The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

13: So Dark It's Almost Black

When Charlie woke up the following morning, all of the other girls had already gone to work.

The house was lonely as she made her way around it, getting herself ready for the day. Suddenly, the hours which stretched before her seemed never ending and she had no idea what she was going to do to fill them. She had said to Mabel she'd have a look around the village but now that it came to it she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to - not by herself, at least.

It was a Saturday, and Charlie knew from talking to Chuck the night before that that meant there would be a whole load of paratroopers also off work for the day. Knowing as much, she knew it was probably a bad day to have a look around, but the decision was made for her when she looked in the cupboards and refrigerator and found they had hardly any food left over.

Charlie sighed and retrieved their rationing coupons from one of the kitchen drawers before heading upstairs to put on some shoes and get ready to leave the house. It was with great reluctance that she stepped outside a few minutes later, closing the front door with a soft click behind her and locking it for good measure.

The morning was overcast, the sky a pale grey where it refused to let the sunlight through. Clouds pushed and shoved each other out of the way, bundling in on top of each other and effectively blocking out any hints of blue sky which might have lain behind them.

It wasn't too cold, though. Chilly, yes, though not as cold as most of the days Charlie had spent in England before this. She was used to it, in any case; it had been similarly cold a lot of the time back home. She was simply used to it starting to warm up by this time of year.

Charlie had a picnic basket she'd found in one of the cupboards hanging from the crook of her elbow, empty aside from the ration coupons inside it, and she hoped she wouldn't look odd venturing to and from the village centre with it - considering it definitely was not a day for a picnic, nor was she in the company of anyone she might have had a picnic with. She'd simply thought it a good idea to bring it along to help her carry all of the shopping bags.

The village centre was bustling with activity on their current cloudy Saturday morning, a mixture of locals and army personnel. Charlie thought the entire scene was rather quaint, like something out of a film her mother might have watched, and smiled shyly back at the locals who offered their 'good morning's to her. She kept her gaze firmly averted from any and all paratroopers, however, lest she be roped into talking to any of them unattended.

Charlie found the grocery store easily, for she passed it every morning on her walk to the bus stop. She ducked inside just as an elderly man was leaving, and he held the door open for her with a smile. She still wasn't quite used to how often people interacted with each other here; she'd barely known her neighbours at home unless they were involved with her father in a business pursuit.

But he didn't altogether dislike the friendly nature of the village. It was just taking her some time to adjust to it.

Inside the grocery store it was cool, chillier than it had been outside, probably in order to preserve the food. The shelves were quite unsettlingly empty, an effect of the rationing, Charlie supposed, which she'd known before arriving was stricter in England than it was in America but this was the first time she was encountering it herself. For a moment she missed home sorely, missed that bakery around the corner from her house which sold the best chocolate chip cookies she'd ever had, but she shook the homesickness away. The lack of choice of food made her job in picking up groceries much quicker than it might have been otherwise, so she tried to focus on the positives instead.

At the checkout counter Charlie presented her rationing coupons, which allowed her to pay for the groceries. Whilst she knew the paratroopers would have all their food bought and prepared for them by the army so they didn't have to worry about rationing themselves, when the nurses were stationed outside of a warzone they had to fend for themselves where food was concerned. The Army Nurse Corps had organised their coupons for them before they'd arrived, ensuring their household would be able to buy groceries when they needed them, and they had a bursary allowance for each week more than sufficient enough to allow them to buy them without having to eat into their earnings.