The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

94: Done Enough

Charlie went to bed early on the night of May sixth and slept off the last of her hangover while her friends stayed out and drank only a little less than they had the day before - save for Boo, who only ever drank a little. When Charlie woke into the morning of May seventh she could only feel relieved she didn't have the overwhelming urge to throw up the entire contents of her stomach again.

It was a slow morning in the nurses' household. Charlie was the only one awake for a long while and she searched the house's pantry to see if there was anything in there still good enough to eat, but found everything either stale or mouldy.

It was with great reluctance that Charlie sat at the kitchen table and chewed on a K-ration, because she'd really hoped to at least find eggs. There she sat and composed a letter to her parents, her first letter to them since Rachamps.

Boo entered the kitchen when Charlie was signing the letter off.

"Feeling better?" Boo asked, heading over to the stove to boil some water for coffee.

"Yeah," Charlie said. She scanned the letter once and then folded it, ready to put in an envelope and send later. "I think I've slept it all off now."

"That's good," Boo chirped. "Ready to do it all over again tonight," she joked.

Charlie laughed. "It would take a very special occasion to make me drink that much again, not just tonight but ever."

"Well, you never know." Boo shrugged, laughing as well. "A lot can change in a day." She was referring to the relationship between Charlie and Floyd, and how she and George had predicted that the two of them would finally tell each other how they felt any day now, but just then she couldn't ever have guessed how right she would find herself to be only for a different reason a few hours later.

Charlie was walking around Berchtesgaden with Mabs, Boo, Autumn, and Henry, confident enough in the lack of resistance in the ghost town that they could leave the field hospital unattended for a while, when the sound of cheering filled the streets. Loud whoops and shouts of jubilation raced through alleyways and around corners, chasing out silence like a drop of ink in a bowl of water, and reached the nurses even along the outskirts of town, further than any of them had yet ventured from the town centre.

They exchanged confused and intrigued glances between them before collectively turning and heading back the way they'd come. The cheering only got louder the closer they drew to the hub of activity. Before long, a group of four soldiers raced past with what must have been six bottles of alcohol between them, smiling wide and laughing and pouring liquid over themselves in their carelessness with getting it into their mouths.

"What on Earth..?" Mabs mumbled from beside Charlie. She looked up at her friend, who could only shrug, before the five nurses turned a corner and came upon a truck parked in a corner of the town centre, with what looked like every soldier in the company crowded around it.

"Hey, look who it is!" George exclaimed. He came running over only to pull Boo into his chest. "Happy VE Day!"

"VE Day?" Henry asked, confused.

"Victory in Europe," explained Don, emerging from the crowd of men with a bottle in each hand. "The German Army surrendered."

"What?" Charlie's own gasp made her sputter.

"War in Europe's over," Don went on, his smile getting wider with every word he spoke. "And we won it."

"The war's over?" Charlie whispered while Don gave Henry a hug.

"War's over," Mabs confirmed. A second later she pulled Charlie into a hug of her own, laughing and cheering with delight, while all Charlie could do was hug her back and try to process what was happening.