Women of War - A Band of Brothers Story

Operation Market Garden

A few days later, Easy Company was on the tarmac of the airfield again, gearing up for another mission. This one, apparently, was far too crucial to be called off. They were jumping into Holland with the objective of liberating Eindhoven and securing the roads for the tanks. Named Operation Market Garden, the mission seemed rather straight-forward and intelligence expected little resistance.

The squad leaders had their hands full in between readying their own kit and making sure that the replacements knew how and what to pack. The rest of the veterans helped where necessary, offering pointers and showing the kids how to organise their equipment so they would be ready to fight as soon as they hit the ground.

"You won't need the reserve, Andrews", Maxine advised, adjusting the straps of the boy's webbing. "We're jumping low. Dukeman, would you mind helping Higgins and Coombs?"

He shook his head. "No problem, Sarge."

"Thanks." Giving him a grateful smile, she turned back to Andrews, going over all the things he should have in his pockets. "Right. Ammo?"

"Right here."

"How much?"

He showed her, explaining: "There wasn't any room for more."

"That's okay. Put the rest in your musette bag. Lighter?"

Andrews patted the pocket and Maxine continued. "Rations?"

"Yep."

***

"Who the hell thought up these flags?", Malarkey wondered, shaking his head at the star-spangled banner on his upper arm.

Along with their new jump gear – complete with a re-designed parachute release mechanism – they had been issued a fresh set of ODs, which included a stupidly large brassard with their flag on it.

"Hell if I know", Muck shrugged. "He was probably blind, though."

A few feet over, Jessica grumbled about being under British command. The operation had been thought up and planned by General Montgomery himself, but unfortunately for them, the British were known to be overly cautious.

"God, manoeuvres are gonna take twice as long", she sighed, shoving a couple of magazines' worth of ammunition into her musette bag. "And why a daytime jump? Seriously, even if the Krauts are only old geezers and kids, it's not too hard to land a shot when there's a couple a' hundred paratroopers falling from the sky."

Ana María, who had so far been trying to ignore her and focus on fixing the radio she and Perconte had been working on for the past hour, set down her screw-driver and turned around. "Dios mio, can you please, please stop your griping?"

"What?", Jessica challenged. "C'mon, it's true! 'The element of surprise'? Yeah, sure gonna be a surprise when they can see us from miles away."

Sat on her haunches, the Puerto Rican pinched the bridge of her nose. "You've been complaining for thirty-five minutes straight", she said slowly in an attempt to restrain her frustration. "And while that is already annoying enough, you've also indirectly insulted Louise and Mia at least five times each, so please – give it a rest."

Stumped, because it had been quite a long while since Ana María had last been so obviously annoyed, Jessica closed her mouth. Only to open it half a minute later to ask: "I insulted Louise?"

The radio tech rolled her eyes and continued to hold the circuit board in place while Perconte tightened the screws. "You've been ranting about the Brits the whole time. How incompetent and slow and unnecessarily cautious they are."