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."

"And these Americans, these Allies, they're going to win this war? You would fight under their colors, their orders, against your own people to see the Führer fall?"

"To free Europe, to free Germany? Without hesitation."

Alice looked into his brown eyes, and he looked right back at her. Neither spoke for several moments. She hoped he was genuinely thinking about what she'd said.

"If you don't do anything stupid, these Americans will treat you fairly," Alice added. She turned back the guards and called them over. "You don't need to die for Hitler's dream."

Franz gave a small nod as the guards took hold of the side of each arm. He watched her for a few more moments as he was dragged away. Her feet wouldn't move. Alice stood where she was, looking at the tree where she'd had Franz stand.

"You alright?" Nixon looked at her carefully, coming to stand in front of her. He took a long drink of his flask. "Dick said you were talking to a prisoner?"

"Ja." She shook her head. "Yes. I'm fine."

"Good. Then you can come help me and Dick from throwing rocks after General McAuliffe's jeep," he said.

He said it so seriously, that Alice actually turned to him in surprise. But when he started smirking, she just shook her head. Alice tried not to laugh. She failed.

"What did he say?" she asked in surprise.

With a roll of his eyes, Nixon just gestured back to where Dick stood looking at a piece of paper in the middle of the CP. As they walked over, he glanced up. "Learn anything interesting?"

"Not to you," she said. With a shrug, she tried to catch a last glimpse of Franz and the two soldiers. "I think he may be more inclined to cooperate for Regimental, though."

Nixon nodded. "That's good, then."

He and Dick told Alice about General McAuliffe's ultimatum. With 1st Battalion retreating from Foy having taken heavy casualties, they needed to be prepared for the worst. They'd already sent a runner up to the line for all three companies in 2nd Battalion, but there was more to do.

"Doc Roe is still looking for supplies," Dick told her. "He's trying to find 3rd Battalion, but I'm not confident they'll have any more supplies than us."

"Probably not," she agreed.

"I want you to head into Bastogne. I'm sending Harry for HQ Company. Track down whatever supplies you can scrounge. Beg, steal, I don't care. Get us something. Top priority is medical supplies. After that, ammo, and then from there anything to keep everyone warm."

"Right."

A jeep arrived after about ten minutes for her. The ride into Bastogne didn't take long, a little over five minutes, and before long she'd climbed out of the jeep and looked around. Almost immediately, Alice felt like throwing up.

Along the sides of the road, dozens of corpses, probably over a hundred along the whole route, had been piled high. The freezing temperatures meant they couldn't dig a grave, and they certainly couldn't burn that many bodies without risking the attention of the Germans. But despite the piles of bodies having a logical explanation, it hurt to look at. These men, these soldiers had given their lives for a foreign nation and couldn't even be buried properly.

"Pretty horrible, huh," the driver told her as she stood next to the jeep. "I threw up when I first came into Bastogne."

Alice glanced back at him. After asking where they'd set up a base for the wounded, she set off into a church at the end of the road near the town center. Around her, Alice saw civilians chatting in small groups. Soldiers congregated with themselves.

By the time she reached the red-brown bricked church, she'd already seen half a dozen wounded men limping around or trying to take some time to have a smoke. She found the inside even worse. Men lined the walls, leaning for support. Half of them didn't take notice of her, the other half watched her in confusion.

Alice took the steps down. Her boots pounded against the stone, echoing around her. Moans and groans filled the air. At the bottom, she halted in her step.

"Are you wounded?"

Alice looked left at the sound of a woman's voice. She found herself looking at a tired young nurse, her face drawn, with light brown hair. But when they looked at each other, Alice saw her surprise.

"You're a woman?" She walked over. "With the Americans?"

Switching to French, Alice nodded. "Yes. I am part of the European resistance."

At her french, the woman flashed her a small smile. "I'm Renee. From here."

"I'm Alice, from Paris." She moved over to her, out of the way of an American medic who watched them closely. "You're a nurse."

"Yes. I was visiting my parents for Christmas when the Germans attacked. Now we're stuck." She sighed. While checking on the bandage of an unconscious soldier she continued to explain. "I've been trying to help the Allies. There isn't much for me in Brussels anymore. But in Bastogne, I can do some good."

"You don't look very happy about that," Alice ventured.

Renee sighed, straightening back up. "No. I suppose I'm tired of patching bleeding bodies back together."

"Then why do you keep helping?"

"The Nazis got my fiance. They took him away because he's a Jew. If I stop this, I might as well pull the gun on him," she explained. Then she looked over at her. "What did you come for?"

"Supplies. Anything you can spare," she told her. "Especially bandages."

"Come, we'll see what we've got."

Alice followed Renee further into the church. About half the thrown together cots lay occupied. As she passed a medic, she heard him talking to another man about impending casualties. Apparently the men retreating from the 506th's 1st Battalion were on their way and needed help, bad.

"There isn't much," Renee said with a sigh. "I suppose you can take a bag of the bandages. They're bedsheets. But that's all. If you come back tomorrow, there may be more we can offer. It depends on how much we need for today," she explained.

Alice took the small bag of bedsheet strips. "Anything helps."

"No morphine, no plasma," she added. "I'm sorry, we can't spare that right now."

Suddenly another woman's voice, shouting from one room over, pulled Renee away. Alice hurried after her. Soon they came up to a young black woman, also speaking French. Alice looked at her in surprise. But there wasn't time for introductions as a dozen men were brought down the stairs into the aid station.

Alice hurried out of the way. With little medical knowledge, Alice was about as useful as the men on the line would've been to the wounded. Without a chance to say goodbye, Alice hurried up the cleared stairs and back to the jeep.

She struck out on the rest of her list. She only managed to find one blanket and no ammo. With a heavy heart, Alice flagged down a jeep heading back towards the 506th. The ride went smoothly. But by the time she reached the CP, in mid afternoon, the tension had increased tenfold. News of the Germans marching from Foy had circulated. With 1st Battalion gone, that left 2nd Battalion to defend Bastogne. Everyone hoped it would be enough.