It took all day on the eighteenth for the 506th to occupy their positions. Easy took up a position in a straight shot from Foy back in the Ardennes forest with the 501st on their right flank. The 506th's 1st Battalion occupied Foy itself. Alice didn't envy them at all. The Germans would attack there first. 

That first day saw foxholes being dug and lots of meetings with Battalion and Regimental. They had little time for much else, but what time they did have, they tried to nap. Napping took real effort, though. For Alice it took crashing from total exhaustion that night to be able to ignore the biting cold and snow in favor of resting.

By afternoon on the nineteenth, Alice already felt herself going stir crazy at the CP. Dick took pity on her. Armed with orders to check on Easy Company and report back to Battalion on their progress, she made the hike up to the line.

The crunch of the fresh snow beneath her boots made more noise in the forest than anything else around her. The gentle stillness of the Ardennes coated in snow seemed to suck the simplest of natural noise from the air. Her face stung so bad that Alice didn't even want to touch it. The irrational part of her brain told her her nose would just fall off.

Alice kept her pistol out as she walked. Her hands shook as she held the grip. She'd managed to scrounge up a pair of worn out gloves when going through the supplies for the CP, but they did little against the wet cold of Bastogne. And as much as she knew the benefits of having a helmet on during a war, the metal felt so cold against her skull that Alice genuinely considered going without and hoping for the best.

She caught sight of a couple people in a foxhole directly in front of her, about twenty yards ahead. Almost instantly, they whipped around, guns trained right on her. She put her hand and her gun up in surrender. They put their own down.

"Hey, Lieutenant," Hoobler said with a grin. "Come to join the rest of us in this hellscape?"

Alice laughed. She moved up towards them, coming to crouch down by their foxhole. Hoobler sat inside with Skinny, the latter with his arms and legs as close to his body as possible for warmth. Hoobler had a smile, Skinny just sat with his expression so straight, it almost made her laugh. "Hey boys. Thought I'd take a walk, see the sights."

"Well do us all a favor?" Hoobler asked.

She chuckled. "Anything for you, Hoobs."

"See if Foxhole Norman can get sent to the Russian Front."

Alice knew she shouldn't laugh. But she couldn't help it. Soon enough even Skinny had a smile on his face. Alice shook her head. "That's above my paygrade, I'm afraid." She stood back up to continue on.

"You said you'd do anything for me, Alice," Hoobler argued, still grinning.

With a roll of her eyes, she tried to stuff her smile down. It took walking away to be able to manage that. Her arms across her chest did little to warm her, but she tried to think otherwise.

"Is that Marlene Dietrich?"

Alice grinned as George, Skip, and Alex popped up along the side of a foxhole, cigarettes hanging out of their stupid grins. George, who had called over to her, moved up to sit on the edge of the foxhole. She joined him.

"Not Marlene Dietrich," Alice quipped back. She gave an exaggerated sigh. "Just a lonely, German girl out for a stroll in the Ardennes."

Alex snorted out a laugh. "Right. Armed with a Colt M1911. Totally innocent."

They all cracked up at his point. For several minutes, Alice stayed and chatted with the three of them. It amazed her at how unphased they seemed by the poor conditions and lack of supplies. Though she supposed if anyone from Easy Company would still be laughing, George, Skip, and Alex were the three.

"Alice?"

She turned around from the edge of the foxhole. Lipton, half smiling, walked over and joined them. Immediately, she pushed herself up to stand with him. "Hey, Lip. Just the person I came to see."

He gave a small laugh. Shaking his head, he gestured down to the three men in the foxhole. "Don't get too comfy, boys."

"Don't worry 'bout us, Lip," Skip insisted.

"Yeah, yeah," he said back. Turning to Alice, he gestured away. "You needed me?"

They walked over to an open spot beneath some trees far enough to be out of earshot. Alice studied him. His nose glowed red, almost comically so, and she would've laughed if Alice hadn't realized she certainly looked no better. After glancing around the forest, she nodded.

"Winters wants a report on Easy. Protocol says go to Dike, my brain says go to you," she told him. "So far everyone I've met seems to be okay. Thoughts?"

Lipton sighed. He looked around, through the trees. Then he turned back to her. "Most of them are fine, especially the Toccoa men. I've encouraged the NCOs to take turns in foxholes with the replacements, but so far it doesn't seem to be catching on," he admitted. "It's only been a couple days, though."

"How's Dike?"

He straightened up. "I'm sure he's doing work."

"Lip, it's me."

With a small sigh, he nodded. "So far, I've not seen much of him. Buck's doing his best to communicate with the other Platoon Leaders, but Dike's not doing any better here than he did on the Island."

Her heart sank, but Alice certainly wasn't surprised. She didn't respond, just nodding ever so slightly as she looked around at the various foxholes in the Ardennes. 

"Can you do me a favor, though," Lip started, a moment later. When she nodded, he shuffled in the snow. "Look, I know you've got your favorites here." When she went to object, he just smiled and shook his head. "Who doesn't? But would you mind visiting some of the new boys? I've tried to get the others to do it. But most of them don't want to, since they just..."

"A lot of them die," she summed up.

"Yeah." Lip frowned. "Yeah, they do."

They stood in a moment of silence. Neither spoke. The emptiness of the snowy forest surrounded them. As Alice thought about the death rate of the replacements compared to the Toccoa men, she understood the hesitance of the older guys to befriend them. Finally she looked back up at Lip. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll go talk to them."

"Thanks."

She shot him a small smile and nodded. Lipton directed her towards a few foxholes. Apparently Babe and an even newer guy, John Julian, had taken up residence over there. She headed over.

A rifle and a young, pale face with dark eyes popped up towards her not long after. Alice held her hands up in peace. It didn't take long for Babe's unmistakable Philadelphia accent to cut through the quiet.

"Hey, Julian, she's on our side. Drop the gun," he snapped.

Alice laughed, "Thanks, Babe. You're John Julian, right?" Moving over to them, she crouched down at the edge of their foxhole. When he nodded back, she smiled. "Call me Alice. You guys have room for me?"

"Yeah, 'a course." Babe scooted over.

She slipped in. Moving to sit closer to Babe, she smiled across at Julian. With a chuckle, she just shook her head. "So, what terrifying stories have the NCOs been telling about me these days?" When Babe let out a snicker beside her, she smiled even wider.

Julian shrugged. He readjusted his gun. "They said you're the best sniper in the whole Battalion."

Alice started laughing again. "Ok, I'm flattered, but my money would be on Shifty if we were using American weapons."

"Julian, she ain't gonna admit to anything," Babe said.

"Oh yeah?" She turned to Babe. "Is that so, Heffron?"

Suddenly he looked slightly worried. "I just..."

With a laugh, Alice turned from him back to Julian. "Babe, Garcia, and Hashey all got terrifying stories of me going Kraut hunting all on my own. Martin and Guarnere insisted I was the scariest sonofabitch in the Regiment."

"You are," countered Babe. "But not for those reasons."

"What do you mean?" She looked at him in confusion.

"Word is, you've got Sink's ear, an' Winters and Nixon too," he ventured.

She stared at him for a moment before grinning like an idiot. With a small shake of her head, she tried to deny it. "Those rumors have been going around since Toccoa, Babe. I have yet to be able to use my powers of suggestion to get anything meaningfully important done for me."

"You trained at Toccoa?" Julian asked.

She turned back to him. "Yes, I was there at the beginning."

"Hey, Lieutenant, we've heard lots of stories," Babe ventured. After a quick scan of the forest, he turned back to her.

"What kind of stories," she asked.

"Some of the guys call you a Nazi," Julian admitted. "The new ones, mostly."

Babe glared at him. "Ey! She ain't a Nazi."

"I've been hearing that one since day one, boys," she admitted. Settling down further in the foxhole, Alice sighed. Her head laid back against the frozen earth. "I am not a Nazi. I am German. I'm also half French."

"Why'd you end up in the paratroopers?" Julian asked.

Alice closed her eyes for a moment. After taking a few deep breaths of frigid air, she shrugged. "Well, I worked against the Nazis in the Maquis, one of the Resistance groups in France. I'm fairly well connected to the Free French," she admitted. "I had a friend at the University of Paris who got me and several friends involved in the Undergound."

"Who?" Babe asked.

She smiled sadly at no one in particular. "Geneviève de Gaulle."

"De Gaulle?" Julian looked at her in surprise. "Like, Charles de Gaulle?"

"The same." She nodded. "Geneviève helped us organize, spoke about her Uncle's vision and the Free French. When I joined a Maquis cell, knowing her and having contacts in Germany made me a good choice for this job. I also know English, German, and French fluently, and have working knowledge of Dutch."

"Wow," Julian murmured.

"I trained starting at Toccoa. Dropped on D-Day, dropped in Market Garden. Got wounded there, as Babe knows." She saw him nod. "Now I'm here."

Babe watched her for a second before turning back to Julian. "See, she definitely ain't a Nazi."

"No." Alice shook her head with a small frown. "No, I'm only a Nazi if every German is."

After a few more minutes of small talk, she moved on to the next foxhole. Most of the men she spoke with fell into two categories: either they had zero interest in hearing anything she had to say, or listened on bated breath. She checked in with Garcia and Hashey too, both of whom she'd tried to stay up to date with since they'd rescued Bull.

But before long, night started to fall. Through the grey cloud cover, they didn't get to see the sun setting, but it kept growing darker and darker. With a last quick word to Lipton, Alice headed back to the CP.

Dick and Nixon sat huddled in a small tent-like shelter, sipping at coffee when she got back. Alice set her gun back in her holster and plopped down on the ground. Nixon handed her a cup a moment later.

"How was your adventure?" Nixon asked.

She shrugged and turned to Dick. "They're handling it surprisingly well, even with the weather and the lack of ammo and supplies. But they're barely getting hit with anything," she added.

Nixon sighed. "Yeah, well, let's hope it stays that way."

She did. Once she'd scrounged up a meager dinner, Alice returned to her foxhole. She'd managed to track down a tarp in the CP supplies and used it to cover her hole. Ordinarily, she'd have been fine, even happy, to stare at the sky. But the absolute black of the cloud-cover gave her tremendous anxiety. The tarp helped stave that off.

But even with the little hideaway she'd set up, the frigid cold and the oppressive silence of the Ardennes kept her awake. She hadn't slept alone in combat basically since they'd first invaded Europe. She'd always had a foxhole buddy in Normandy, usually Harry, and in Holland, they'd had barns and farmhouses. Now, she felt the absence of Easy vividly. Even in the Alps, she'd had her brother and the other Resistance fighters.

At 0245 hours, she heard the crumbling and crunching of another tarp, and then a small groan. Alice decided to investigate. She poked her head out of the foxhole. It didn't surprise her to find Nixon checking his watch in the middle of the CP.

With a huff, Alice hauled herself out. Her hands stung as she pushed them into the snow for leverage. Nixon turned to her in surprise. After taking a moment to try to warm her hands up even just a little, she joined him.

"Where are you going?" she whispered.

He sighed. "I was gonna check the line."

"Right." Alice shifted where she stood, pulling her helmet on. "Let's go."

"Can't sleep?"

She shook her head. "No."

Neither said anything further. With a rifle in hand, Alice followed him out to go check what they could. Somehow night in the snowy forest held even less noise than the day. It wasn't even just a silence as they walked through the trees in the darkness, but a stillness. Nothing seemed to move except the two of them.

It didn't take long to locate the three companies in the 2nd Battalion. Fox, Dog, and then Easy managed to cover their areas well. But as they came to the edge of Second Platoon on the right flank, they both stopped in confusion.

"Where's the 501st?" Alice stood silent in the cold. She looked around. Twenty yards back, the last Easy Company foxhole guarded the area. Here, they couldn't find anyone. 

Nixon narrowed his eyes. He looked around. By now, 0430 hours, they needed to get moving back to the CP. Searching for the missing regiment in the frozen dark would be a bad idea anyways. He sighed.

"We'll stretch 2nd Platoon a little further," he decided. "Let's find Buck."

By the time they'd had Buck deploy a squad further down the line, Alice felt herself drifting off even in the cold. As she and Nixon trekked back to the command post for 2nd Battalion, she could see him thinking. All of his usual witty humor seemed to have disappeared. Alice felt the exact same way.

As they wandered into the CP, she sighed. "We've got too many gaps," she muttered. 

Nixon just turned to her and gave an almost imperceptible nod. They watched each other carefully. Finally, Alice sighed and said goodnight. She crept back into her foxhole slowly. Laying her helmet to the side, Alice tried to cover herself with her scratchy blanket as best she could. She curled up against the side. If the Germans knew where to hit the Allies, they would break through no problem. So Alice prayed that they wouldn't.