Chapter Text
“Thanks to this man’s infractions, all company passes are canceled,” Eugene exhaled in irritation, watching with a measure of pity the poor soldier (what was his name? Albert? Talbert?) whom Sobel had decided to use as a scapegoat for his despotic outbursts. The company’s quiet frustration was suddenly broken by a murmur that might well have been a scream in the absolute silence.
“Bâtard!” Eugene flinched at the French curse and searched for the source of the sound. He had just completed a month of training at Camp Toccoa, and the sound of his mother tongue felt so familiar (even if it was an insult) that it was almost painful.
“Who said that? I ordered silence!” Sobel barked, and Eugene snapped back to attention, his back stiff as a rod, eyes forward, shoulders squared.
His pulse quickened, curiosity biting at the pit of his stomach, sending ants through his tense muscles, making him restless, anxious. Gene had never been a sociable boy. He preferred spending his days paddling his father’s pirogue down the river, surrounded by the music of the swamp, rather than roaming the streets (and later, the bars) with his cousins and classmates. Solitude didn’t bother him—he preferred it—but after a month surrounded by strangers, the sound of French felt like a balm.
Toccoa was a hive of activity, a constant buzz of orders, chants, shouts, heavy boots, and soldiers’ laughter. For someone like him, accustomed to silence and the melody of the forest, it was disorienting. More than once he felt lost, unmoored, and wished with all his soul to return home. Fortunately, as the days passed, he grew used to the noise, the lack of privacy, and the forced camaraderie, allowing himself to be swept up in the whirlwind of personalities, accents, customs, and origins that made up the heterogeneous human mass of Easy Company.
“As you know, we’ve received some men from Able Company, so it’s time to test them, gentlemen. In PT gear, we’re heading up Currahee.” Eugene broke ranks, following the others toward the barracks, muttering curses under his breath.
He hurried to the back of the cabin and was surprised to notice that the empty cot beside his (left by a soldier who had decided it was a good idea to shoot himself in the foot to avoid climbing Currahee) was now occupied by a young man with bright red hair and a sour expression, changing clothes with furious hands, as if the uniform were Sobel himself and he were about to tear it apart.
“C'est un fils de pute, le pire des fils de pute,” he muttered, and Eugene couldn’t help himself.
“I’d like to say you’ll get used to it soon, but I can’t promise that,” he said aloud, and the new recruit’s astonished eyes leapt to him with fierce joy.
“No one told me there was a civilized man among this whole tangle of savages,” he exclaimed, standing up with a grin from ear to ear, ignoring Perconte’s offended “Hey!” behind him. “Where are you from, kid?”
“Bayou Chene, né et élevé,” Eugene replied, shaking the freckled hand extended to him enthusiastically. The newcomer’s green eyes lit up, and he let out a bark-like laugh, clapping Eugene on the shoulder so hard he nearly sent him sprawling.
“Mon Dieu, I’m from Lafayette. Louis Michaud.”
“Eugene Roe.”
From that day on, Eugene never felt alone again. Louis was a whirlwind of energy, with such an overwhelming personality and such a sincere smile that everyone soon forgot he came from another company. He was twenty-one (three years older than Gene) and adapted to Easy’s dynamic with incredible ease. From the very first moment, he took the young Cajun under his wing, dragging him along, keeping him within arm’s reach at all times.
The two could talk for hours, always in that mixed, strange French that was the inheritance of their ancestors, a direct line home. They were like night and day, the two faces of Louisiana. While Louis was brightness and celebration, Mardi Gras, heat and joy, Eugene was the calm of the swamp, the melodic silence of the forest, the coolness of water and the softness of Spanish moss.
Louis’s friendship made his days in Toccoa more bearable, and a year later Eugene had adapted to regimental life and become just another man in the company. He learned many things over the course of that year. He learned to fight like a soldier, think like a soldier, act like a soldier. He could read maps and knew the blast radius of a grenade; he could choose the best place to dig a trench and communicate silently with others even in the dark. He could identify different weapons by sound and locate and memorize landmarks as ridiculous as a tree or a damn rock.
He was a good soldier. Fast, confident, disciplined. He had one of the best shooting scores and was sure he could qualify to serve as a radio or mortar technician… until someone decided it was a good idea to put an armband with a cross on his arm and pull him away from his comrades, throwing him headfirst into what would be his new training regimen: Eugene Roe would become one of the company’s medics.
Army regulations dictated that combat medics could not carry weapons, as they would need their hands to do their job. The Geneva Convention established that no member of the Red Cross (and Gene had become one, whether he liked it or not) could be targeted or harmed, as they were a neutral part of the conflict. However, no one was naïve enough to believe that the Germans or the Japanese would follow the rules of the game. The Japanese had turned hospitals to ashes during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and intelligence reports from the European and African fronts spoke of medics and nurses kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in cold blood. Hell, even the newsreels shown in theaters talked about the enemy’s brutality toward medical personnel.
The solution to the problem was simple: if medics couldn’t carry weapons, they had to be accompanied at all times by armed soldiers, an escort to keep them safe while they worked. Gene didn’t like the idea. He was a soldier like any other, capable of defending himself. He was a man, not a child—he didn’t need a babysitter.
But orders were orders, and Gene was forced to swallow his complaints and wait to find out who his partner would be. Two months later, the army declared his medical training complete, and Eugene returned to the company without a rifle and with a satchel slung over his shoulder, full of medical supplies and knowledge that he hoped would allow him to save the lives of the men he had come to know—and even to love.
They taught him the location of the main arteries, how to administer morphine, plasma, and sulfa drugs, how to prevent shock, how to triage the wounded, and how to distinguish between puncture, laceration, and traumatic wounds. They showed him images of the most atrocious injuries Eugene had ever seen and made him practice suturing on the skin of dead pigs. He learned to move under fire, to keep a cool head under pressure, to immobilize the wounded and evacuate them, to screen for disease, and to identify the signs of combat exhaustion and mental anguish that render a soldier useless.
He learned that he had to emotionally distance himself from the men, and at the same time know all their names and be attentive to their physical and mental needs. But how was he supposed to tend to their needs if, in theory, he was meant to stay away from everyone?
One day, Winters summoned the newly appointed medics to introduce them to their escorts and assign them to their respective platoons. Easy Company had three medics: Albert Mampre, Ralph Spina, and Eugene Roe. Ralph was from Philadelphia and had the same temperament and contagious cheer as Sgt. Guarnere. Mampre was from Ohio, the son of Armenian immigrants, and had a way about him that made everyone trust him.
Beside them, Gene felt inadequate. He wasn’t charismatic like Spina or conciliatory like Mampre. He was too quiet, too introspective, and it had taken him a long time to integrate into the company. If not for Louis’s presence, perhaps he never would have—at least not completely. He was scared, worried about not being what the men needed, about not being up to the task.
“As you know, we must assign each of you an escort who will accompany you at all times while we are in combat. Your duty is to remain with your escort at all times or, if he falls, with your platoon leader,” Winters explained in the calm, firm tone he always used when giving an order.
“Yes, sir,” the three replied in unison.
“Very well. Spina, your escort will be Sgt. Guarnere, Second Platoon. Mampre, you’ll go with Sgt. Randleman. And Roe, your escort is Private Michaud.”
Eugene frowned immediately. Louis? Why did it have to be Louis? How was he supposed to focus on his job if half his mind would be worried about his best friend being killed?
“That’s all. Report to your escorts and your respective platoons.”
Spina and Mampre saluted and headed for the exit, but Eugene lingered behind, uncertain.
“Roe?”
“Permission to speak, sir.”
“Granted.”
“Sir, with all due respect, is there any possibility of changing my escort? Private Michaud and I are very good friends, and I fear his safety will concern me more than my duty, sir,” he explained plainly, surprising his superior with his honesty.
Winters looked at him for a long moment, as if weighing his words. Gene liked Lt. Winters. He was a sensible man, a good leader. Surely he would see the danger of pairing him with Louis; surely he would understand his point of view. After a few moments that felt eternal, Winters sighed.
“I understand what you’re saying, Gene. But Michaud volunteered, and the orders were signed by Colonel Sink. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Still at ease, Eugene clenched his fists behind his back and nodded slowly.
“I understand, sir.”
“Honestly, Eugene, I think Michaud will do a good job. I know he helped you integrate into the company, that you’re comfortable around him, and that’s something you’ll need. In combat, you have to trust yourself and the man beside you… and Michaud has proven to be a good soldier. You’ll be safe with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, you’re dismissed.”
“Sir.” Eugene saluted and left the office, ready to report to his unit.
Camp Mackall wasn’t very different from Toccoa: the same barracks, the same heat, the same humidity, the same mosquitoes, and the same anxiety that built each day without knowing when or where they would be sent to fight. Near Easy’s barracks, a familiar figure appeared in his field of vision. Louis was smoking a cigarette, clearly waiting for him. As soon as he saw him, his face lit up and he hurried to meet him, happy to see him again after two months of grueling preparation.
“Gene, did you hear? I’m going to be your guardian angel,” Louis exclaimed as soon as he appeared. Eugene pressed his lips together and bit his tongue, walking past him to look for Sgt. Martin.
“Gene? Didn’t you hear me?” His smile vanished when he saw the bitter expression on his friend’s face. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?”
“Why did you do it? Why did you have to volunteer to be my escort? Don’t you understand how dangerous it is?” Eugene asked, turning to face him with a tight chest. Before Louis, Gene had never had a true friend. He embodied everything good in his life: his home, his language, his history, and the mere idea of losing him was too painful to bear.
“You’re telling me it’s dangerous? What about you? You’re going to jump out of a plane and cross enemy lines with nothing to defend yourself but a bag full of bandages and your pretty face? How do you think I could leave you alone, in the hands of a stranger? Tu es fou?! ” Louis shot back, startling him. It was the first time since he’d known him that Michaud had raised his voice, and the desperation in his eyes made Eugene’s anger falter.
Louis wasn’t volunteering because he thought Gene needed a babysitter. He volunteered because he cared about him, because he was terrified at the thought of seeing him in danger with nothing but the goodwill and honor of his enemies to protect him. Eugene let his shoulders drop and sighed, looking up at the sky in feigned frustration. He wasn’t angry anymore. At least, if he was going to be forced to stay at another soldier’s six, he preferred it be someone he knew, someone he could trust.
“You’re an idiot, Michaud,” Eugene replied flatly, but a smile spread across his face despite himself.
“Ouais, mas tu m'aimes”.
Gene had never left Louisiana before enlisting and being sent to Toccoa and then Mackall. It wasn’t strange. People like him were born, lived, and died in the same town, knowing of the world only what they heard on the radio or discussed around the table. And now, Eugene Roe of Bayou Chene, Louisiana, was bidding farewell to the Statue of Liberty on his way to Europe.
England looked like nothing he had ever seen before. It was damp, but not the dampness he was used to. It was a cold dampness that clung to his bones and refused to leave under the perpetually overcast skies. Even when the sun appeared in the insipid English summer, it failed to shake the cold from his soul. Or perhaps it wasn’t the cold that kept him awake at night. It was fear, the uncertainty of not knowing when the day would come when they would finally be thrown into battle. Anxiety clung to him like a second skin, and at times Eugene wished the orders would come just to put an end to the endless waiting.
Around him, everyone pretended to be calm, enjoying the English countryside and the company of the young women who seemed happy to send the Yankees to their deaths with satisfied smiles on their lips. But Gene knew the truth. He could see it in their eyes when no one else was looking, in the occasional subtle tremors, in the laughter that was too loud. Everyone was afraid. But no one would take a step back.
His days passed between training, theoretical classes with the regimental doctors, and long shifts at the local aid station to prepare them to treat real patients. And then, without much fanfare, the moment everyone awaited and feared in equal measure arrived: H-Hour, D-Day.
Louis and he boarded the C-47 together and sat side by side in silence. Eugene clutched his grandmother’s rosary in his hands and prayed softly while Louis smoked compulsively, one cigarette after another. The roar of the engines filled the air, and with each passing second they drew closer and closer to their destination.
“Don’t be afraid,” Eugene felt Louis’s breath at his ear, the only way to be heard over the noise. “Whatever happens, I’ll be with you.”
Eugene wanted to say he wasn’t afraid, that he was a soldier, capable of taking care of himself, of doing his duty… but the truth was, he was afraid. It wasn’t a paralyzing fear, nor the cowardice of those who don’t dare. It wasn’t even fear of death. Eugene feared failure. He feared forgetting what he had been taught, freezing at the sight of his comrades’ pain, being unable to stop death. He feared not being enough.
When the bombs and the whistling of anti-aircraft fire mixed with the infernal noise of the plane, fear ceased to matter. Adrenaline replaced it, and Gene stood up, hooking onto the static line behind Lt. Winters with determination. Behind him, he could feel Louis’s hands checking his gear and tightening the straps of his parachute, clinging to his training to forget the hollowness in his stomach.
The red light at the door blinked a couple of times and then turned green. Eugene watched Winters leap into the void and followed without thinking, throwing himself into the night. Around him, bullets whistled, seeking a target, seeking flesh and bone, hungry for the blood of their enemies.
His parachute deployed without incident, but the wind dragged him helplessly. In the half-light lit by explosions, Gene saw the rest of the soldiers from his plane descending, wondering where Louis might be. He was supposed to be his escort—but how the hell were they supposed to find each other in that darkness?
It was impossible, and yet they did. Louis, pale and missing half his gear from the fall, materialized at his side the moment he hit the ground and grabbed him by the arm, dragging him toward the woods. “Always stay at your escort’s six,” they had told him in training, and Eugene obeyed, eyes fixed on the back of his best friend, moving and moving through unknown territory with the hope of finding the rest of their unit before the Germans found them.
Morning found them at a farm behind German lines. Here and there, small groups of soldiers appeared and gathered, greeting each other with relief at knowing they were alive and safe. Many were still missing, but seeing familiar faces filled them with hope. Maybe it wouldn’t all be so bad. Maybe there was still hope.
Eugene immediately reported to the improvised aid station set up in a barn. From the doorway, the smell of blood hit him like a punch to the gut. This was real. His pulse quickened and his breath faltered for a fraction of a second. And then the warm weight of Louis’s hand on his shoulder pulled him from his trance. He had followed Louis all the way to the rally point; now it was his turn to follow him.
Eugene knew what to do. In the relative darkness of the barn, the medics moved back and forth, followed by their escorts, desperately trying to wrestle death into submission.
“Medic!” someone shouted at the door, and Eugene rushed out to meet him, grabbing the man under the arms to drag him inside. A bullet had pierced his shoulder, and blood soaked his uniform as he screamed and writhed, sobbing, begging them not to let him die. He was just a kid—about Gene’s age—but he looked so pale, so young… a child pleading for another chance.
“Easy, you’ll be fine. It’s not serious, it’s not serious,” Eugene murmured, gripping the fabric to tear it open for a better look at the wound. “No exit wound, probably fractured the clavicle, but it didn’t hit the artery. No signs of shock yet. Bon. C’est bon.”
“Gene, what do you need?” Louis’s voice trembled beside him, but his hands were steady as he handed over the satchel and went for water to clean the blood. Morphine. Extract the bullet. Sulfa. Close the wound. Bandage. Immobilize. His movements were methodical, his voice firm, his presence calming. Eugene was no longer Eugene—not in that moment. He was a combat medic, and Louis knew he was lost.
After the capture of Brécourt, the company kept moving, always advancing, advancing, advancing. Louis’s feet were blistered, his back tense, and fear gnawed at his neck day and night. Every small sound, every snapping twig, every shadow was an enemy—someone ready to kill him or, worse, to take Eugene from him.
His friendship with him felt like a miracle. Eugene was a miracle. He was his complete opposite, and yet Louis loved him like a madman. He would never tell him, of course. He could never ruin what they had. Gene trusted him, cared for him in his own way, and that was enough. But as the days passed, the weight of his feelings became more and more unbearable.
At night they shared a trench, forced to remain together at all times, and the sound of Eugene’s calm breathing was like a knife in his stomach. The gentle warmth of his body beside his, his long lashes brushing his cheeks, his slightly parted lips, inviting… Louis was going to lose his mind.
Perhaps that was what caused the disaster. Perhaps he was so immersed in the immensity of his feelings that he let his guard down and didn’t see what was coming.
Carentan greeted them with a rain of bullets, and Louis ran after Eugene, answering every call for help with his rifle raised, ready to defend him. Mortars and cannons shattered buildings like crumbs, debris raining down around them. Eugene, on his knees with a man across his lap, was bandaging his bleeding head when the mortar struck the house behind them. Instantly, the young medic curled over himself, shielding the wounded man with his body, clutching his helmet as Louis threw himself over them both.
At first, he felt nothing. It wasn’t until something warm brushed his nape that he realized what had happened.
“Gene?” he whispered, unable to say anything else. Eugene turned toward him, and when he saw the horror on his face, time stopped.
Gene—his Gene—stared at him with those enormous blue eyes (so blue, God, why are they so blue? where did that color come from?) filled with panic as he lunged forward, catching him before he hit the ground. Eugene—his gentle hands—helped him lie back on the debris-strewn street. Louis could see his lips moving, but his mind couldn’t register the words. It was like being underwater, languid, as consciousness slipped away. The blast had sent his helmet rolling down the street, and a piece of rubble had fractured his skull, turning his head into a bloody mass that Gene cradled delicately.
“No, please, no. Please, please, please, Louis, don’t leave me. Don’t go, not like this, Louis, no…” Eugene begged, his heart shattered and his face streaked with hot tears. “You can’t leave me alone, you can’t…”
Louis didn’t close his eyes. His pupils stayed locked on Eugene’s as life left them, and his body went slack, inert in his hands.
“Louie? Lou?” Eugene called him by the nicknames he had never dared to use, shaking him by the shoulders, unable to grasp the magnitude of what had happened.
Louis was dead. Louis wasn’t coming back.
A scream lodged in his throat, and Eugene pressed his lips together, forcing it down. He locked it inside himself and forced himself to move. War was a succession of tragedies, and it wouldn’t stop for his. Silently, he bowed his head and pressed his forehead to Louis’s, feeling the still-warm blood of his best friend on his hands.
“Merci pour tout, je t'aimerai toujours,” he murmured against his skin, then straightened to take his dog tags and his mother’s rosary and hang them around his own neck. He closed Louis’s eyes with gentle fingers and turned his attention back to the soldier beside him, gripping him by the shoulders to drag him to the relative safety of a distant building.
The battle continued, and when the Germans finally withdrew, the battalion improvised an aid station in a restaurant. Gene worked with the other medics, treating the endless stream of wounded. And then Winters arrived. The lieutenant sat at a table and let him clean his wound, until he noticed Michaud’s absence beside the medic.
“Roe, where’s your escort?” Michaud had been the best escort in the company, a silent shadow who had even learned to identify medical supplies to support his friend’s work, and not seeing him hovering around Roe was strange.
“He went down,” Eugene replied without stopping his work.
“What?” Eugene removed Louis’s dog tags from his neck and handed them to the lieutenant in silence. His expression was calm, but his eyes were empty of all life, and for a moment Winters feared the worst. “Roe…”
“Later I’ll find Sergeant Martin and stay with him to await orders,” Eugene said before he could continue. “May I bandage your leg now?”
“Yes, do it,” he murmured, reminding himself to keep an eye on the medic from then on.
Weeks later, back in England, Eugene’s eyes were still empty, and Louis’s rosary remained around his neck. And then, the replacements arrived.