Their new commanding officer - Lieutenant Sobel, as had been screamed at them at the crack of dawn - had Second Platoon up bright and early. He ordered them to put their fatigues on over the top of their PT gear and line up in formation outside within two minutes. Posey had never been more grateful for choosing to wear something so skimpy to bed in a room full of men.
All she had to do was slip her fatigues on over her nightclothes and avoid looking up at the various changing men around her as she did so. She was up and lined up in what they all hoped was considered 'formation' in just shy of two minutes.
Lieutenant Sobel was not impressed.
"This," he began, shouting louder than he needed to in order to be heard and especially louder than he should have been so early in the morning, "is the lousiest goddamn formation I have ever seen. Under my command, Easy Company will not have the lousiest anything. So, Second Platoon, you are going to go back into your barracks and return within one minute and then you will show me the best goddamn formation I have ever seen. Understood?"
Posey followed everyone else's lead when the men replied in a booming, "Yes, sir," and stood waiting for a formal dismissal. She thanked God she had stood in the middle of the group because she would already have been back in the barracks by now if she'd been at the back.
Second Platoon's officer, Lieutenant Winters, turned to face his platoon and ordered, "Second Platoon, back into the barracks and out again within one minute. When you return you will stand at attention in military formation. Go!"
As she jogged back to the barracks with the rest of the men only to jog straight back out again, Posey decided she rather liked Lieutenant Winters. At least he, unlike Sobel, had told them what had been wrong with their first attempt at a formation, and he'd done so subtly, too. They needed to be stood at attention. Posey had peeped behind the settee at enough of her father's war films to know what that meant.
When Second Platoon was stood back in front of Lieutenant Sobel, sweating already even in the early morning and from such little exertion, he didn't quirk a smile even though they stood at attention this time. Instead, he boomed, "When I come to you you will tell me your name as follows: last name, first name, middle initial. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!"
He went along the rows.
As he did, Posey tuned out the shouted names of her peers and kept her eyes firmly forwards, rehearsing her answer over and over again in her head to prevent a slip up. She rehearsed it so rigorously she even knew what inflection to use with her voice to make it sound like she hadn't been rehearsing. When Lieutenant Sobel came to stand before her she barked at him in her faked deep voice, "Wells, Joseph M., sir!"
Sobel studied her critically.
Eventually, he said, "You think you've got what it takes, Private Wells?"
What the bloody hell was she supposed to say to that?
"Yes, sir!" she said.
"Someone as small as you." Sobel shook his head and gave a bark of a laugh. "You look like a little girl."
The irony.
Sobel laughed once more before looking back down his nose at her. "We'll see if you wash out, Private Wells." With one last bitter grimace the brute of a man was on to the next person in the formation. Posey let out a silent, shaky breath of relief.
As soon as he'd finished 'meeting' all of the enlisted of Second Platoon, Sobel came to stand before them all with a glower and a huff. "Change into PT gear. We're running Currahee."
Currahee. The mountain that overlooked the camp. It was towering, vast, and intimidating. Posey had never really been intimately acquainted with mountains. She felt her heart stop at the thought of running up one.
"Second Platoon, change into your PT gear," Winters reiterated, and with that they all ran back into the barracks, again.
The jog to the bottom of the path up the mountain consisted of Posey trying her best to even out her breathing and hide the dread blossoming on her face. She knew the first time would inevitably be the hardest but just how hard that would be, she trembled to find out. None of the others seemed to be half as worried, though, and if Bill Guarnere wasn't afraid then, as far as he was concerned, Posey was even less afraid than that.
Maybe beating Guarnere at everything would be better motivation for completing her training than getting home.
Sobel had them all stop at the foot of the mountain, where they came upon First Platoon and subsequently awaited Third. There was a clear divide between the platoons, just as there had been in the mess hall at dinner the previous day and breakfast that morning, both groups trying to size the other up.
"Second Platoon, nice of you to show up!" shouted one man from First, earning a round of hearty laughs from the men grouped around him.
"Why? You got somewhere better to be?" Guarnere called back. Posey bit back her laugh with all of her might.
As the platoons continued to throw remarks at each other she turned her eyes on her own platoon's officer, Lieutenant Winters, and that of First, a dark-haired man with thick eyebrows and a cheeky smirk whose ODs declared him as Nixon. They were standing close together, discussing something, though both of their eyes were set on the platoons before them. When Winters said something that made his friend laugh, Posey accidentally caught his eye and looked away immediately, feeling her cheeks flush at being caught trying to lipread. When she looked back over again, however, both men were looking elsewhere.
It took Third Platoon around fifteen minutes to show up to the bottom of Mount Currahee, during which Posey's dread about the entire affair only seemed to grow. The knot in her stomach tightened with each minute they were kept in suspense. She couldn't help her eyes from dragging themselves up the mountain as far as she could see from the bottom of the path. It was dusty, long, and above all, steep. Hopefully the view from the top would be worth it - if, that was, she ended up even making it that far; with the way it loomed over her the prospect seemed about three years' worth of training away, which was less than ideal because she didn't have that long.
"Third Platoon, at the back!" Sobel barked at the newcomers. The re-arrival of the company commanding officer meant that Third avoided the ribbing Second had been preparing for them.
"Mount Currahee," Sobel began, addressing them all as he marched up and down the left flank of them. "Three miles up, three miles down." Posey's heart was in her shoes. Three miles? "You will run, you will not walk. You will make it to the top, wherein you will tap the stone and head straight back down again. You will run in formation, four men to a row, separated into your platoons. You will be timed." With one last glowering look, Sobel turned and took off at a jog. "Easy Company on me!"
Posey ended up between Joe Liebgott and George Luz with Eugene Roe on the end of their row. They were a patchwork of personalities squashed together and, when they each realised who they were with, none of them seemed to really know how they'd ended up together. As they began their trek up Currahee, Posey set her eyes on the back of the man's head in front of her, Johnny Martin, and tried to keep rhythm with the men at her sides. She had no idea how good her stamina was and could only pray that she wouldn't end up washing out on her very first day.
They ran mostly in silence - that was, until Winters sped up from where he'd been at the back of Second Platoon and jogged past shouting out words of encouragement. "Come on! You can make it up! Lets go, Second Platoon, lets go!"
Whilst Posey was struggling to breathe, Winters somehow found the energy to not only accelerate but call out to them, too. It was beyond her where he stored all that energy.
"Doin' alright, Wells?" Luz asked from beside her, shooting her one glance that had the sweat from his hair flicking onto the side of her face.
"Alright," she affirmed, barely managing to choke the words out. "You?"
Luz nodded, keeping his eyes forwards this time. "Alright."
"Liebgott?" she then asked. She didn't have the energy to turn her head to look at him and could only focus on taking step after step.
"Yeah, I'm alright," came Liebgott's response.
"Roe?"
"Alright."
"Glad we got that covered," Luz commented. If Posey had any extra breath to spare she would've laughed.
The going only got tougher the higher up the mountain they progressed. As Posey's lungs tightened and her breaths became quicker, the path seemed to get steeper at the same rate. Also directly proportional to these variables was the volume and vigour with which Sobel shouted at them.
"You think you'll make the paratroopers running this slow?!" he called out rhetorically. "We're coming up for thirty minutes and none of you have reached the top yet. I'm starting to think we'll need an entirely new set of recruits."
Posey kept her head down to avoid him catching her rolling her eyes. It was day one, what did he expect?
She was all but dead by the time she made it to the top. Their rows and columns had long since dispersed with the thinning of the track. For this, she couldn't help but be grateful, for Luz had made it up much quicker than she had and she knew she never would've been able to keep up with him. There went her hopes of the shortest sticking together.
She slapped the stone - which was actually rather large and cuboid shaped - with energy she could only muster through sheer spite, before turning and beginning her run back down. The descent was far easier than the ascent, though running downhill on a sandy path meant much of her focus was now concentrated on not slipping as well as trying to find enough air to breathe.
Reaching the bottom, she collapsed next to the rest of her platoon who had already made it down, dripping with sweat and breathing so heavily she felt Mrs. Daniels might even have been able to hear it.
Still, even in the midst of exhaustion, she couldn't help but smile; she had made it and she hadn't been last. Small victories.
"That," came Sobel's voice, piercing through the air and dampening her spirits, "was pathetic, Easy Company. If you wanna make it in the paratroopers that will not be acceptable."
He turned to the officers of each platoon and dished out orders. Winters approached Second Platoon looking only half as exhausted as everyone else, but doubly as apologetic. "Second Platoon, follow me to the PT course."
The 'yes, sir' he received in reply was weak and spiritless but it was good enough for him. He turned and led the way without another word.
As she followed, Posey glanced briefly behind her in the hopes of catching a glance at where the other platoons were headed, but doing so almost made her lose her footing with the lack of energy she had to do anything other than drag her feet along. She turned back to face the front and tried not to worry too much about what the PT course would entail.
As Winters explained the obstacle course to them, Posey focused on working out how she'd manage to use what little muscle she had to her advantage, and indeed she spent the rest of the first day that way. She kept her head down, did as she was told, and tried to work out ways to blag what everyone else was able to do with far less trouble. Still, she made it through day one, which was more than she had expected if she was being entirely honest with herself.
She made herself scarce whilst the other men showered and had to lay covered in dirt and dry sweat well into the night. With the excess of physical training, however, the men were out like a light and she was able to slip out of the barracks and to the shower block without drawing any attention to herself.
She kept her undergarments on while she showered just in case of emergency, though she hardly knew how that would help her in the event that someone did happen to walk in. When she made it back to the barracks she wore a small smile. She was hot, tired, and achy, but she was clean. And she'd made it through day one of basic.