A Soldier of No Importance [ Band of Brothers ] 1

THIRTY ONE

Easy Company completed the challenge, capturing F Company's flag and protecting their own. Casualty rates for Easy were high, though, and according to what the men told her, they'd only succeeded thanks to Winters and Welsh. Soon they returned to base for the weekend, taking buses back to Camp Mackall.

Alice spent the majority of Saturday with the enlisted. One of the movie theaters on base showed Gone with the Wind. Alice and several men of all the platoons attended an afternoon showing. She enjoyed herself. The movie exhausted her, though, so she excused herself to grab a nap.

Unfortunately, it ended in screaming yet again. The massacre of Jews had played like a movie in her mind. Bernadette had been there. She had never seen Warsaw, but Paris took the place easily. Flames licked and enveloped rows of crying children, flaying them alive. Each victim had the yellow star of David sewn to their shirts, just as Paris' Jews had been forced to do. Of course, all that remained of them in her dreams were smoking carcasses of ash.

The stench of burning human flesh filled her nose as though if took place in reality. Alice couldn't stop herself from crying as she hid her face in her sheets. The empty barracks echoed with her sobs. Her body heaved until she couldn't cry anymore. All she could do was choke on her desperate attempts at breathing.

The rain that pounded the barracks slowed. Alice still couldn't control her breathing. As she clambered down from the top bunk to the floor, she slipped on her boots. A bottle of red wine she'd picked up on her last weekend in town lay stashed at the bottom of ber foot locker. Alice dragged it out. She opened it with a pop.

As she downed a large drink straight from the bottle, she heard the men outside. Alice panicked. She still cried. As they opened the front entrance, Alice slipped out the back door of the platoon barracks. Only a light misting of rain hit her face as she sat on the wooden steps down. Alice leaned her face up towards the sky. The misting coated her skin. It calmed her down.

What did thirteen thousand people even look like? Alice downed another chug of the wine. The warmth in her body spread to her extremities. Her heartbeat calmed. She tried to push the nightmarish visual of children burning alive from her mind. Finally, she was tired of getting wet. With her breathing mostly under control, Alice ducked back into the barracks as quietly as she could.

A chorus of laughter echoed through the room as she snuck inside. Quite a few men of Easy lounged around: Talbert, Skinny, Lipton, George, Bill, Joe Toye, Bull, Johnny, Frank, Malarkey, Muck, Penkala, and Chuck Grant. Alice took another long drink of the wine. She ran a hand through her wet hair, watching the men playing poker or writing letters. They had their own stash of alcohol.

Putting down the wine bottle, she took some clothes out of her footlocker and slipped to change from her wet fatigues. With the loose shirt and shorts on instead, she slipped off both her socks and shoes. She set them and her other clothes out to dry.

They still hadn't noticed her presence. Alice scooted up the ladder into her bunk and lay on her stomach. With her face propped up over her arms, she looked down at the men playing poker on the floor in the middle of the room.

"So, Welsh did good during the defense?" George asked the boys of First.

Johnny nodded. "He's smart. Got a good sense of tactics." Shuffling the deck of cards, he waited for Bull, the previous winner, to collect his money. "I like him."

"Not quite Winters," Bull added. "But ain't many people like Winters anyway."

They all seconded him. Johnny Martin dealt the cards. They decided on standard five card draw, nothing wild. After adding the antes, they looked at their starting hands. Malarkey sat to Johnny's left. He opened the betting.