Word count; 2,358
Eugene
— December 26th, 1944. Bastogne, Belgium.
I weaved around men as they climbed out of their foxholes, journeying to breakfast. The whole morning, neither of them had resisted to smile, for once unbothered by the snow but rather focused on the events of the previous day. Some had attached the small compasses to their webbing, others to their boots. Most kept them in their chest pocket, aware it could be the last gift they would ever receive.
Winters thumped a large box on the tree stump he normally used as a stool, beckoning me from my usual route of knitting through the company. I stuffed my fists into my handwarmers, feeling for the small compass between my thumb and index finger. Captain Nixon appeared from his own foxhole, cheeks grey from the lack of a shave.
"Patrol brought this back." Winters unclamped the wooden crate. "Said there were some bandages, some penicillin."
"Morphine?" I asked.
"None," Winters looked over his shoulder at Nixon, who squinted at a piece of paper. "Good morning, princess."
"Jesus," He muttered.
Winters questioned the exclaimation, gesturing towards the box before turning around. I began to dig through it, hoping that the patrol hadn't examined the contents properly, only to look up as I felt a pair of eyes land on me. It was only brief, a short glance before returning back to the man in front of him.
"How many?"
"They're unsure." Nixon crumpled the paper into his pocket. "A few civilians. Two Czech soldiers."
Winters looked at me again. Knowing that was my dismissal, I gulped, shutting the crate and continuing on my path.
"Hey, hey, Doc,"
I regarded my right, Babe climbing out from his foxhole.
"What's that?"
"Some supplies."
He rolled his eyes, "No shit. What kinda supplies?"
"Bandages, cough medicine, needles."
Heffron shivered, "Always hated needles."
I smiled awkwardly, he frowned.
"You're really bad to talk to." He tugged on my shoulder. "Come on. Get some grub."
"Not hungry." I resisted his touch.
"No shit. If you don't eat now, I'll find you tonight, all skin and bones and no food. You're coming."
And like that, he dragged me to breakfast. Half of the men had already finished their food, yet still loitered around the area, recollecting fond memories together.
"Hey, Doc!"
I halted, a soldier having pulled at the bottom of my trouser leg.
"What's the news?" Toye probed.
"I can't keep doing this, Toye."
"Hey, I saw you over there." He looked at the man next to him, both crouched around their bowls of food. "What's up? We going home yet?"
The two other faces nearby - Guarnere and Powers - looked up at me in anticipation. I ordered Heffron to get food. Squatting, they let out a small cheer and I rolled my eyes.
"What do you want to know?"
Guarnere spat, "If we're fuckin' going home or not."
"No. You're not going home yet."
Bill's frame caved slightly, as if he was really hoping for other news.
"So..." Toye supplied.
I glanced over both of my shoulders, no-one else paying attention.
"There's been a couple mortar hits. North-West side of town."
"How bad?"
"Couple civilians and soldiers."
They nodded with a sort of satisfaction.
I answered what they were all thinking, "It was last night. The Lieutenant said she wasn't moving out until the morning."
"But North-West right?" A voice from behind me raised. "Ain't that the same side where the 21st is?"
I followed the direction of the query, Martin at its centre. Almost everyone was paying attention to the conversation, now.
"They'd have more sense than to keep her near mortar range."
"Would they?"
"Fuckin' lost her in Nuenen, wouldn't be surprised if they did this time."
"And what if-"
"Okay, okay." I cleared my throat, lowering my voice. "I was going to catch a ride into town after midday... I will ask around to see if she got off all right. Okay?"
A few bobbed their heads, some murmuring a couple acknowledgements. Naturally, my gaze landed on Liebgott, who knelt by a nearby tree with Luz. Silently, a promise was made.
I stood in front of the church - my usual stop-off in town - and swallowed, hard, my heart blanketed in a frost. To my right, a few soldiers were heading down the street, the civilians of Bastogne continuing with their days. Normally, I would stick around for an hour or two, giving my help where it was needed. Somehow, my stomach twisted, like I was a child who knew they had been caught lying. Like I was abandoning my duties. Like I was back in Louisiana, in that small riverside town, being blamed for every wrongdoing our family faced.
Except, it was none of those things. I carried on into the church.
I headed down the aisle, checking on the few members of Easy Company that had found shelter there in their time away from the front. The priest that usually delivered the last rites to the casualties greeted me, shaking my hand and pressing our foreheads together. He knew he could trust me - he once said, in broken English despite my fluency in French - because of the colour of my hands. Stained red, he said.
I stepped into a sideroom, where the organ would've been kept before the war. At first, I pretended to file through some crates - an act that the sisters had encouraged me to do in order to stop interrupting them.
"Hi," A nurse - Elise - said in French, sweet as an angel.
"Hi." I responded, clearing my throat.
"It has been a while since I last saw you." She frowned sympathetically, knowing the exact reason why.
We were both doing our separate things, though when I stood up straight, abandoning the idea of the crates, she was leaning against the table, staring at me. I swallowed, clearing my throat again.
"Do you need something?" She gestured to the boxes.
"No, no." I answered immediately. "Actually, yes."
She chuckled.
"You know the Lieutenant, right? The woman. Kennedy."
"Yes, yes." She tittered. "She's very sweet."
"Did she leave okay this morning? No problems?"
Elise stirred, filtering through her memory.
"It's only," I excused, "The men want to know that she was okay. Because of the mortar hits last night."
"She left yesterday, already. There was a vehicle travelling to her destination." Elise clasped her fingers over her swollen abdomen. "I'm sure she is okay. It was before any of the blasts."
The frost over my heart began to spread, spawning a dread beneath it. I thanked Elise, and returned to the outside of the church. I reached into my pocket, acting on instinct, and began to follow the roads North-West. The entire time, I kept imagining the same situation in my head: what I may find, what I would tell the men, if I would at that.
For a while, there was nothing but endless roads and burnt out buildings, piles of dead debris only increasing as I made my way towards the edge of the town. I stopped in the middle of a crossroads, looking down each of the streets as if each determined my fate. Twenty minutes had already passed. Up ahead - forty or so metres away - a figure of blazed metal sat in the middle of a road, blackened by an ancient flame. I carried on.
I peered through the windows of the burned vehicle, any signs of life completely eradicated. It was only when I circled the pile of metal that I covered my jaw with my forearm, a scorched body trapped beneath the main body of the car. I pushed away any thought that started to think of the unthinkable.
"Where are you, Frances..." I muttered to myself, looking further down the road.
All was still, the sun hidden beneath the constant overcast of grey clouds. On the ground, the snow was in blotches, ready to be blanketed with the afternoon downpour of frost that would come. Snow rarely left the front, but in the town it almost never stayed.
A small lift in the air brought my gaze to over my shoulder. Fields covered each side of the roads, filled with coarse dirt - perfect for farming, if the circumstances provided the chance. Even a shed sat near the next crossroads, big enough to house a small tractor. Woodlands engulfed the roads a couple hundred metres away. I would've turned back then and there.
Taking one last glimpse at the corpse, I headed for the shed. The door of it creaked back and forth as the wind gently swayed into the shack. At the front, before the stone step up into the building, boot marks were imprinted in the dirt, beginning in the middle of the field and disappearing onto the road, accompanied by a large trail of blood, like someone had used a paintbrush and dragged the ooze across the track. Placing one hand carefully on the wood, I pushed open the threshold.
In one corner, there was a wooden table, a few empty rounds tossed on the floor beneath it. On the right hand side, a large patch of red had seeped into the wood. Still, the air was tight, not even a bird or artillery barrage to grace it. I turned around, scanning the distance as more roads met woodlands. Taking a seat on the step, I buried my fists into my handwarmers. My head declined, examining the footprints. I frowned.
I picked up a little piece of metal peeking out from the dirt, smudging my thumb over it to wipe away the mud. It was a tiger.
No.
It was the tiger.
Once, I saw Liebgott attaching it to his dogtags, so there'd be no chance of losing it. Sometimes - when I'd make my rounds - I'd find him holding onto it, enclosed in his palm and resting against his lips, eyes clamped shut as if he were praying. No-one questioned it; maybe it was a good luck charm. If only they knew the real reason.
It was hers.
I dug an arm under the cover of a foxhole, whipping it open and sliding down the dirt walls before anyone from within could contend. At first, Guarnere began to retort, only for Toye to tell him to shut up after realising it was me. Offended, Bill erupted into an argument.
"So yeah, everything's just peaches, Doc, I appreciate you coming over. I would've made dinner but the missus has been up my arse all day." Toye elbowed Guarnere in the side. "Can I get you anything else? A piece of shit, maybe?"
I smiled briefly, "Forgive me if I don't."
"Think you're a fuckin' wise-guy huh-"
Toye interrupted his friend, "What's up, Doc?"
"Yeah, I uh..."
He understood immediately, prompting his eyes to the direction I had come from. I shook my head, meaning, no-one saw me. Everyone was too busy trying not to freeze to bother noticing which foxhole I had dipped in to, or if I had even passed by at all.
"Gotta' get me a fuckin' badge for all these girl scouts meetings. Anyone got a cookie?"
"Shut up, Bill." Toye elbowed him again, nodding at me a second or two later.
I looked between both of them. Guarnere's face stiffened, like it only just dawned on him the reason why I was talking to them in the first place.
"The Lieutenant told me about the night before the jump." I said carefully, softly. "You two found her outside."
"Yeah, what about it?"
I stared at them for a while. They knew exactly why I was there. These two were the only others in the company who had a dormant rage within them, still holding onto the fact that what happened to Frances couldn't have been dismissed as quickly and easily as it was. Some nights, they still spoke about it, investigating who smoked Chesterfields. Martin, if he weren't so wise, would be the exact same. Who knows what Liebgott would do if he found out.
I dug into my pocket, revealing the tiger key chain.
"Ain't that Lieb's?" Guarnere questioned.
I shook my head. "It belonged to the Lieutenant. She lost it in Holland, and he gave it back to her yesterday. I found it again, in the mud by an old farmer's shed."
Toye sat back, suddenly unaffected by the cold.
"There was a car, burnt-out, the driver the exact same. Down the road, there's the farmer's shed. Footprints everywhere, a path of blood trailing down the track." I sifted through my memory. "Inside, there's more blood on the floor, a couple empty cases. I don't know what to make of it."
Both men examined my eyes, as if the words weren't true.
"You didn't see a body? Apart from the driver?" Toye inquired.
I declined my head, "Only blood."
"She could've been taken somewhere. Finished off then." Bill suggested.
Toye's head bobbed slowly, trying to gander his own reality of the situation.
"Maybe it wasn't even the fuckin' Krauts. We don't know the 21st. One of the fellas could've seen it as their chance to feel a woman and hide the evidence."
Toye gave his friend a look, displeased with the words.
"You never know, Joe. As Doc says, not the first time some weird shit has happened to her." Guarnere folded his arms over his torso. "I'm just sayin' it's a possibility."
Joe rubbed his eyebrows with his thumb and index finger, letting out an exhale.
"Can't even fuckin' do anything about it, anyway. Think Winters would let us waltz into Bastogne looking for a Lieutenant who might be dead?"
I swallowed a lump, and Toye regarded me, disappointed in himself if anything.
"He's right."
I let in a couple breaths before answering, "So we just assume she's dead?"
"I don't want to. But we don't have a choice." Joe exhaled. "Have you told anyone else?"
"Only you two."
"Word will spread soon enough."
"Fucking bullshit, man."
Realising this had led no-where, I brought my knees close to my chest, wondering why they ever even let Frances out of the States to begin with.
"I'll keep you posted if I find anything." I promised, crawling out of the foxhole before anything else could be said.