Hello everyone and welcome back to the story. I hope you're all doing good or as good as your circumstances allow. I'm uploading this chapter while suffering through an hour-long lecture on... cognitive processes, I think? I don't know, I'm not exactly taking much in. But the sun is shining and we had spring weather for the last week, so I'm actually in a really good mood.
I'm sorry that the chapter is so short, but it really is a bit of an interlude between episodes 8 and 9. We'll be getting to Why We Fight in the next few chapters. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and as always, big thanks to all of you who read this and for your lovely reviews.
Returning to Mourmelon-le-Grand felt like a dream come true. The battered soldiers were welcomed by their sister regiment with cheers and whistles and the latest gossip. In the throng of excitement and immense relief of actually having made it back from the front lines once more, they temporarily forgot about their various aches, pains and sorrows.
The women of the 506, in a tradition that had originated back in basic training and taken hold after D-Day, sought each other out amidst the hubbub to share a heartfelt hug. Their circle had shrunk dramatically since they had first joined the US Army, but none of them mentioned it, simply grateful to not be alone.
"Is there room for one more in this reunion, ladies?", called a familiar voice they had all missed over the last weeks.
Cries of "Mom!" and "Catherine!" went up and the warmly smiling woman was immediately inundated in the most exuberant group hug Mourmelon had ever seen. They melted into a tangle of arms and bodies, laughing and crying at the same time, and revelled in each other's presence. None of them noticed the reporter and his photographer standing off to the side, and even if they had, none of them would have paid them any mind.
.
After a tepid but very welcome shower, the tired soldiers trotted off to their billets, eager to start catching up on all the sleep they had missed in the last two months. Catherine took charge of those that were ill or injured, sending those that needed it off to the infirmary while the rest was only too happy to claim their bunk. Much to her surprise, though, Louise caught her arm before she could go over to Mia. The ugly bruise on her friend and fellow combat medic's jawline had been impossible to miss and Catherine's concern had only grown once she'd seen how unsteady Mia was on her feet.
"Leave it, Mom", Louise said in an undertone.
"Leave it?", she echoed, staring at Louise. "What do you mean, leave it? She's hurt!"
Louise's hold on her arm didn't let up. "Yes I know, I saw it happen. She's also burning with fever and has been for going on three days now."
"What? Then why isn't she in the infirmary? She looks like death warmed over, she-"
"Catherine", the sniper cut in, her voice polished iron. "Think. She hates people fussing over her on the best of days. And right now, Mia is beyond miserable."
Grudgingly, because Mia habitually and expertly understated and hid her own ailments and that always worried her, Catherine had to admit that Louise had a point. "Fine. I'll check on her tomorrow."
.
Shuffling through the billet until she found her bunk, Mia gave a stray thought to how odd it was that Catherine hadn't dragged her to the infirmary. She was too tired, hurt and sick to pretend otherwise and there was no way Catherine hadn't noticed.
Doesn't matter, she decided as she shed her webbing and jacket before collapsing onto the bed. I just want to sleep. With that, she struggled out of her boots, curled up and pulled the blanket up to her ears.
She was out before the aspirin she'd swallowed had time to kick in.
Like the last time they had been pulled off the line, hardly any of the returning soldiers were up when the rest of the camp went to breakfast. And those few that were dragged themselves to the mess tent, blearily shovelled food into their mouths and downed a cup of whatever the Army called coffee, maybe detoured to the latrines and then returned to their bunks to promptly pass out again. Most of the battle-weary returnees had woken at least once by mid-afternoon, but a number of them remained in the arms of Morpheus, hardly even stirring at the regular noise level of a busy staging point like Mourmelon.
The only one already reacclimatised to garrison life, Catherine was more than happy to see to all the things her fellow medics hadn't had time for in the field and spent most of the morning looking through the paperwork they had filled out in her stead. Installing herself at a table in the back of the mess hall, she chuckled at the snarky remarks scribbled in the margins of handwritten report drafts and smiled at Mia's inconsistent spelling. But they had done an excellent job of handling the ranking medic's responsibilities while she'd been laid up in the hospital with a bullet in her gut.
The smile was replaced by a frown every so often when she read of the painful and gruesome injuries her comrades and friends had suffered, a pang of familiar grief hitting her whenever she saw KIA together with a name that she could match to a face.
She had tried to keep up with Easy's movements, but casualty and battle reports weren't readily available at the hospital and vague generalities like "town successfully liberated" or "sustained heavy losses" didn't tell her much. She'd learned of the major incidents from other wounded soldiers and through the sporadic letters her friends sent her from the front lines. Toye and Guarnere, Buck being pulled off the line. Muck and Penkala dead. Dozens killed and wounded in Foy. Maxine and Frances.
Even though the reports could never represent the full extent of the struggles and losses the company had gone through, Catherine read them to fill in the gaps of what she needed to know as ranking medic.
.
Once the paperwork was checked, sorted and delivered to the HQ barracks, Catherine made her rounds among the company before returning to the mess hall for lunch. She sat with a group of drowsy soldiers from her battalion, eating her mystery meal without looking too closely and chatting amiably with James Pescini from Fox Company and a yawning Ralph Olson, one of D Company's medics.
"How did you get shot anyways?", Olson wondered around a mouthful of food, squinting at her across the table. His eyes were still puffy with sleep.
Pescini blinked and questioned: "You telling me you haven't heard?"
"I've heard about 30 different stories and by now, I got them all so mixed up you could tell me it was Patton himself." He turned expectantly to Catherine.
She chuckled and shrugged. "I was pretty out of it, so I only remember bits and pieces, but from what I figure, a twitchy replacement thought the enemy had come calling when I did rounds. Pulled the trigger, knocked me flat on my back." She didn't mention that excruciating pain featured heavily in her fragmented memories of the event, along with a pair of wide blue eyes and an overwhelming fear of leaving her family behind.
Grimacing in sympathy, Olson grumbled something less than charitable about trigger-happy idiots. Pescini clucked his tongue in disgust, poking a piece of what the Army was passing as meat onto his fork and promptly derailed the conversation by asking: "Hey, what d'you guys think: is this more soggy shoe leather or marinated rubber?"
Catherine groaned. This kind of talk never failed to ruin her appetite. She wasn't squeamish in any way, but the vivid comparisons of their meals to the grossest and most unappetising things in existence didn't help when the food was barely more than edible.
.
Since business at the infirmary was slow, Catherine spent most of the afternoon writing letters, mending assorted clothes and playing a few hands of solitaire on her bunk. In between, she surreptitiously checked on Mia. She was still asleep, coughing occasionally without waking up, but at least the fever was gone.
Dear Lord, please give her a break, the Hawaiian thought as she settled back onto her cot and picked up the cards again. She needs one. Badly.
To outsiders, it looked like Mia was just getting over a nasty cough and recovering like everyone else from the gruelling winter in the Ardennes and the subsequent weeks of fighting their way across Belgium. Those that knew her well, however, could see that she was hurting.
Her smiles, unreadable as always, were dim and weak, a strained, hollow thing. Her personal space, usually surrounding her like a bubble, soft and permeable, resembled a near-impenetrable wall. Generally receptive of casual touches, Mia now shied away from them. Luz, tactile by nature, was reduced to a desperately worried mess, watching the young woman from afar and wringing his hands, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Gene's expression would always twist into a sad, concerned frown whenever his gaze caught on the desolate figure. Jaws clenched, eyes dropped away, lips pursed into helpless, sympathetic frowns.
Until Louise couldn't take the sight of her friend suffering in silence any longer. Huffing out a breath that told everyone there was no stopping her, the blonde tossed away her smoke. "Excuse me", she said and strode over to where Mia sat on the hood of a jeep, a crumpled piece of paper in her lap and an unlit cigarette in her fingers.
The guys watched as subtly as they could, expecting Louise to just barrel right through the invisible steel barrier that kept everyone at arms' length without so much as a by your leave.
The sniper took them all by surprise as she slowed her steps, her approach careful and almost hesitant. She did not cross the imaginary perimeter before Mia gave her permission with a tiny, jerky nod. Only then did Louise settle next to her friend, mindful not to sit too close.
"Do you want to talk about it?", the blonde asked softly.
Mia didn't look up. "About what?"
"Don't play dumb", she chided without any heat, "it doesn't suit you."
"What's there to talk about? It's war. People die."
The dull tone could have been mistaken for indifference if it hadn't been for the pain and grief underneath the weariness. "He was your uncle. Your own regiment killed him and you heard about it from your wounded cousins who were taken prisoner in a patrol into enemy lines."
She made little choked noise at the back of her throat and nodded, whispering a hoarse "I know."
A stray tear rolled down a pale cheek, trailing over blueish green skin before it was wiped away. Louise pretended not to notice and pulled out her lighter, plucking the cigarette from small fingers to light it before handing it back. Deep blue eyes rose to meet slate grey ones. Louise put a hand on her friend's knee and gave it a squeeze, eliciting the tiniest flicker of a grateful smile from Mia.
.
They passed the cigarette back and forth in silence, unbothered by the cool breeze that still carried a touch of winter chill now that they actually had real winter clothing.
"Regiment wanted to know everything about my family", Mia said eventually, her voice low but mostly steady. "I had to tell them about the Widerstand."
"The German Underground?"
Mia took a drag from the cigarette, pulled up a leg and wrapped her arms around it. "Mhm. If that information falls into the wrong hands, my aunt is dead. Nixon told me nobody else would know, but-" She sighed, passed the smoke to Louise. Dragging a hand through her hair, she continued: "It made me so angry. My family didn't want to fight in the Nazi army. They're not even in the NSDAP."
Tears welled up in her eyes again and her speech gained momentum even as a few specific words eluded her. "Tante Sophie makes passports and helps… hunted people escape towards France or Switzerland, Onkel Stephan worked with the French Resistance when his unit was stationed in France and I know my cousins tried to help people when they could at the Eastern Front, but regiment, they asked like they were Rommel's personal favourites. It made me sick."
Oh I would've made minced meat out of those upper brass snots, Louise thought, seething with righteous fury on Mia's behalf. "Why those- Of all the-" Focus! You can rage to your heart's content later. She blew out a long stream of smoke in an effort to calm herself. "Mia, are you scared that we – the company, I mean – think the same?"
The messy-haired head lowered, too-long curls sneaking out from behind her ears as the younger woman stared down into her lap. "Maybe. I don't know. I was, I think, but saying it..." She frowned and shook her head, murmuring: "I'm being stupid, right?"
"Hey", Louise interjected, squeezing her knee again and smiling when she looked up, "you were exhausted and sick. That's not exactly a good basis for rational thinking."
Traces of humour danced in the light in Mia's eyes and she chuckled softly. "I think you're right. I felt like throwing up the whole time at regiment. I should've vomited on their shoes."
Louise laughed and when she heard her friend snickering, she felt something inside her relax for the first time since they had been sent into the Ardennes.
Slowly, Easy Company recovered. The arrival of spring – heralded by the weather growing warmer and sunnier – also helped. Illness passed, wounds healed, shadows disappeared. Smiles and laughter came freer and easier as haggard features filled out again and the tension of constant vigilance melted away.
Their backpay came through, along with a sizeable chunk of mail that had been lost in transit while they had bounced from town to town. They finally had time for all the everyday things that had had to take a back seat while on the front lines. Clothes were mended or thrown away, new uniform packs were picked up, tried on and then altered or swapped out if necessary. The luxury of hot – or even lukewarm – showers was heartily indulged in by all of them. Audrey jumped at the opportunity to get a real haircut, Theresa and Ana María happily going along with her while the rest of the women were content to just take a pair of scissors to their split ends and uneven lengths.
They made liberal use of weekend passes and any other type of pass they could get, but even on base, they found ways to stave off the boredom that always followed after a long stretch out in the field. They played poker and basketball and shot the breeze and generally let the fact sink in that they were still alive.
Training would resume soon enough and they'd have their hands full with revisiting strategies and manoeuvres and getting the latest batch of replacements into shape, so they enjoyed their free time while it lasted.