Evelyn's Tale

-Twenty Nine-

9th January, 1945

As the bright stars shone up above in the clear night sky, the Bois Jacques were silent. Nobody was eager to leave the relative warmth and comfort of their foxholes. Not even the lure of Joe Domingus' cooking was enough to tempt them. After all, with their ever-dwindling supplies, the best they got at the moment was something watery with perhaps some barley or a lone vegetable floating on the top of it. Bastogne was slowly beating Easy company down one by one.

Those who weren't suffering with physical ailments were being worn down mentally. The latest casualty of that was Buck Compton. Only three days ago, he had been pulled off the line and sent to a field hospital with trench foot. Well, trench foot had been the official line, but that was only because there was no way to explain the truth. Everyone knew that Buck was a ticking time bomb and seeing Toye and Guarnere wounded had been the thing to finally detonate him.

At the mere thought of her brother's name, Evelyn's heart clenched as it did every other time she thought of him. She missed him so much already and she still couldn't shake the image of him lying bleeding on the ground. She wanted to be with him, to help him as he dealt with the physical and emotional challenges that came with him losing his leg. She wanted to be there when her parents and Frannie saw him for how he was now. She wanted to protect him from those that would look at him like he was any less than them now. She wanted to be there to tell them all that instead of being less of a man, he was in fact the bravest of them all. But he was who knew where at this moment in time, and she was here.

Pulling Bill's letter out of her pocket, she fingered the frayed edges and focused on his untidy scrawl. He had always been hopeless at writing. It had never interested him. He had always been too busy wanting to run about or play baseball with his friends. And Bill knew that he didn't have a way with words. He wasn't eloquent. He just said, and wrote, everything like it was and if the recipient didn't like it then to hell with them.

Evie, (it read)

You know that writing aint never been my strong suit, but I decided this way the best way to talk to you about something that I know I should have really told you face to face. But it turns out I'm more of a coward than I thought. Who knew? But don't tell anyone, alright? And if fucking Luz reads this and goes shooting off his mouth then I'm gonna kill him. Who am I kidding? Of course he's gonna read it. George Luz, keep your fucking trap shut, ok? And Evelyn, before you start turning red in the face with impatience, yes, I will just get to the point now.

So uh, I need to speak to you about the whole Liebgott thing. Don't start getting all irate, just hear-well, read- me out, will you? I'm just gonna come straight out with it because the more I beat around the bush, the worse it's gonna be.

Basically, after I caught you two together and we all had that big fight, that wasn't exactly the end of it all. I found out Liebgott was on guard duty, so I took it upon myself to go and find him. I did something that in hindsight I thought was helpful, but someone has recently made me realise that I actually did the opposite of what I was intending.

Oh God, this is so hard to write. But basically I told Liebgott that he had to end things with you. I told him that if he didn't, I would go to Colonel Sink and make sure you were both kicked out of Easy. In Liebgott's defence (I can't believe that's something I would ever say), he said he didn't care if you both got kicked out because he wanted to be with you regardless, but I made him change his mind.

I can only imagine just how much you must hate me right now, and how angry you must feel. Evie, you've got every right to be angry at me, but please, before you scrunch up this letter and throw it away, just let me explain myself? Please? Please?