Disclaimer: I don't own Band of Brothers. This is mini-series based.

6th October 1944

So, Market Garden had gone wrong and three weeks later they were still in Holland, stuck on the wrong side of the Rhine. The war had stagnated and the murkiest, darkest hole in Europe was suddenly a 5 kilometre wide stretch of land called The Island, trapped between the Lower Rhine and the Waal. The nurses had quickly been moved further South as everything had started to go tits up in Nijmegen, the city currently marked the East most point of the Allied advance. The Germans held territory North and West as far as Opheusden making the Units on The Island all but surrounded but for a very small retreating space to the South.

The period was a slow one for nursing. The war had gone back in time, the Germans had dug their trenches, the British and Americans were hunkering down in theirs, each supported by British artillery in the rear. They were fighting the war the way their parents had fought almost two decades ago and it was immeasurably dull for the girls in the rear just waiting for something to happen.

Talk inevitably turned to men. Dorothea had not stopped talking about her new fiancee, the exact details of the proposal, the ring she was yet to receive, ever since they had arrived in Holland. The other girls were tired of it but in Ally, the new American nurse she found a new captivated audience.

'He's a paratrooper himself,' she said proudly, with that disgusting in love smile that everyone pretended to distain but were really just jealous of. 'A British paratrooper in the 6th Airborne.'

'Is he here now?' asked Ally.

'Oh, no. He's back in England. His division wasn't involved in Market Garden and he was wounded in Normandy, not seriously. Anyway, Malcolm and I are going to marry as soon as we're in the country at the same time.'

'So, Alison…' said Maggie pouncing on the new girl.

'Oh, Ally, please. Ain't nobody but my mother calls me Alison.'

'Well, I wouldn't want to be mistaken for your mother. Do you have a young man? Any handsome American waiting for you?'

Ally laughed. Just like everything about her the laugh was sweet and innocent, she seemed a lot younger than her 20 years. 'Oh, Gee no! My daddy wouldn't let any boy within 20 yards of my front door.'

'But he let you come to Europe?'

'Yeah, he's funny like that,' she shrugged. 'He said I needed the culture.'

This prompted everyone to laugh. Sitting in a bombed in school in Holland they could see precious little culture. Obviously no one had told Ally's father that the old Europe of museums, art galleries and operas was dead and unlikely to be resuscitated any time soon.

'How's it going with your American?' Dorothea asked Grace.

'What American?' she answered, faux innocent. Even so there wasn't much to say about Webster, one kiss did not constitute a possessive pronoun.

'The ever so handsome blue eyed Adonis.'

That wasn't how Grace would have described him. 'David. It's died. I haven't seen him in about 3 weeks and besides even if he did walk in today I really don't think I'd have the time for anything like that.'

'Quite right,' pronounced Maggie. 'You don't want to be tying yourself down to anyone, I don't care how blue his eyes are.'

Matron strode in, her greying hair sweeping in tendrils over her red and sweating face. 'No time to sit around, girls, it's about to get very warm in here.'

'What's happening?' asked Dorothea.

'Jerry's broken through Opheusden. Everything's a bit of a shambles. Major Horton's been killed and no one knows what they're doing. I've been told to expect quite a few casualties.'

'What can I do?' asked Ally eagerly.

'You, Chambers,' scorned Maggie. 'Can go play char-wallah.'

'What?'

'Make the tea.'

Alison stood her ground. She shook her strawberry blonde curls and while the look of steady determination was somewhat lessened by the childish smattering of freckles across her button nose it was clear that she would not be swayed. 'Now look here. I'm a nurse just as good as the rest of you. Just cause I ain't been in no wars or nothing doesn't mean I can't take care of people like I've been trained. Tell me what needs doin'.'

Maggie look shocked but Matron seemed to appreciate the outburst. She appraised the youngest member of her team with a quick flick of her beady eyes. 'You can assist me today, Sister Chambers.'

Grace groaned. That had been her job. 'But…'

'You can run over to one of the Regimental Aid Stations,' instructed Matron. 'See how they're doing for supplies and see if they need any help.'

'Don't know why they sent you,' grumbled the grumpy looking American medic, who looked at her through half-closed eyes not even bothering to get up from his chair. A cigarette hung lazily from the corner of his mouth building up ash. 'It's quiet as the grave out here. Some of the natives are saying they've got a Brit dying up in one of their farmhouses. I sent some guys to go check it out.'

'Well, I'll just wait then,' she said pompously, shooting him one of her most condescending looks. He didn't see it, his eyes were already closed in preparation for a long doze.

'You do that.'

It seemed then man had made quite a home for himself in the red bricked school house turned Regimental Aid Station. He had a small gas stove brewing grainy erstaz coffee, where he had got it she didn't know, as far as she was aware their were only British rations available on The Island and they did not contain coffee. On one of the small children's desks were a couple of blankets made into a bed. He had obviously been here a while.

The whole of the area had been completely evacuated of civillians, no mean feat in such a densely packed area like Holland and the streets were given an eerie ghost town feel that even inside could not be supressed. The ghosts of little Dutch children sat at the desks which were ready to be used as operating tables at a moments notice.

They sat there in awkward silence for at least ten minutes. It was a silence broken only when rocking on his chair the stuck-up medic lost his balance and had to grab the edge of the desk to keep from falling over. She disliked him so much she didn't even hid her snort of ridicule.

Before the wounded British man could arrive, two stretcher bearers and an American surgeon decorated as a Major burst in carrying a Dutch civilian dressed in a dusty black suit. The man's bloodless white face contrasted starkly with his dark hair and clothes and the small, feeble moans he was admitting made Grace uncertain about his recovery. The quiet ones were the ones to worry about.

'Who are you?' snapped the Major bluntly.

'Sister Barnes,' she answered, she left off the "sir" he was American, she wasn't required to show any deference to him. 'They sent me over from the Clearing Station to lend a hand.'

'Well, we could use a hand now.' They heaved the man's body onto the teacher's desk beneath the blackboard. Around the blackboard, she noticed remained brightly coloured children's drawings, one marred by a large, red hand print.

'What happened?' she asked.

'He refused the evacuate, apparently. Got caught up in the shelling in Randwijk. It looks like a skull fracture but we can't move him any further back to a proper operating theatre, moving him 150 yards off the line almost killed him.'

Grace dashed into the store room to collect a bottle of dried plasma, when mixed with distilled water it would be ready to use like an ordinary blood transfusion. The room the boxes of plasma were kept in was cool, she could imagine it as it had once been, full of pencils and books for Dutch children. All of that had now been looted or burnt when British and American forces had moved in.

As quick as she could she darted back into the main class room but it was already too late. She could hear his death rattle, breath bubbling over blood. The man twitched one final time before laying still.

The Major stood up and wiped his bloodied hands. 'Get rid of the body,' he said simply to the Medic who had not moved the whole time before marching into the back rooms in distraction.

A jeep pulled up outside and the quiet in the room was disturbed by the noise of the stretcher bearers returned from the Dutch farmhouse. In a moment of amazing coincidence the man they had found was not a British soldier but and American trooper, an American trooper named David Webster. He was sitting upright and while filthy and bleeding he didn't look any the worse for the wounded leg he was gripping.

'Talk of the Devil,' she muttered and greeted him with a smile.

'Well, isn't this a surprise, Sister Barnes.' The stretcher bearers lowered him to the ground and he hobbled himself over to one of the tiny desks.

'How does it feel being mistake for a Limey?' she asked with a grin.

'The least of my worries,' he answered.

'How are things back there?'

'A goddamn mess. We're just sitting in our trenches watching artillery shooting over our heads. You seen that movie, All Quiet on the Western Front? It's like that. And it isn't going to end any time soon. They're well supplied, it's only a few miles up into Germany. In fact they're so well supplied they don't think anything of firing their 88s on one wounded guy struggling across a field.'

'Can I look at the leg?'

'Oh, yeah sure. I don't think it's bad but it hurts like a good goddamn.'

It was a clean wound a sharp entrance through the base of the calf and an exit wound about half way up the leg. It had avoided any muscle damage and the bone was virtually untouched. It was a one in a million wound and she told him so.

He grinned happily. 'Someone up there likes me.'

'That's someone at least.' A skinny dark man Grace recognized from Bill Guarnere's craps game had entered. He had apparently walked all the way from the line as they hadn't heard a jeep pull up. He was just as ingrained with dirt as Webster, it looked as if the two of them had been rolling in a pig sty, and an equally disgusting handkerchief was binding a profusely bleeding neck.

'Hey, Joe!' called Webster. 'You getting out of this dump?'

Joe Liebgott shook his head despondently, scratching his wounded neck. 'Nah. It's nuthin'. What you got there, Web?'

'This here is a million dollar wound,' Webster answered proudly, looking down at his leg with affection. 'Minimal damage, maximum escape power.'

'Beautiful. Some guys get all the fucking luck.'

'Do you want me to look at that, or are you just going to scratch?' asked Grace, attempting peel away the scrap of handkerchief.

'Hey, don't I know you?' Liebgott frowned. 'Oh, yeah. It's Marlene Dietrich. How you doing Marlene?'

Grace blushed, it wasn't helping her professional attitude. 'You remember that?'

'Hell yeah. Don't see too many dames around about barracks. Most like you take them some place fancy.'

She glanced at Webster mischievously. 'What can I say? I'm a cheap date.'

'Or maybe Webster's just cheap.' Liebgott winced as she cleaned his wound with the same bloodied water she had used for Webster's leg. With everything wiped clean she could see that the bullet had only grazed his neck on it's way past but even an inch to the left could have left him choking on his own blood. One glance at Liebgott's impertinent smile shook those morbid thoughts out her head. It was impossible to imagine his animated face as anything other than alive. 'How about I take you to Paris, huh? Show you a real nice time.'

'Do you remember my real name?'

He shrugged. 'I like Marlene.'

'It's Grace,' said Webster pointedly.

'That's pretty too.' He shifted away from her touch as she retied her own fresh handkerchief around his neck, covering a layer of sulfa powder. It made him look rather rakish, more like a fashion accessory than a bandage. 'Anyway, I gotta get going. Captain Winters will be wanting a report on those Kraut prisoners. You won't believe want that sonofabitch made me do. Ah, never mind, I'll tell you later.'

'Quite a bit later,' said Webster, indicating the leg.

'Yeah. See you around, Web. And maybe I'll see you later, Marlene.' He winked and sauntered out, his rifle slung casually over his shoulder.

'He's a bit of a character,' she said a few moments after he left.

Webster nodded fondly. 'Yep. They all are.'

'What about Winters? Is he a good officer? Liebgott seemed a bit…'

'It doesn't take much to piss Joe off. Winters is a good Officer, better than most. Most are arrogant jerks to begin with, give them some stripes and they get drunk on power. Captain Winters isn't like that. He won't ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself.'

'Well, don't hold me to it but I don't think he's going to be Captain Winters for long.' He frowned. 'Major Horton's dead, at the Opheusden railway. He's your Battalion Executive Officer, isn't he?'

Webster nodded. 'And who'd be next in line to the throne?'

'Winters.'

'No shit.'

They fell into thoughtful silence as she cleared away his old bandages. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall. She thought he had fallen asleep but he didn't look peaceful, a small frown wrinkled his forehead. Suddenly, he spoke. 'I guess I'll be gone for quite a while.'

'A few weeks,' she agreed.

'I'll be staying out of this as long as I can. I can't take it any more.'

She knelt beside him and took his hand. His voice was cracking as he spoke and she sensed that he was fighting tears. It scared her. 'We all feel like that.'

'I know. Will you write to me when I'm in the hospital? I need someone to keep me up on everything that's going on with this crazy outfit.'

'Of course.'

The was a rumble of a parking jeep outside, breaking their moment. Grace slipped her hands from his and shook her head slightly to clear the thoughts that were fogging her senses. 'I'll go see if they can take you back to the Evacuation point.'

At the door she met Eugene Roe, one half of a stretcher carrying a man lying on his front, bleeding from the back.

'It's pretty serious,' he drawled. 'You got a surgeon in here?'

'Yeah. He's in the back. Where's you driver going next?'

'Anywhere you want me to go, baby,' called said Driver with a wink.

'All right, take him to the Evacuation Point.' She nodded at Webster who was struggling to his feet. 'Don't let him walk.'

She didn't say anything else to David as he exited, leaning on the Jeep Driver's shoulder. He waved and she smiled weakly back. She was sure that she was going to miss him, just talking to him, but she had more important things to worry about. Her job was more important than a man. That thought made her laugh, less than a year ago she would have been flirting and dancing with the rest of them. Hell, she had become a nurse partly because of all the men she would meet. Now it seemed a stupid and childish notion. War was not at all romantic, in fact for the most part it got in the way of romance.

'You okay there, Boyle?' Roe leant over the wounded man. Boyle grunted.

Half an hour later the Surgeon and Grace had stabalised Boyle and it looked as though he was probably going to make it. Boyle was packed off back to the rear and then probably back to England where he would be fed and washed properly. She couldn't deny that she wasn't a little jealous of him, not that shrapnel wounds were fun but she would do anything for a warm shower.

She was left to study Eugene Roe. Brief glances in Aldbourne did not mean that she knew him but she soon discovered he wasn't one to bare his soul. In reality he was shy, quiet to the point of awkwardness but thoroughly, thoroughly adorable. The dark hair, the sad eyes he would be irresistable to most girls without having any idea of his effect.

'I'm surprised I don't see you back here more often.'

He shrugged slightly, not looking up from his tin cup of coffee. 'I prefer it on the line. I do more good there than back here.'

'You're a good medic,' she said kindly. 'I know why they picked you for it.'

'You do?'

'It's your voice.' He frowned. 'You have a very nice voice. It's calming.'

He smiled faintly. 'No one's ever said that to me before.'

'I don't believe that.'

He stared into the grainy coffee's dark depths for a few moments. His hands were stained with dried blood, his knuckles were brown with the stuff, it stained the webs of his calluses. They looked like hers. She remembered when she used to file her nails and paint them bright colours. Bruised and battered they were now far from attractive but they were a nurse's hands and she wore them with pride as he wore his.

'You should come off the line more often,' she commented. 'You could always use a break and I could always find you some coffee.'

'Thank you, m'am.'

'God, you're polite, Eugene.'

The next smile was genuine and enchanting. 'Just like my mother taught me.' He swigged the last dregs of the drink before standing up. 'I better get going.'

'Aren't you going to wait for a jeep?'

'No, I'll walk. It ain't far.'

As he was leaving the now familiar screech of a jeep rang through the air for the fourth time that morning. Grace sighed, so much for a slow day.

A/N: Hey, everyone thanks muchly for the reviews, you are all my new best friends.