The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

78: Favourite Pastime

Perhaps as a sort of apology for their false alarm about being taken off the line, the Army delivered showers and supplies to Haguenau. After a hot shower they'd get to put on fresh ODs along with winter shoe packs - only two months too late - and stock the hospital back up, not only with medical supplies and equipment but with fresh rations.

Charlie's immediate thought when Henry passed on the information was that it was too good to be true. Her second, upon following her outside and seeing the row of tents set up with steam emerging from them, was that she must have fallen an incredibly long way at some point during the war to think being able to shower was too good to be true. Once, she'd taken such a thing for granted. Never again.

The nurses' shower tent was set up around the back of the bakery being used as the field hospital, away from the men's ones for safety reasons. There were two MPs, one posted at either end, to add an extra measure of safety, and a box full of fresh ODs and undergarments beside one of them.

"Boots and helmets are on the other side," the MP posted at the front of the tent said. "I'd get the boots before you go in, if I were you. Floor floods pretty fast and you don't wanna get your socks wet."

Henry thanked the man and inclined her head in the direction of the back of the tent. Charlie, Boo, and Autumn followed her silently. They each picked up the boots labelled with their names and skirted back around the tent, where they retrieved the bags containing their ODs and undergarments before heading inside.

"Anyone got a hairbrush?" Charlie asked as she attempted to comb her fingers through her tangled hair. It had grown out well past the regulation length and had become harder and harder to care for while out on the line. At some point she'd stopped trying altogether. Now, she didn't even want to imagine how hard it was going to be to get all of the knots out, but she knew she couldn't get her hair wet before she brushed it.

"Yeah, here," said Autumn, who had been taking care of her hair better than the rest of her. She passed the hairbrush over to Charlie, then took one look at her hair as Charlie removed her helmet and shook her head. "I'll do it," she decided.

"Thanks."

It must have taken Autumn an hour to brush out Charlie's hair. At one point Charlie had worried aloud that the shower tent would be taken down before they even got the opportunity to shower but Henry reassured them both from outside that she wouldn't let such a thing happen.

When Charlie's hair was finally detangled it felt dirtier than ever, thick with grease and mud and blood and still dusted with ash from the burning of the church in Bastogne. But she didn't have to wait long to get it clean again; her and Autumn stripped down immediately and opened the boxes of fresh bars of soap that had been left for them inside the tent.

Charlie ended up having to wash her hair four times before it felt clean, then washed it once more just in case; she didn't know when the next time they'd get access to showers was, after all. Then she turned her attention to her body. She could barely bear to look down at it even as she lathered the soap up over her skin. She was much thinner than she'd ever been, her rib cage visible even when she inhaled, and the expanse of her stomach, arms, and legs was covered in bruises. Shades of black, blue, purple, green, and yellow littered her flesh - most of them she couldn't even match up to a specific incident - and suddenly she was sure that the next time she looked at her face in a mirror she wouldn't recognise herself. If her body looked this different, and it had always been at least somewhat visible to her beneath her clothes, then how much changed was her face? The one she remembered, the one she imagined when she thought about herself, was round, with neat, thin eyebrows and full lips, bright blue eyes surrounded by thousands of tiny freckles which raced each other from one cheek, over the bridge of her nose, to the other, then curved up around each temple and scattered across her forehead. The face she remembered looked young, younger, even, than her years, but wasn't it true that everyone looked older now? So just how much had the war aged her? Were her lips thinner, her eyes duller, her face less round and more angular? Were the bags beneath her eyes darker, deeper, the hollows of her cheeks more pronounced?