There's always been one man they could count on
The Easy Company roster was a solid weight in Carwood Lipton’s pocket. It was only a folded up piece of paper, a scrawled list of names and quickly jotted numbers; he shouldn’t have been so aware of it, but he was. There were sixy-three men sitting around him in the convent. Sixty-three. Of the one hundred and fourty-five men that had entered Belgium, only sixty-three now surrounded him in Rachamps. More than half were now dead, wounded, or taken off the line. Dead, like Skip Muck or Alex Penkala. Wounded, like Joe Toye and Bill Guarnere. Gone, like Buck Compton.
"There’s always been one man they could count on.” Spiers had said, looking at him steadily with his dark eyes. “…Hell, it was you, First Sergeant.”
And now he was making lieutenant, getting a battlefield commission and joining the officers. Second Lieutenant Lipton. Fancy that.
Lipton leaned back against the hard wood of the pew, thankful it wasn’t the cold dirt of a foxhole. His cheek stung where the bullet had grazed it, and he automatically reached up to brush the back of his hand across it. It came away speckled with dry blood and dirt, reminding Lipton of how long it had been since he’d had a shower. He’d settle for the warmth and comfort of being indoors for the moment, tilting his head back against the dull curve of the pew and watching the men sit silently in their exhaustion. The girls choir was still singing, the sound light and airy and beautiful, almost unearthly in the dim candlelight. The words slipped past him in mysterious French. He idly wondered if Doc Roe understood what they were singing; he spoke French. Lipton closed his eyes.
It was the rushing sound that woke him. Jerking upwards, he scanned the area for cover from the approaching shell. He froze when all he saw was blue, blue water stretching out over the horizon and sand around his feet. The tide swept against the shore then dragged out again as a gull screeched somewhere overhead.
Lipton didn’t wonder where he was or what had happened to him. He leant back against the tree, taking a deep breath and letting it go out slowly.
He had broken.
Like Buck Compton, who had sat there so desolate and empty when Lipton had leant down to talk to him, who had only looked away with red eyes when Lipton had put a hand on his knee. Like the soldier who had tried to dig a foxhole with his bare hands, until all he had were bloody stumps were fingernails used to be, numb to everything but his own fear.
Lipton had left all the boys behind to face the rest of the war alone. He’d let them down. He’d failed Easy, and the guilt burned deep in his stomach.
"Dammit." He said, his voice seemingly loud in whatever hallucinogenic state he was in.