Charade (Band of Brothers)

"READY TO FLY"

Tensions were running high. Agitated men milled around, trying to take their minds off the inevitable by twirling knives through their fingers, gripping tightly onto weathered wooden rosaries, stripping their weapons and polishing the barrels of their rifles, or, in the case of George Luz, cracking jokes at a more incessant rate than ever before. 

"Hey, Nicolli, if you play your cards right with that pilot over there he might turn us 'round and drop us in Cornwall." He whispered, jabbing Kate's side with his elbow.

Kate, on the other hand, was handling the pressure by overthinking every possible thing around her. Like the fact that Luz hadn't used a single nickname on her since he found out about her secret. To be fair, he couldn't very well keep calling her Jim, as he did before. 

"Hello, anyone home?" George tapped on her shoulder with the horse-whip-looking apparatus that he'd been trying to figure out how to use for the last half hour. 

"Huh? Yeah, I'm fine." Kate chuckled. "I feel like I'm worrying about every little thing except the actual damn jump."

"So, what's the big deal, we're one of the first Allied units jumping in the middle of the night into a country we've never seen before with tens of thousands of angry armed krauts waiting to surround us and kill us. It's not like it's dangerous or anything." 

"What's the matter, George? You're a paratrooper, you eat danger for breakfast." Joe Liebgott approached the two of them, tossing a razor between his hands.

"With the mess staff we've currently got, you're damn right." 

"Come on boys, how's about a little trim before the invasion? I'll give you a friendly discount, only fifteen cents." Joe waggled the razor. He'd been giving the whole company mohawks all afternoon.

"You charge everyone fifteen cents, Lieb!" Kate laughed nervously, secretly in awe of how well the men were composed, considering that Operation Overlord was only a few hours away. 

"What do you say?"

"You know, every bone in my body tells me not to let you come near me with a blade in your hand," joked Kate. She ran her fingers through her hair. She was used to the short male cut by now, but it was as short as she was willing to comfortably go. Though the length of hair she lost when she dressed as a man and joined the army was a lot more, somehow she thought it might be even harder to make the transition from crew cut to bald. "Thanks, Joe, but maybe next time."

Kate got up, jingling as the many metal clasps and buckles on her uniform clinked together, holding about a hundred pounds of gear onto her body. She could barely walk without toppling over, but still, she ambled down the runway scattered with groups of her fellow troopers chatting, praying, and biting their nails in anticipation. She moved past Talbert, admiring his new pistols, and Shifty, gently cleaning the soot from the chamber of his M1. Finally, she reached where Webster was perched alone on some sandbags, looking as though he was trying his best to be brooding, scribbling something desperately on the back of his copy of the letter everyone received from Colonel Sink. 

"Webster, how are you doing?" Kate dropped down next to him.

"Same as everyone else," He flashed her a smile. "Just wanted to get this atmosphere down on paper. How everyone is, you know? This feeling in the air that everyone is pretending doesn't exist." 

"Then you must have documented Corporal Nicolli, the poised picture of 'keeping it together,' right?"

Webster scoffed and shook his head. "How's your leg?"

Kate looked down and slapped her knee. "It'll be fine, it's been a few weeks."

"Well... If you say so." He raised an eyebrow at her, apparently skeptical. Kate wasn't lying to him, though, she really believed it would be alright - the knee had healed up just like Doc Roe had said. Needless to say, he wasn't happy with her when he found Kate had ducked out of the medical tent, but she wasn't the first soldier to disregard medical advice. Besides, it only hurt occasionally now, and just slightly. She just hoped her landing in France wouldn't be too rough on it.