Wonderful Beta's: Laura001, Anonymous1O1, Atman, Aryam150, FandomlyCroft, and Minerva300
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that he didn't trust me so much" - Mother Teresa
Chapter Summary: Eve's training begins.
-Chapter 3-
Private Evelyn Buchanan tried not to shift and fidget as she stood at attention for what was closing in on the second hour in a row, waiting for her instructor. She'd been told to meet him on this field at 0530 and stand at attention until he arrived.
She shifted her weight again, easing off first her aching right foot, then her left. Her new boots were biting into her feet. It felt like they were sandpaper lined instead of wool, grinding away the flesh around her bones.
A near constant stream of sweat dripped from her hair line, down her nose, and dropping to her chest to disappear in the damp mess under her clothes.
Eve couldn't help but feel a bit silly. Like a little girl standing in daddy's shoes and mommy's overlong dress. It didn't help that it was way too hot to be wearing all this gear. Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to train in three layers and fifty pounds of gear in the Georgia summer?
Only a man would think it was a good idea for men to train in the hottest part of the country in three layers of cotton.
She closed her eyes and shifted again, slowly trying, while not moving overly much, to stretch out her cramped muscles. It didn't help that she already felt baggy and tired. Her monthly bleeding had started last night, much to her mortification this morning as she stripped her bed and scrubbed it diligently. The whole thing was two weeks early, and Eve attributed it to stress more than anything. But the cloths used to stop her monthly bleeding from humiliating her did nothing to help her feel good about herself.
More infuriating than standing here, baking in the rising sun for hours with nothing to do, was that she had a clear view of other company's training on the obstacle course.
They weren't her company – Easy Company was in lessons at the moment – but these men already looked like fighting men, like soldiers. Eve just looked silly, standing here alone, waiting for no one.
"You are standing at the position of attention!" barked a voice from behind her. Eve nearly leapt in surprise. She would have, but her muscles were too stiff and sore from standing still for so long.
Sobel had finally arrived, and he was furious.
Eve's entire attention honed in on the raging man, momentarily forgetting her aching body.
"Name?" he demanded, snarling.
Eve swallowed and tried to clear her parched throat enough to speak through her chapped lips. "Buchanan, Evelyn, Sir."
He looked her over, sneering his disapproval and tugging her equipment out for his inspection with a meticulously clean hand.
"What is this?" he asked, a mean look in his eye.
Eve stared at the bayonet he held with trepidation, unsure what to answer, or how she'd already managed to get herself in trouble.
"I asked a question, Private," he hissed. "What is this?"
"A bayonet, sir?" she asked, unsure.
"That's incorrect, Private. This is property of the United States Army. Property which you have failed to keep properly maintained! This blunted piece of shit isn't worth being called a bayonet. Is your whet stone malfunctioning? Were you too tired this morning to sharpen it?
"DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY, RIGHT NOW!"
Eve dropped, and tried to manage pushups in fifty pounds of gear and through twenty pounds of sweat. She tried to breathe through the pain, and bit her lip as she forced her quivering arms up and down, trying to keep her pack from slipping off her shoulders.
"YOU'RE NOT COUNTING, SOLDIER!"
"O-one," she said, knowing better than to guess what number she was on.
"I can't hear you!"
"ONE!" she screamed.
"Faster!"
"Two! Three," she grunted as she pushed herself up and tried not to fall back to the ground.
"You might look like a soldier, but you've got a long way to go before you prove you belong here!"
Eve bit her lip and kept going, focusing all her will into just doing one more, and then another after that.
She lost count a few times, and Sobel made her start over from the beginning. She guessed she'd done maybe thirty pushups when her shaking arms could not manage to push her body up for another one. Not even if he'd put a gun to her head would she have been able to do one more.
"On your feet!" he barked.
Eve scrambled up, a messy cacophony of colliding equipment as it rearranged. She tried not to grimace where he could see, but the condescending smile he gave her bedraggled form let her know she'd failed.
She wiped her hands, slick with red dirt turned to mud by her sweat, onto her pant legs.
"What is this, Private, dirty ODs?"
Eve glanced down and winced at the mess she'd made.
"Ten more!"
Eve dropped down and did ten more, too exhausted to argue at this point. It took her nearly three times as long to finish the set as it had the first ten she'd completed.
When she stood, he gave her a narrow eyed look, waiting for her to wipe her hands again. She resumed standing at attention and tried not to think about how much her hands itched.
"Because of your numerous infractions," said Sobel once she'd stopped heaving for breath, "your weekend pass is revoked. We're running up Currahee, Private. Three miles up, three miles down!"
Eve tried not to whimper and followed Sobel as he took off, doing her best to keep up with the man, who was running faster than she'd thought him capable of, which made it all the harder to keep up with him loaded down as she was with all her kit.
When they finally reached the base of the mountain, Sobel pulled a stopwatch from his pocket.
"Get going," he announced, clicking the button.
Eve hitched her pack higher on her shoulders and lurched forward, already exhausted from her morning run.
It was impossible to run the whole stretch. The hill was steep; the gravel littered dirt road crumbled from beneath her feet with each step. She walked when she couldn't jog, jogged when she couldn't run, and cried when she couldn't do anything more than stand and breathe.
Somehow, she made it to the top. It came down to pure stubborn tenacity. She kept going even when she wanted to give up and just let herself roll back down the hill so she wouldn't have to walk back down.
It was Alex's voice in her ear that made her finish, that kept her from folding into a ball or just sitting down to quit.
"No one is going to take a girl to war!"
She would not let him be right.
She was going to finish even if she died trying.
When she hit the top, she was practically on her hands and knees. She touched the stone, and looked down on the valley below, on camp Toccoa and all the very small soldiers below and laughed – with a touch of hysteria – before all but tumbling back down.
It took an embarrassingly long time. She passed another company running up the hill and tried to keep out of their way. Though the officers kept their men on the other side of the road, the jeering laughter at her wrung out appearance could not be silenced, and the officers didn't even try.
Eve acknowledged two things as she stumbled back to the bottom and met Sobel's judgment, just enduring the screaming anger he heaped on her without comment or protest. This was going to be the hardest thing she'd ever done, and that people should be careful what they wish for.
XxX
Every morning, Evelyn woke up and was ready and waiting on the field by 0530.
If Sobel was the one training her for the day, the start time varied due to his propensity to arrive anywhere from exactly on time, to leaving her to wait for hours. When he did arrive, he started by going through her gear. Despite the hours she spent meticulously going over each piece of equipment to make sure it was in perfect shape, he always found and pointed out several infractions.
Evelyn learned to simply save time and answer: "No excuse, sir," for each one.
"You will drop and give me ten pushups for each infraction," he would say. On one particularly hot day he only found one, but the next day he found six. So, she dropped. He watched her down his long pointed nose. She was fine through the first twenty, was sweating by thirty, trembling by forty, and positively shaking by sixty, but she finished. She stood back up, consciously remembering not to wipe her palms on her trousers, never forgetting the lesson she'd learned that first day.
When they'd finished the bizarre ritual of equipment check, Sobel took Eve on a morning run, a run that grew increasingly longer, one mile added per day. She was then dismissed to eat breakfast and shower. Fifteen minutes allotted for each activity, before reporting back for another equipment check, this time in the barracks as he inspected it for cleanliness and contraband.
If she had failed to address the issues he'd pointed out earlier that day, she did triple the punishment. He always found more to criticize, but Eve realized pretty early on that he was just making up infractions more than half the time.
Then it was a run up Currahee, which Sobel timed every third run.
Eve had to assume she was improving because he never showed her her time.
Then it was off to assorted drills. They changed every few days, but it was always grueling. Sobel pushed her beyond what she thought she could handle, keeping her out late on all-night-marches, and had her up before dawn each morning for more PT.
Gradually, she realized that he was teaching her things as he was tormenting her, but he was so petty and small minded that Eve didn't even care. She began to hate him with every small infraction that he pointed out, every petty chore he assigned to just waste her time.
She said nothing, she did nothing. She just did what she had to and kept a blank face.
Sobel made sure that the gap between her, the person working in the muck and the mud, and him, the ever clean and presentable superior, was ever observed.
When it was all over for the evening, she was always so tired she just wanted to cry. Only the potential teasing she faced from the man kept her eyes clear.
She learned to expect the half portion she usually got for dinner, with the other half adding grease and slop to her already mud stained ODs. She hardly noticed any more, just moved sleepily down the line and automatically to her deserted corner of the room to eat in peace.
She learned to savor the meals where no one went out of their way to harass her.
The harassment was typically pushing her into her meal. Once, she'd sat on something squishy on her bench. But overall, the men generally didn't bother with her. She was often already too deep in her own misery to react with anything more than blank acceptance of their pranks. She hoped they felt like they were kicking an animal that was already beaten down, because that's how she felt.
The isolation was endless and unforgiving. There was no one she could turn to; no one she felt she could say with confidence was rooting for her, just herself. It was a hard, bitter pill to take, but every meal was a reminder.
No one wanted to befriend the girl.
Each day pushed the hard truth home a little further: There was no one rooting for her to succeed. No one was going to help her. She had nothing but her own determination to keep herself going.
But sometimes, that didn't seem like enough.
XxX
Sobel wasn't the only person drafted as her instructor. He had a whole company to oversee after all, and certainly couldn't spend all his time tormenting her.
The first replacement instructor she had was First Sergeant Evans.
Evans wasn't too much different from training with Sobel. The ginger haired man skipped over her equipment check and put her straight to work. He shared Sobel's annoying habit of watching her like a critiquing spectator while she worked increasingly harder.
Where he differed was that Evans was likely to wait until she'd done something completely wrong before telling her she'd messed up, but not how, and then letting her try and fail until she figured it out on her own. Sobel just didn't have that kind of patience and typically just screamed at her until she figured out how he wanted her to accomplish the task. Where Sobel wanted everything done exactly the way he would go about it, Evans didn't much care about the execution as long as the goal was achieved.
It was different, but not necessarily better than working with Sobel.
The second person she met from Easy Company was altogether different than Evans. He was a handsome dark-haired fellow from New Jersey. His eyes betrayed his sharp mind, and his grin his humor.
He staggered onto the field just fifteen minutes past 0530, looking rather worse for wear.
Eve took in the man with some trepidation, because if he felt half as bad as he looked, she was going to be in for one hell of a day.
"Jesus Christ," the man mumbled upon seeing her. "You always up this early in full gear?"
Eve didn't know if the question was rhetorical, but hedged her bets that he didn't actually want to hear the obvious answer and stayed quiet.
"Aren't you friendly?" he muttered, mistakenly thinking he'd done so under his breath.
Eve had heard him just fine and tried not to be stung. She didn't even know his name yet, and he was already predetermined not to like her. Immediately, she reminded herself that she wasn't here to be liked and tried to straighten her spine just a bit more under the weight of his stare.
"I'm Lieutenant Nixon. I'll be taking over your training today from Lieutenant Sobel, because he's sleeping in like a normal person."
Eve could read between the lines. He was being punished for something and had been stuck training the girl.
He scratched his stubbled cheek and yawned.
"So, what do you normally do this early?"
He reminded her of someone. It took a long moment before she realized it was Alex. Something in the way he held himself, an uncaring slouch despite being raised to have perfect posture.
"Typically, Lieutenant Sobel checks my equipment first, then he has me run Currahee first, and then –"
He interrupted her with a groan. "I'm not doing that this early in the morning." He cocked his head and considered her. "Tell you what, why don't you go ahead and get rid of all that gear? I've got something better in mind for this morning. Besides, you look dead on your feet."
Eve just stared at him, trying to guess whether or not he was kidding.
"Come on, don't just look at me, I haven't got all day."
Confused, but unwilling to question it, Eve raced back to her billet and stowed away her gear before racing back to the field just in time to see Nixon stowing a flask in his breast pocket.
"I'd offer you some," he said, noting where she was looking, "but you don't look old enough to have one just yet."
"I'm twenty-three," she told him, the words spilling out of her without permission. Eve was already dropping into position for pushups, Sobel's usual consequence for speaking out of turn.
Nixon didn't bark though, just watched her run through the ten pushups without comment, but with a sharp look in his eye.
"He's got you well trained, hasn't he?" he remarked as she stood back up and automatically assumed the position of attention.
Eve blinked at him, not sure if she was supposed to be offended by the comment or flattered.
"At ease, Private," he said. "All that standing at attention is making me feel tight. Don't worry about speaking freely around me either. You got a problem, I damn well wanna know what it is, got it?"
Eve nodded.
"Let me hear you say it," he pressed.
"Yes, sir."
"Alright," he said. "Sit down."
She did, unconsciously mirroring his pose, slouch and all.
"This morning, we're going to go over standard operating procedure for capturing a target…"
Eve settled in to listen, already riveted.
Before she knew it, the whole morning had passed away in a flurry of questions and answers. Nixon was willing to answer pretty much any question she had about the military.
"Why do you have to select two people if you suspect a gas attack? Can't you just pick one?" she inquired. Apparently it was standard operating procedure for two people to remove their masks in the event of a suspected gassing. "Wouldn't it make more sense to just look around at all the dead animals?"
"There aren't any animals on a battlefield," said Nixon, "And you're missing the main point, which is that first you take everyone's weapons, and then you select two people."
The bell rang signaling lunch. Eve had often times been too far away from camp, mostly running Currahee, to actually take a break during the day, but Nixon was already getting up, dusting off the seat of his pants as he straightened.
Eve followed his lead and stood as well, but waited for orders. She'd missed her run up Currahee after all.
"Let's get some chow," said Nixon, already walking away. "After lunch, we can talk about unit tactics and run through the hand signals you should be learning…"
XxX
About four days after meeting Nixon, Eve met a third member of Easy Company. Lieutenant Winters had red hair, sharp blue eyes and an easy manner.
"Hello, Private," he said when he arrived, precisely on time, something Evans and Sobel rarely bothered with. "I'm Lieutenant Winters, I'll be looking over your training today."
He gave her a half smile she couldn't help but return. Eve had to admit, he was very attractive. As soon as she recognized that thought - and the budding blush behind it – she stomped it down and squashed it.
It was odd. Winters was just as demanding a task master as Sobel was, often asking what felt like impossible feats from her, but he was fair. He only demanded her best, not perfection, and he encouraged her.
"Good job, soldier. Keep it up," said Winters early in the day.
Eve nearly dropped her rifle from using it as a workout weight, floored by the actual positive encouragement.
Winters made sure her technique was correct, adjusting her posture with clinical hands so she was able to get more exhausted than ever from her workout. It was worrying that she'd been doing it wrong for so long, and even more worrying that Sobel hadn't pointed it out to her.
"Permission to speak, sir?" she asked.
He smiled, "Granted."
"Will you walk me through the rest of the exercises too?"
She tried not to interpret the surprised look on his face as rejection and waited for his answer.
"Of course," he replied, and then did it, walking her through each and every exercise Sobel had her do, and several she'd never done before.
Better than that, he explained why what she was doing was wrong after he showed her how to fix it.
"Turn your knee a bit more to the outside. It'll help you get back into position easier."
"Make sure you keep your chin straight ahead. Otherwise your back bows when you push back up, which can really hurt your back. Try again." He watched her try another push up. "Better."
Even more impressive: Winters actually did the exercises with her in a form of camaraderie that she'd never experienced before.
Winters was definitely her favorite instructor.
There were others, but never more than once as officers seemed to be in Easy Company one second and gone the next in an ever revolving door.
Nixon and Winters came out to help her least often, but she looked forward to those days. Every morning she waited anxiously, praying that it wouldn't be Sobel or Evans on their way to meet her. She was disappointed often.
Despite working with some of the lieutenants, she still wasn't allowed to watch the men train. This led her to believe that the men were laughably far ahead of her. Maybe Sobel was doing her a favor by preventing her from watching them, but she yearned to compare herself.
That didn't mean they weren't allowed to watch her. She often had an audience that came by to heckle her, taunting her as she struggled to mount the ten-foot wall for the third time in an hour, running sprints between each wall climb.
"Better run, Girlie! The Japs is here!" She heard someone cry in a mocking tone.
They didn't come by when Winters and Nixon were around, only Evans and Sobel.
Sobel seemed to subtly encourage their taunting, if only because he didn't do anything to stop it. It certainly wasn't isolated to E company either. Members from every Company, from Able to Item, had swung by her field or the obstacle course or even as she was trying to run Currahee (taunting her as they easily outstripped her), to mock the clumsy girl running the obstacle course under Sobel's fierce scrutiny.
She swung herself up and over the log wall and hurled towards the tunnels. She crawled under the barbed wire-lined mud pit.
She could hear Sobel screaming. "For God's sake Buchanan, move faster!" She did. "Stay lower!" She tried. "If you run around like a girl, the Japs will pick you off right away. They're good at picking off the weak link."
Eve gritted her teeth through the mud and kept going. If the litany of curse words she chanted in her head to keep a rhythm grew with each of his high-pitched, nasal shouting, well…
When she finished the course, she stood at attention before Sobel as he dressed her down, listing all the things she'd done wrong that would get not only herself, but everyone around her killed.
"Yes, Sir!" was always the answer. The only answer she could give, before she fell back to the beginning and tried again.
XxX
One night, he pushed her too far.
Sobel had been in fine form. He'd followed her up Currahee, trying to humiliate her at every turn, even going so far as running circles around her when she had to pause to jog.
"The men of Easy Company can run this hill at double time in a full pack and gear in half this time! You're too slow! You're not cut out for this. Just say the word and it can all be over. You can go back home to mommy and forget this whole thing ever happened. Find a nice husband to take care of you-"
Eve tried to tune him out, to just keep her head up and keep going.
"You look tired, Buchanan. You can go back down to bed, right now. Just say goodbye to all this. You know you're never going to make it as a paratrooper anyway." The barrage was constant.
She took it all, gritting her teeth and biting her lip.
Sobel hadn't been satisfied when they'd finished running Currahee. He put her right to work on endless exercises. Jumping jacks, chin-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, squats, duck-walks, lunges, sprints, deep knee bends, designed to stretch each and every muscle in her body.
Afterwards, just when she felt like she was about to collapse, he sent her to run the obstacle course twice, smugly holding his stop watch in his lily white hand.
And then he sent her back up Currahee.
She had no idea how long she'd been at it, but she'd barely been able to remain upright when Sobel finally told her she was dismissed.
Eve fell out, and stumbled towards the mess hall, feeling as though she was a wash cloth someone had wrung out and left to dry on too-thin wire.
She ate automatically, each raise of her fork agony for her still quivering arm. She'd been humiliated and belittled over nonsense all frigging day, and now all she wanted was to sleep.
Bang. She jumped, much to the enjoyment of the snickering men. But it woke her up enough to finish the last bites of her cold food.
Eve stood with a grimace and stared down at her tray, vividly imagining it magically floating itself over to the dishwasher. She resigned herself to the extra steps and grabbed it, trying not to notice the way her hands throbbed and her knees quaked as she slowly made it to the line, buzzing in her ears as the space between blinks became longer each time.
Her feet took her automatically out of the mess hall. It must have been closer to sleep walking because she didn't even remember the walk to her billet, longing for a shower and hopefully bed.
Sobel had other ideas.
He was waiting for her outside her billet, a full pack and kit dumped in the red dirt next to him.
She begrudgingly put it on, inspecting each bit of equipment as she assembled it, as quickly and as thoroughly as she could with Sobel's eagle-eye focused on her. Altogether, it felt like it must weigh more than she did. She sagged under the weight and waited for orders.
"Aren't you missing something, Private?" Sobel asked after she'd been waiting for a good five minutes for him to tell her what to do.
Eve thought about it, but honestly had no idea.
"Your canteen, private. The most important resource a soldier in the wild has, and it was not with your gear. Why is that, Private?"
"No excuse, sir," she said.
He hummed. "As it turns out, I may know the location of your missing canteen. Some thieves have stolen it and misplaced it somewhere in the woods around camp. Luckily for you, they've left you a map with its location. You will retrieve your canteen and bring it back to me before dawn, or you won't come back at all. Understand?"
"Yes, sir!" she barked.
"But first, you will complete the exercise I had scheduled for you tonight. You will demonstrate your ability with orienteering on a compass course."
She blinked at him, confused and too tired to ask.
"You will find all ten points indicated on your map, and retrieve your canteen. At each point will be a card with something on it. Report back to me with what was on those cards. You have about," he looked at his watch, an exaggerated motion to taunt her, "nine hours, starting now. The course begins once you reach the top of Currahee. And remember, Private, I will be watching you, so no funny business."
Eve had never once tried to take a shortcut or skive off some task that Sobel had assigned, so she did not let this comment affect her.
"Here's your map, Private." She took it, noticing his clean fingernails with irritation. "What are you waiting for?"
Eve saluted him and began her run. He did not join her.
She ran the hill without leaving her gear at the bottom out of pure stubbornness, which was as good a reason for doing anything in her experience. She jogged going up, taking breaks to walk every hundred yards or so, and trying not to think about how slow she was going.
Running now, while she was exhausted would ultimately help her in the long run, but right now she didn't care about the long run. She was more tired than she'd ever been in her life and now she had to do this nonsense.
Stubbornness was going to put her in an early grave if Sobel kept at her like this.
But she would die before she gave up. If they wanted her out, they'd have to carry her.
She made it up the mountain in roughly an hour, typically a terrible time for her, but she could do nothing about it but try to work faster. She had to hurry if she was going to retrieve her canteen from wherever Sobel had thought to hide it before dawn. Thieves indeed.
Eve could read a map just fine. She had a knack for it. She'd found that she could walk in any direction from a starting point, twisting to avoid obstacles, and return with ease. Plus, she used a hunter's eyesight to find even the most obscure landmarks.
Unfortunately, she couldn't say the same for Sobel.
Even with the limited amount of fieldwork Eve had with him, it was no secret around Toccoa that the man got lost constantly. She'd overheard Easy Company men complain about it more than once; and of course she'd witnessed it on occasion.
She probably wouldn't trust him to lead her to water. She definitely didn't trust that the canteen was actually where he said it was, even if his original intention had been to leave it where indicated.
Eve pulled out her map and compass. She contemplated using her flashlight, but it went against all of her sensibilities and all the things that Sobel had pounded into her recently about stealth. The moon was full, and there were a few big clouds, which gave off enough reflective light that she was able to make it out.
Maneuvering around obstacles, like the swamp at the bottom of this gully – which would've slowed her down tremendously had she been foolish enough to try just walking in a straight line – saved her heaps of time. The cards were all on nice tables, hidden under oiled tarps so that they could weather the elements. Obviously, they were a standard part of training, and not something special Sobel set up just for her.
She dutifully recorded what she found on the cards. Sometimes it was a random alphanumeric sequence; one time it was the word 'fish'. They'd designed it to prevent cheating. Eve could have never guessed what was on the cards had she not actually found them.
Plus, there was no way that Sobel could claim that she hadn't done the course properly, now.
Finally, she'd found the last card. She squinted down at her wristwatch, thankful again that the moon was out so she could read the darn thing in the dark. The extra light had made this whole exercise much easier too, come to think of it, because she hadn't worried nearly so much about tripping over things and spraining her ankle or something equally stupid that would pull her from training.
She had less than two hours to retrieve her canteen. She'd been up and training for more than nineteen hours today by her reckoning.
There was nothing to do but get on with it. If she wanted to finish, she'd have to track where Sobel went with her canteen from here.
It helped her significantly that Sobel hadn't taken much care to disguise his movement in the forest, leaving the most obvious trail she'd ever seen from a person with the way he'd just charged forward; and to her fortune, there had been a series of flash thunder storms over the past week, which had been hell to run in. Red mud covered every inch of the forest floor, sucking her boots down further with each step she took.
Combined with the weight on her back already pulling her down, she was in hell.
But it made it so much easier to track where Sobel had gone.
It was easy enough to figure out where he'd deviate from the obvious route she would have taken if she were trying to get where the map said she needed to be.
It was infuriating.
This wasn't even a place where he could have made a logical mistake.
He must have done it deliberately to throw her off. If she hadn't had so little confidence in his navigation, it might've worked and she could've been out here for hours.
Eve tried to keep herself calm and rational, tried her best not to get angry at the unfairness of it all. It didn't do any good to get angry. It just made it harder to focus on the task at hand.
Still.
Sobel would have had her wandering around all night looking for a canteen that he never intended to be where he said it was.
The unfairness of it all struck her particularly hard. She bit her lip to suppress her emotions, but it was a losing battle.
It didn't help that she was shivering, despite having gloves on. Her boots were soaked through to her socks, which slipped around her feet to create what she was sure would become some very interesting blisters.
Each step sucked more energy from her. She fell over debris that she could've easily avoided had she not been exhausted beyond all measure.
It took her far longer than it should have to find the tiny cover Sobel had erected to camouflage her canteen. She'd managed to pass the thing twice before figuring it out.
Suddenly, it struck Eve that her canteen meant water. Thirst slammed into her fatigued body, sending her to her knees reverently in front of the hideout as she pulled forth her canteen.
It was like a little ray of hope in an otherwise desolate day. She was parched and swaying, even now that she was on her knees, from thirst and exhaustion, and yet she'd found it. She'd beat Sobel's stupid test designed to prove that she couldn't hack it.
She was so thankful she'd finally found the stupid thing. Her hands trembled too much to actually unscrew it, mud sliding on the cap, making opening it impossible. With a sound of frustration, she wrapped the bottle cap in her sleeve and twisted as hard as she could.
The seal sighed as it released. Eve brought the blessedly cool metal to her lips and threw her head back.
Nothing.
Not a drop.
Eve could feel the burning trail of frustrated, exhausted tears making their way down her cheeks. She stared at the canteen in her hand, betrayed. Maybe it was some kind of trick, maybe her body was so thirsty it couldn't even register the water? She tried dumping the canteen over her head again.
Still nothing.
The bastard had emptied it before he'd left it here.
She started honest-to-God sobbing.
She'd never been so miserable, never wanted to give it all up so much before. She was at the end of her rope.
Why on Earth had she ever decided to join the Army? This wasn't training, it was torture.
She'd beat Sobel's stupid test. She'd done absolutely everything he'd asked of her today. She'd been going for nearly twenty-four hours. She just wanted to be done.
She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. Her body was pushed beyond her endurance and that was the part of the life of a soldier that she'd accepted, expected even.
But this? This was just cruel.
She threw her canteen to the ground and collapsed. She screamed and cried and raged at the world.
And then she climbed back to her feet and began stumbling back towards camp, canteen secured on her belt.
She was still on a time limit.
Eve started picking her way carefully down the mountain. She'd get water and bed when she got back, she was certain this time. It was just a little bit farther, she coached herself. Just a bit more and then she would be done with this horrible day.
She rubbed her eyes furiously, smearing them with dirt and not caring one bit. She couldn't stop crying. She couldn't do anything now that the floodgates had opened.
If she wasn't so lonely, if she wasn't so mad at Sobel, if she'd just listened to her father...
But she was, and she hadn't. But she wasn't going to give up now.
She'd come too far to give Sobel the satisfaction of seeing her quit. She would not give up. She would not be a failure.
She would show everyone that a woman could make the cut.
When she returned, just shy of the time limit, the camp was pitch dark. Sobel met her looking well rested and impossibly clean when she handed over the cards she'd copied, frowning deeply when he realized they were all correct.
He gave her a nod and dismissed her, no words of praise or pride to spare on her. Eve hadn't really expected any, but it might've been nice to hear them.
She stumbled to her rack as soon as he released her, her entire body trembling with adrenaline-fueled fatigue.
For once Eve was grateful about not having bunkmates as she tried to get into her PT gear for bed. It took her three tries to get her shirt off. Her hands and arms just didn't respond correctly the first few times she'd tried it.
Dressed, she walked straight for the spigot in the corner and cranked it on. She didn't even bother waiting for the water to heat before she dunked her head in the blissfully cold water. She guzzled down enough water that she puked a little back up. It was the best water she'd ever tasted.
Still desperately thirsty, she drank even more until her belly was full for what seemed to be the first time since she arrived at Toccoa.
She made a perfunctory attempt to put away her gear before she collapsed onto her bed, not even making it under the covers before she was instantly asleep.
The next morning, a mere two hours later, Eve dragged herself up at reveille, Sobel cussed her out for no apparent reason and then she was back to it. One day closer to being a paratrooper.
XxX
Overall, Eve thought the physical part of her training was progressing well. She certainly felt stronger. She was able to do more, and much faster. What was once a seemingly endless list of chores became steadily easier each day.
Even her clothes were looser in places, and tighter in others. She had dropped at least a cup size, and had to ask Elizabeth to discretely send her a tighter bra.
Running Currahee was a staple. Three miles up, three miles down; three or four times a week at minimum. Eve did it closer to six or seven times a week, sometimes twice in one day. She still couldn't run the whole way, but she'd stopped walking all together, and each time she jogged a little less often.
She could do fifty pushups easily now that Sobel had taken sadistic joy in making her do a hundred. Five chin-ups still made her arms ache, but it was better than the pitiful one she'd managed on her first day.
Of course, it didn't ever get to be easy. Sobel constantly upped the ante. He added a timer to her obstacle runs.
The obstacles themselves were numerous and varied, all requiring some form of dexterity and strength. She knew, mentally that they were designed to help build the muscle required to manipulate a parachute and survive prolonged combat, and not for Sobel's sadistic pleasure. But she resented every moment of joy he derived in watching her fling herself up and over the ten-foot log wall. The horizontal ladder over water was a special kind of torture. Between the individual obstacles there were hills to run, ditches to cross, and trenches to jump.
Failure meant restarting from the beginning, no matter how close she was to finishing.
Eventually it got easier too, as Eve started learning the small tricks she could use to help her. The horizontal ladder, for example, needed momentum more than strength to accomplish it.
But that didn't mean that the thirty-foot ladder wasn't challenging after she'd figured it out its secret.
By the time she finished the course, she was physically exhausted. Sobel used this opportunity to belittle her, mocking that she hadn't done nearly as well as the men had.
Eve wanted to scream: "Then why am I still here!", but managed to refrain each time by the skin of her teeth.
Soon the course became routine as her body developed and her condition improved. Sobel and Sink added more to it, to make it more challenging for everyone, and she dreaded each addition with all of her soul, but accepted them without complaint. It was grueling and monotonous, but day by day, it was getting a bit easier. Of course, what was being asked of her was getting harder too, so she couldn't really judge her progress.
She didn't have the upper body strength of a man, but she was lighter, and she had better balance because her center of gravity was lower. She worked smarter, not harder, and was able to accomplish everything asked of her, even if sometimes it was just barely.
Just as surely as her muscles grew, so did her loathing of Sobel; the man was petty and cruel for no reason other than he could be.
He asked a lot of her, and that she'd expected, but she hadn't realized how degrading he would be. He spent sometimes hours of time ripping her ego and then her rack to shreds, looking for infractions he could punish her with. When he couldn't find any, he made some up and punished her anyway.
If training hadn't been miserable enough, dealing with Sobel's constant ignoble bullshit was exhausting.
Sobel gave her field manuals to study and then would surprise her with quizzes about what she had studied. It didn't matter what her answers were, she was always wrong. And wrong answers meant more drills.
She did the best she could and accepted the punishment without complaint, which she figured was what Sobel wanted from her anyhow.
On days when the weather was poor, he sent her into classroom lectures with Regular Army noncommissioned officers to learn weapon handling and components, standard procedures, and covered a wealth of other information in between. Eve found the lessons on how to pilot a parachute especially interesting.
Of course, these lessons had their own homework, which she had to complete on top of whatever Sobel had assigned, with similar consequences when she failed. She did her best not to fail, even going so far as staying up into the wee hours of the night to finish the work. It made her exhausted, and PT the next day that much harder, but it meant less punishment duty – which meant she had more time to study.
It was all a vicious cycle to wear her down.
Sometimes, she was absolutely certain that her instructors told her that she'd failed to accomplish the parameters of the assignments they'd set even when she'd done what they'd asked to the letter.
She was definitely sure that Sobel did it with her field manual assignments.
All she could do about it was redo the work on top of whatever else she'd been given to do and hope that they accepted it this time.
Eve accepted this unfairness as a fact of life and moved quietly onward, doing the work she could and accepting punishment duties when she failed. She took punishment duty for trumped-up bullshit charges from Sobel as well.
Scrubbing the men's latrine was his favorite to inflict on her. Night duty was another unpleasantness she'd had to endure. She stood guard for two two-hour shifts at night, listening intently as each sound collated into imaginary enemy converging on her location. Such was her exhaustion that she didn't even notice the private that came to relieve her.
She gave the man a quick salute and jogged back to bed for a few hours before she had to get up and relieve his relief. After that, she'd be back up to start all over again with a run.
When she was off-duty, Eve spent a lot of time on base. She rarely if ever had a weekend pass as Sobel loved to assign her punishment after Saturday afternoon inspections. She'd never actually gotten to see Toccoa, much less anything beyond the scrap of Georgia woods they'd settled the camp on. She was curious by nature, and not being able to leave camp was a pain in the ass.
She filled whatever down time she had with yet more exercise. This time it was because she wanted to. She needed to be the best – better than any of the men – to gain their respect. And she was going to do it by outrunning, out-climbing, and outperforming everyone else.
If I'm the best, they won't care that I'm a girl, she told herself optimistically.
When she was too tired to move any more, she flipped through the field manuals and played solitaire until sleep claimed her, pretending that she wasn't lonely.
XxX
Eve's problems with the other men were coming to a head. It seemed like every day that she stayed, the men became more determined to convince her to leave.
She endured them calling her a floozy – and several other names she tried not to remember – every day and accepted it. She'd forced herself to get used to it and tried to remember that the names were just names, not things that defined her; some days it even worked.
She found herself bumped and shoved her into walls and sharp corners, the crowd always too dense to pick out who exactly was behind it. It felt like she had a new collection of bruises every time she showered.
On one memorable occasion she'd been shoved into a row of trash cans. She'd then had to gather the spilled, spoiled garbage by hand and replace it in the bins, gagging and fighting back tears the whole time. A full thirty minutes under her freezing shower hadn't washed the stink off, or the bruise on her thigh the size of her fist.
She had more bruises from bumping into the men than she did from training.
There wasn't much she could do about it. She would never be included if she decided to tattle. No one liked a rat.
Still, if she had told someone the men probably would have never ambushed her a few days before her final examination.
She was leaving the mess hall just after lunch when she ran into a group of five privates from Baker Company.
Eve tried to go around them, expecting the shoulder checking that knocked her into the wall.
What she didn't expect was for the soldier to follow and try to pin her to it. He realized very quickly why that wasn't a good idea.
When Eve was a child, her governess and then her older brother had taught her how to make overzealous men let her go and regret ever grabbing her.
Cold fear raced down her spine. She fought like a cornered wild cat, kicking, biting and scratching. But she was too scared to scream, too focused on getting him to let go. She pinched at every nerve she remembered on his hands, finally finding one that made him holler.
He lashed out and walloped her in the face, his fist blackening her eye. But the momentum of the hit got her out of the corner she'd been backed in.
She didn't stick around to finish the fight – that had never been her intention – she ran like hell.
Eve burst through the onlookers, vaguely recognizing them as Easy Company men.
Humiliation washed over her.
They'd watched. And they'd done nothing to help her. Granted, they didn't join in trying to humiliate her either, but it was clear – she was not one of them, and thus didn't even warrant their protection. It made her feel sick.
She didn't slow down until she was in her barracks, leaning all of her weight against the door, trying desperately to stop trembling. She tried to ignore the hot tears dripping off her chin as the fear she'd felt overwhelmed her for a moment.
Just a moment, she vowed.
When her hands had stopped shaking, she straightened with a sniff and went to the spigot that served as her shower. She ran her washcloth under the frigid water and brought it to her eye, vaguely noticing that she had blood under her nails from where she must have raked the man who'd hit her.
She left the cloth on her eye for as long as she could, rewetting it whenever the water warmed to her skin temperature. It wasn't the steak her housekeeper would've given her, but it was the best she could do. She wasn't going to medical for a black eye.
When she'd shown up for evening PT with a shiner, Sobel had growled about it and proceeded to double her load for fighting. Eve was almost grateful since it kept her mind off what had happened.
She needed to be a soldier first and her evaluation was just around the corner.
It was her only weapon, the only thing she had sole control over.
Instead of trying to retaliate, she needed to put her head down and keep working.
She was going to prove them all wrong. She would prove she belonged here, that she was just as capable a soldier as any other man in the company. She just had to survive these last few days, and then her test tomorrow.
She couldn't help the anxiety that churned in her stomach every time she thought about her test. She tried to push it away and focus. She had to survive the rest of her probation first.
XxX
Eugene Roe staggered back as the girl careened into him. She looked exhausted and disheveled, and scared.
She pushed away from him, with barely a glance backwards as she fled.
He took quick stock of the scene, of the Baker Company boys caterwauling about their injured hands and how the girl was going to pay.
"Did you see what happened?" he asked Sergeant Guarnere, who was also watching the action.
Easy Company had just finished PT with Sobel, and he was tired. He'd planned to try for a nap or something before dinner.
But it looked like his bunk mates would be too riled up for him to get any peace now.
"She should just take the hint and leave," said Liebgott from behind him somewhere. Roe cocked his head to listen to the San Franciscan. "One less thing to worry about when we get over there. We don't need dead weight when we're fighting Japs."
George Luz, easily the friendliest man in Easy, laughed. "That's what we have Sobel for, huh, Lieb?"
"All's I know is that I joined to be with the best of the best. Ain't no way a girl is the best this country has to offer. Ain't no way," said Guarnere.
Privately, Roe hoped she would give up and go home. He didn't want to watch a woman being torn to pieces on a bloody battlefield. He could respect her want to be a soldier, but he didn't think he would be able to live with himself if he had to watch a woman die, fighting a war thousands of miles away from home where it was safe.
He prayed that night for God to send Evelyn Buchanan back home.
XxX
Eve didn't think she'd manage to sleep at all the night before her examination. Sobel took care of that notion and worked her so hard she gladly dropped into bed, dreaming before her head hit the pillow.
The next morning, she rolled out of bed and changed into her PT gear. The sky hadn't even started to lighten yet with the dawn, but she was far too nervous that she'd be late to try and get back to sleep.
She threw up what she'd managed to eat last night for dinner.
When she got to the field, she was beyond relieved to see that she was the first to arrive.
She waited anxiously for Sobel and her examiners to turn up. Every minute felt like an hour.
Finally, after what seemed like a hundred years, they appeared. Eve watched the trio of men, too far away to identify anyone but Sobel's very familiar figure cutting across the still damp field.
Eve had to remember to keep breathing.
"At ease, soldier," commanded Sink once he was in front of her. "Miss Buchanan, I'd like to introduce you to the new General in charge of the program, General Taylor."
It was Eve's worst nightmare. General Lee was instrumental in getting her into this program; he was the one who was backing her. Taylor had no incentive whatsoever to allow her to stay even if she succeeded. He might be inclined to fail her before she even got started.
"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am," said General Taylor with a smile. The man was handsome enough, and was probably her father's age.
"Shall we get started Lieutenant?" Sink asked.
"Right this way, gentlemen," agreed Sobel. "Report to the obstacle course, Private."
Eve saluted and headed that way, carefully forcing herself not to run. She wanted every scrap of energy she had to go into the task before her.
Her time here was worth nothing else. If this was going to be the end of her journey, she wanted them to remember her at least.
When the three men arrived, each had a stop watch.
"All right, Private," said Sink, addressing her from a distance away. "You'll have three opportunities to go through this obstacle course. You must make it through in under three minutes in one of those runs. Are you ready?"
Every hair on her body stood up as adrenaline plunged into her system. She nodded, too shaken to speak.
"On my mark," he said. "Go!"
Eve sprinted flat out as fast as she could, flinging herself up and over obstacles. Her muscles anticipating what she would ask before her brain had even caught up. She raced through the course once, twice, a third time and just prayed that she'd made time once.
She just needed once.
Next they led her over to a machine gun.
"For this task, Private, you will disassemble, clean and reassemble this gun, then fire a burst over yonder to hit that target."
Eve followed Sink's finger to a barrel propped up in the distance. She nodded.
"On my mark," he said, the words well familiar after three runs through the obstacle course. "Go!"
Eve went, working steadily until each piece was taken apart and checked over. She cleaned the barrel and made sure to replace the firing pin before she snapped the ammunition in place and took aim. One quick burst, one, two, three, the barrel went down smoking, and she was done with the second part of her test.
She couldn't tell if she'd passed, or even if she'd done well. All three men were stone faced.
At least she'd hit the target.
Sobel marched her through a variety of other physical exercises. They never told her what her benchmark was, so Eve did them all until she couldn't do any more.
"Well done, Private," confirmed Sink. "For your last standardized test, you're going to make a round trip up Currahee, and back. Are you ready?"
Eve could do nothing but nod around the lump in her throat.
"On my mark, then… Go!"
Eve ran. She ran as fast as she could for as long as she could. She jogged when the trail became too steep for a flat out sprint, but managed to run for most of it. It was somehow fitting that this mountain, which had become her bane while training, was her final task.
She could do this.
Eve kept going, kept pushing, until she was suddenly back at the beginning, standing in front of General Taylor, Colonel Sink, and Sobel.
The two commanders were smiling. Sobel looked smug.
"Forty-three minutes! Well done, Lieutenant Sobel. You've out done yourself. Damn fine job, soldier," said Colonel Sink. Eve felt cheated that Sobel was getting the praise for her hard work, the man who'd done anything to see her fail, was reaping the benefit of her success. He must have been addressing her as well in his praise, but it surely didn't feel like it. "General?" the man addressed his superior.
"I think this young woman is ready to integrate with the others," confirmed General Taylor. He shook her hand, and gave her a warm smile.
Sink copied the sentiment and said, "Congratulations. I knew you could do it."
Eve bit her lip to keep from laughing as elation bubbled in her breast. Absolutely no one had known she would be able to do this; secretly not even her. "Thank you, sir," she said instead, diplomatic to the end.
"Take the afternoon off, Private," said Sink before he left the grounds. "You've earned it."
Once the two brass were off the field, Sobel said, "Be ready tomorrow morning at the regular time, Private. I will be escorting you to Easy Company barracks at 0600 tomorrow morning."
"Yes, sir," she said.
"Dismissed," he confirmed.
Eve felt like she could float away, but she did her best to walk sedately back to her billet.
Once the door was safely closed behind her, she twirled around, just once, in excitement and started packing.
She was in. From tomorrow forward, she'd be a member of Easy Company, 506, 101st Airborne division until the day she died.
She would deal with the fact that her entire Company hated her tomorrow. Tonight, she was going to celebrate by falling into bed and staying there until morning.
-End Chapter-
Sorry this is a bit late. New chapters will be posted on Thursdays. Thanks for reading!