A Soldier of No Importance [ Band of Brothers ] 1

SIXTY ONE

When she woke up, a tent hung over her head. Alice scrunched her eyes shut against the lights. A groan escaped her before she had time to react again. As her mind stopped being fuzzy, pain in her left arm began to return and Alice remembered getting shot. She opened her eyes again.

Alice blinked a few times. She could hear voices around her. After a few minutes of listening to the murmur, she heard a voice close by that she recognized. Alice turned left. "Gene?"

The man in question sat on a cot not far away, chatting with a nurse. He and the woman both turned her way. The woman smiled and moved from the medic's side.

"Welcome to the field hospital," she said. The woman had light brown hair tied back under her nursing hat and a kind smile. "Your friend here was telling me about you, Lieutenant."

Alice glanced past her at Gene. She shook her head. "He is quite the gossip when I get injured."

The woman laughed. "I'm Sarah. You're at the Field Hospital that the 506th uses. You and your medic got here a day ago." As Alice started to sit up, Sarah helped her. "Your arm's doing well. The wound was minor, especially compared to a lot of the wounds we see here."

"When can I go back to the front?" 

Sarah frowned. "Give it at least two weeks, my dear. And that's being generous. We did triage, repaired the damage as best we could. But gunshot wounds take time."

Alice scoffed. "Trust me, I know."

With a smile, Sarah nodded. "We noticed the scarring under your left shoulder. It looks to be at least three years old."

"It is."

When Alice didn't say anything else, Sarah just flashed her a sad smile. She turned away. Once the nurse had left the tent, Alice turned to Gene. The other four beds lay empty. Noise from outside made its way in, however, so there wasn't much peace in the hospital tent.

"How's your leg?" Alice asked.

He shrugged. "Two weeks, like you." After a few moments, he continued on. He glanced at her bandages. "How'd you get shot? No one's told me."

Alice sighed. She looked down at the state of herself. She had no shirt, just white bandages that had been wrapped around her breasts and upper chest for modesty. The bandages over her left arm were tight, pristinely white against her reddened skin. Her pants still had soot and blood caked all over them, but someone had removed her boots.

"Alice?"

She glanced up at him. "Hm?"

"How'd you get shot?"

"Oh." Alice shrugged. Pain shot through her and she hissed. "The Germans bombed Eindhoven. I took a group back to help. I got shot in the confusion." Trailing off, Alice bit her lip. It shouldn't have surprised her that they'd shot at her when she'd spoken German, especially in the confusion of the attack. But somehow it still hurt. "They mistook me for a Nazi."

Gene hummed. He looked at her closely, not saying anything more. Before long Gene laid back down. Alice stayed sitting up, unsure of what to do other than sit and think. She didn't like thinking these days, though. Flashes of memory of the broken, burning bodies of Eindhoven played before her like a movie at the cinema. Their screams echoed in her ears. Alice couldn't shake it. 

Voices outside jerked her back to reality. Some time had passed, but Alice didn't know how much. The light seemed lower. Gene still slept to her left. Before long, the voices came closer and she recognized one of them. Lewis Nixon came inside moments later with a nurse. When the woman saw Alice awake she left them to check on her other patients.