Toy Soldier » Band of Brothers

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝟷

𝙹𝚄𝙻𝚈 𝟷𝟿𝟺𝟸

"Excuse me, Ma'am?"

Tommy peeled open a single startlingly blue eye, begrudgingly pulling his sweaty cheek away from the window to which it had adhered. It had been hard enough to fall asleep with the constant rattling and clanging layered over the incessant murmur of the few passengers piled onto the small train, and yet as soon as he was on the verge of falling into blissful unconscious, someone interrupted him.

He sat alone in his complex of four seats that faced each other. He was the last one left on the train from the group of around one hundred other inductees that had arrived at Fort Bragg indoctrination center seven days prior for basic processing and training.

After he had arrived at the Fort Bragg, he had been asked a few basic question, among which one of the first was whether or not he wanted to volunteer to be a paratrooper.

In the bus on the way there Tommy had read been reading the November 1941 edition of Reader's Digest. Among the articles, there was one about something called paratroopers, soldiers the United States was training in Georgia to jump out of airplanes, land, and fight. Said the article:

Soldiers must be unmarried, under 30, physically top and emotionally well balanced. When one of these picked men reaches Fort Benning he starts through the toughest school ever devised for American soldiers. For six weeks he is hardened into a physical superman, driven through exercises which make football practice look soft....They are probably the hardest, toughest and best-dressed soldiers in the Army....When he gets his jump training he gets silver wings to wear on his blouse and he is cocky.

So, of course, when the officer said, "If interested, please stand up." Tommy was the first out of his seat. Of the hundred men, exactly two stood up, and in the end, only Tommy was sent out to Camp Toccoa after the seven day processing period in Fort Bragg.

His rather short legs were stretched out in front of him, the tightly laced boots perched against the opposite seat. He peered over to the source of the sound, not bothering to open his other eye, as he crossed his arms over his chest with a barely pronounced scowl.

"Who the hell you callin' Ma'am, Pal?"

"Well fuck me."

"The hell I will!"

"You gotta be pullin' my leg!" The man glanced to his side, and Tommy noticed a group of three others beside him, "I mean look at him, Hoobler," he turned back to Tommy, "You really ain't a dame?"

"Ya wanna check for yourself, Pal?" Tommy snapped, suddenly much more alert. The hair on the back of his neck bristled as he sat up to his full, wholly unimpressive, height.

The two glared at each other for a second. Tommy carefully sized up the red head man, taking note of his superior height and build. Then he noticed a flash of amusement in the his warm brown eyes and quickly replaced his haughty expression with a dimpled grin.

"Thomas Reller." he introduced, thrusting his hand forward.

"Don Malarkey." he smiled, shaking Tommy's hand, though he didn't miss the force of the grip, "Thats Bob Rader, Will Howell, and that," he pointed to a round faced man with a pleasant, almost childish grin and very noticeable curled ears, "is Don Hoobler."

"You boys headin' to Toccoa as well?"

They all hummed in agreement as they all squeezed into the four seats opposite and around Tommy.

"You're the only one?" Hoobler asked, squeezing himself into the seat next to Rader with an easy grin.

Tommy hummed, "Only one shipped out from Fort Bragg. No one else was stupid enough to volunteer."

"So where ya from, Reller?" Malarkey asked, pulling a pack of smokes out of his jacket pocket and offering one to Tommy who refused with a simple shake of the head.

"Brevard, North Carolina."

"No way!" Malarkey suddenly exclaimed excitedly, looking strangely akin to an excited, red furred dog, "A buddy of mines from there. Artie Douglas, you know him?"

"Artie?" Tommy recalled the rather pudgy, bucktoothed boy whom his cousin had been friends with. Artie had moved away right before highschool, "Bucktooth Art?"

"The very same."

"Yeah, of course! He was my cousins friend before he screwed off somewhere some five years ago. Never heard of him again after that."

"Yeah," Malarkey moved closer to Tommy, an excited flush colouring his pale face, "Yeah. Showed up one day in Astoria—"

"Oregon?"

"—yeah. I haven't seen him since highschool, but he always said Brevard really was the pits."

Tommy snorted, nodding his head, "He'd be right. Nothing to do but drink, smoke, chase skirts and get in fisticuffs."

"Now that don't sound too bad." Hoobler commented, placing a cigarette between his teeth. Tommy quickly took a lighter out of his breast pocket and lit it up for him.

"How 'bout you?" he asked Malarkey, leaning comfortably against the scratchy upholstery of the train seat, "What damage made you volunteer?"

Malarkey grinned, "Well, they asked and I was too stupid to refuse. Plus the fifty bucks extra seems like a good incentive. Gotta send what I can back home to my ma. I volunteered at Fort Lewis, and then four days later I was shipped over to St. Louis where I met these jokers."

Soon enough the train pulled into Toccoa station and all five of the men threw their army issued duffles over their shoulders, and piled onto the single transport truck waiting to pick them up.

The camp was located in Chattahoochee National Forest, not far from the town called Toccoa, which is where the camp got its name. It had been built specifically to form the experimental regiment that would feed into the Parachute School at Fort Benning, also in Georgia.

By the time Tommy, Malarkey, Hoobler, Rader, and Howell got there, there were already about six thousand men there.

The newcomers were placed in W Company, a tented facility on the grassy slope of a hill just below the regimental medical-processing facility. It was a company in name only, and Tommy soon learned that the "W" stood for either "welcome" or "washout", because as him and the others were coming in, a group of guys were going out.

"This serves as the regiment's in-and-out processing machine." Burr Smith, a guy from Southern California who slept on the bunk under Tommy's told him. He had already been there for a while, "and it's a fast train in both directions."

Eventually, Tommy, Malarky, and Hoobler were assigned to E company. The barracks were already full by the time the three were introduced into the group. Tommy felt much too uncomfortable approaching anyone, so after he had set up his cot he entertained himself by watching Malarkey fail at putting together his.

"Awe, hell!" Malarkey swore, "How did you get those corners so clean? Not even my girl Bernice could do it that well."

"Screw you, Malarkey, don't take out your inferiority complex on me." Tommy drawled, quietly with that heavy, North Carolina accent of his, though there wasn't any true malice behind the words.

Once Tommy had contented himself with watching Malarkey messily attempt to fold nurses corners into his sheet, he took out a little, leather bound notebook and a stubby pencil. Sketching had been a hobby he had long contented himself with, especially in times when he found himself unable to hold any meaningful conversation.

"You saw McArthur and Weller got booted?" Tommy overheard four men on the bunk next to him.

"Didn't make it up Currahee, poor bastards."

"What the hell is Currahee?" Tommy thought and was about to vocalise it before Malarkey beat him to it.

One of the men who had been talking turned back to Malarkey with an annoyed expression, "Screw you, Pal."

Tommy thought he had grown accustomed to the sound of 40 men sleeping in one room, but for some reason he could not fall asleep that night. There was a constant nagging in the back of his mind that incessantly refused to let him fall into blissful unconscious. Yet, no matter how much he dwelled on it, he still couldn't figure out what it was.