All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

08: Rifle

Suddenly surrounded by so many people, it became easy to forget the loneliness. In her new persona, Posey had people to talk to, people who wanted to talk to her, and people who wanted to listen to what she had to say. Friends, even. Maybe. And it became so easy to pretend that it was all real, that she really was Joseph Wells from Boston, Massachusetts, and that she wasn't spinning a most dizzying lie.

At times she found herself wondering where she would draw the line. Where was the distinction between appearance and reality when her appearance had to become her reality in order to survive?

It was mealtimes she tended to find the loneliest, in an ironic sort of way.

Mealtimes were, in a word, loud - fizzing with laughter and shouting and the clinking of cutlery against plates. Men were bundled together on benches like sardines in a can, knocking elbows and knees with every slight movement. But even from the midst of it all, sat firmly in the eye of the hurricane, Posey found herself feeling all alone, and all because the men had begun talking about family.

So many of them came from families overloaded with children, rattling off the names of siblings upon siblings. Guarnere and Luz both had whole battalions of sisters who they spoke of fondly. Each of the men, upon reflection, spoke about their families with nothing but fondness - and excitement to get to visit home at Christmas.

"What about you, Wells?" asked Malarkey from where he sat opposite her. "Who you got waiting at home for ya?"

Posey thought hard on how to answer. Who did she have waiting at home for her? She hadn't had correspondence from any of her family for months, which she forced herself to believe was due to how far from home she was and not anything more disastrous. A brother in the RAF, a mother in the heart of the Germans' bullseye, and a father she wanted nothing to do with, that's who she was supposed to say, though she wasn't actually certain any of them were waiting for her at all.

"Just my mom and my brother," she replied eventually with a tight-lipped smile.

"How old's your brother?" asked Skip with genuine curiosity.

Posey chuckled to herself. "Twenty-one. He's serving in the Air Force." Not entirely a lie.

"Didn't wanna follow in his footsteps?" Malarkey wondered around a sip of water.

She shook her head. "He flies the planes so I thought I'd jump out of them. How else do you one-up a fighter pilot?"

This earned her a round of laughter which was just enough to turn the spotlight onto someone else. When Toye was in the midst of recounting his family situation she breathed an inaudible sigh of relief and took a large gulp of water. Now she just had to remember that she'd told them that and pray she didn't accidentally trip herself up.

Showering at night left her exhausted. Between the intense PT and the long days, by the time they were dismissed for bed all she wanted to do was collapse and sleep for years. That, however, was a luxury she couldn't afford - she dreaded to think what would happen if anyone caught her in the shower; in that situation, being dropped from the Airborne would be the least of her worries. She shuddered every time she thought of it and thus she forced herself to stay awake for long enough that she could sneak out in the early hours of the morning. Focusing on staying awake was good for one thing, though, and that was preventing her from crying - thinking of home made her sleepy so she didn't allow herself to do it. Whilst tears still welled in her eyes at the most random of moments, at least they didn't fall at night. That was her one solace.

Running Currahee actually became one of Posey's favourite parts of basic. It was intense and gruelling and exhausting, but at least she didn't have to think too hard about anything that mattered - that was, anything beyond putting one foot in front of the other and not tripping on anything. With all of her focus on making it to the top, her time quickly became one of the best. True, she was at the bottom of the theoretical league tables in everything else, but in running Currahee? She was practically legendary. Perhaps because of her small, wiry frame as opposed to in spite of it.