Under The Banner ▪ Band Of Brothers

...left in the darkness...

December 23, 1944

Zhanna would have attributed the loss of feeling in her fingers to fear if they weren't curled tightly around her blistering cold rifle, the wind cracking the joints. She should have been afraid, staring out at the blaring white snow, open to the sky's brightness. She hadn't seen the sky clearly in weeks and the faint white sunlight wasn't a comfort. It bathed the battlefield that stretched out before them, casting a spotlight against the scars in the frozen earth. There was no hiding the destruction.

She should have been afraid. The German line was in the opposing skeleton of trees, staring back at them. It was almost too quiet, as they waited for orders. As they held their shivering breaths. They had dropped more supplies for the bunkered down Airborne but there were no bullets for Zhanna. While, at least, the men had ammo in their rifles, Zhanna could feel the weight of the three casings heavy in her hand, hanging on the back of her mind like a snagged thread.

Silence stretched between the foxholes, a connection of thread and anticipation that looped them all together. Not a word was spoken. Zhanna wasn't sure she had words. All she had was three bullets and a mind full of tangled thoughts.

Three bullets. The lead and gunpowder was more precious to her than gold and yet, she would be forced to send them flying through the air. She had always carefully picked her targets but now the pressure for Zhanna was heavy on her shoulders. Heavier than Buck's wool coat. She couldn't misfire. She couldn't miss.

And here she was, on the cusp of a battle, with only three bullets to her name. The ground rumbled underneath her, the clouds of snow disturbed by tumbling tank treads as the sleek metal forms coasted from the treeline.

Tanks. Not the damn tanks again.

Zhanna glanced at her dugout mate, Alley, whose face showed all the unease she couldn't muster. She wanted to reassure him. Crack a small smile. But that would have split her whole face, the halves falling into the snow beside them.

Silence was best. Silence was safer.

As Lipton slipped through the lines, he brought with him a tide of noise, breaking the still silence. Those tanks were getting closer and the men began to rustle with unease.

"Hold your fire, boys!" Lipton reassured. "Don't let them draw you out."

Zhanna didn't have to be told to hold her fire. She didn't need the reminder. Glancing around at the men, the tank engines rising in her ears joined by the repeated chorus of "Hold your fire!"

Holding her fire. Didn't they see she was? Zhanna had so little to fight with. She didn't need to be told. She had so little to fight for. Zhanna would rather hold her fire. Be at the back of the fight, in the welcoming branches of a tall tree. She was too close. This was all much too close. Zhanna could almost breathe the petrol of the tanks, feel them rumbling over her, as the gears and the inner workings of the tank ground and tore. She felt like she was in the belly of the beast again.

A shot rang out. It was familiar to Zhanna. The sound she had come to recognize at the discharge of her rifle and the fall of a German soldier. But she hadn't fired it. Looking up, Smokey Gordon had fallen back, retreating from his position at the machine gun.

"Smokey's hit!" someone shouted. The words hadn't come from Zhanna's parched lips.

"Medic!" That cry had crossed Zhanna's chattering jaw. Through half-open eyes, her fingers curling tighter around her rifle, Zhanna watched as Smokey was hauled out of the foxhole, leaving it empty and his machine gun unmanned. Empty foxholes were never good. Empty foxholes, much like empty houses, were often never filled again. Dimly, she realized that Alley wasn't beside her. He was beside Smokey, hauling him toward the stumbling Doc Roe.

The machine gun was unmanned. The gun would go unfired. The pile of bullets, looped and ready to be fired, was plentiful. The tanks were coming closer and they were down one machine gun.

Her splintering bones and her aching joints stood. It was impossible. It wasn't possible. And yet, she found herself in the foxhole, hands peeling off the beloved rifle and wrapping around the frigid metal. An American- made weapon beneath her palms, not the smooth wood of her Mosin-Nagant.

Before she could grow used to the feel of the weapon, the tanks broke through the teetering saplings that had tried to grow up in that open field, squeezing any and all life from the weak sunlight and the scarred ground. It would have been almost beautiful if they hadn't been crushed beneath the treads of German tanks.

"They're breaking through!"

"Machine guns open fire!"

That was her. Zhanna had never been told when to fire before, allowing her discretion and intuition to guide her. And yet, it was comforting to know that Lipton had called for them. There was no heartbeat of panic, wondering if she had timed it wrong.

She allowed her finger to squeeze the trigger, feeling Alley slide into the foxhole beside her. Good thing too. Zhanna knew how to pull a trigger and she had a good aim but the intricacies of a machine gun were foreign to her.

The sheer power that this weapon had, rattling beneath her fingertips and echoing in her mind was almost too much. She felt light, like she had been drinking in Aldbourne again. Drunk on the power in her hands, Zhanna set her sight on those damned tanks. Beasts of mechanics they were but Zhanna didn't think they were indestructible.

Maybe she imagined things in place of the tanks, more abstract thoughts and feelings she would gladly plow with a machine gun. Zhanna was a sniper but she liked the power that the machine gun afforded. The grace and the silence of a sniper hadn't done her much good in the end. All she had was three bullets and a book of memories.

The more Alley fed bullets into the machine, the more Zhanna allowed herself to grow thoughtless. She didn't take the careful consideration that her usual tactics required. She didn't pause, release a breath, and then pull the trigger. Zhanna couldn't remember the last breath she had taken. The cold had stretched across her fingers, breaching the wool of her coat and many layers. It was a penetrating chill and it sank deep into her bones, joining the frost and the rust that had already coated the joints. Like cold water, it froze in sheets. Zhanna was frozen, it seemed, with her finger perpetually curled around the trigger.

The power didn't last. Her power never did. She was pulled from the gun before she would have liked, in a blur of splinters and blood. Not her own. The snow was coated in blood. The Airborne had fallen back into their foxholes, to lick their wounds and to rest, knowing that there would be another tank, another attack.

Foxholes were empty, some had lost a friend. Smokey Gordon was in the aid station. He wasn't the first and he wouldn't be the last. They were being surrounded, closed in from all sides. Bastogne was bending them to its will. Rocks had been tethered to her ankles, stuffed into her pockets. Zhanna was alone in her foxhole, something tugging at her stomach, bringing her further and further from that safe place she had dreamed of. She was drowning in this frozen forest and she didn't have the strength to fight it.