The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

84: An Ode to A Life

Charlie began her second week of R&R in the room she shared with Autumn and Boo, with its empty bed in the centre waiting for Mabs, looking through old photographs. Autumn had a photo album that she carried with her everywhere, full of all of the photographs she'd taken with her camera - her new memories. Since Charlie had asked nicely and Autumn wanted to spend her day learning to play baseball with Boo and some of the men, Autumn had allowed Charlie to look through the photo album.

It was a unique kind of torture, but also a unique kind of joy.

This particular photo album, Charlie realised when she started to look through it, was dedicated to the war. Autumn had inscribed the words 'March 1944' on the title page, along with her name, and the first photograph was of her standing outside a train station, dressed in her winter dress uniform and carrying her carpet bag, ready to head overseas.

Charlie was the first of Autumn's friends to feature in any of the pictures. They'd been each other's first friends when starting this whole journey, after all, and Autumn had taken multiple pictures of Charlie without her knowing as they made the journey from the ship to Aldbourne, which was when Mabs and Boo started to appear.

Photograph after photograph depicted their lives back in Aldbourne, when their biggest problems had been how to organise all of them going out to the pub at once without someone having to go to work with a hangover the next day. Many of the men appeared, in the pub or in the village centre or at their house, always smiling when they knew they were being photographed, which made it perfectly clear when they weren't aware they were the subject of an ode to a life they'd never quite realised at the time how much they would miss.

There were pictures of the dance in Aldbourne - of Boo and George dancing together, the night they'd fallen in love; of Mabs and Floyd leaning close to each other to flirt; of Charlie and Chuck smiling at each other; of Hoobs making funny faces at the camera - and pictures of the days the four nurses had spent sitting in the backyard, when they'd had that heatwave.

Then came the pictures of Normandy - of once clean, sunny faces downcast and covered in mud. Autumn had snapped Charlie when she was covered in blood and dirt, frowning at the world around her as they moved from Utah Beach to Carentan, and then Mabs, beside her, who had obviously noticed the camera and forced a smile for the sake of brightening the memory.

The next time Charlie appeared she was sitting with Floyd, and though she wasn't smiling, there was something lighter about her countenance. Now, Charlie could recognise the change in herself: with Floyd she had felt safe. Back then, she hadn't even realised how he changed her, lightened her burden and made the world seem a little less dangerous and a little less dark. She'd just thought she enjoyed his company a normal amount.

She snorted to herself to think of it. Delusional,  that was what she'd been.

Charlie flicked through page after page of their time in France, then watched as they returned to Aldbourne, which was when Lieb started to make a notable appearance. Probably, that was when he and Autumn had first started to become friends.

Then appeared Babe, looking bright and bubbly and much younger than he did now, and Hashey and Garcia and James.

What an ache filled Charlie's chest when she saw James.

He was sitting with Babe, Hashey, and Garcia in the pub, all of them grinning at the camera but clearly a little embarrassed to be being photographed, and there were those dimples she'd adored so much. Charlie extended gentle fingers to brush over his face. The world had become a much, much darker place when it had lost James and his dimples.

Charlie watched as she became friends with Skip, Alex, and Alton, as she appeared in pictures with them more often than not, and cried silently to herself as she looked at pictures of her dancing with Skip at her birthday party and then again at that party they'd hosted in their backyard, when it had rained. She'd had no idea Autumn had captured all of this.