Sea spray and sick coat the plank bottom of the barge-like vessel as it bobs along the water. The heavy sea swells don't make Fitz nearly as ill as the sounds of the other men retching in the landing craft. Even the toughest veteran of the Africa campaign has been reduced by the heavy swells. His section leader, a man who has been mentioned in dispatches, looks like he couldn't break through the skin of a rice pudding nevertheless the Italian defenses awaiting them. Since they'd embarked from Africa the men of 2nd Battalion, Highland Light Infantry had been herded like cattle from ship to progressively smaller ship. Fitz is stuck between desperation to get off the shallow draft and a paralyzing fear to what awaits him outside.

At least half of the soldiers on the landing craft are going into action for the first time. The other half wear faces that said they knew what was to come. Fitz wasn't sure quite where he fit. The Glasgow Highlanders pitiful attempt at a rescue mission in France three years ago was hardly comparable to a massive assault like this. They're invading land that's been held and fortified by the enemy for years.

Fortunately, the Royal Navy and RAF have done their part in limiting interference from the enemy. No searchlights had played on their ships. Despite how easy it would have been for artillery on the plateaus to rain down on the landing ships that had dropped anchor ten miles back, the ship Fitz had scrambled down from via cargo net almost an hour ago, they have been remarkably undisturbed.

Fitz tries to remember everything he could about J sector at Landing Acid Center. He'd studied the aerial photographs, defensive overlays and read every bit of terrain analysis he possibly could. He knew his company's mission, his battalion's mission and the mission of the units around them inside and out. They will land near the town of Cassibile on a crescent-shaped shingle and sand beach. There will be a narrow road that leads to the town of Cassible. The task of F Company is to secure the left flank of the road from the beach that borders an almond grove.

His hands fidget nervously with the strap to his rifle. He looks over the old Enfield he'd spent so long perfecting. Pieces of it, like the flash suppressor, remind him of Jemma. He fingers the basket over the barrel, recalling how she'd insisted the dispersal of gases would help improve his visibility when firing. Somehow the mere thought of Jemma right now helps give him a certain calm. He inhales deeply and tries to think of nothing else but her until the moment the ramp drops.

"Move! Move! Move!" His sergeant shouts, as if the men who have been vomiting non-stop since boarding the craft need telling twice to get off it. Fitz splashes down into water that is nearly up to his waist. He instinctively lifts his rifle high across his chest, recalling the hours of training at the CTC. The first thing he's struck with is how much warmer the water is than the cold North Atlantic water and northern lochs they had trained in. The next thing he notices is how quiet it is. He makes an effort to scan the beach as he makes his way to shallower water, but the minimal light from the crescent moon makes it difficult to see much except his fellow soldiers making their way to the beach. Hearing the burp of machine-gun fire further down the coast, he points his rifle toward shore and attempts to run as soon as the water level allows him.

He is so desperate to get on land, he runs into the man in front of him and they both go tumbling into the surf. The soldier screams at him and yanks him to his feet by his collar like he is a kitten getting scruffed by his mother. Then he shoves him forward and tells him to run. He'd laugh at the obvious words if he weren't so afraid. Completely soaked now, his speed now hampered by the wet uniform, he is confident a bullet will find him. But he hears neither the snap of a bullet or shells whining overhead. The only sound he does hear is his own panicked breathing.

Terrified and confused about how quiet their sector is, he loses any sense of where the rest of his section is. The entire company is ashore within minutes and it's an overwhelming feeling to know this is taking place at this very minute at beaches all over the island. He takes in several shaky breaths and waits for orders, conscious of only one singular fact. A fact he's known for months, but had always just seemed theoretical and far away. No more a reality than Arthurian legends he'd read as a child.

Looking out on the rest of his company, sitting on the Sicilian beach he's overwhelmed at the knowledge that that fact is now his reality.

They've invaded Europe.

By nightfall, the Eighth Army has secured the beachhead and already advanced nearly ten miles inland. He's heard one combat team is already on its way to Syracuse. His unit, however, is still on the beach at Cassibile. D-Day plus one means thousands more troops and vehicles will be coming ashore tomorrow and their job is to maintain security and make sure it all goes smoothly.

Exhausted and weary, he knows he should sleep, but instead climbs to a bluff overlooking the beach. The sheer scale of it all is overwhelming. Barrage balloons have been set up and down the beach, and the sea is full of ships set to disembark troops tomorrow. It all makes him feel small and inconsequential.

"Not a bad view, is it?" Fitz startles at the strange voice that, in turn, laughs at his jumpiness. "Expecting an Italian?"

"No, I just…"

"S'alright. You're an idiot if you're not on edge." Fitz can see now it is a sergeant who has pulled up next to him on the hillside. Though he sees the same unit insignia on his sleeve, Fitz is struck by the sound of an accent that is decidedly not Scottish. "They've gotta be planning something. This was all too easy. Toughest resistance came from the damn swamp."

"Maybe they're tired of fighting," Fitz remarks.

"Maybe," the sergeant muses before lighting up a cigarette and offering one to Fitz. He declines, informing the sergeant he doesn't smoke, who laughs at the comment and informs Fitz bluntly that he soon will.

"This was easy. All this. Today. Far too easy. Now we've gotta fight our way in." The foreboding words should scare Fitz. He's heard as much from other men in his unit who have fought the Germans and Italians in Africa. "And if the Italians are done, it just means it'll be Germans."

Fitz doesn't offer a reply. Today hadn't been a true taste of combat and he knows it. They'd been shelled briefly with some inaccurate artillery fire, but it had been much like his time in France. He'd been gripped with fear all day, awaiting something that hadn't ever really happened. The difficulty today had come from how narrow the routes inland were. Establishing the beachhead and fighting the Italians hadn't been the problem, quickly clearing the congested beach of Allied personnel and equipment had.

"I saw you setting up the 18 Set this morning over at Battalion HQ," the sergeant remarks. "You're pretty skilled with it. You a signaller?"

"No."

"Got a look at that rifle of yours too," he admires, leaning over to peek another look. "I know that's not issued. Where'd that scope come from?"

"I made it."

"Yeah, how much would you take for it?"

Fitz laughs off the inquiry until he sees the sergeant is serious.

"I spent two years working on these modifications."

"Yeah, and?" the English sergeant presses.

"It's not for sale." Fitz laughs again at his persistence.

"Well, could you modify mine? Make me another one of those?"

"Aye, back home I could."

"Well, we've got to get back home then. Because I need one of those." He motions to Fitz's rifle and extends his hand. "Lance Hunter."

"Leo Fitz."

He's a glorified stevedore and wants to laugh at his father, who had so desperately wanted his son to fight in a war, but unknowingly placed him in an infantry company that's been turned into a logistical unit. Other battalions are fighting their way toward Mt. Etna miles inland, but he's helping organize petrol and ammunition dumps and moving stores from ship holds to the maintenance area.

The brand new soldiers are annoyed at being relegated to such menial duty, but the veterans are pleased with the safe posting. He can hear Allied warships firing almost round the clock and the German bombers strafe the coast, but those sounds of the war are the closest they get to combat.

He's content with the posting. It's only been four days, but there is a regularity and routine to his days. He knows when he'll take his meals and how much sleep he will get. He can write to Jemma every day and think about that perfect moment on the platform in Bletchley without wondering whether tomorrow will come. The invasion has been a spectacular success from what little he can see from their beachhead, though he hears the Americans on the western shore have run into more resistance.

He doesn't see Sergeant Hunter again until D-Day + 3. His company is providing security at the inland assembly areas while Fitz's is still organizing materiel at the beachhead.

"Been looking for you," he remarks suddenly as Fitz walks up the beach with a water jug in each hand.

"I'm right where you left me," Fitz grits, continuing to make his way up the beach.

"Well, I'm moving down the coast and our company needs someone to work the 18 Set."

"What happened to yours?"

"Numpty fell off a horse."

"A horse?"

"Don't ask." He rolls his eyes. "Look, I already got both COs to approve the transfer."

"I'm not trained as a signaller," Fitz protests.

"No, but I'm sure you could probably build the damned set right now if I asked you," Hunter scoffs.

"And I'm pretty sure you can find someone else to work it," Fitz dismisses, reluctant to leave his safe position on the Beach Brick team.

"But I don't want someone else, I want you," Hunter speaks the last word with such intensity, Fitz has a hard time coming up with a response. Aside from Jemma and a couple lads at University who had wanted to cheat off him, he'd never known anyone to desire his company.

"You can't have my rifle," he warns the sergeant.

And so Fitz finds himself in 14 Platoon, H Company, a member of Sergeant Hunter's section. He's pleased to see their duties aren't very different from what Fitz's had been at Cassibile, they're just ten miles up the coast and closer to Syracuse. Fitz is paired with a young private named Smyth to work the 18 Set Wireless. Smyth carries the bulky radio around on his back and it is Fitz's new job to operate it. They stay close to the lieutenant, who communicates with the company commander through the wireless. It's mostly mundane personnel checks and accountability, but it helps Fitz get comfortable speaking on the wireless, something he's done shockingly little of after four years in service.

Smyth is a quiet lad, who Fitz gets on with well enough, but it is Sergeant Hunter who quickly becomes his best mate. He writes about him in nearly every letter to Jemma. Sometimes it's about their foraging expeditions to gather olives and almonds, other times it's about how much he wants to shoot Fitz's rifle. He tells her what a difficult time Hunter has understanding some of the Jocks with thicker accents and how they take the piss over him being one of the only English soldiers in the company.

When Fitz dares to ask why and how he ended up in a Scottish Territorial unit, it prompts a discussion about how long both have been in. Fitz begins talking about his father then without any prompting from Hunter. About how he's been in the Black Watch for nearly thirty years and how disappointed he'd been when Fitz hadn't immediately followed him into service after University.

"He wanted me to join the Royal Engineers," Fitz admits. "I know he thinks the Territorials are a laugh."

"I used to think they were too," Hunter admits. "I was in the Commandos before here."

"The Commandos!" Fitz's eyes widen. He's heard stories about the elite military unit, but had truthfully doubted their existence.

"Fought in Norway and the Channel Islands." As he rattles off names of battles, Fitz fights off the urge to ask him about each of the campaigns. "When they started filling these regiments with recruits from all over, they started moving Regulars around too. "

"So they sent you from the Commandos to the Territorials?" It doesn't take an expert to know that's a demotion.

"I used to be a subaltern," he informs nonchalantly, as if he were informing Fitz what he'd had for breakfast.

"You were an officer?"

"Not a very good one," Hunter laughs. "My Company Commander hated me." Fitz knows there's a story here, which Hunter seems all too glad to tell.

"Do you miss it?"

"Not being a lieutenant," he laughs.

"Still. I mean, the Commandos to here - "

"Commandos don't have anyone with a rifle nice as yours," Hunter remarks.

"Come off it."

Hunter throws his knife at the ground and insists this is a good unit full of good soldiers. There's the implicit acknowledgment that he's talking about Fitz, but Fitz isn't sure how to take the compliment. Nobody's ever called him a good soldier save his mum.

Much like his first conversations with Jemma, he and Hunter talk about nothing and everything. Fitz can hardly believe how much they get on. Sometimes it's life in the army and news of the war. Others it's as simple and benign as their favorite rations. Although the sergeant is three pay grades above him they become inseparable.

"You've got to stop giving the cigarettes away!" Hunter complains, a fag pursed between his lips as he rummages through Fitz's Compo rations for the week.

"I don't give them away. I trade them for the tinned plum pudding."

"Well, trade some my way," Hunter whines.

"Trade me some plum pudding."

"I'll trade you a whole week of plum pudding!" He hits Fitz in the chest with the tin of pudding.

Hunter asks constantly about the identity of the woman he writes all the time. Fitz isn't sure why he is reluctant to talk about Jemma, but by week two he can no longer hide her identity.

"She's just a - "

"If you tell me she's just a friend one more time I will beat you to death with this." Hunter holds up the small hand shovel they've been digging a new slit trench with.

"It's the truth," Fitz laughs.

"You write her every day."

"Not much else to do here."

"There's talking to me!" Hunter presses his hand to his chest and feigns being hurt. "So is she waiting back home for you?"

"I don't know," Fitz scratches his head unsurely. "I think...maybe."

It's small pieces of information at a time that he reveals.

When Hunter tells him about a tall leggy blond he'd met on leave, Fitz blurts out that Jemma's got brown hair.

When Hunter reveals he's from a town in Buckinghamshire, Fitz reveals that's where Jemma works.

Somehow a month passes on the shores of Sicily. The invasion is a success. By August they've stopped unloading gear and have begun loading it to prepare for their move north to Messina. By August he's stopped hiding Jemma's identity completely. He tells Hunter about meeting her parents and "maybe there is". The sergeant laughs at how he hangs onto 'maybe', but doesn't give him too hard a time. There's lads in the platoon hanging onto less.

They're preparing for another invasion and, even though command hasn't said anything, everyone knows it. Fitz thinks that's why Hunter doesn't take the piss too badly. He supposes the stack of letters he receives from Jemma on their fourth week in Sicily helps too.

It's a large stack. She rambles about songs on the wireless and a bicycle ride with Bobbi on their day off. There's nothing remotely personal save for the way she signs it.

Love, Jemma.

Seeing the small smile on Fitz's face, Hunter begs for details and tries to peek a look. It takes Fitz nearly an hour to read all the letters because he reads each one twice. Each one ends the same way. He makes a habit of reading each letter every day before he writes her, hoping they'll arrive before they make it to the mainland so she knows, at least for now, he is okay.

He knows this time he is tempting fate. Twice now he has been to war. Twice now he has been saved from combat. He's been strafed by Stukas and Messerschmitts, but only from the safety of a bunker. He knows what incoming rounds sound like when they land a mile away, but he's never been shelled directly. He's never seen death aside from the dead horses that lined the roads in France. He's only fired his weapon twice the entire time he's been at war and both times it had been without eyes on an actual target.

Operation Baytown is smaller than the massive landing on Sicily and it's consequently easier for Fitz to memorize every detail about it. Hunter laughs at how much time he spends learning the sand tables and every inch of enemy occupied territory. Knowing as much as he can about the foreign land is comforting. Like he had before Operation Husky, he reads the country guides, studies the sand table and continues to learn as much Italian as he can.

Hunter just laughs and insists that he doesn't need to do it. The operation will be much the same as the last. They'll come ashore. They'll ready the beach. Then they'll remain at the port until it's time to take over another.

For the first week Hunter is mostly correct. The sky sings with friendly shells from Sicily as they chug across the narrow strait in the dark to George Beach. The landing is completely unopposed. Italian soldiers don't fire a shot and come streaming out waving white flags. Second battalion quickly sets up a defensive perimeter to secure the beachhead and flow of supplies just like in Sicily.

He contemplates writing to Jemma in cipher to tell her exactly where they are and what they're doing. She'd be proud to know he was part of the first Allied troops to actually make it onto the continent, a fact Hunter is quick to point out. He thinks she'd take comfort in being able to point to the toe of the Italian peninsula and know he was somewhere there.

Instead he tells her benign details about the long craggy mountain range that runs right through the area and the great citadel built in Roman times. There's not much else to talk about. They've shelled the town so furiously for the last three weeks leading up to the invasion there's not much left of it but broken shutters, piles of rubble, cracked tiles, and twisted wire.

It must have been a beautiful place at one time with its medieval walls and picturesque shops. Now there are few houses anywhere that are intact. Fitz wonders when he comes across such towns how many of these had cellars full of trapped men, women, and children, or how many animals were caught in smashed stables. No one seemed to be doing any rescue work.

Still the Italian people are welcoming and willing to provide them with fresh cheese and olives. Hunter laughs that sometimes he feels like he's out at a dinner party and not at war. "This might be the best gig in the war," he laughs.

When Fitz writes to Jemma at the conclusion of his first week on the Italian mainland, he realizes that it's been four years since war was declared. That means it's been nearly five since he joined the Territorials.

"Jesus, you've been in as long as I have," Hunter remarks then points to the lack of even a single chevron on his sleeve. "How the hell are you still a private?"

Fitz confesses then what he knows Hunter has been eager to get out of him for over a month. He tells him about working with the armorer, then in his own garage with Battalion HQ, and then in his own workshop in Edinburgh.

"I stand corrected. That sounds like the best gig in the war," he whistles admiringly. "And that's where you made this?"

"I made all kinds of things there," Fitz admits. "Mostly for the Home Guard, but there was more. I started building a scope to identify targets at night."

"For your rifle?"

"On any rifle. On a tank even. Jemma was helping me."

He tells him then about her visit to Edinburgh and the things he'd confessed on the train platform, both the way she'd reacted and the way he'd reacted in turn. In retrospect, it seems so stupid. To think that he could simply stop writing to her and that would make his feelings for her go away.

"So you're in love with her?" There is no knowing smile or grin accompanying the inquiry, "I reckoned so. Didn't know you'd actually told her."

It is that moment, when Fitz is on the verge of admitting he'd never told her properly - not in any of their tearfilled goodbyes on the train platform or in the hundreds of letters he's written to her over the years - that everything changes.

It starts off as a rumor. The rumor soon becomes all anyone can discuss. Then they have a meeting in the Company CP and it becomes reality. The 32nd Beach Brick is being disbanded. Second Battalion, Highland Light Infantry will return to serving not as the main defensive force of the beachhead, but as a light infantry unit.

According to higher, they've done a wonderful job organizing the beachhead. Too wonderful. Their CO cites statistics about how many thousands of troops and vehicles of the Eighth Army have made their way inland. However, the nature of the countryside is making it impossible for all those troops and vehicles to move. The Germans are demolishing roads and bridges and the Eighth Army can only move as fast as the engineers can clear the obstructions.

Fitz hears little of the details. Something about only moving 48 km in six days and a mission brief at 1900, but only one thing matters.

They're moving to the front.

pThey're moving to the front./p