Hi, so here is another chapter and I hope that you enjoy it. We are now over halfway! Thank you all so much for your continued support, it means so much!

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

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And now we get a little but more into the fiction bit of this story, I never intended for this to be military perfect so please keep in mind that what happens to Louisa in this chapter and the ones that follow didn't happen in real life.


Poetic Justice

Chapter 15-The Open Road.

Louisa is in Belgium trying to keep her head above water as the war drags on, being in the thick of it and wishing to be in the thick of it is not the same and then suddenly something happens that puts her morality to the test.


Belgium if it had not been bombed to pieces would have been nice. Louisa thought it reminded her the most of Austria. London had reminded her of America. It had been crowded, full of life and yet had a dangerous edge to it that had put even her teeth on edge. The constant dropping of the bombs had not helped much other than to help her learn how to sleep sitting with her back up in the air raid shelter.

She had learnt the British had a prickly sense of pride and an intense sense of duty. There was no wining when it came to this war with the British, they just rolled up their sleeves and they made do, from the ARP to the Home Guard, to the men and woman in uniform they made do. Rations had been in affect in America and that had been par for the course but Louisa had always gotten the sense that they had been better off. When she had finally arrived in England she realised that she had been right.

The rations in Britain were cut to the bone. She made do because she ate when she had a chance and she had, had it drilled into her from childhood that you never brought attention to yourself by asking for more. That being said she had to admit that she knew she was dropping the baby fat that had dogged her since childhood. She knew that she was becoming old and tired in her little shabby apartment in London. She knew that she was judged sideways by her landlord (forced to put her up by the British Intelligence Services no doubt) for her accent and she also knew that she was judged a little by the locals but she kept her head down and did what she was trained to do.

The training that the British taught her to do was far more intense than she had wanted to believe it would be. Sometimes every bone in her body would be aching from the drills, she learnt how to fire a gun, how to kill a man with her bare hands (that had been a day and a half being thrown around on a matt by a man older than she was who she was convinced wanted her on her back for another reason) and she had been taught how to run and swim and do this and do that and do everything and anything.

Sometimes she didn't care about her landlord because she fell into bed and didn't wake up until the next day. Her first and only Sunday off in London and she spent most of it in bed catching up on sleep that left her dizzy with relief when she got to stay in past her alarm clock.

But after six months in London at the summer of 1944 when she had just turned eighteen she learnt that the invasion had gone on ahead. D-Day was what they had decided to call it and D-Day it had been. Louisa had been in the Intelligence offices listening in her nails in her mouth trying to remain small and not make a sound. It had been a combination of the British, the American and the Canadian forces that had gotten it done but there had been an intense push from all resistances including the one in France.

And they had done it. Men in every shape and form, land, sea and air had gotten onto those beaches and then into the towns and then into France. There was a sense that 1944 would be the year of liberation and everyone in London was emblazoned with new hope. Even in America the news was looking good. Louisa knew that the Marines had taken back a good chunk of islands, they were ripping them out of the Japanese hands with dogged determination. She had gathered through letters from her mother (who had put aside her anger to still write to Louisa) that her brother was still alive. That while he had been wounded in the latest battle he had been sent stateside to Australia.

That had made her pause over her pen and she had debated how to reply.

In the end she put away her pen.

She was not going to write something that she was not sure she could say.

After those six months, after the invasion she was pushed back to Belgium.

And here they were.

Now.

Belgium was much the same as Austria. It was the same…atmosphere and it was hard for her to realise that she was close to her country.

But Belgium was also a mess.

Louisa had been sent to a church near the Ardennes Forest. There were American's scattered all around them as well as Germans and the Church was used as a local point for wounded men and woman. It was one of those strange places in a war where you could walk one street and find American soldiers and walk another one and find German ones.

If that was what it was like for her, then she didn't want to think about what it was like for the men on the lines.

The problem wasn't the work. She was good at the work. The problem was the war.

She had gravely misjudged the war.

She had made it through in London on a combination of grit and reality. There wasn't any fighting in London, not like there was in Belgium but with Belgium there was combat nearly everyday. Shelling was not just regulated to at night it was all day everyday and indeed the first time Louisa had been introduced to her commanding officer she had been pushed face first into a pile of snow as a shell had come down and blown apart the house behind them.

The shelling and the bombing and the constant lack of electricity, heat, water…that was one thing entirely, the truth was it was winter and bitterly cold. She had gone in with nothing but the clothes on her back and a small rucksack to carry and her boots were not winter boots. Soon she was wrapping her feet with sack cloth in the morning for extra warmth. Sleep when it came was few and far between and she had learnt that her hours of sleep came when they came and she should be grateful for each pressing half hour of sleep that she got and as for a bed! Well that was a pipe dream.

It was hard work, hard conditions and a hell of a lot of danger. Too much danger for her to realise. The resistance worked on it's own way and she instead was interrogating German soldiers a lot of whom had nothing left to loose and some who had been completely indoctrinated. Looking at them she saw her brothers had they stayed in Austria. She saw Rolfe and she knew that their father had made the right decision in getting them out when they had. When she had stepped into that little hospital in the Church and seen limbs blown apart and head's smashed open and bellies torn she had thrown up. Her commanding officer a man by the name of Jenerick, Josiah Jenerick had taken her outside shoved her against a wall and told her in no uncertain terms that if she did that again she was back on the boat to whatever 'fucking foreign place you came from'. He was a bully through and through but Louisa had dealt with bullies her entire life.

She never threw up again though.

But she did get blood under her fingernails, her hair was now tied behind her in a mass of blonde that hadn't been washed in a while. She had gone from her uniform into riding trousers in black shoved into army boots and a black shirt that she had tucked into them, she had pulled over them an old aviator's jacket that had belonged to a man who she was sure had died with his plane but she had not the scruples to care when the jacket had been so warm and Louisa had been so cold.

This part of the story started the day after the Airborne had entered the forest. It was December 1944 and though Holland had been liberated (somewhat) and other European countries were being liberated and the Germans were being pushed back (and being annihilated by the Russians in the East) she got the impression that an American ran POW Camp was not the worst place for the average German solider to be, they had still not ended the war by Christmas. She knew that they were coming close and she had wondered what this would mean, this would be her first real Christmas away from her family. Her mother wrote but the post was so few and far between that she didn't get much of it and it was only filled with the most menial family news.

Her father had never been mentioned once.

She had taken out her pen and paper and more than once had considered writing to him but what was she supposed to say? What could she say? She was beginning to understand why he had been so adverse to the war—the war—there was no fucking words to how horrendous the war was. To how much damage bombs and bullets and blades could do to the human body and even worse to the human mind.

So she did not know how to tell him that he had been right.

But it was early days yet.

Early days.


She had been walking to the little well in the village to get some water. Half of her job seemed to be fetching and carrying things for the nurses half of whom were civilians with grimmer than grim expressions on their faces. This was not London where everyone watched the battles from afar with their fingers crossed. This was in the thick of it and everyone pulled together and did their bit.

So she had been getting water on the dull grey Tuesday morning in December when this story starts again. It had been a nothing day, a nothing kind of morning and the shelling had been the only thing that she had been aware of. And one minute the Church with her commanding officers in it, the men, the woman was there and the next minute it was gone.

The full force of the blast lifted her up and threw her across the ground. She remembered hitting something hard and having the presence of mind to block her head but everything else connected to the solid concreate of the road and so therefore it hurt.

The full force of it made her dizzy and she turned around to see the entire building on fire and she had to roll over onto her side so that she could throw up what little she had eaten. The Germans who had been pressing their way through this country village by village were on their way and despite her looks Louisa knew that she was an officer, a pretty intelligence officer and she was not going to get captured by the enemy. She remembered being told that nobody would come after her if she was.

And she believed it.

She forced herself to her feet her rucksack still with her (she had foolishly believed that some people had sticky fingers so she had taken to carrying it around with her) and she staggered upright every bone in her body aching. She grabbed her gun that had been issued to her and she turned and bolted into the woods.

She knew how to run, she had been trained how to run. Suddenly she had never been more grateful of that fact in her entire life. She ducked and dived into the trees as the first tank came in and she ran like her life depended on it. Her village was a small one next to Bastogne. Once she got to there she would be able to find the American's and she believed that the American's would know what to do with her. Bastogne seemed to be where they were holding the lines and she was retreating backwards towards them as the Germans advanced. She tripped a little and went down cutting her face on something sharp but she was knee deep in snow and so achingly cold and she pushed herself to her feet ran some more and then fell.

She fell into a fucking foxhole.

Of all the thing to fall into.

She didn't know if she had landed in friend or foe's foxhole but someone had definitely been in it because he pushed her backwards and she reached for her gun only to have her hand wrestled. She fought because that was what Louisa did. She fought and she looked up to see green eyes staring back at her and a face that she knew.

She knew.

It was a start anyway.

She opened her mouth but a very American voice got their first. She did not have the time for this, she did not have the words for this either but she knew that she especially did not have the time for it.

"Just what the fuck are you doing in my foxhole little foreigner?"

And yeah, Louisa just did not have the time for this.

But here she was on the open road nonetheless.


And there we go, I hope that you enjoy this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one sooner rather than later. I am hoping I can get out another couple before I do my Christmas update which will be multiple chapters.

Next Chapter-Louisa is in a foxhole with the man who enlisted her and she is not happy about it. To be fair neither is he. The American forces are just confused and the enemy is shelling the hell out of them. All in all it's a recipe for disaster.