A/N: Hello everyone. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing, I'm glad you enjoy my writing :)
Please note that my Spanish skills are practically non-existent. I can read it and I understand a word here and there when I hear it, but I never had it in school so I can't write or speak it. So, apologies for any mistakes and please feel free to correct them :)
Sobel put them down every chance he got. And if he couldn't find a reason to yell at them and punish them, he invented one. Explanations and excuses were always ignored.
One time, Christenson was forced to repeat all 12 miles of the Friday night march because he had gone against orders and drunk from his canteen.
When Catherine protested that she had told him to do it since he had a bad cold and needed to stay hydrated, the CO chewed her out in front of the whole company before assigning her the same punishment as Christenson.
.
Another time that Sobel was on a war-path, he had three of the women run Currahee late in the evening. The sun had already set when he shouted: "Fall out!", meaning they would only return well after nightfall.
The unlucky three were Jessica, Ana María and Mia. Their offenses? Sneezing, being too short and being too flat-chested, respectively.
The three women were fuelled by their outrage and embarrassment as they jogged up the road to the mountain. The rest of the company, many of them angry on behalf of their comrades, watched them go.
They ran in silence.
Jessica's cheeks and the back of her neck were still glowing from the tirade she had received for not being able to contain a sneeze.
Ana María was cursing their CO in her mind, a storm of Spanish insults and expletives swirling inside her head.
Mia's expression was blank while she focused on her steps in the rapidly dwindling light, trying to ignore the burning clump of shame in her chest.
.
Darkness fell before they had reached the top, making it twice as hard to make it up the slope of the path that became progressively steeper.
Ana María tripped and barely caught herself when her foot suddenly found a pothole. "Puñeta!", she spat, wiping her hands on her PT shorts.
"Are you okay?", Mia asked, helping her up.
"Fine", the Puerto Rican grumbled.
"I'd be a lot better if I could see where the hell I'm going", Jessica chimed in, slipping on some loose rocks a second later.
Reaching the top stone, the three women paused for breath. The only source of light they had was the waning moon.
"Well", Jessica quipped dryly, "if we break our necks, least we don't have to worry about Sobel anymore."
Her two companions huffed in agreement.
Mia squared her shoulders. "Alright", she said. "Let's go."
.
The first part of their way back down was a disaster. The path was steep there and consisted of dirt, crumbly inclines and gravel. Roots peeked out here and there, nature's perfect trip wires and in the darkness, getting a foothold was a matter of trial and error.
Mia went down hard as Jessica crashed into her from behind when Ana María lost her footing and slid into Jessica, knocking her off her feet as well.
The young medic instinctively tried to break her fall, none too eager to pitch head first down the slope. Unfortunately, her left hand found uneven terrain. A sharp pain shot up to her elbow and she sucked in a breath as she caught herself before she could hit her head.
"Everyone okay?", she asked, sitting up and climbing to her feet.
Ana María groaned: "That's going to leave one big bruise", but she didn't hesitate to get up either.
"Ouch", Jessica groused, gladly accepting a hand up from Ana María. "We'll be feeling this tomorrow."
Mia carefully flexed her left wrist, which was now throbbing dully. "Mhm."
.
They all sighed in relief when they reached the road again.
"At least nobody can see how dirty we are", Ana María pointed out. "My backside is covered in red dirt."
Sobel was nowhere to be seen when they returned to camp. They trudged to their billet, grabbed their shower kits and trudged to the showers, careful not to wake the others.
Under the shower, a number of scratches and scrapes came to light. Suppressing hisses and yelps of pain, the three women showered as quickly as they could in the dark. None of them saw the blood mixing with the dirty water on the floor, but they all knew it was there from the stinging of their skinned knees and palms.
Mia made a quick trip to the infirmary to fetch some bandaging material. She was heading back to her billet when all of a sudden, a figure blocked her path. She froze.
The beam of a flashlight hit her face and she shied back, squinting against the unexpected brightness.
The person recognised her discomfort and was considerate enough to point the beam away from her face.
.
Blinking a few times to clear the white spots from her vision, Mia recognised the man as one of the platoon leaders from Dog Company. "Lieutenant Speirs", she greeted, keeping her voice low.
"What are you doing out of your billet at this hour, soldier?", he asked, his tone even.
Mia, tired and sore, rubbed her eyes and explained: "We had to run Currahee, sir. I just got some bandages and plasters."
The lieutenant frowned. "You ran up and down the mountain in the dark?", he questioned, asking for confirmation with the barest hint of an inflection in his voice.
"Yes sir."
Speirs' expression shifted, but in the light of a solitary flashlight, the young medic couldn't decipher it. And frankly, she was too tired. She just followed him when he motioned for her to do so.
.
"What is your name, soldier?", he asked as they walked through the dark compound.
"Mia Arricante, sir."
He nodded and said: "You shouldn't wander around alone at night, Arricante."
A weary smile turned up the corner of her mouth. "I couldn't expect Jessica and Ana María to walk with me to the infirmary and back", she reasoned. "They're exhausted."
"And you aren't?", Speirs questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"Who cares?", she asked back with a tired sigh. "I'm a medic, it's my job to look after them."
.
They reached the women's billet. Mia thanked the lieutenant for accompanying her and bid him good night in just a handful of words.
Speirs gave her a nod and left, disappearing in the night.
Silently opening the door, Mia tiptoed through the billet, carefully stepping around the creaky floor boards until she got to her bunk. In the light of a tiny flashlight, she cleaned Jessica and Ana María's injuries and put some plasters on spots that were still weeping. Then, she quickly tended to her own scrapes before clicking off the flashlight.
The three women dropped onto their respective bunks and were soon dead asleep, exhaustion overwhelming them before they could even think more about their aches and wounds.
When they didn't run Currahee, the aspiring paratroopers ran the obstacle course. Like almost every other PT exercise, it was timed. Each trooper had to negotiate the course within 3 minutes. And the most hated obstacle, one that led to the dismissal of many a man, was the 10-foot wall, which had to be climbed without anyone's assistance.
.
Helen hopped through the rope squares. It always reminded her of the many days she had spent playing hopscotch with her friends as a child. Though there, it had been fun, without any pressure.
Here, if she wasn't careful, she could trip over a rope and fall, losing precious time and that could ultimately lead to her losing her spot in Easy.
"Go, Helen!", Elizabeth called from where she was waiting for her turn.
.
Up ahead, Kathleen crawled through the wooden tunnel, wishing not for the first time that she were smaller.
Or, at least, more flexible, like Maxine for example. The upper-class woman from D.C. benefited from her ballet lessons that had left her legs strong and her body enviably agile.
She somersaulted out of the tunnel and overtook Dukeman.
.
Theresa took a deep breath before jumping up, grabbing onto the first rung of the monkey bars that spanned a 30-foot body of water. Apart from the wall, she hated this obstacle the most. Crossing the horizontal ladder hand over hand required a lot of strength and no small amount of dexterity. She couldn't remember just how many times she had lost her grip and gotten soaked.
Gritting her teeth, she continued struggling forward, reminding herself that it was all about the momentum, as Ana María had told her.
At only 4 foot 11, the Puerto Rican was the smallest of the entire company, so naturally, Theresa had asked her how she could cross this particular obstacle so easily.
"It's about the momentum", she had replied. "You can't stop and you need to put your whole body into it. Watch Mia next time, she told me this."
.
"C'mon, let's go!", Lieutenant Winters called. "C'mon!"
Frances was neck and neck with Irene, but it was only for a few seconds. Then, the more athletic of the two increased her speed, easily jumping the trench before them. Frances followed suit, pushing off the edge and trying to copy her friend's technique. It was very close, but she made it and that alone gave her a little bit of energy.
.
At the hated ten-foot wall, Jessica pulled herself up and nearly fell down the other side, such was her surprise at clearing the obstacle on her first attempt. "Yes!", she whispered to herself.
Skinny grinned at her as they both dropped down and continued her run.
.
Louise and Mia reached the wall at almost the same time, the medic a bit ahead of the sniper. The British woman watched as her friend sprinted towards the obstacle and jumped up. Mid-air, she braced her free foot against the wall and pushed off, half-turning and grabbing hold.
A split-second later, Louise scaled the wall using the exact same method.
.
Nearly at the end of the course, Catherine was on her stomach, crawling through the mud under coils of barbed wire. To add a dose of realism, there were machine guns firing above their heads, giving them a very good incentive to keep their heads and backsides low. The Hawaiian mother of two wasn't too keen on finding out whether they were using live rounds or just blanks.
"Jesus, what the hell is this?", she heard Muck pant in front of her.
She didn't really care. The smell was awful.
Bull replied: "That's pig's guts, boy!"
Ew. Catherine tried to keep her face away from the bloody, stinking mud as best as she could. All her efforts proved to be futile when they had to cross a ditch filled with more innards.
It was the sound that got to her. Feeling the blood saturate her ODs was nasty and the stench was revolting, but the squelching, squishing sound of their bodies tumbling down the slope and rolling through the intestines made her stomach turn.
Catherine gagged and hurried to pull herself out of the ditch.
The entire company looked like it had been to war after the course. Their ODs were slick with mud, sweat and blood, their faces smeared with grime, their gear in desperate need of cleaning.
"You know, I'm surprised none of you dames fainted at the sight of all the blood", Roy Cobb mentioned.
Eugene Roe shook his head and Bill Guarnere drawled: "Ah, shut up, Cobb."
.
The women who happened to around to hear Cobb's remark shared telling glances before turning to look at him again. Then, they burst into laughter.
"That is the silliest thing I've heard all day", Elizabeth guffawed.
Kathleen agreed, asking him: "Don't you know anything about women?"
"Fainting at the sight of blood." Jessica shook her head, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. "Honey, we see blood every month."
Needless to say, nobody ever mentioned women being squeamish about blood again.