All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

31: Mutiny

Christmas came and went in a blur. Posey saw her brother once, a few days before the day itself, but he insisted she not visit him on Christmas Day. He'd said she should spend it with her platoon, a bid to strengthen the bonds between them now that she would be going to war with them. Everything out of John's mouth when she visited seemed to be about preparing her for war; he spoke about trusting the men beside her, steeling herself to not think about the killing she would be doing, and not taking any day she got to live for granted. Their two kinds of combat were different from each other though, he noted, and made sure to drill into her that she would no doubt see and experience some horrors during her time in combat.

Posey returned to Aldbourne from the hospital feeling as though all the life had been sucked out of her. She wasn't sure John had even mentioned the fact that it was Christmas once, so dead set on discussing warfare as he was.

When the new year rolled around, all Posey felt was dread. It was 1944 and the war didn't look like it was going to be ending anytime soon. She'd hoped - foolishly, she'd be the first to admit - that the war might end before she ever even had to venture overseas. Instead of whispers about an end in sight, however, the only whispers she heard were about a potential invasion of mainland Europe the Airborne were set to be figure-heading.

Training picked up rather than slowed down; the damp and freezing British winter weather didn't seem to bother their higherups in the slightest. And with the increased fervour of their field training, Sobel seemed to only become more irritable and less competent.

Whilst the enlisted of the company formed a united front against him - in private, of course, though it wouldn't have taken much of a critical eye to discern their dislike - tensions brewed amongst the officers; Winters became more and more open about his mistrust of Sobel as a combat leader when they were doing field exercises, reorganising positions and tactics to accommodate for Sobel's ineptitude.

Everything seemed to come to a climax on one particular field exercise when Sobel had led one half of the platoon astray. Winters had changed the tactics of the two squads he was presiding over, Guarnere's and Lipton's, to ensure they got the most out of the exercise even with half of their men missing in action, and, out in the middle of nowhere, Luz had apparently done a spectacular impression of Major Horton to gull Sobel into getting them moving. Whilst this had made for an incredible story in the barracks that night - which had Posey wishing anew that she'd been put in a different squad that she might have experienced the gulling first hand - Sobel had gotten into trouble with Major Strayer as a result. Consequently, Winters had gotten into trouble with Sobel. Whether that was what the court martial report said, however, was a moot point. Either way, Winters was barred from his duties as Second Platoon's officer and the company's executive officer.

"Sobel's court martialling Winters and now Second Platoon is without a competent fucking officer," Toye ranted to the barracks. All of the company's NCOs were holding court somewhere and the measly privates amongst them were left to mull over the news they'd thrown at them before leaving. "Winters is the only thing keeping Second Platoon's head above water - hell, the whole damn company's! - and that bastard puts him on mess detail?"

"Yeah, Sobel's a bastard," Penkala replied evenly. "This ain't news."

"Yeah, well that bastard is gonna be leading us into combat without a buffer zone to keep any of us alive!"

"Sobel would've gotten us killed regardless," Posey said from her bunk, shrugging. "Winters is a good leader but that doesn't mean much when Sobel does as he pleases anyway and overrules him."

"Fucking damn it, you're not understanding what I'm saying!"

"We're understandin' you just fine, Joe," Luz put in from his place on the floor at the bottom of his bunk. "But there ain't nothin' we can do about it."