Humanity of the Broken [ Band of Brothers ] 2

FOUR

She didn't sleep more than a handful of hours. Maybe it was the total silence of the Ardennes, but whenever she heard anyone moving about, Alice woke up. At 0900 hours, that meant Dick Winters. Just as Alice climbed up, though, she saw Dick pause. Then he gestured to someone else.

Alice pulled her pistol out. Moments later, she heard Dick speaking what bit of German he'd picked up in lessons and from her. Alice followed his gun barrel and saw an enemy soldier moving towards them, hands up. She pushed herself out of the foxhole.

To her surprise, Gene Roe stood near him. Even as she reached them, two other soldiers had hurried over and come up behind the young German soldier. Dick spared her a quick glance before he disarmed and inspected the man.

Man. Alice nearly laughed. It looked more like a boy who stood before her. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Her brain said she needed to be angry, mad that this boy had joined a force intending to kill her. But her heart went out to him.

"Woher kommen Sie?" she asked.

Everyone, German and American, stopped what they were doing for a moment to look at her. But she only spared Dick a quick glance before turning back to the German soldier. He watched her closely.

"Woher kommen Sie," she repeated.

"Lübeck," he said. After bracing himself, when he realized they weren't going to shoot him for speaking, he glanced at her again. "Sie sind Deutsche?"

"Ja. Hamburg."

He stared at her for a bit. Alice felt her voice catch in her throat. His city wasn't far from hers. As Dick pulled a bandage from the man's jacket and tossed it to Gene, he watched him and then turned back to her.

"Warum bist du bei den Amerikanern?"

To her surprise, the question didn't sound accusatory. He seemed more curious about why she fought for the Americans than angry. Alice hesitated. Then she turned to Dick. "Can I talk to him, before we send him to Regimental?" Alice asked. "Please?"

Dick looked at her silently, and then at the prisoner. He took a deep breath. But he nodded. "Five minutes."

At the same moment, they heard a jeep rumbling through the snow. As Dick turned away and, with a newly arrived Colonel Strayer, went to meet the jeep, Alice grabbed the soldier's arm and guided him a ways away. The two guards moved with her. She had them wait about fifteen feet back, worried about how their presence could scare the German soldier. Then she started to speak to him in German again.

"You asked me why I fight with them?" When he nodded, she sighed. "I want to free Germany from Hitler. Protect my home, our home."

He shook his head. "Do you know what they did to us? Have you seen what they did to Hamburg, to Lübeck? It came on us in the night, like a great fire from heaven. But it wasn't from heaven, it was from hell. My father and brother burned that night. These Allies, they want to destroy Germany."

"No," Alice insisted. "They want to destroy Hitler, and the Germany that the Führer has twisted."

They watched each other for a few, quiet moments. She forgot about the cold, and the wet snow, and the biting air. And it seemed the soldier before her did as well.

"What's your name?" Alice asked him.

"Franz." He waited a moment. "And yours?"

"Alice." Then she paused. "Adélaïde. My mother was French, from just east of Épinal."

"I could call you a traitor for wearing that uniform," Franz said a moment later.

Alice nodded. "You could. And you'd be right. I am a traitor to Hitler's Germany. But I'm here, fighting in this uniform, because Germany lost its way. Were the Allies wrong in what they did to us after the last war? Absolutely. But those men, they aren't these men. And Hitler is a lot worse than these."