The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

65: Nothing But Dwindling Hope

If Charlie had ever thought she'd been cold before, she had been about as wrong as a person could be. In a shallow foxhole in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, close to a town named Bastogne, Charlie and Mabs were so cold even Charlie couldn't sleep. Charlie, who would have easily been able to sleep for a full day back in Mourmelon if not for the other nurses waking her up to work or eat. Even she couldn't manage to get a wink of sleep now.

The tips of Charlie's fingers burned, so cold she could no longer tell if they felt cold or hot, and her ears ached beneath her helmet. Her nose had gone numb, her cheeks were stinging, and the back of her throat felt like sandpaper. The ground both beneath and behind her felt frozen solid. For the time being, the places which made contact with it were numb, but if she moved even an inch she knew the chill would come racing back in, made even more furious by the damp in her fatigues.

And all this didn't even account for the pounding in her head, where she hadn't been able to drink any water since leaving the camp, or the hollow emptiness in her stomach, where she hadn't been able to eat anything, either. Everything was being strictly rationed. Everything. Water, food, toilet paper, cigarettes, ammunition, medical supplies, to name but a few. Supplies of everything were running low and they had only been there for one night.

"Happy birthday, Mabs," Charlie whispered to the only person she knew with any real certainty had survived the night. Her voice emerged low and scratchy, breaking on every vowel, and she hadn't meant for it to be a whisper but that had been all she could muster. Charlie didn't look over at Mabs, she didn't want to let the cold air rush into any gaps in her scarf. Instead, she sat still, not moving a muscle despite the fact everything burned from sitting in the same position for too long.

"Thanks, Charlie," Mabs replied, her voice also a whisper.

Staring at the frozen dirt wall in front of her, Charlie felt too overwhelmed by the pure wickedness of the situation to even muster any tears. The world was just beginning to get light again, a sign that they'd made it through the first of what was to be an endless string of terrible nights, but even the golden light of the sunrise couldn't rouse Charlie's interest. This was worse than anything she could have attempted to brace herself for.

"We had all this stuff planned," Charlie whispered pitifully, staring blankly ahead. Now she could understand why the retreating men from the night before had looked the way they had, and she hadn't even had to withstand a barrage yet. "We put up bunting in the mess hall," Charlie went on, and suddenly recalled the fact that, at the very least, she had this with her.

Forcing herself to move in the hopes it would make Mabs smile, Charlie reached into her breast pocket and withdrew the scraps of paper Duckie had saved from the mess hall before they'd left Mourmelon. She handed it over to Mabs and then settled into a more comfortable position, which started to burn not even five seconds after she'd found it, but by then she was too scared of the cold to move again.

"Thanks, Charlie," Mabs said again, though there was the tiniest hint of a smile in her voice this time. "Really. This was real sweet of ya."

Charlie hummed her acknowledgement. "Duckie saved it for you."

"Good of him."

"Yeah."

As they lapsed back into silence Charlie wondered about the very distant general who had decided to make them do this. Had he thought about the people who'd be freezing over here, with not nearly enough food or water or med supplies or ammo, not to mention winter clothing? Had he cared?

Probably not. According to Henry, the town of Bastogne, which the entire 101st Airborne had been tasked with defending, had seven roads leading into it and seven roads leading out, making it ideal for the transportation of German armour. General Eisenhower had decided he didn't want the Germans to be able to use those roads and thus put a perimeter around the town in the form of human bodies. Young men and women in the same uniforms they'd worn in the baking heat of Normandy in June. Soldiers with no ammunition and nurses with no medical supplies.