Hello everyone! Thank you all for your reviews on the last chapters. I'm still ridiculously excited that you guys enjoy my story so much!
I'm currently struggling with the chapters for episode 5. It's a really tough one. It covers between 3 and 4 months and a lot happens during that time. I'm still trying to figure out what to focus on and how to write it... I have some ideas and hopefully, I can have the chapters ready on time, but if you guys have any ideas or suggestions, I'd be really grateful for them. :)
Also, please note that I don't know a lot of Spanish - especially not the Puerto Rican variety. It's all research, online translators and a bit of a feeling for language. So I apologise for any mistakes.
Of the five bridges the 101st Airborne had been assigned to capture, they only managed to take four. They were held up by 88s and machine gun fire from German outposts before they could reach the last bridge at Son. When they finally broke through the resistance, the Germans blew up the bridge.
Frances had a close encounter with an 88s projectile that blew up mere inches away from her. She was knocked off her feet by the blast, but luckily escaped serious injury.
"You really had somebody looking down on you", Spina commented as he cleaned the shallow cuts that littered her face.
She chuckled and lifted her left shoulder in a lopsided shrug, grimacing as the bruises on her back already began to make their presence known. "My mom, I'd like to think", she said.
"Yeah?"
"Mhm." Frances slid off the crooked desk that had been repurposed as an examination table. "She died when we were still young, but Dad often said that she's watching us from Heaven. 'Your mother is probably rolling her eyes up there', he'd say whenever Andy and I got in trouble. And then Uncle Archie would laugh and say: 'Jim, Anna is most definitely laughing herself silly up there'."
Spina laughed and asked: "That where you got your tricks from?" He paused when he realised how judgmental that sounded, but when Frances just giggled, he relaxed.
"That's right", she grinned proudly. "Mom and Uncle Archie grew up around street magicians, pick pockets, card sharps and all sorts of con artists." Picking up her helmet and shrugging her rifle over her shoulder, she gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for patching me up, Spina. See you later."
Then, she headed outside, whistling a cheerful tune as if she hadn't been on the receiving end of an explosion less than an hour before. Spina stared after her and scratched his head. There were some interesting characters in this unit, he mused.
Easy travelled in style atop the tanks accompanying them, only the scouting team walking next to the massive armoured vehicles that rumbled along the street towards their objective. The weather was splendid and Jessica was happy to lean back, listen to the chatter around her and tease the replacements in her squad. They were so green and jumpy, it was ridiculous.
As they rattled past a road sign, she heard Webster say: "Vincent van Gogh was born in Nuenen."
Cobb, who was in her squad as well, snarked: "Yeah, so what?", while Hoobler joked that they sure taught useful stuff at Harvard.
"Who is that anyway?", Jessica pretended to wonder, grinning at Webster's scandalised expression as he dove into a passionate lecture about the famous painter.
All banter and joking died off when they passed a thin silhouette by the roadside. It was a young woman, head shorn, clothed in dirty rags. In her arms, swaddled in a blanket that was grey with dust and dirt, was a baby.
Many soldiers averted their eyes.
Mia stiffened and made to slide off the tank, some rations and a few rolls of gauze in her hands. She was held back by a hand on her shoulder. Turning her head, she received a silent shake of the head from Jessica.
"Don't be stupid, you wanna break your neck?", the blonde hissed in response to the medic's narrow-eyed glare, taking the supplies out of the medic's hands and tossing them to Maitland walking below.
.
"Hey get a load of General Patton!"
Hoobler's amused call pulled everyone's attention to the front of their convoy. Lieutenant Brewer was standing there, looking through his binoculars, seemingly unaware of the fact that he was practically inviting enemy bullets by being in the open like that.
Jessica snorted and mumbled: "He might as well paint a bull's eye on his chest", while Theresa shook her head, incredulous at the officer's carelessness.
Bull hollered a warning, but it was too late.
A loud crack split the air and the man collapsed in a spurt of blood.
"Sniper! Clear the tracks!"
"In the ditch!"
"Get behind the tanks!"
Theresa swore before joining the shouts of the NCOs. "Off the tanks, move, move, move!", she bellowed as everyone scrambled for cover in the roadside.
The turrets turned and aimed at a German tank speeding down another road. Two deafening booms later, enemy soldiers climbed out of their now destroyed and burning tank.
Rifles opened fire and bullets flew.
.
"Medic up front!", Bull cried from where he was crouched on the road by the lieutenant's side. "Medic up front!"
Pepping raced past them, climbed the slope of the ditch and rushed to the fallen man.
Bull got to his feet and shouted at them to keep moving.
"Move!", Johnny Martin echoed his friend's order, which was repeated by his fellow NCOs behind him.
Another shot split through the chaos and Pepping went down, his leg shot out from underneath him. Hashey, who was on point for Bull's squad, stared in horror. Webster and Hoobler were still shooting at the Krauts.
Bull ran to get his squad moving, seeing that his replacements had frozen, leaving them in a vulnerable position. But from what he could see, Theresa was doing a fine job spurring them into motion.
"Come on, move! We're sitting ducks here!", the woman called, her own squad following without hesitation. "Keep moving, they shoot at stationary targets!" Her hand found a handful of Hashey's arm and pulled him along. "Go!"
Up on the road, Mampre had arrived to tend to Lt Brewer and Pepping. The lieutenant was bleeding badly from a wound on his neck, legs kicking as he writhed, struggling to breathe. Pepping just lay on his back, hands clasped over the hole in his thigh, jaw clenched tightly against the grunts of pain that escaped him.
Easy headed into Nuenen, platoons spreading out to cover as much ground as possible. While they hoped that one tank would be all they'd see of the enemy today, they knew it was highly unlikely. The town almost reeked of ambush.
Their suspicions were proven right soon after when a Tiger tank hidden behind a haystack decimated one of the British tanks, effectively cutting the road.
All hell broke loose.
A hailstorm of bullets rained down on them, tank shells reducing solid walls to piles of rubble and dust. The radio was constantly buzzing with transmissions, the radio ops shouting themselves hoarse over the noise of battle.
The enemy just came from everywhere.
.
A group from second and third platoon was pinned down by a sniper. Every time they so much as twitched behind the garden wall, another leaden volley flew their way.
"Where the hell is this guy?", one of the replacements wondered.
Skinny ducked as chips of brick and mortar sprayed up when another round buried itself in the wall, two inches above his head. "What the fuck's he doing, he's not hitting anything!", he cursed.
"He's taking pot shots, hoping to get lucky!", Louise responded with a moue of distaste. "Stay down!"
Another solitary shot rang out, the bullet ricocheting off a piece of debris with a metallic clang.
Calculating angles and distances, she deduced: "He's close and up high, probably on a roof."
"Got him!", Ana María relayed, radio receiver wedged between ear and shoulder. "Across the street, four houses down. On the parapet."
Louise signalled her understanding and waited for her chance. As soon as the next shot broke, she was on her feet. Whirling around, she brought her rifle up and in the span of three seconds aimed and fired.
"Let's go!"
.
Theresa took out another Kraut, but there were so many that it hardly made a difference. Black smoke from the burning tank that was somehow still moving obscured her vision.
She gritted her teeth and ordered her guys to fall back. There were just too many. Where the hell did they all come from?
She heard Johnny shout and a burst of automatic gunfire right afterwards. It was answered by the rattle of a machine gun. Lord have mercy and watch over them.
"Move it, go, go!", she called even though nobody needed any extra encouragement. The enemy MG spitting slews of bullets on them was motivation enough.
"We had to leave him", Hoobler gasped as he reported to Lt Peacock, back hitting the low wall behind which they had taken cover. "He's still alive."
Roe appeared on the other side of the lieutenant. "Who's hurt?"
"Van Klinken. Other side of that hedge." He had been shot when they'd crossed the hedge to the ditch on the other side, several rounds of machine gun fire hitting him as they tore through the dense foliage.
Roe pulled a bandage from his satchel, acknowledged with a soft "Uh-huh" and hurried off.
Hoobler uttered an emphatic curse before following him while Cobb provided covering fire.
A well-placed bazooka round curtesy of Chuck Grant took care of the MG that had felled Van Klinken. Several people were thrown to the ground when a tank fired through the house, the side of the building exploding in a cloud of dust, wood, glass and stone.
.
"Fall back! Fall back!"
They were retreating, hopelessly outgunned. Catherine was keenly aware of the Germans closing in as she tended to a wounded replacement. "Let's get him out of here", she told Christenson, hurriedly tying off the bandage and hooking her fingers into the injured man's belt loops to hoist him up.
Mortar shells blew up uncomfortably close as they double-timed it towards the rear. Another tank demolished another house in its attempt to cut off their escape route. They stumbled, but both of them managed to keep their feet under them.
"Keep moving!", Christenson ground out.
.
Hoobler and Roe returned, dragging the unconscious Van Klinken between them.
"Webster, take over!", Hoobler shouted, ducking back behind the low wall. He asked Peacock what they were going to do.
The lieutenant stared at him and replied: "I'm not sure!"
"Sir, they're about to outflank us! We-"
He interrupted himself when Mia came skidding around the corner, crouching down on his other side. "We have to leave, now!", the young medic said without preamble, her accent sharp with urgency.
A high-pitched whine cut off any further deliberations.
"Mortar!"
They ran.
.
The first shell landed six feet away and kicked up a fountain of dirt and shrapnel.
The second hit disintegrated the wall that had served as their cover.
The dust settled, revealing Cobb in the corner, knees pulled to his chest, eyes wide and unfocused. Blood was trailing down his face from multiple small cuts.
Mia was with him in a flash. "You're okay. Hurry, get him out of here!", she instructed, hauling the shaken man to his feet and handing him off to Hoobler before turning to the frazzled lieutenant. "We need to go!"
"Armour has cut the road! We have infantry everywhere!", Luz bellowed into the radio, covering his ear with his free hand to have at least a chance of hearing a response over the racket of the battle. "Repeat: Armour has cut the road! We are covered in infantry!"
He heard Perconte report the same thing. There hadn't been anything from Ana María in a while, her last transmission being that the sniper had been taken care of.
Guarnere shouted at them to fall back, Maxine echoing the orders on the other side of the garden path.
They were halfway across the lawn when part of the house blew up. Bricks, shards and splintered pieces of wood whizzed past them as the concussion slammed into their backs. Some were knocked over, but most of them managed to jump into the ditch unscathed.
.
Buck went down right in front of Louise. Malarkey hollered for a medic, dropping to a crouch with Muck on the other side. They all had their guns raised, ready to defend the wounded lieutenant. Roe came bounding up to them, easily leaping over the fallen man.
Buck greeted him with a faint smile. "Hey Doc."
"Lieutenant", the Cajun returned, wasting no time as he examined the wound. "It's gone right through, Buck, side to side, both cheeks."
They were showered in dirt from another mortar explosion, but none of them did more than duck their heads to shield their eyes.
"Malarkey", Buck said, voice strangled with pain, "get 'em outta here. Go."
"What?!"
"Just go and leave me here for the Germans, okay?"
Malarkey argued back: "Are you nuts?!"
"We'll carry you", Roe chimed in as he bandaged the wounds.
The tow-headed lieutenant scoffed. "Are you kidding me? I weigh more than you two guys combined."
"Don't be ridiculous!", Louise snapped in between shooting two more Krauts.
Malarkey paused for a moment, an idea forming in his head. Decision reached, he got to his feet. "Come on."
Muck and Louise followed him without question.
.
As they ran back into the fray, the two mortar men learnt five new swear words and a number of colourful ways to describe someone's mental state.
They made short work of kicking a door off its hinges, not pausing in their actions when Guarnere spotted them and yelled: "What the hell are you doing?!"
"Help us!", Malarkey yelled back.
The platoon sergeant did so without hesitation or further questions and in a matter of minutes, they were using the slab of wood to drag the wounded Buck Compton towards the rear.
Plumes of black smoke reached up into the innocently blue sky, flames flickering bright orange and yellow against the dark backdrop. Several buildings burned. Easy Company scrambled up the dykes onto the road, past their own tanks and piled onto the trucks waiting for them.
Ana María hurried to get onto the nearest truck. Her right hip and shoulder were sore from when she'd been hit by flying pieces of brick wall. The same pieces of brick wall that had taken out her radio.
Blindly reaching up, she grabbed two of the hands that waited to pull her aboard. Regaining her footing, the Puerto Rican thanked Alley and Lesniewski, then dropped into the next best seat and began to examine her radio.
"No tengo tiempo para esa mierda", she muttered angrily, pulling a screwdriver from one of her gazillion pockets. "Pedazo de basura."
Alley, who happened to sit next to her, watched with a strange sense of fascinated amusement as Ana María inspected her radio for damage, all the while cursing under her breath. He didn't speak Spanish, but her tone and expression conveyed the message clearly enough to fill in the gaps between the few swear words he recognised.
"Is it busted?", he asked as she scowled at the dented casing before poking at some wires.
Ana María interrupted her unhappy tirade to acknowledge his question. "Uhm..." She studied the device with a frown. "I can't really say without opening it up, but if the damage is as minor as I hope it is...I should be able to fix it."
.
Squad leaders did headcounts and relayed them to their platoon sergeants while they got ready to move out. Lipton, in his capacity as first sergeant, gathered those reports so he could inform Captain Winters.
"One bullet, four holes", Bill quipped as they got Buck settled in the bed of one of the trucks.
Lip cracked a small smile. "Yeah, it's almost a miracle."
They moved away, Bill mentioning: "I don't think we know where Bull is."
Catherine joined them, the look on her face heralding bad news. "Sir, I got one wounded", she said formally.
Lipton already knew that, had seen it himself. "Okay, Wilson, thanks." He glanced over at Bill. The platoon sergeant was obviously feeling the same worried foreboding as him.
"That's not all, sir", she continued, wiping blood-stained fingers on her OD shirt without a second thought. "I have one missing, too."
Frowning, Lipton mentally took stock. Roe was accounted for, as was Catherine, obviously. Mampre had gone to the aid station with Pepping and Lt Brewer. Spina...Spina he had spotted on one of the trucks, bandaging some poor guy's arm. Which left-
"Arricante."
Bill cursed.
The ranking medic nodded, mouth grim, eyes pained. "She hasn't made it back", she said, tone heavy with unvoiced possible explanations. And implications.
.
"Do we know what happened?", Lip asked.
Catherine shook her head, looked down. "I...I only just noticed", she confessed, features twisting with guilt. "God, how could I not notice?"
The First Sergeant squeezed her shoulder. "You had your hands full", he offered in an attempt to console her. "You had wounded to take care of."
Bill's jaw tightened as the sinking feeling of dread gave way to angry determination. They had just taken one hell of a licking, which was bad enough in itself. They also had two Toccoa guys MIA, which made it a lot worse. Who knows what the Krauts would do if they found them?
Add to that the fact that one of the missing was a medic and thus unarmed. Then factor in that said medic was also a young woman and Bill had to consciously stop himself from thinking about it any further before he threw up. "I'll talk to the guys", he promised. "Somebody's gotta know something."
Catherine managed a shaky, but grateful smile. "Thanks, Bill."
He nodded at her and went to find out what the hell happened to Bull and Mia. Somebody had to be the last person to see them.