A Soldier of No Importance [ Band of Brothers ] 1

THIRTY TWO

May came and went, June ended, and Alice had stayed true to her promise to herself. She hadn't even approached the level of intoxication she'd reached the night Lipton had to help her. Somehow, she wasn't exactly sure, word never seemed to get around to either the officers or Gene. Alice certainly didn't complain.

By the time July started passing by, she figured they must've done fifty jumps. The 506th had recently become an official part of the 101st Airborne Division in June, and since then, jump practice had somehow managed to only increase. Between jumps and maneuvers, the men and officers increased time in tactical lectures and lessons too. Usually they didn't have time for partying as they got up so early and off so late that thoughts of alcohol vanished from their minds.

Her fondest moments during the brutally packed days were usually at the very end of the night. Alice had started making it a habit to smoke a cigarette on the steps of their barracks. Nearly every night, someone joined her. More often than not, it included some combination of George, Lieb, Bill, Talbert, or Toye. Sometimes it was more than one, sometimes it was none of them. Alice noticed that Gene only joined her when the others didn't. Some days, people she rarely expected ended up next to her on the grass outside their barracks. Skinny and Shifty started joining her some days. Hoobs and Blithe did so on occasion.

Depending on who joined her, she approached it differently. The talkative ones like George or Bill could go on and on without any sort of prompting. She didn't mind at all. But she almost enjoyed nights with the quieter ones more. 

Skinny and Shifty would sometimes talk to her about their homes in Virginia. Apparently, they came from opposite ends of the state. Skinny came from a town called Herndon, up in the northern part of Virginia. Shifty grew up in the south western end of the state, though he also liked to talk about the area of Norfolk where he and Popeye had both met and worked before joining the war effort. According to him, the Tidewater area of Virginia, where Norfolk lay, had beautiful beaches and good places to go boating.

The discussion would usually turn to her at some point. Shifty especially always made sure to ask her about her home, too. What had she loved about France the most, or Germany? Alice liked to talk about the area of Provence, or the Côte d'Azur. Thinking of Paris had become too painful in the months she'd been with Easy, but her family had traveled often during their first years after moving to France.

Some days, if none of the enlisted made to join her, Alice would find the other Lieutenants. Harry Welsh, often the easiest to locate, joined her more often than not. Over the course of the two months he'd been with Easy, they'd shared smokes before bed semi frequently. Alice ended up opening up about Toccoa, and her time training there. She even told Harry about her family after a while, deciding he'd hear about it from somewhere eventually. For his part, Harry talked about home too. Most frequently, he brought up his sweetheart and fiancée, Kitty Grogan. Alice couldn't help but smile when he talked about her. With Harry present, Skip Muck no longer was the only man of Easy completely smitten by a dame back home. He also told her about his time with the 82nd, where he'd been demoted and promoted more times than he could count for fighting. 

Sometimes, Dick would join them just for the company. Both Nixon and Ron were hard to track down, as they both ran on different schedules than Easy Company. But when she could, Alice sought them both out. The stress levels in Camp Mackall steadily increased the whole summer. Any idiot could see that the inevitable invasion inched closer and closer each day. She tried to use her evening smoking break as a way to calm not only herself, but the men around her.

Avoiding Captain Sobel actually became easier by the day, when it came to time not spent in maneuvers. Even then, it seemed that Sobel preferred to work with Second Platoon, so she hopped over to First with Harry whenever possible. Alice guessed Sobel enjoyed making Dick Winters as miserable as possible; even Sobel must've been able to see how much more fit for command Dick was compared to him. By hooking up with his platoon, Sobel made sure Dick couldn't flourish in command. Alice watched him grow more and more frustrated with their Commanding Officer by the day.