'Dear Mrs. Daniels,'
"Missin' home already, Wells?"
Posey made a show of rolling her eyes at Guarnere's comment but kept her head bent down over her paper where she had it flat against her copy of Twelfth Night. She had the book propped against her thighs where her feet were flat on the mattress, knees pointed skyward whilst she sat back against the metal headboard. She was grateful once more for having gotten to choose her bunk, for one of the three uncovered lightbulbs that hung over the left side of the barracks dangled right above her head.
'Admittedly, I haven't much to report yet (I've only been here a few hours) so I suppose I'm only really writing to have someone to talk to. Someone I know, that is. Someone who knows me. I'll fill you in on what there is to say anyway.'
"Got a broad waitin' for ya back home, Wells? That who you're writin' to?"
She didn't know who had spoken but she didn't look up to check. Instead, she smiled to herself and shook her head, rolling her pencil around between her fingers as she considered what she'd write next.
'Georgia is hot. Stiflingly so. I haven't been so hot in all my life so I hardly know how I'm going to be able to manage intense physical training in such oppressive heat. I'm hopeful, however, that my experience in running for cover from previous years will serve me well where stamina is concerned.'
Posey couldn't help but laugh at her own equivocation there. She knew she couldn't be too specific in her letters because the army would be checking them to censor before sending them off, but Mrs. Daniels would certainly recognise her intended meaning. 'Experience in running for cover' was a very nice way of putting 'running to the bomb shelter in the pitch darkness whilst the Luftwaffe flew overhead, about to bomb yet another part of a once-glorious city'.
She was bitter to recall that fear. The unrivalled terror she had experienced during the Blitz before she'd been evacuated was something none of these men had ever even remotely experienced. They didn't know the sound of German aeroplane engines so intimately they'd recognise them even asleep, weren't haunted by the high whine of the bombs they dropped right before the resounding crash destroyed yet another school, church, or home. They didn't know fear like she knew it. They didn't know desperation. As far as they were concerned, this was all still a game.
"I got a broad waiting for me back home," a voice Posey recognised as belonging to Skip Muck had declared when she'd been writing.
"Got a picture?" Malarkey asked. He leaned forwards on his bunk as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the photograph even before Skip had retrieved it.
"Faye Tanner," Skip said with a nod.
Posey glanced up to find him showing Malarkey and a few of the other men the picture. Malarkey let out a low whistle whilst some of the others nodded their approval.
"She's a dish, Skip," Luz commented, still gazing down at the photograph. "She got a sister?"
Posey laughed along with the others and turned her eyes back to her letter. She chewed briefly on the end of her pencil as she ran through different ideas of what to write next in her head.
'The men in my platoon are a patchwork of characters. Some are incredibly loud and boisterous, others mellow and reserved. I fear I've already made an enemy of one of them but he is so very fun to tease. He's very easy to get a rise out of. However, whilst he started it, I vow to try my best to not be so disagreeable going forwards. I'll be working with these men for the foreseeable future, after all, so it would be best to befriend them, I'm sure.'
"What do you think our CO's gonna be like?" was the next topic of conversation, broached by Malarkey. Indeed, by this point in the evening the barracks were all but vibrating with a mixture of nerves and excitement. None of the men would admit it but Posey caught glimpses of tapping feet and fiddling fingers every time she looked up from her paper. It was a comforting thought that maybe these men might be just as scared about what was to come as she was.
"Tough, probably," replied Skip with a shrug.
"The Airborne's supposed to be one of the best," put in Joe Toye wisely. "The guy who recruited me said."
"Ah, and that's why he picked you, right, Joe?" Luz piped up, a cheeky grin etched into his features. "He took one look at you and said, 'I know the exact place for you, my boy, and it's a paratrooper's life for you!'"
Skip laughed. "Yeah, I'll bet they said the same crap to everyone to get them to sign up. The only reason I agreed was for the extra fifty dollars a month."
A lot of the men laughed and nodded their agreement at this which had Posey's stomach twisting in a mixture of resentment and envy. Imagining only being there for the extra money or for the glory of it all seemed so trivial when she thought about how she was only there out of pure desperation. Still, she supposed that if she hadn't been evacuated and her entire life hadn't been flipped upside down she likely would've enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force or some other such if only to help out. Back in England she'd had plans and joining the war effort to support her country as soon as she was old enough had been a staple in them.
She audibly sighed and shook her head; just because her life was in shambles didn't mean it was the men's fault that theirs weren't. And likely they really wanted to join the military for the same reason she once had: to serve their country. She decided then she'd have to give them all a break and ease up a bit on the self-pity, even though it was so easy to just sit and make herself want to cry.
"I heard if you wanna be in the Airborne you gotta be the best," spoke up Frank Perconte. He was a small and slight man, likely the same height as Posey if not only a smidge taller, and his face seemed to be contorted into a perpetual frown. Behind the frown, however, he was a fiery Italian with a thick Bronx accent, and some of his one-liners did tend to be funny. But perhaps Posey was biased purely because she had been tending to seek out the shorter men in the group and mentally label them as her closest comrades in this entire affair, for if they could do the training then surely she could as well. Thus far her list of comrades included, but was (hopefully) not limited to, George Luz, Frank Perconte, Popeye Wynn, and Johnny Martin with the death glare. She hoped desperately they wouldn't all four of them end up washing out.
"Hey, Guarnere!" Posey called out in response to Perconte's statement, not bothering to look up. "I think you're in the wrong place."
"Shut your fuckin' trap, Wells, I could bench press two of you on each arm in my sleep."
Posey laughed but didn't make to reply - mainly because this was likely entirely true - and went back to writing. When she read back over what she'd written in her previous paragraph she laughed.
'Okay, well, I can't seem to stop winding him up so that'll have to be an ongoing labour of love, but as for the rest of them I'm sure we'll get along swimmingly.
'The barracks are stiflingly hot, the beds firm and very near to the ground, and the food quite vile, though other than that I can't really complain. It is green and pale in comparison to your home but it'll do just fine for the time being.
'We start training early tomorrow morning so I'd best pack this up. Thank you for the book, I've started to read it already and it is indeed one of my favourite Shakespeare plays. And thank you for everything else.
'I miss you. And I really do mean that.
'Best,
'J. Wells'
As soon as she'd finished writing, Posey folded the piece of paper and tucked it into her footlocker along with all of the other probably-contraband she'd taken with her. When she settled back onto the bed she allowed herself a minute to take in her surroundings, both the barracks themselves and the men scattered across them. They were a lively bunch, to be certain, but not all of them entirely unlikeable. Her being there wasn't about making friends, that much was true, but if her time in training could come with as little pain and suffering as possible then that would certainly be a welcome change of pace.
She observed a card game for a little while, watching mainly in an attempt to gauge what information she could about the men participating, before all of the lights in the barracks went out simultaneously. Apparently, they took the term 'lights out' very seriously here.
Thus, Posey crawled to the head of her bed and wriggled beneath the covers. The sheet serving as a blanket was thin, scratchy, and entirely redundant in the heat of Toccoa, but it would do a good job of hiding her form in the skimpy PT uniform she had chosen to sleep in, having hoped it would cool her down somewhat.
For a while, Posey laid in the dark, listening to all of the small noises that filled the barracks. The sounds of a whole platoon of men breathing dominated the quiet but there were snores every now and then. Beyond that, there was the gentle breeze from outside as it swayed the trees and the sounds of crickets chirping. Eventually, Posey found a period of time she could work out that everyone was asleep for, a window of opportunity in which she could sneak to the showers. It was a small gap, certainly, and likely wouldn't appear like clockwork every night, but at least she had something to go off of. This fact settled her stomach a tad and allowed her to settle back into the pillow and mattress.
It seemed hours before sleep finally came but when it did she dreamed of the train she had arrived in Toccoa on, though this time she was accompanied by the men in her platoon. Bill Guarnere was shouting his mouth off from one of the seats on the other side of the row whilst George Luz gave loud, enthusiastic impressions from the row across from her and Frank Perconte laughed. Eugene Roe was tucked into the seat between Posey and the window, offering a quiet laugh and a smile every now and then and little more, whilst Skip Muck and Donald Malarkey were as thick as thieves elsewhere in the compartment, their voices and their laughter their only recognisable feature in the haze of the dream state.
Posey herself sat entirely relaxed, settled back into the seat and observing with a grin. She shared a look with Joe Toye at one particular remark Guarnere made, shot a snarky comment of her own back, and then laughed loudly. Then she allowed herself simply to watch.
In the dream, Posey felt at home. She felt settled and welcome and safe. When she woke it would be a sobering realisation that she had been herself in the dream - a girl, with long blonde hair and a face full of gentle makeup - and in reality, her secret would keep her from ever truly knowing that camaraderie herself.
Still, for a little while she had been one of them. For a short while she had been a paratrooper with the 506th and she felt she may also have been happy about it. She could only hope, when she was back to full consciousness, that she'd never end up having to be a paratrooper in real life.