A Soldier of No Importance [ Band of Brothers ] 1

FIFTY EIGHT

September 17, 1944

Eindhoven, North Brabant, The Netherlands

Her body hit the ground with a roll. Behind her, her silk chute crashed to the ground, waving in the wind caught like a tarp. Green shoots of grass tickled her cheek as she rolled from her back. It took a moment of wrestling with the parachute before she had time to focus on her surroundings.

Hundreds of paratroopers descended green against the clouded skies of white. For a brief moment, Alice allowed herself to watch in awe. But reality sank in. Tearing her attention from the parachute-filled sky, Alice checked her gun before following the other members of Easy, Dog, and Fox out of the wide open field and into the nearby Sonsche forest. It didn't take long for her to locate Second Platoon. She joined Buck at the front.

"That went surprisingly well," she muttered.

Buck looked back at her as he joined him. With a smile, he just glanced around and over her, taking stock of who had joined the platoon and who still was missing. Then he nodded to her. "Better than Normandy, that's for sure. You seen Bill?"

Alice shook her head. "No, but I wasn't looking."

He shrugged. Their platoon sergeant would show up eventually. Turning back from him, Alice tried to see if she could spot Bill Guarnere. As she chewed at her lip and tried to count the men behind her, she finally breathed a sigh of relief as the man in question came up from the back of the group. He stopped beside them with a grunt.

"You're late, Sergeant," Buck said, amused.

Bill rolled his eyes. "Just checkin' in on somethin'. I'm here now."

"Come on, we need to reach Son as quickly as possible," Alice said.

The faster Easy, Dog, and Fox could reach the city of Son, the less likely they'd run into serious resistance. They had a limited amount of time. Step one of Operation Market Garden for them would be to secure the bridge at Son.

Unfortunately, Step One failed.

After watching the Germans successfully bomb the bridge at Son, Major Strayer had gathered all the officers of 2nd Battalion. A radio op had already called for the engineers, but they didn't have time to wait. Alice stood between Buck and Shames at the small meeting.

"We need to get to Eindhoven," Strayer said. "The faster we move south, the better chance we have at arriving quietly."

Ron Speirs nodded from where he stood with Dog's officers. "Then we should get moving."

"Captain Winters, take Easy on ahead. Dog, Fox, follow after." Strayer looked around. "Keep Noise Discipline from here on out. Understood?" They all nodded, so he dismissed them. "Let's get moving."

The trek to Eindhoven passed without any sort of incident. They stayed quiet, taking covered routes whenever possible. The cloud cover still hadn't lifted. As the day wore on, she began to worry about air support, or, the lack thereof due to weather. So far since the jump, the supposedly easy mission had been nothing but trouble.

They'd been hunkered down in a long ditch just north of Eindhoven for nearly twenty minutes. Alice felt her anxiety getting worse and worse with each passing minute. The sky, still covered in white clouds, looked almost like a blank canvas. In any other circumstance, Alice might have been impressed, even inspired by the sight. But now it mocked her.

Movement and noise to her left jerked her out of her thoughts. Buck picked his way over to her, hunched for cover. She waited for him.

"We're moving in across the field," he told her, and Bill Guarnere to her left. "Let's go."