Disclaimer: any recognisable characters, places or situations, including the TV show Band Of Brothers are not mine and are the property of their respective owners. All original characters and content are however mine. Feedback is appreciated, constructive criticism not just criticism please. Not sure if I'm going to carry on with the story or if I'll delete it as I do not want to disrespect the relatives and friends of the real men and heroes of Easy Company. Anyway thanks for reading enjoy! :-)

Chapter One: We Stand Alone

July 1942 Camp Toccoa Georgia

Atrocious bosses and hard labour were two things that I was familiar with after my parents' death. Despite my past experiences nothing fully prepared me for this, training as a paratrooper with my fellow-men of Easy Company. Each of us with our own personal reasons for joining the fight in the war, mine mainly the $50 bonus we get, as well as the challenge of it of course, both physically and mentally. We were thrown together at Camp Toccoa in July 1942, we were mostly young guys; I had not met anyone over the age of thirty. We all came from different backgrounds some of the men are well-educated, others like me no so much. Education had to take a backseat when my brothers and sisters were going hungry; I was the head of the household after my parents died. As with any company in the army we were expected to train, live, fight and potentially die with each other. During the days of grueling training we started to form a bond as a unit, I feel one of the main contributing factor for this bond was one man, our disdain towards 1st Lieutenant Herbert Sobel. He was a man who could rub anyone the wrong way. He was a pompous buffoon that nobody liked. One prime example of the idiotic man was right now, I would bet my bottom dollar that he will find some bullshit wrong during the inspection.

I stand in the second line of men, glancing at my fellow friends who are waiting rather impatiently for Sobel to arrive, the heat becoming increasingly unbearable, flies and mosquitos constantly buzzing around us, the occasional man swatting them away. We have only been at camp for about a week and I'm already missing my life back home the increasingly louder footsteps of boots distract me from becoming too homesick, looking to the left slightly I see the owner of the boots, Sobel. He strides towards the rows of waiting men wearing his beloved jacket, Sergeant Evans in toe.

"You people are at the position of attention!" his shrill voice breaks through the silence. I can only imagine the internal groans and swear words everyone was saying. Swearing had become an everyday occurrence since arriving here, yes I had sworn before coming here however it seemed as if every other word here was a curse.

"Private Perconte, have you been blousing your trousers over your boots like a Paratrooper?" so he's chosen Perco to be his first victim. Frank continues to look straight ahead at the lieutenant.

"No sir."

I switch off at this point already sick of hearing Sobel's bullshit what I can gather is that he chews

Perco out about creases in his pants and ultimately revokes his weekend pass, like he always seems to do lately. He picks on Luz next though I'm not listening to him anymore; I focus on the small hum of a fly that has decided to bother me. I only tune back into the conversation to hear Sobel revoke yet another man's pass. Sobel moves along the group once more staring meticulously at each member until he stops directly in front of me a look of disgust on his face.

"Name" he demands aggressively whilst for some strange reason glancing at my ears.

"Larsen James W sir" I answer

"Private do you bathe regularly?" did he really just ask that?

"Yes sir" I reply slightly pissed off.

"Well private you do not do it correctly, you have dirt behind your ear pass revoked" well he has officially sunk to a new low in my eyes. I have most certainly cleaned behind my ears; my mother was always obsessed with cleanliness, as she always said "cleanliness is next to godliness". In my sulking state I tune out Sobel's nit picking once more, I can't bear to hear him any longer, the only parts I catch are him revoking Lips pass, him calling Malark private bullshit and can only assume he revokes his pass. The last person he put under the spotlight is Lieb, he revokes Lieb's pass due to a rusty bayonet. I hear him knock Joe's knife on his helmet, then proceeded to the front of the group holding Liebgott's bayonet in the air as if he was presenting it to us.

"I wouldn't take this rusty piece of shit to war and I will not take you to war in your condition!" He yells and throws the blade into the dry muddy ground, the tip landing at an angle; I wish it landed on his foot instead. He continues his shouting. "Now thanks to these men and their infractions every man in the company who had a weekend pass he lost it" once again I can only imagine the groans that everyone was suppressing following that announcement, weekend passes were like gold dust. After a dramatic pause and a sweeping glance Sobel speaks again. "Change into your P.T gear we are running Currahee." F-ing great another run up that hill.

Sobel walks off and Winters steps up telling us to fall out and that we have two minutes, with that everyone sprints into the barracks to throw on our shorts and white T-shirts. When we make it inside everyone is scrambling to change. Martin seems visibly pissed off at Frank. They start to argue loudly over Franks trousers. Me, Joe and Malarkey watch them fight for a moment before turning to each other.

"He's such a shit, my bayonet wasn't rusty at all" Joe grumbles lowly next to me as he pulls on his shirt, Lieb was very much like me when it came to his anger he has a short temper as it is but his fuse is ten times shorter when it comes to Sobel. Nodding I throw in my thoughts on the matter.

"Yeah well apparently I'm dirty, complete and utter bullshit!" I exclaim making my distaste of the man clear, Malarkey looks over to us with a look of agreement to my statement.

"Talking of bullshit that's what my name stands for, the bastard. He is lieutenant bullshit more like" a number of the men around us nod in agreement.

The hatred was strong towards that man today, if we could harness this emotion and use it against the Krauts then in my opinion the war would be over very quickly. When they are finished dressing they make their way outside Liebgott leading whilst I stay back to slip my shirt on, I notice White sat on his cot, not wearing PT uniform, I think he's decided to quit, I don't blame him but I'd never leave something unfinished, once I start I have to end. By the time I get out of the cabin I am near the back of the group, I push past the soldiers from the others companies as they make their way to the mess hall, lectures or to the movies. They often piss us off with their comments about us running and doing extra training, they always have more free time than us, but we will see who lasts longer when it comes to the war.

We set off with Sobel leading the group towards the bane of my life. Currahee. It apparently means we stand alone; all I know is that it is hell. If I was to imagine hell it would be this. No I'm not exaggerating, 3 miles up and 3 miles down as well as we stand alone have become Easy's mottos of late. The mountain, well technically hill but it may as well be a mountain towers over the cabins of the base; it is a constant reminder of what we have to face nearly every day. The tall evergreen and pine trees densely coat its incline mud and rock paths cut through the terrain. I remember the first day here I was stood next to Tip, we both looked up at it and he turns towards me and says "I'll bet that when we finish the training program here, the last thing they'll make us do will be to climb to the top of that mountain" his face was priceless when a few minutes later a whistle was blown and we were ordered to dress in P.T and run to the top and back down. That was only a week ago yet with all the training we've been doing it seems so long ago. Many of the men who we met on that day left after that, they couldn't cope with the demanding physical nature of the training. I can see a number of the ones who are still here leaving before we get our jump wings.

The pace was set steady and is fast for the average person but we aren't average, we are the best of the best. It seems that today's 'infractions' have made Sobel push us harder than normal. The atmosphere far quieter than normal, not many people speak, or sing, we just focus on the task in hand, running up the steep grassy, rocky ground and running back down again. Sobel would often yell one of his many obnoxious and ridiculous catch phrases such as "high yo silver" or "the japs are coming to get you" he thought that the latter would motivate us to run faster, it never really did, one of the main reasons why we would try to run faster was to escape having to spend too much time with him, as well as the strong competition between many of the men, some of which were athletes during their college and high school days. It didn't take long for me to jog past some of the slower guys, not that I'm fast, now Winters is fast; he normally makes it to the top first. I had caught up to Don and skip by this point.

As we were running up a particularly rocky part my feet and ankles began to hurt. Skip was running directly in front of me when he landed awkwardly on a rock causing him to go over on his ankle and twisting it badly, as he was falling to the ground we all rushed to help him out however Sobel thought otherwise.

"Do not help that man!" He orders. Some people follow his command but others like me subtly attempt to pull him up, we manage that without any hassle from Sobel for disobeying orders as he had returned to his annoying yelling of his catchphrases. When I eventually make it to the top Winters is their obviously having reached the summit first his was shouting words of support, I wish he had Sobel's place instead he'd make such a better leader.

"Come on Jimmie you can do it!"

I flash him an exhausted smile as it slam my clammy hands onto the cool stone at the top then preceded the steep descent.

If we thought running the mountain normally was tough then boy we were in for a shock when we ran it in our full gear with guns in hand the next day. That was unbelievable, I thought I was going to die during that, the only thing that kept me going was the shouts of support from the others, mainly Winters once again. Sobel was working us like dogs.

We are now on a late night March in full gear under the instruction that we cannot drink from our canteens or smoke. I'm not sure if Sobel paid attention in officer school but I was under the impression that water was vital and dehydration was bad, but hey I'm no doc but Sobel seems to think he is. Marching at the back of the group I could not fully hear the conversation between bull and Winters, all I managed to hear was some laughs after they had exchanged words. When we first started the night marches they were 11 miles in length and we wore our P.T gear, with each day we added extra items of uniform, which brings us to todays 12 mile march in full combat clothing rifle in hand. Focusing on the task in hand I resist the urge to drink water, God I wish I could smoke now as even if I was allowed to I couldn't, I'm out of smokes, I shouldn't have gambled them away, now Luz had two of my cartons of Lucky Strikes.

Once the march was over Sobel makes us stand in line in front of him whilst we pour all of our precious water onto the parched ground. It pained me to watch every last drop fall. Everyone's canteen continued to empty apart from one, it finished emptying far quicker than the others and he had noticed this and was looking very pissed off. Christenson didn't follow Sobel's orders; he had drunk some of his water. We all knew the consequence of this was re doing the exercise. Sobel order him to start running now. The poor bastard looked like he was about to keel over. Sobel then pulls Winters to the side and starts to yell at him, Sobel gesturing to us every now and again. Sobel stalks off and Winters announces that all weekend passes are revoked. We were dismissed. I made my way to my cot changing out of some of my gear. Exhausted after a day of lectures, calisthenics, the obstacle course and the night march, today was Friday and we had some free time now for the first time in a while.

Some of the other guys were in the bunk house milling around, talking in their little groups of close friends, reading magazines, reading and writing letters or playing cards. Luz was in the middle of dealing out the cards to Don, Skip, Tab and Perco when he notices me.

"You want in?" he asks a knowing grin on his face.

"George you know full well that I have nothing left for you to take so if you ask me one more time in the next three weeks I think I'll have to kill you" I half-heartedly joke, resulting in a loud eruption of laughs from the group, even Luz was laughing. That's what I like about good old George Luz he could take a joke, another reason why I like Luz is his uncanny ability to impersonate anyone, his usual favourite is John Wayne, but it seems today he has a different person in mind.

"Well if you're going to kill someone, do it simply" he says putting on his best Cary Grant impression, sounding remarkably close to the actor's voice.

"Yeah, yeah whatever Luz just get back to your game" shaking my head and smiling at him as I head towards my footlocker to retrieve some reading material. Luz turns back to the group of gambling men and continues dealing them in.

I settled down to read, well view my Titter magazine. After looking at it for a while the urge to smoke was beyond bearable especially when everyone else had lit up. Searching relentlessly in my pockets and footlocker for about five minutes I give up, I don't have any. That's when Tipper and Liebgott walk in and sit at their beds.

"Hey tip, Joe, can I have a smoke?" I ask

"No that's what you get for being shit at gambling Jimmie" Lieb shoots back as he puts a stick into his mouth and lights it with his lighter. If I wasn't so exhausted from today's exercises then I would've jumped up and grabbed the cigarette out of his mouth.

"Yeah sure have two" oh thank god for Tipper. Thanking him whilst accepting the smoke I relish it. I've never wanted a cigarette as much as that in all my life.

I carried on looking at my magazine for a while, the other fellas doing whatever they were doing up until Winters enters the room. We all snap up and salute he salutes back.

"At ease gentleman, McDonald, Toye, Perconte, Lipton, Muck and Guarnere can I have a word with you outside please" he addresses the group.

The guys all stand up and share questioning glances then follow the redheaded officer out the door, almost immediately the rest of Easy go back to their original positions and continue to talk, laugh and play.

"I wonder what he wants to speak to them about?" Tipper asks me from his place on his bed directly to the left of me.

"Probably punishment for some infractions or some shit like that" Lieb cuts in from his bed opposite us. My craving for smokes getting the better of me now regretting not taking up Luz on his gambling offer though Tip was kind enough to give me two, they're not going to last long. Thinking on my feet feeling that was the perfect opportunity to win some more cigarettes back.

"Yeah Joe's probably right, it normally is about that, I wager this cigarette that it'll be mess duty." I exclaim as Joe and Tipper smirk at the fact that I was gambling my last smoke again.

"I'm not taking any part in this bet and neither should you Jim considering your gambling luck recently" Tip laughs as he shakes his head at my antics.

"Fine I'll bet you a whole carton that they'll be on latrine duty" Lieb boldly states.

Now I have to win I need those smokes and he knows it. I nod in agreement to the terms just as the men return through the door, each with pissed expressions. I hear them complain about Sobel and punishment for infractions, my face breaks out into a smile at this; I can already taste those Lucky Strikes. They make their way to their footlockers and beds, I was about to ask what punishment it was going to be when I hear Bill explain to his best friend.

"Goddammit latrine duty is shit, literally" Gonorrhea grumbles out loudly to Joe Toye who is situated down the other end of the long rows of beds.

"Jesus Christ" my face dropping considerably. A loud cackle of laughter can be heard coming from my two pals.

"Hand it over Jimmie" Lieb manages to spit out a smug smirk painted on his skinny face.

"Fuck you!" I throw the cigarette at him, he winks and sticks it between his lips and lights it. He breathes the smoke in deeply sighs and leans back on his bed, clearly glad that he won the bet and that he didn't have to surrender his full carton.