Easy Company is in Austria when they get the news that they are being redeployed.
Ever since V-E Day the men had let themselves fall into a false sense of security, that it would be no time at all now before they went home. Somehow they had forgotten that halfway around the world the war raged on, and that the Axis Powers were made of more than just Germany and Italy. The Japs continue to put up a fierce fight even as they are hammered back slowly, island by island, back to their own territory.
Rumors had been flying about that the 101st would be redeployed, and each time it was brought up, the men agreed that they would probably be sent to the Pacific before too long. No man wanted to risk being optimistic enough to hope they would get to go home instead, but the ember was there, burning low but persistently.
The official announcement comes after the lottery. "The 101st will definitely be redeployed to the Pacific," says Speirs. "Tomorrow at 0600, we begin training to go to war." With those two lines he squashes out the ember, and a collective sigh seems to ripple across the men as they hear what they had expected, but dreaded.
Some of the men have enough points to go home, but not many. Most of the men who were wounded enough to have that many points have already been long gone, taken off the front lines by one injury too many. Others–too many– are dead. The rest of Easy Company are replacements or Toccoa men, who, by the grace of God, were only wounded once or twice or never, but do not have the points to go home and will now have to face even more fighting. Eugene can't think of too many men who will be going home. He knows he sure doesn't have enough points himself. Besides, amongst the Toccoa men at least, nobody wants to leave the others to face the Pacific alone.
There is no set date for their jump into Japan yet, so Easy Company hangs about Austria for the time being. There is little for Eugene to do, with no fighting, and in the beginning he finds his days to be empty, hours stretched long and thin with nothing to do. It's not that he misses bandaging bloody limbs, but it was his purpose. Without it, wearing his uniform, he feels useless.
He spends his time relaxing, wandering the town with the others, and writing to Renée, describing everything. Austria is unlike any other place they've been, so green and lush and beautiful. When he thinks of Haguenau, drab and gray, or the forests of Bastogne, hell on Earth, Austria seems like a veritable slice of Heaven.
Eugene hears of Janovec's death secondhand, from Webster. He'd been killed in a car crash. Nobody called for a medic because he was already dead when they brought him back. Eugene feels a twisting in his stomach, that familiar ache he has felt too often in the last three years. The war was supposed to be over, but men were still dying. In a car crash, of all things. Eugene presses his lips together to suppress his anger at the unremarkable cause of death. For a man who had braved artillery and gunfire and tanks to die in a car crash, well, that was just sickeningly ironic and mundane. Who would have thought that such a man was still capable of dying like a rabbit run over by a car? Not that the men of Easy Company thought themselves immortal; quite the opposite. But there was some sort of injustice in Janovec's death that Eugene can't shake. He should have died in his own bed, at the age of 80, his loved ones at his side. That was the death he deserved.
Janovec had had seventy-five points. Ten more points, and he could have gone home. Instead he lay stiff and cold under a blanket in the back of an ambulance. Eugene can only feel saddened and sickened as he walks away.
For the first time in weeks, Eugene hears the call of "Medic!". He springs into action, running out into the main street. It is the middle of the night and dark as all hell, but a jeep is rattling into town, headlights on full glare. The light must have lit up his red cross armband, because the the calls for a medic get louder, more frantic. Eugene runs over as the jeep stops. Two privates he recognizes vaguely are in the jeep. Replacements. One is driving, the other in the back. Slung across the back is a man Eugene does recognize. Grant.
"What happened?" demands Eugene, hurrying to the back where he can see Grant's face. His eyes are closed, his breathing shallow. It is too dark to see anything, but from the light reflecting off the cobblestones Eugene can see a dark, shiny pool of liquid. He touches Grant's head gingerly. The slippery, tacky feeling is instantly familiar. Blood.
"He was shot in the head," says one of the privates, his voice shaking. "There was a private, he was one of our guys, on the road...he had a gun...I think he was drunk. Sergeant Grant was trying to calm him down, and then the guy just shot him."
Eugene reaches into his bag for bandages and begins gently cleaning Grant's head, trying to hide his dread. Men rarely recovered from head wounds, and this one seems bad. His voice stays calm as he gives orders, though. "You, in the front." The private at the wheel sits up. "Find Speirs. Tell him what happened, then bring him here." The private nods and dashes off into the night. To the other, Eugene says, "Help me. Hold this bandage here." While he does so, Eugene wraps Grant's head up carefully.
At the aid station, Eugene's stomach drops when they turn the light on Grant's wound. It is worse than he thought. The private who drove is in the room, and Speirs is there as well, holding Grant's hand as the doctor takes a look. Eugene holds the blood transfusion bottle, watching the doctor.
The doctor straightens up, sighs in defeat. "He's not going to make it."
Eugene can't believe it. "You mean you can't operate on him?" It's not as if they are lacking for supplies or facilities.
The doctor shakes his head. "Not me. You'd have to have a brain surgeon. And even then, I don't think he's got much of a chance." The doctor takes a drag of his cigarette.
Speirs' eyes dart back and forth, his mouth opens and closes, his mind working furiously. Then he lets go of Grant's hand and picks up the end of the board he is lying on. "Come on, help me," he says.
The private picks up the other end, and Eugene has to follow as they move Grant out of the room. "Where are we going?" asks the private, bewildered.
"We're going to find a brain surgeon!"
Speirs stops briefly to give Talbert some instructions on finding the shooter before loading Grant back onto the jeep and driving out. He'd gotten word there was a good doctor nearby, and they pull up to his house quickly.
Speirs' knocking is brisk, and the doctor comes to the door quickly, looking perplexed as he is forced to the jeep by gunpoint. Upon seeing Grant, he stops, looks from Speirs to Eugene, who is still holding the blood transfusion bottle.
"What happened to him?"
"He was shot in the head," explains Eugene, as the doctor leans down for a closer look.
"A half-hour ago," says Speirs quietly, his expression softening. Speirs makes for the driver's seat, but the doctor stops him.
"Let me drive. We'll get there faster." Speirs doesn't argue, and gets in on the other side.
Thankfully, Grant turns out to be the last man Eugene ever has to treat. He survives. Both his survival, and Janovec's death, are reported to Renée in his letters.
Not once since their first letters has there been a gap in Renée and Eugene's correspondence. The letters are tied in a thick bundle in his musette bag, and the sheer amount surprises him almost every time he sees it. Eugene wonders how he might have fared if he hadn't had Renée to write to. Sure he probably would have staggered along, but writing had cleared his mind so well. He can't imagine keeping everything he has written all pent up anymore.
As he thinks about Renée, Eugene thanks God fervently that she survived the bombing of Bastogne, because he cannot imagine what the rest of the war might have been like for him, to be brooding and lonely with nobody to confide in. Even from hundreds of miles away, she softened and healed him. Renée was truly an angel.
He still carries her headscarf in his pocket wherever he goes, a reminder of her healing touch, and in the hope that he might learn the same softness, not knowing that he already has it. The same quiet, unobtrusive healing power that might be contained in a bar of chocolate.
It always came back to chocolate with Renée. How strange, that two people could have met and their lives entangled so just because of a fateful bar of chocolate, tossed from one to the other. Although long gone, it left its mark on the world in its own way, in the form of two stacks of letters.
Easy Company is playing baseball when they hear the news.
The war is over.
The Japanese have surrendered. The war is absolutely, completely over.
There will be no more fighting, no redeployment, only homecoming. The men are silent again as Winters talks, trying to digest the news. It is hard to comprehend. That which has occupied their life for three years...could it really be over at the simple utterance of one sentence?
The war is over.
Eugene has to say the phrase to himself multiple times, tasting the strangeness of it. Why is it so hard to fathom? It has only been three years, but the war has come to dominate his life. His role as a medic was his purpose. He had long left behind any real hopes of returning home. Indeed, Eugene finds it hard to remember home as something that had once been real. His life in Louisiana seems a dream now, and war his harsh reality. But now...he is going home. He tries to remember his home, the house in Louisiana, his father's shrimp fishing boat, his mother's smile. Slowly they become clear in his mind as the simple thought begins to take root. The war is over. I am going home.
The other men break out in laughter and smiles. Somebody claps Eugene on the shoulder, and then he finds himself smiling with them. They turn and begin to head out, arms around each other's shoulders, voices raised with jokes and laughter. The sun is shining down on them like a benediction, and Eugene can't help but think how perfect it all is.
Eugene says goodbye to the men of Easy when they arrive back in New York. Everybody is going their separate ways. Babe and Spina to Philadelphia, Luz to Manhattan, Webster to Boston, Liebgott to San Francisco, and all the rest of them. They all hug, promise to write and keep in touch, maybe even have a reunion sometime soon. Eugene leaves the others with a smile, thanking God that he was fortunate enough to serve with men like these. He says his last goodbyes, and gets on a train back to Louisiana.
From the train station he takes a taxi back home. Eugene is quiet during the ride, looking out the window and watching Louisiana rush by him. Seeing the familiar streets of his neighborhood is surreal. Everything is so calm and quiet, as if it had been standing there for a hundred years, and would stand there for a hundred years more, in peace and undisturbed. For the last three years Eugene has remembered his home as if from a half-remembered dream, and seeing it in front of him, in all its realness, is jarring. Some things have changed. There is a new deli on the corner where there wasn't when he left. A bookstore he liked to go to has been demolished, a laundromat in its place. A dog he doesn't recognize strolls down the street. His home has changed, but so has he.
Eugene wonders how he is going to fit into civilian life again. He wonders how he is going to be able to tell his family about his experience. Even now, the only person he can really tell these things to is Renée.
Renée. He had wanted to see her again, one last time, before he returned to America, but was unable to find an opportunity, or the means, to get to Bastogne again. While regrettable, it was to be expected. Instead he wrote her one last letter the night before he boarded the ship, giving her his address in Louisiana so they could continue to write.
The taxi takes him right to the driveway of his house. He collects his bags and stands on the sidewalk, looking up at the house he has not seen since he enlisted in the paratroopers. Inside is his father, mother, brothers and sisters. If seeing a house shakes him so, what will seeing the faces of his family do?
Slowly he hefts his bag over his shoulder and makes his way to the front door and rings the doorbell.
His mother opens the door. She looks up at him, wide-eyed, mouth open in a gasp of joy and surprise. He offers her a shy half-smile.
"I'm back."
A few weeks later, Eugene idly opens the mailbox to pick up the mail for his mother. And sitting on top is an envelope addressed to him, in a neat handwriting and blue ink. He smiles as he picks it up.
Their correspondence continues for several months after the war ended, until one day, Eugene moves house. He is careful to tell Renée in his last letter to her, giving her his new address so they can continue to write. But he never receives another letter from her. He waits and waits, but hears nothing. In the end, he figures his letter to her must have been lost.
Almost at the end! Only one more chapter to go! Even though this is pretty much the end of Renee and Eugene's story. This chapter turned out to be a bit longer, but that's good, it makes up for the short one last week. I feel like I wrapped things up a bit too quickly but school started this week and I didn't have much time to write, I literally wrote this chapter in between classes and polished it up a bit at 11:30 at night. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading, reviews are always appreciated!