A Soldier of No Importance [ Band of Brothers ] 1

FIFTY NINE

It didn't take long for them to set off towards the other bridges. Alice remained in Eindhoven, meeting with members of the Resistance and trying to gather what intelligence information she could from them. By nightfall, Easy returned and took up lodgings around the outskirts of town. Absolutely exhausted from a day of paper pushing and interviews, Alice walked in the dark from the house she'd done her work in to wherever Easy had set up for the night.

She stood outside the city. The sky still hadn't cleared, so instead of stars and the full moon that they should've seen, only a blanket of black was visible. Behind her she could still hear the parties being thrown by the liberated Dutch. Alice closed her eyes. Letting her head fall back a bit, she tried to relax.

A lot had come to light that day, more than she'd expected. The Resistance happily shared their information with her. They had German troop movements, code names of contacts in other cities, records of eliminated targets both human and structural. It hadn't taken long to find out that their primary method of resistance had been smuggling and hiding their Jewish brothers and sisters.

Many of the people she interviewed for information had done just that. They all knew about the Jewish work camps; men and women and children taken away to build things for the Nazi cause. None of them knew where the camps were, though, or how many and when they'd been built. A loosely organized underground network had been built to smuggle the Jews of Holland to Amsterdam and other port cities, and from there, out of German occupied Europe.

One estimate she heard placed the number of Jews who had gone missing near a hundred thousand, but the total number could've been far greater since the start of the war. As Alice stood outside the city, darkness around her, she tried to breathe. Ignore the parties, ignore the brash Americans, ignore the rowdy liberated Dutch.

For a while she just stood there. Alice didn't move, didn't talk. She just breathed. But soon enough, Johnny Martin's voice from her left distracted her.

"Second Platoon's been looking for you," he said. Moving to stand next to her, he glanced at her face. When she didn't respond he just shrugged. "So's George. Non-stop."

Alice cracked a small smile. "Yeah, I bet." But Alice didn't move to follow him. She stood looking off into the darkness of Holland. "Good work, securing the bridges."

"Find out anything useful while you were stuck here?"

"Some."

Johnny nodded. "Well, some of us grabbed a cleaned out barn along the other side of town. I don't beg, but if I did, I would beg you to come so Bill, George, and the rest of Second would shut up about where you are."

She scoffed, and then shook her head. "Fine, fine. I get the picture."

Alice followed Johnny around the edge of town. They walked in silence. When the farmhouse came into view, she paused for a moment. Such a picturesque little barn... When they reached it, George, Skip, and Penkala sat outside smoking. At their approach, all three of them shouted.

"You found her!" George grinned. Standing up, he waited for them, hands on his hips.

Johnny just shook his head. "It was the only fucking way to get sleep around here."

Pushing past them, he went inside. Alice stood with her arms crossed. George, Skip, and Penkala started telling her all about their missions since she'd left them that mid morning. At first she listened, but soon Alice tuned it out.

They went inside. As she nodded along absentmindedly, she took up a vacant spot along the wall and plopped down. To the far side she saw a lot of Third and First lounging about, some playing cards, other digging into food that looked decidedly nonmilitary. Second Platoon lay or sat scattered around as well. She saw Joe and Bill chatting with Lipton in the back far corner. Skinny, Alley, and Liebgott had started a card game. Soon enough, Alice tried to tune everything else out as well.