The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

31: Just Like the Rest of Us

The nurses never ended up having to set up the field hospital the following day, because the company's orders were to continue pressing on into France. And it was a good thing, too, because they never would have gotten the tent pegs into the sodden ground. Once it had started raining, it just didn't stop.

They all knew that at some point they'd have to at least try to put up their tent. At some point they'd stop and be told that that was where they were staying and they'd have to grapple with a tent to get a field hospital set up in the middle of nowhere while the heavens dropped every bit of water they'd ever stored up on them.

Charlie tried not to think about it. She tried not to let the rain, of all things, bother her. Because what was rain, in the grand scheme of things? Annoying, yes - she'd wanted to write a letter to her parents at some point which she couldn't do while everything was so wet - but life-threatening? Life ruining? No. And she'd seen too many men in the last few days, riddled with ailments which fit that brief, who'd complained less than she felt inclined to now. So she didn't let herself think about it.

The only person who didn't seem to be suffering so much in the rain was, incidentally, Floyd, who had managed to steal a German soldier's raincoat on D-Day. As they set up camp in their new middle-of-nowhere location, Floyd and a few of the other men stopped by after digging their foxholes to help set up the field hospital. He was grinning from ear to ear as his friends all but begged him to pass the raincoat over for a while.

He just rolled his eyes at them. "Take a hike, fellas," he dismissed them with a smirk. "I got precious cargo that I ain't risking getting wet." From where he'd taken over from Charlie in trying to hammer the tent peg into the ground, he shot her a wink, which let her know he was talking about the book she'd given him just before he'd left Aldbourne for D-Day.

She tried not to show it, but she was touched by the sentiment. He was sweeter than he let people believe, sometimes.

The men who'd come to help had gotten clearance from their acting commanding officer, First Lieutenant Winters, to come over and help, so they didn't need to hurry back to see to any duties after assisting the nurses. Winters was only acting commanding officer because First Lieutenant Meehan's plane had gone down on D-Day, Charlie discovered when she asked.

When Malarkey told her, chills ran down her spine. She hadn't heard much about the D-Day experience for the paratroopers, only really knew about what it had looked like on Utah Beach. She wasn't at all surprised to hear it was equally as bloody.

"What were the beaches like, anyway?" Malarkey asked, passing some crates of blood to Joe Toye to take into the field hospital.

As though they'd planned it, the three other nurses' eyes immediately flicked to Charlie.

Charlie gnawed on her bottom lip. "We only saw Utah," she said tentatively, treading lightly as she considered the question and how best to answer it without accidentally calling forth ghosts she'd been trying to bury.

"And?" Malarkey pressed, curious.

Charlie's eyes found Floyd. He was watching her closely as he straightened from where he'd been crouching to hammer in the peg, waiting for her answer.

She turned back to Malarkey. "It was bad," she said, and left it at that. If he wanted more information she was sure he could get it from newspapers once they got back to England. She wasn't going to dig back up everything she'd been trying so hard to bury.

Malarkey didn't press, and soon enough everything had been carried into the makeshift field hospital and set in its rightful place.

"Ay, nice place ya got here," George said as he came sidling through the tent flap. He spoke around the cigarette he was just now shoving into his mouth, having been unable to light it in the rain, and shot Boo a wink as he took a look around. "How much you guys charging a night?"