The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

01: I Hope I'm Ready

Charlie couldn't sleep. All hope of sleeping had disappeared when she'd crawled under the covers to a flash of lightning and the sound of crashing thunder. As she lay in bed, cuddled as far under her quilt as she could get, she watched white light flash out of the darkness into the cracks above and below her curtains, listened to rain pelt the windows and thunder shake the pane.

She let her mind drift to all the many thunderstorms she'd experienced in this same room throughout her life. When she was little she'd been enamoured, fascinated by the flashing light and the noise. When she got older she became comforted by the chaos, even knowing as she did that her mother would complain of the damage caused the moment she realised there was a storm outside, and that it would be her who bore the brunt of her mother's frustration. Now, Charlie was detached from the beautiful tempest. Though she watched it she saw it not. Her mind flashed back over hundreds of childhood memories, desperate to avoid the plaguing reminder of what tomorrow would hold.

The storm raged on outside her window and Charlie heaved a sigh into her comforter. Of course her last night on home soil would bring nothing but wind and rain, noise and trouble. She'd wanted to spend her last night in America in peace before she dove into the fire that was the war in Europe, wanted to remember how it had felt to sleep comfortably and quietly.

What she wanted, she supposed, was of little consequence now. At least when she found herself whiling her nights away in half-sleep, kept awake by the sounds of gunfire and war, she would be able to imagine a storm like this one instead, pretend that she was back in New Hampshire in her childhood bedroom, if only until she was roused and set to duty again.

When morning came Charlie woke from a fitful sleep to her mother shaking her awake. She didn't know when she'd fallen asleep or how long she'd managed to rest, but she was wide awake the moment she opened her eyes and heard her mother telling her to get ready to leave for the train station. The icy dread she felt every time she thought about leaving settled into her bones in an instant, a heavy weight dropping into her stomach and pushing down on her chest.

You signed up for this, she reminded herself as her mother shut the door behind her and she began to get into her uniform. You trained for this. And yet the reassurances did nothing to quiet the terror in her mind. She'd known this day was coming for months, had been training for it for years, and yet the fact that it had arrived almost shocked her off her feet. It didn't seem real just yet, that she was leaving today and didn't know when she'd be coming back. Instead, as she dressed for the journey, pulling on the many layers of her winter dress uniform before making a start on taking the rags out of her hair, she felt she could have been getting dressed on any other random day, ready to head to school to train as the nurse she now was or head to church with her mother and father as she had done just yesterday morning, a lifetime ago now.

It was when she was swiping on a final layer of lipstick - victory red, the shade was called, and she'd hoped when she'd bought it that it would bring her luck - that her mother reopened her bedroom door and stepped in. "Charlie," she said, keeping her voice steady, though Charlie could tell she, too, was bearing the burden of a thousand nerves in her stomach. "Are you almost ready to go? We don't want to be late."

Charlie nodded and rolled her lipstick back down, capping it and then putting it with the rest of the cosmetics she was taking with her. "We wouldn't be late even if we didn't leave for another two hours, mom," she said easily, trying to force a smile on her lips. She knew if she let on that she was even a little bit scared her mother would never let her go, would telephone and shout at and bribe as many people as she needed to until Charlie was off the hook and allowed to stay home. But, frightened as she was, Charlie wasn't going to let that happen. She needed to do her part, and this was what she'd decided her part looked like. And she knew she was lucky for having had the chance to decide; how must all the boys her age have felt when they'd had to pack up and head overseas, to Europe or to Africa or to the Pacific, knowing their chances of survival were slim to none, far lower than hers were.