The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

73: No One's Done More

For the first time in months, Charlie took off her locket. It clinked against her dog tags as she tried to remove it, the two chains entangling themselves for a moment, before she managed to pull it free. When she held it in her hands, Charlie realised it had frozen closed. 

She'd wanted to open it up and see the picture of her parents inside. That was the whole reason she'd decided to take it off. She'd been thinking a lot about that picture recently, a photograph of her mother and father on their wedding day, and hadn't noticed her perspective on it shifting until it had flipped completely.

When she'd first put the photograph in there, when she'd received the locket on the Christmas Day of her sixteenth year, she'd done so because she'd loved that picture. Her parents had looked so happy, her father so handsome and her mother so beautiful, and she'd dreamed of her own wedding day, when she'd have a photograph of herself in a white dress and a veil beside a man she couldn't love any more if she'd tried.

When she was eighteen, she'd found out her parents weren't actually, nor had they ever been, in love.

It had been an advantageous marriage for a multitude of reasons: both of them came from old money, but her father had been going off the rails somewhat with his gambling and her mother had refused every man her parents had suggested to her so far, so the two of them had needed someone. When they met at the races, they'd hit it off. Before then, Charlie had thought they'd fallen in love, but they hadn't. They'd simply liked each other. Understood each other. They saw the world in similar ways, had similar ideas about how to navigate it, and that had been good enough for the both of them.

At eighteen, upon discovering this, Charlie had still thought the picture was lovely. She'd been a romantic at sixteen, but at eighteen she was starting to understand what her own future would look like, and a marriage for friendship as well as money seemed almost magical to her then.

Now, in her mind's eye, that photograph was sad.

She had wanted to see it properly, to try to remember why she had ever thought marrying someone you didn't love just because they suited your lifestyle was beautiful, but the cold had other ideas. Of course it had frozen closed. Everything was frozen. And there was nothing much worthwhile in looking at pictures from home and recalling just how far away you were, anyway.

Charlie clipped the necklace back on hastily and buried it back beneath her fatigues. It was cold now, where before it had been warm from sitting constantly nestled between her collarbones, so she pressed her hands against the locket to try to warm it up quicker.

By the time it had warmed up again she had forgotten all about it.

Autumn was doing a little bit better by now, but she was still sad all the time. She was eating again now, though, and speaking. There were no more sarcastic comments or wry smiles, but as long as she was saying words everyone was content to take that as progress.

In the following days, Charlie split her free time between Autumn's foxhole and Skip and Alex's. Her and Mabs took it in turns visiting Autumn so that they didn't stifle her too much and, when it was Mabs' turn, Charlie would go to visit Skip and Alex so as to not have to sit alone. It was there that she found out Easy was being split up.

"We're headin' back in an hour," Alton was saying of him and some of the rest of Third Platoon. "Apparently Dog Company are even worse for wear than we are, if you can believe it. They're sendin' over half of Third to flesh 'em out."

"Damn," said Alex.

"Well," began Skip, "it was nice knowing you, Alton."

"Shut up," Alton told him with a laugh.