The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

77: Somewhere Better

After taking Foy, Easy was ordered to clear the Germans out of the town of Noville and then liberate Rachamps. They were told that that was the end of it, that after Rachamps they'd be going back to Mourmelon to rest.

The morning of their departure from Belgium back to France, they were informed that they weren't being taken off the line after all.

Lip informed them all that Hitler had launched a new offensive in Alsace and Easy Company was being sent to a French town named Haguenau to help hold the line.

Charlie was so tired that when she heard the news she felt she could weep. They'd spent the night inside for the first time in over a month in a convent in Rachamps, warmed by candlelight and being sung to in French by a choir who sounded like angels. Charlie had fallen asleep properly for the first time since arriving in Belgium, without being woken by either a barrage or the fear of one, comforted by resting her head on Floyd's shoulder and the knowledge that the next time she fell asleep it would be in a warm bed after a hot shower.

Now, if she hadn't already cried out every last tear she had in her, she was sure she would have broken down into sobs. As it was, all she did was shut her eyes and steel herself for whatever came next.

Haguenau was as bleak a town as Foy, Noville, and Rachamps had all been, likely pretty once upon a time but now ruined by war. Every building was war torn, with windows shattered, roofs caving in, and bricks tumbling into the road. It was all shades of grey and brown, dirty water and mud and dead grass on the ground, stains of ash and dirt on the walls.

Easy Company rolled into the town in a row of trucks, far fewer trucks than they'd ever needed before. They'd entered Belgium as a company of five nurses and a hundred and twenty-one men, and gained twenty-four replacements in their time there. Now, they were returning to France as a company of four nurses and sixty-three men. So many gone. So many who would never return.

The four remaining nurses set up the field hospital in what had once been a bakery. It was smaller than what they'd used before but so much more than what they'd had in Bastogne, which was nothing at all.

It was while they were setting out the beds they'd had delivered to them upon arrival into Haguenau that two voices made themselves known at the door.

"This is the field hospital?"

Doctor Whitlock didn't sound impressed. Charlie was even less impressed to hear his voice. Once, what seemed like a very long time ago, they'd needed surgeons, had relied on them heavily with every battle that Easy had gone into. Now, they'd gone so long without them Charlie couldn't be sure they needed them at all anymore. Everything the surgeons had once done all of the nurses had taught themselves while in Bastogne: amputations, surgeries, blood transfusions back when they'd still had a supply of blood, all of it had been done by nurses who hadn't been trained to do it but hadn't had any other choice.

And where had their two surgeons been during that time? The two people who had been trained to do all of those things, who were being employed and probably paid handsomely to do those things - where had they been through all of that?

"Yes," Henry answered Whitlock without looking up from the sheets she was smoothing over.

"Bit small, don't you think?" Whitlock went on.

Doctor Remington, saying nothing, crossed the room to where the checkout counter had once been and started to lay his equipment out.

Charlie finished fluffing a pillow and stood up to her full height, then turned blank eyes on Doctor Whitlock. Once upon a time she'd bent over backwards to make that man happy, even when he hadn't shown her so much respect as to call her by her proper title. Now, she would do it no more. He had no use to her anymore. Everything she'd once needed him for she could now do herself.