvel at hers. She gazed out at the mountains for a while, wondering whether Easy had made it to the Eagle's Nest yet, before she headed downstairs and out into the street and found men starting to return, champagne bottles in hand.
"What's it like?" Charlie called out to Alton as she caught sight of him wandering down the street. He had a bottle of champagne in one hand and some sort of book in the other, and he smirked as he ambled his way over to her.
"I'm goin' back up in a second," he said. "I'll take ya."
Charlie smiled. "Okay," she agreed. Then she pointed to his book. "What's that?"
Alton's smirk grew. "Hitler's personal photo album," he said, offering it to her.
When Charlie had it in her hands she opened it carefully, aware of how much money it would be worth, and flicked through a couple of pages. She couldn't bear to look at even a third before she had to shut the book and hand it back to Alton. The man who had created so much terror and suffering didn't deserve to have photographs of himself smiling like that, eating the finest food and drinking the finest champagne while he starved and tortured millions.
"Let me go put this with my stuff and I'll come pick y'up," Alton said, holding up the photo album. He left directly to go and deposit it wherever he'd be staying the night while Charlie sat down on the doorstep to wait.
He was wise, she thought, in coming back from the Eagle's Nest early to put the album somewhere safe. A lot of the men would definitely be trying to steal it if he wasn't careful with it, Speirs among them with his notorious sticky fingers. She could only imagine the trouble Alton was going to have to go to to keep his new possession quiet.
Alton returned and Charlie called into the house that she was going with him up to the Eagle's Nest. The others all called back that they'd go up later and so Charlie set off without them. She and Alton had to go up the mountain on foot, which would have probably taken him half the time it did if he'd been alone and not keeping time with her, but she appreciated his company. She just hoped there would be some champagne left by the time they got up there.
The Eagle's Nest was crawling with soldiers when Charlie and Alton eventually made their way inside. Even in the entryway men were crowded around a huge, red Italian marble fireplace, chipping off pieces of the marble to take home with them as souvenirs.
Everywhere Charlie turned she found men holding bottles of different types of alcohol and other things they'd looted - photographs and cutlery and Nazi flags off the walls. Alton led her to the bar in the dining area where they found a few bottles of champagne still unopened, and he uncorked a bottle for her before handing it over.
The champagne was nicer than any alcohol Charlie had ever tasted. It was bubbly and sharp, fresh and sweet, and tasted about as good as she would expect with the money it had probably cost. She sipped at it leisurely as she took a look around, walking in and out of rooms made of stone and peering out of every window she found, stunned by the view of the Alps from so high up. Eight thousand feet up, she'd heard in passing.
The Eagle's Nest was somehow both luxurious and minimalist, and clearly very, very expensive. Every bit of furniture inside was masterfully created. And the architecture itself was a masterpiece; the windows had been built into the grey stone walls in such a way that when light flooded in it looked ethereal, dreamlike. Charlie hated how much she liked the place.
Charlie sipped and sipped at the champagne as she did one tour of the chalet and then another, wherein she replaced her empty bottle with a fresh one and sipped generously from that, too. At one point she found a piece of the red Italian marble from the entryway fireplace lying on a shelf and pocketed it, not caring who it had originally belonged to. Then she happened upon some of her friends on a balcony she hadn't seen on her first go around, which had stunning cloisters, windowless and looking out on snow-peaked mountains.
"Charlie!" Boo greeted from her perch on George's lap. They were both sitting on a sunbed at the end of a line of sunbeds pushed against the stone wall. Currently, all of them were occupied.
"Hi!" Charlie chirped in return, and sipped from her champagne. "Isn't it pretty?" she asked, gesturing to the wall beside her.
"How much have you had to drink?" Mabs asked around an amused smile and a sip from the bottle she was sharing with Autumn.
"Lots," said Charlie, doing a little twirl. She had to hold onto the wall for support afterwards, lest she go tumbling over, and Floyd, who had been sitting on the sunbed closest to her, rose to his feet to place a steadying hand against her waist.
"Easy there, Freckles," he said, grinning. "Don't want you to go tumbling down the side of the mountain."
"This is so yummy," Charlie said next as she sat down on the end of Floyd's sunbed. She held the bottle out to him to try and he took a sip, hummed his appreciation, and handed it back to her.
"Where'd you find a bottle for yourself, huh?" Mabs asked, frowning as Autumn took a long sip on the bottle they were sharing.
Charlie shrugged coyly and drank again.
"That's her second," George said, laughing. In the face of Charlie's gasp at being exposed he said, "Yeah, that's right. I saw."
Before anyone could try to take the bottle away from her, Charlie tipped as much of it down her throat as she could. She did her best not to giggle at the chorus of complaints and objections that went up among her friends as they tried fruitlessly to stop her, and she drained the bottle in a few big gulps.
"That was so stupid, Charlie," Don said, laughing around the rim of his own bottle. "You're gonna be drunk off your ass."
"She already is!" Mabs complained.
Charlie just shrugged. It wasn't like she'd be working for the rest of the day, anyway, and her things were already safely shut in the house she'd chosen back in town. As far as she was concerned, for the rest of the day there was nothing else for her to worry about.