A Soldier of No Importance [ Band of Brothers ] 1

SIXTY FOUR

At 0800, after the sun rose brilliantly in the sky, word came by way of Lewis Nixon. Alice and Harry still sat or paced in the CP barn, the former snuggling up with Trigger for emotional and physical support. Her arm had started aching a few hours prior. When Nixon burst into the barn at almost eight on the dot, both of them started up.

"Come on! I'm heading to check out the line," he said.

They got no more information than that until the three had barreled into a jeep. As a corporal drove them, Nixon turned around in his seat and tried to bring them up to speed on what he knew; the Germans and the Americans had clashed at dawn, two companies full of SS versus barely over a platoon of paratroopers, and the paratroopers had won. After about ten minutes, the jeep skidded to a halt on a gravel road. 

All around them, evidence of the battle littered the area. Piles of dead SS soldiers sat around the fields. The stench of death had just begun to permeate the air as the sun rose. Even as Nixon gave orders to send a group of prisoners back to the Allied CP, they came face to face with an exhausted Peacock.

Alice listened to him explain the battle to Nixon and Harry. The biggest thing she got out of it was they'd suffered twenty-two wounded. Peacock called it lucky. Alice called it a shame.

It didn't take long for her to lose track of both Harry and Nixon. The pain in her arm only increased as she stumbled around the battlefield, the ground marred by artillery and grenades. As she stood looking out over the field, bodies of German soldiers lying prostrate on the damp, damaged soil, her heart constricted again. 

Germans. She was German. They were German. If these men held but half the love of the Fatherland that she held, Alice could almost understand their desire to bring it honor. She'd seen the horrible conditions, the shame left on Germany after their defeat in the Great War. World War One, now, she supposed. She understood the frustrations her people felt at their disgrace.

Looking down into the face of a young, dead member of the SS, she once again was hit with a wave of guilt. These were her brethren. They spoke her language, had walked her cities. They knew her music, her art. The brown eyes staring back at her, unseeing, could've easily belonged to her brothers.

As she stood there, overlooking the corpse-riddled field, an image popped into her mind. Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer". Here she stood, alone, looking out not over a sea of fog, but a sea of death. 

"Alice."

It took a moment before she turned around. With a small, forced smile, she found Gene and George Luz both making their way to her. The former seemed about as in pain as she felt, no doubt due to the limp he still experienced.

"Good work," she said, working her way back over to them. "Twenty-two wounded. Any deaths?"

George paused for a moment. Pain crossed his expression before he nodded. "Dukeman."

"I'm sorry."

No one said anything else. I'm sorry seemed to be the only good response to the death of the Toccoa man. Together they moved back towards where Easy had gathered. As they did so, they passed a few POWs waiting for instructions. They spoke German in thinly veiled whispers. Two of them looked genuinely concerned about how they were to be treated.

Alice looked at them. They looked back. Upon realizing she was a woman, they all started moving closer, more confused than anything else, she guessed. With a sigh, she went to move on. But then she stopped. She wanted to assure them they'd be treated fairly. Alice moved over, but not too close. "Keine Bange. Sie werden euch nicht töten."

Upon her German, they started in surprise. Christenson and Johnny stood guarding them and looked over in concern. One of the SS, a young man, looked from them to Alice.