All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

65: Shower

News tended to travel quick through the company, but no news travelled quicker than that of the 'we need a new CO' variety.

"Heyliger's been hit."

They'd been moved to hold the line in Driel, Holland, and it was quieter here. The quiet, however, could be unsettling even to the veterans. The word was that Heyliger had been wandering between outposts with Winters when one of the soldiers on watch had shot him four times. Apparently, Doc Roe had dressed both Winters and Welsh down afterwards for some mistake they'd made or other. Doc Roe, if nothing else, had nerves of steel.

"Who d'ya think they'll bring in now, huh?" Malarkey asked the moment they'd first heard the news. "Think they'll promote Welsh?"

"I hope so," said Posey, nodding as she got used to the idea. "I like Welsh. Plus, he started out as enlisted. Means he's fair."

"If Buck was here it'd be him up for promotion," Toye commented, his voice more passionate than it generally tended to be. Posey did agree with him, though; if Compton hadn't been shot in Nuenen and had to be taken off the line, she thought he'd have had a decent shot at being their next CO. She would've liked it if he was, too - she liked Welsh well enough but Compton was her platoon leader. She knew him, had fought under him, and he knew her. Yes, she'd have liked for Compton to have been their new CO very much.

"If he gets back soon maybe he still will be," she said hopefully, looking between the faces she was sat with and searching for a glimpse of the same optimism. In reply she was met with shrugs and half-assenting grumbles, though nothing of conviction. Her shoulders slumped as she sighed. She hadn't really believed it, either. That would have been too good to be true.

Easy Company's new commanding officer came to them in the form of a man named Lieutenant Norman Dike. None of them knew him - he'd been assigned to them by the brass and had no combat experience. Posey hoped that this fact would make him work doubly hard to prove himself, like a lot of the replacements tended to do.

This hope was, like many of her hopes as of late, in vain.

Lieutenant Dike had barely been their CO for five hours before he'd earned himself the nickname Foxhole Norman, a fitting sobriquet for his impressive ability to avoid the front line at all costs. At any given moment he was either talking to the brass over the phone or hiding somewhere, either way Posey wasn't sure he had any idea where the Germans were in relation to them except that he didn't want to find out. For all of his combat avoidance, however, he had no problem sending out patrols.

Posey had disliked him the moment she'd laid eyes on him. She liked to think of herself as someone who was always willing to give people a chance, even when their reputation preceded them in a less than flattering manner, but there was something about the way he'd held himself when she'd watched him talking to some of the NCOs that rubbed her the wrong way. Perhaps it was his lack of eye contact, instead choosing to survey the area around them as though looking for any excuse to leave the conversation, or perhaps it was the way he very clearly looked down his nose at them, as though they were a nuisance for wanting to find out where his head was at with regard to their position for the day. Either way, before he'd uttered a single word to her personally she'd decided outright that she didn't like that man. As far as she was concerned, this was the universe throwing a second Sobel in their path after they'd so fortunately been able to avoid the last one.

The first time Lieutenant Dike did talk to Posey didn't change her opinion of him.

"Private Wells," he called out to her as she was coming back off of watch.

Posey shared a look with Toye, one full of dismay on her end and full of mirth on his, before turning and making her way to her new CO. She stood at attention before him and snapped a salute, something she hadn't done since training, and he took his sweet time saluting her back so that she could lower her arm. After a careful once-over he nodded once, curtly. "At ease, private."