The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

100: Awakening from the Fairy Tale

"You heard about the lottery on the anniversary of D-Day?" Janovec asked Charlie as he sat in the basement of the hotel with her. She was taking inventory of bandages and he was bored, so, naturally, he'd chosen to spend his free time irritating Charlie.

"Yep," she replied without looking up from her counting.

"How good do you think my chances of winning are?"

Charlie stifled a laugh. "Well, statistically speaking they're the same as everyone else's," she replied, deliberately attempting to be vague. She knew, of course, that there was only one man who had any chance of winning that lottery, and that his chance was a hundred percent; Floyd had pitched his idea about rigging it in Shifty's favour to the officers, each of them individually, and all of them had agreed without a second's hesitation.

Shifty would be going home.

"I can't wait to go home," Janovec said, oblivious to anything lingering below the surface level of Charlie's answer. "Finally eat some good goddamn food. I'm tellin' ya, if I win that lottery I am goin' straight to this bakery down the street from my house and I ain't leavin' until I'm so full I throw up."

Charlie pulled a face. "First of all," she said, straightening up so he'd see her expression, which made him laugh, "that's disgusting."

He grinned.

"Second of all, don't you think there are men who deserve it more?"

Janovec pshawed and Charlie rolled her eyes.

"What do you mean?" he demanded, though Charlie knew he knew exactly what she meant. "You sayin' I ain't done enough?"

"I'm not saying that at all," Charlie explained. "What I'm saying is that there are men who trained at Toccoa, jumped on D-Day, remained on the line for the entirety of our time in Normandy - participating in Carentan and the Battle of Bloody Gulch, some of them also even in the Brécourt Manor Assault. Then they jumped into Holland for Market Garden and remained on the Island throughout our time in Eindhoven, the Island, and Arnhem. Then were on the line for Bastogne, the Bois Jacques, Foy, Noville, Rachamps, and Haguenau. And after all that, they still don't have enough points to go home." She sighed, more exhausted at the entire situation than she was genuinely annoyed or exasperated with Janovec. "Do you not think those men deserve it more?"

"Yeah, I guess, but..."

Charlie nodded along as he explained his perspective, and she didn't try to argue with him. There was nothing wrong with him wanting to go home - any amount of time spent away from home overseas to fight a war was enough to make anyone long for home. In an ideal world, all of them would be returning. But this wasn't an ideal world, far from it, and as much as she wanted all of them to go home, replacements and veterans alike, if she was going to be wishing for anyone to get that opportunity she knew who she would be prioritising.

"But Tab's gotta have enough points, right?" Janovec asked at the end of his speech.

Charlie shot him a sad smile. She finished marking up their current supply of bandages before moving onto the morphine. "He's ten short," she answered Janovec, and took care to ensure her face was hidden from his view when she said it. Saying those three words always made her so desperately sad she couldn't even force a smile, let alone keep the shake out of her voice.

It was so unjust, all of it. Floyd had given so much to the company, to the war, and he still wasn't allowed to leave. General Taylor and the Airborne didn't believe he'd done enough. How could anyone look at the list of all he'd done and not think he'd done enough? It baffled her.

"Jesus," Janovec said with a low exhale of breath. "That's the same amount as I got. How's Tab got the same amount of points as me?"

Charlie shrugged, her face still turned away. None of it made any sense, and she was sick of trying to find any in it.