"Tomorrow's Monday. It's a clean slate, boys. And if we can manage it we'll all find ourselves in possession of some weekend passes and a whole lot'a dough to blow on Friday night."
Posey laughed to herself where she sat atop her bunk, listening to Luz proclaim to everyone in the barracks his hopes for a weekend pass. Thus far, weekend passes had been to the men of Easy Company what God had always been to good Christians: something thought about at all hours of the day and yet never once seen. They strove week in and week out for perfection, scrubbing their rifles and boots until their hands were raw and making their beds with all of the precision expected of them, purely in the hopes of getting their hands on a weekend pass. In all their weeks of basic training, every weekend pass Easy Company had ever had had been revoked by their cruel ruler, Lieutenant Sobel.
This was one thing all of the platoons had in common; Sobel never let any of them finish a week with a pass. Eventually, they'd all realised this and reached a truce between them, though there was still playful competition between the platoons when they'd all run Currahee together or pass each other on the training fields. Still, they spent their Friday nights and weekends mingling, entering and leaving each of the three sets of barracks at will. Posey found that First Platoon actually had some decent guys in it, even reluctant to admit it as she was. As far as she was concerned, though, Third would always be beyond redemption.
Despite the elusiveness of the famed weekend passes, each week on a Sunday night Luz traipsed between the barracks insisting that this week would be the week. They'd earn themselves weekend passes, according to him, and go to one of Toccoa's many bars and get absolutely wasted. Posey always laughed along with him but the thought unsettled her; even though she knew they were about as likely to get weekend passes as she was to win the Victoria Cross, she couldn't help the nervous energy that bubbled up in her stomach at the thought of actually having to go to a bar one of these days. She'd been fifteen when she'd left England, not old enough to drink by British law, and thus had never even had so much as a single drop of alcohol. Even at eighteen she wasn't legal to drink under American law, their legal age being twenty-one, but she also knew that training to go to war meant that bartenders didn't really care all that much how old you were.
Thus, the thought of having to follow the rest of her platoon to a bar and pretend that she could hold her liquor as much as she could enjoy it was terrifying. She was shorter than the other men, and thinner too, and she knew that one sniff of the barmaid's apron would likely send her horizontal. She most certainly did not need any of the others seeing that.
Or God forbid she got loose lips when she was intoxicated. No, getting drunk on a weekend pass was not an option. The one thing she appreciated Sobel for was his revoking them each week without fail.
"Maybe make your bed properly this week, Luz, and you'll get one. How 'bout that?" Perconte chimed in from where he was shuffling a pack of cards on his bed.
Posey snorted a laugh but didn't look up from the letter she was preparing to write.
"I did make it properly, Perco!" Luz exclaimed with an air of defiant enthusiasm not at all necessary for the point he was making. "Sobel just likes to chew me out for no reason."
"Sobel likes to chew everyone out," Guarnere said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Get used to it. Ain't personal."
"Maybe it's a little bit personal," Posey piped up, smiling to herself. "He seems to hate Smokey-from-First's guts."
"Yeah, well, he ain't so sweet on you either, Wells," Johnny added in his familiar deadpan.
Posey laughed. "Yeah, because I'm shit at PT."
"Great with a rifle, though," Luz acknowledged.
"Very kind of you to say," she replied, chuckling to herself.
"Did you used to hunt? 'Fore the war?" Popeye asked from the bunk beside hers. When she looked to him he was watching her curiously. A Southern man as he was, Posey supposed he had probably done his fair share of hunting growing up.
Posey shook her head. "Nope. First gun I ever touched was an M1." She shot him a grin. "Just a natural, I guess."
As the conversation carried on around her, she put her pencil to paper and made a start on her letter.
'Dear Mrs. Daniels,
At an unexpected turn of events, it appears I'm a natural marksman. Who would ever have guessed? Thank goodness, too, because I'm not so good at the physical training aspect of boot camp - which is, admittedly, an awfully big part of it.
I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to tell you about the training itself so instead I suppose I'll tell you a little bit about the barracks life. The men in my platoon are (mostly) perfectly agreeable and we get along swimmingly. I find myself surrounded by masses of people at every hour of the day so it's difficult to find myself lonely, really, which I'm immensely grateful for.
There is little else for me to disclose; the food is passable, the weather scorching, the barracks tiny, and the training hard. It's not all so bad and I do think I'm improving where the physicality of training is concerned.
How are things with you? I do hope you're keeping busy and not finding the house too quiet without me. Some of the men are talking about visiting home for Christmas and I was wondering whether you might have me back. Feel free to say no as we're also welcome to stay on the base. I was merely curious as to whether you might like a few days' company, though.
Also, have any letters or news arrived from across the pond? If you could forward any correspondence to me I'd be incredibly grateful!
Best,
J. Wells'
As soon as she'd finished writing, Posey tucked the letter into the book she'd been using as a desk and set it back in her footlocker.
The rest of the evening was largely passed with repetitive conversations about weekend passes - with the routine their lives now had and the monotony they'd been thrust into there was little else for the men to get excited about. Posey was more excited by the prospect of Christmas and not having to play a part for a while. Whilst it was true that Christmas was a long way off yet, the thought of getting to be Josephine as opposed to Joseph for a while was one that kept her smiling even when the lights across camp went out.
Then she got to wondering how her family would be celebrating Christmas this year and the smile dropped. She hated wartime. She hated not knowing where her family were or what they were doing. And, above all, she hated Hitler for starting this stupid war.
Her smile that night was replaced by a scowl, even hours later as she headed to the showers in silence and washed as quickly as she was able. She hated that she'd been evacuated and hated that she'd had to join the army to get home. She hated that she had to pretend to be a man and that all of her hair was gone and that she had hardly any possessions anymore and that she was completely and utterly stuck. Of all the things she hated there wasn't a single thing she could do to rectify any of them.
Posey fell asleep that night with a frown on her lips and a heavy weight on her heart. Whilst she could let herself get wrapped up in military life from time to time and have a joke with the men in her platoon, reality would always be right there, waiting to rear its ugly head and sober her right up. Not for the first time, she dropped into slumber wondering just how everything had come so terribly undone.