Chapters: 1/5
Fandom: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Characters: Ronald Speirs, Chuck Grant, Derwood Cann
Additional Tags: What really happened the night Chuck Grant was shot?, Nobody really knows but I am so far into researching it I might as well use it for somethin, hbowarsteal | hbowartournament's Poll Stealing Challenge, HBOWAR Tournament polls on Tumblr---VOTE FOR SPEIRS, more research and historical fact than Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose--low bar to set. I know
Summary:
On May 27, 1945 in Saalfelden, Austria Chuck Grant was shot in the head and two other men are killed. NOTHING, adds up. Ronald Speirs is on the case.
For HboWarTournament poll steal. VOTE FOR RON SPEIRS!!!
Summary: Ronnie finally earns her war correspondent credentials and Chuck decides to shoulder some extra risk in favor of getting her closer to the frontlines.
Title: Familiar Faces In Foreign Land
Pairing: Chuck Grant x Veronica Valero
Tags:
The Dolls: @bandofbelle
Band Of Brothers: @fernando-jpg @chubbypotatoepie @tvserie-s-world @clumsy-wonderland @lordndsaviorwinters @lanadelray1989 @chanshugsaretherapy @hoddystark @gotxpenny @ecompstolemysoul @torchbearerkyle @easily-obsessed-with-things @luvrottt @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @metrofae
Warnings: language, smoking, period-typical misogyny, violence and warfare
A/N: back with more Chuck Grant for y'all! It took me SO LONG to post this despite having had it written for a month but oh well, life. If you wanna be added to the dolls taglist let me know, and enjoy this part<3
Part I • Part III
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Band of Brothers masterlist
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September 10th, 1944
Chuck Grant wasn't stupid. He had a good head on his shoulders, actually—practical thinking mixing homogeneously with soft empathy. He hadn't achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant before even seeing action for nothing. Yet, he'd been called an idiot three times in less than an hour. One of them by an officer, no less.
“It's not happening.” Buck Compton shook his head 'no', the dirty blonde Sergeant trailing after the Lieutenant, who had refused to reason the moment Grant voiced his request.
“Sir, she won't be a problem.”
“She's been a problem, Chuck.” Buck stated, slowing down when he reached Winters’ office in the English building assigned to Regiment. “She snuck into a hospital ship and pretended to be a nurse for about a month before someone realized she wasn’t.”
Chuck exhaled. That wasn’t entirely true, he thought. It didn’t take long for the men to see that a broad moving between platoons with an ink pen and a notebook instead of a first aid kit bag couldn’t possibly be a nurse, no matter what uniform she wore.
“She got credentials now, Sir.” The NCO reasoned, adamant to accomplish what he'd promised to Veronica a few nights ago in the pub. Well, promise might have been a strong word, but it surely felt like that to Chuck, and he wasn't one to go back on his word. And so, with his Lieutenant’s back turned to him, Chuck added, “I’ll vouch for her if needed.”
That made Buck turn back, his foot already in Winters’ office, and the officer damn near sighed. “Grant.” He shot a look at their captain, who sat behind the desk, suddenly mildly interested in their conversation.
“I’ll do it if needed.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I know she's good at her job.” Chuck countered calmly. “And I know people back home could use one of her reports.” a short silence following in which Grant pulled out his pack of smokes, ready to be dismissed by his COs anytime now.
And, sure enough, a wave of the blonde Lieutenant's hand came. “We’ll think about it.” Both a full stop to the conversation and a sign to leave.
“Thank you, Sir.” with a curt nod, Grant took his officer's cue, a cigarette trapped between his lips and his lighter up, wondering if he would see Veronica before they were off to their next jump. Chances were slim, but casual hope never killed anybody.
September 18th, 1944
The road into Eindhoven had become a slow crawl of steel, mud and noise. British tanks rumbled one behind the other through the Dutch countryside, their tracks grinding over broken pavement while civilians gathered dangerously close to the roadsides waving little orange flags and cigarettes with equal enthusiasm.
Perched atop the rear hull of one of the tanks, Veronica adjusted the Leica hanging from her neck and snapped another photograph of a group of children sprinting alongside the convoy barefoot.
“Try not to fall.” Winnie muttered beside her.
Ronnie looked up from the camera with a grin. “You say that like it’d stop me.”
“It might shame you into surviving.”
“That’s sweet, Freddie.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“Snippy, are we?”
And Winnie was. She was snippy, because if somebody had told her that the price to pay for dropping into occupied Holland to document and important allied operation was that she had to put up with Tank driver Bobby Achard from fucking Surrey, she would've stayed in the ATS.
“—Thing is, Hawthorne,” he continued his tedious ramble to Winnie, cigarette bouncing between his fingers, “women never realize how difficult these machines are till they actually see one up close.”
Ronnie’s attention immediately flickered away from her camera. She had gotten away from it all by pretending she didn't understand Bobby’s accent, forcing out her own Spanish one as thick as she could to back up her excuse, so Winnie was getting the brunt of it. For the last few hours, the Brummie girl had heard enough variations of this conversation to know exactly where this was going.
“Yes.” she replied dryly. “I imagine the large armored vehicle might’ve given it away, though.”
The man laughed again. “No, no, I mean mechanically. Complex bits of engineering. Takes a certain sort of mind.”
Winnie exhaled through her nose, looking anywhere but at the man. “Does it, now?”
“Don’t get me wrong, though, girls like you are useful around camp. Morale and all that.”
Ronnie snorted at the driver’s words, balancing herself to get a better angle of the celebrations with her camera.
The tank lurched over uneven ground and the shorthaired girl steadied herself automatically without looking, one hand braced against the metal hull while the other fixed her glasses higher up her nose. Her mind was starting to fantasize with pushing poor Bobby off the tank and driving it herself.
“Can you drive it straight or...?”
“Hawthorne, love, it's harder than it looks.”
“You’re talking to an ATS driver, love.” Veronica chipped in after peeping at Winnie's white-knuckle grip and annoyed disposition. “The girl’s managed more vehicles than you'll ever dream of driving.”
“Oh so you do understand my accent?”
“Might come as a shock to you after half a day of having the both of us around.” Winnie snapped back at the incredulous tank driver. “You're not much of a listener, are you Bobby?”
“Just trying to make a conversation here.”
“That might be the issue.”
“Freddie.”
“What.” Winnie adjusted her British army issued helmet's strap with sharp little movements, muttering under her breath, “Bloody impossible countrymen.” The soldier opened and closed his mouth once, struggling to regain footing and Ronnie, leaning back against the tank, watched the whole exchange with the delighted fascination of someone witnessing a usually quiet dog finally bite somebody. “Posh prick.”
The tank driver straightened up, leisuring position shifting into a tense one. “What did you just say?”
“I said you’re a posh prick.” Winnie stated, louder this time, triggering a stuttering scoff from Bobby, who could not quite take in the woman’s audacity. Veronica herself, eyes widened and mouth clasped at the interaction, also found it hard to believe; she could only phathom how insufferable her friend had found the boy from Surrey to have such a harsh reaction, very much uncharacteristic of her.
“HALT!” An officer commanded urgently from the cobblestoned street, his right palm up acting as a visual reinforcement to his yell. Bobby barely managed to stop the tank on time; too taken aback by Winifred’s words to execute the given order. Both women lunged forward at the sudden stop, barely catching themselves.
“This must be our stop— C’mon Ron.” Winnie rushed her auburn-haired companion to climb off the tank, treating it as a regional bus, rather than an armoured vehicle. The officer on the ground, thrown off by the girls’ presence but a gentleman nonetheless, circled the Cromwell and extended his hand to aid Ronnie on her way down, for which she gifted him a sweetened ‘thank you’. Winnie on the other side, very much used to the struggle of handling large vehicles despite her short height, planted her boots on the ground easily.
“Is the town secured?” Ronnie inquired, adjusting her bag’s strap over her shoulder.
“We got a few snipers to catch still.” The man’s wary eyes examining the pair. “Are you girls nurses?”
“Reporters.” Both women corrected him, one more enthusiastic than the other, motioning at their identifying beige armband.
“Reporters?” He quirked a brow, darting up a complicit glance at Bobby. “Just when I thought I’d seen it all in this war.”
“War will always surprise you—“ Ronnie made a pause to shamelessly reach for the man’s collar, pulling his lapel aside to check his insignias. “—Lieutenant.” With a smile, she accommodated his jacket again, too fast for the CO to stop her from tampering with his uniform.
“British?”
“Somewhat.”
“Then you girls are not my problem.” The man said, taking a step to the side for the pair to walk into the liberated town.
It was only when they both were sure he was out of earshot that Winnie asked, “You know the thing you asked me on the plane?”
September 17th, 1944
The rackety plane flying Winnie and Ronnie over Dutch land had the pair grasping at their harnesses for dear life, even while they sat on the metal chairs. Veronica was now praying with her chin tilted up and eyes closed. Winifred didn’t remember the last time she saw her friend turn to God, but she couldn’t recall much, her mind hazed with the second air pill sickness her friend had refused to ingest.
Between slow blinks —one uncoordinated eye at a time—, Winnie was starting to doubt their brief time in jump school would help them in any way.
“Freddie!” The Spaniard’s scream, swallowed by the deafening sounds of the engine and the wind combined, reached Winnie’s ear as a distant call, but she still turned to her friend. “I’ve been thinking!”
“Stop doing that!” Winnie countered, voice coming out as a near-mumble within the airplane, and Veronica found herself having to read the Brit’s lips.
“You reckon we’ll be able to switch from your guys to an American unit?!”
“To a what?!”
“An American unit!!”
“… Why would we want to do that?!”
“I’m curious!”
“About the yanks?! Have you lost your wits?!” The red light came on, and, in their stupor, Winnie somehow managed to remember the procedure. She stood up and Ronnie followed, the taller girl’s grip catching a destabilized Winifred before she could topple over. “We’ll talk about it, alright?!”
“Alright!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I’m on board.”
“Thought it’d take more convincing for you to say yes.” Ronnie confessed, moving with ease through the celebrative crowd of Dutch citizens and the occasional group of American paratroopers.
“You can thank Bobby,” Winnie muttered with the kind of bitter disdain that seemed to bubble in her chest whenever an upper class boy tried to chat to her about nearly any topic. The Brit’s eyes skimmed the high ajar windows of Eindhoven, prepping herself to duck and tackle her friend down at the mere glimpse of anything resembling a rifle peeking from them.
Ronnie, on the contrary, seemed despreocupied; too focused on the people around them, her camera up to her face as she walked, looking for good angles. She wasn’t expecting to document a sweet victory so soon after their rocky drop into Arnhem after which they had to be immediately evacuated, but she wasn’t about to complain. The scene was, in a way, reminiscent of what Ronnie recalled the Salamantine celebrations to be —which, if she was honest with herself, wasn’t much— but her heart swelled with the vague feeling of home and the amusement caused by how familiar the Americans seemed to be with the Dutch.
“These yanks fascinate me,” The Spaniard laughed at the sight of one of the men nearly barreling into her while he beelined toward a gorgeous Dutch girl. “spatial awareness is not a concept they’re familiar with.”
“Probably it’s not on their vocabulary.” Winnie replied tugging Ronnie’s belt to guide her away from the seemingly empty buildings and to the safety of the robust trees planted in the town’s center. “Just like self-preservation isn’t in yours.” That earned a scoff from a distracted Ronnie, who was allowing Winnie to redirect her from behind —as if the Brummie woman was able to see where they were headed to—. “You might have more in common with the yanks that you do with the Brits.”
At that dig, Veronica spun around, doing a violent 180 to face Winnie with a menacing index up to her friend’s face. “Don’t even joke about that, Winifred.”
Winnie puffed out a breath, slapping the Spaniard’s hand away from her face with raised brows. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
“A familiar face.” Ronnie’s tone had a mildly annoyed ring to it, almost like her goal was obvious despite not having shared it with the war artist. “How else are we supposed to attach ourselves to a yank regiment?”
“Well, what kind of familiar face do we need?”
“Eh, an officer? Preferably.” She scrunched her nose, adjusting her Leica’s parameters to the sunny morning in order to prevent the light to overexpose what would potentially be her few gleeful photographs taken during the war.
“Do you recall any officer fond of us?”
“Shit, Freddie, I don’t even recall an officer who tolerated us.” Ronnie grimaced, looking to the side with a thoughtful frown on her face. “A Noncom could do, I guess.”
Winnie strained her neck to skim the crowd, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as her blue eyes jumped from one paratrooper to another as Ronnie kept listing their possibilities, more thinking out loud than speaking to Winnie. Sure enough, the Brit’s gaze landed on a familiar face, eyes widening at the dark haired boy looking down with an open smile, presumably chatting with a kid.
The back of Winnie’s hand smacked Ronnie’s arm, causing the photojournalist to halt her ramble. “You reckon a private would do the trick for now?”
“Depends, you see someone?”
Winnie fought back a cackle of anticipated hilarity, “I do see someone,” The Brit sidestepped Ronnie, who was now looking over her shoulder, and raised both her arms, palms extended ready to wave them at the familiar trooper standing among the crowd as she screamed, “WEBSTER! DAVID WEBSTER!”
Veronica’s jaw dropped in horror as her short friend pushed through the people without awaiting for an affirmative that wouldn't have come if it were up to Ronnie.
The last time The two women had crossed paths with David Webster hadn't been long ago; barely a month —too little time for the Spaniard's liking— and not by choice, either. Back when the girls had returned to England from Normandy, Webster had ever so kindly reminded Ronnie that for their marriage to be somewhat believable, they had to spend some time together in public.
It had taken Ronnie and afternoon to realize marrying a boy she barely knew on a night out to ‘do him a favor’ hadn't been her best call, and so the photojournalist had nearly begged David for a divorce.
“WINIFRED!” Ronnie beelined after her friend, who had already caught Webster's attention with enough enthusiasm to make up for her own distaste. “COME BACK!”
“Winifred Hawthorne!” Webster greeted the shorter girl with a dimpled smile, his blue eyes scanning the crowd and finding Ronnie right behind. “Veronica!”
“Uh-uh.” The Spaniard shook her head ‘no’ and tried to turn heel; go back to the Brits if necessary, or at least away from her now ex-husband —God, what an odd thing to say—, but she didn’t make it half a step before she bumped into yet another familiar face.
“Careful-“ Non other than Sergeant Grant’s left hand caught her arm in prevention of a possible loss of balance on Ronnie’s part due to the harsh encounter. It took the dark blonde a step back and a second look at the woman’s face to recognize her, his expression shifting from a frown to a surprised yet pleased smile. “Hell, it’s a small world.”
“Small. Minuscule, even.” Veronica’s rushed words seemed to both confuse and amuse the sergeant. Grant didn’t have time to throw out an inquiry about it; Ronnie’s body language betrayed her when she did a half turn to look over her shoulder before she could catch herself. The man whose hand was still wrapped around her forearm simply had to follow her subtle cue to find Winnie first, then Webster.
“Hawthorne,” He greeted her with a small nod, obtaining a little wave accompanied by an echo of the soldier’s surname from an overly smiley Winifred. Blue eyes pingponed between the Brit and the brunette private, a small, puzzled frown forming in his visage. “You know each other?”
“Oh boy, do we know each other.” Winnie snorted; the way her knowing look pivoted from Webster to her best friend only making Chuck’s eyebrows furrow more. “Ron?”
“England?” The Sergeant guessed, looking back at the auburn haired girl with a quirked brow.
“God, don’t ask.” Ronnie mumbled. Her disdain would’ve been drowned by the loud crowd, had Grant not stood so close to her.
“Why?”
“It’s a sensitive topic for her still.” Winnie’s mocking tone most likely was lost to Grant; it surely had been lost to Webster, who widened his big eyes at the shorter girl, as if he believed Ronnie had been truly affected by their separation.
And so Webster hadn’t intended to come off as impertinent or over-explanatory when he clarified the situation to Grant. In fact, he thought of himself as a gentleman, sparing poor Ronnie of having to explain it to the man standing before her. “Veronica is my- my ex-wife.” It probably hadn’t occured to him that maybe the Spaniard didn’t think disclosing that piece of information was inherently necessary.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said don’t ask.”
“The separation is still very recent.” Winnie nodded, somehow managing to rein in her laugh.
“She’s a lovely woman,” Webster continued; an enthusiastic white lie from his perspective. “We just… didn’t click, it was all so sudden and—”
“Jesus Christ, shut UP.” Ronnie spat turning around to face the pair when Grant’s fingers awkwardly abandoned her forearm to adjust the strap of his M1, his attention turning to his side, then returning to the oblivious private with what Winnie would classify as irked. “God, I can’t stand him.” She added, more to herself, yet not low enough for Webster to miss it.
“Don’t be mean Ron.” The Brit half scolded her with no real judgement.
“I…” Grant found himself at a loss of words, exhaling through his nose as he reached for the cigarette behind his ear. “Shouldn’t’ve asked.”
Ronnie herself puffed, searching for any excuse to move on from the conversation. With enough luck that it took barely a fraction of second for her squinted sea-colored irises to land on a certain redhead, being led across the square and in their general direction by a shorter man who Ronnie recognized as Elsie’s friend, Bill.
The Spaniard, whose mind worked fast while performing her job and even faster when it came to payback, reached out and pulled Babe’s suspenders to hold him back. “Edward! Fancy seeing you here.”
“Christ-” The younger boy’s voice came out high-pitched; whether it was due to the shock of seeing Ronnie or to the usage of his first name, it wasn’t clear. Widened, brown orbs landed on a now borderline spooked Winnie, who read her friend’s intentions before she could start her bit. “Hey,” he tried, but Winnie’s focus was locked on her bag now; she mumbled back a greeting while she poorly pretended to be busy rummaging through her belongings. “How come-” he cleared his throat, “why are you girls here?”
“Working! Speaking of,” Ronnie began with renewed energy. “We’re aiming to attach ourselves to a yank- sorry, American regiment,” she pointed at her busied friend behind her, “Winnie here has had enough of her own countrymen. The issue is,” she sighed, “we might need of someone who can vouch for us. An NCO preferably but-”
“Why are you talking to a private, then?” A mildly offended Grant jumped back into the conversation, the cigarette hanging from his lips.
“I’m not talking to anybody in particular, Sergeant.” Ronnie blatantly lied with a shrug, “the kid asked.”
“I know what you’re doing.” He warned, pointing his index at her.
“I’m not doing anything yet.”
“Just ask me.”
“Ask what?”
“Ron.” Winnie called, her hands still in her bag, gaining the three men’s attention, but not her friend's.
“Is she always like this?” Chuck questioned, looking over the Spaniard's shoulder.
“Define ‘like this’.” the Brit almost sighed out her sentence.
“Stubborn.”
“Yes.”
Grant scoffed, then stared back at Ronnie with raised eyebrows. “are you gonna ask me or do I just walk past you?”
Ronnie opened her mouth, then closed it, second-guessing doubling down and, finally, deciding against it.
“Would it be too much trouble to ask you to vouch for us?”
“Yes,” the Sergeant deadpanned, not once averting his gaze from Ronnie's. “But I'll do it anyway.”
“Aren’t you a sweetheart.”
“Lieutenant Compton's around somewhere,” Chuck said, eyes skimming the crowd over Ronnie's head. “I'll talk to him.”
“When?” Ronnie asked immediately.
“When he stops getting kissed by half of Eindhoven.” That earned a laugh out of Winnie, though it died quickly when a squeal erupted nearby.
A young Dutch woman with bright curls and enough enthusiasm to power a city burst between them. She grabbed Chuck's free arm with both hands, talking rapidly in Dutch while her other hand fished something from her cleavage.
The Staff Sergeant looked down, bewildered, then up at Ronnie, breathing out a single awkward laugh, uncharacteristic of him. The girl triumphantly held up the Zippo —his Zippo, the Spaniard figured, which probably had been lent to the woman in the first place—, shoved it into his breast pocket, tapped his chest with a broad grin and planted a loud kiss on his cheek.
“Who's getting kissed by half of Eindhoven, again?” Ronnie inquired, one eyebrow climbing, somewhat teasing, somewhat dry. “Compton or you?”
Chuck snorted, wiping at the lipstick mark from under his cheekbone with the back of his hand. “Compton.”
“Mhmm.” Unconvinced, Ronnie slowly raised her Leica up to eye level.
Click!
God only knew what she’d captured. Probably nothing usable, considering the Dutch girl immediately dragged Chuck backward by his arm, now joined by two more women and an elderly man.
The ginger Private who had momentarily stalled due to nerves and confusion, directed his attention to an elusive Winnie, whose mind was still haunted by the dreadful first interaction they had a month and a half prior. “Win... uh... Winifred-” Babe was equally shaken still, and that became obvious in the way he vacillated when it came to approaching Winnie; a start contrast to the behavior displayed at the English pub.
The Brummie girl had two seconds of grace to look at Babe, her heart doing a weird little jump when the American boy accidentally shortened her name. Once said two seconds ticked by, the same girl who had dragged Grant away from the two reporters latched onto Babe's sleeve.
Winifred watched the replacement's eyes widen in horror as the Dutch woman pulled him after Chuck while speaking at machine-gun speed until both boys were swallowed by boisterous people.
“There goes our passage.” Winnie commented, standing on her tiptoes in a futile attempt to track the two paratroopers.
“They’ll be back.” Ronnie assured her, cleaning the camera's lense before leaving it to hang from her again.
“If they don't, we always have Web, right?” the shorthaired girl nudged the nearly forgotten brunette, who gifted her a charming yet oblivious smile.
“Oh, fuck off.” Veronica spat, threading past them and through the celebration, pushing and shoving both soldiers and civilians in search of a scene worth capturing. Winnie followed right after giving Webster and sympathetic pat on his bicep, too scared of being separated from her friend to stay behind and chat.
Veronica soon found an abandoned chair, either belonging to a house's terrace or a bar, and climbed on top of it with determination to skim the square.
“Get down so I can go up,” Winnie requested, her chin tilted up. “you’re gonna fall.”
“I'm taller than you.” Ronnie dismissed her, a palm glued to her forehead to grant her shade over her eyes under the bright sun.
“You’re also clumsier than me. Get down.”
“What is...?” Ronnie’s tone shifted immediately, her eyes screwing up, fixed on a spot not too far off from where the two girls stood; a small group of people yelling in a circle as three women were pushed to the center. “Jesus Christ-”
“What’s- what? Jesus Christ, what? What do you see?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t like it.” She extended her palm and Winnie took it without a word needed to help the Spaniard down. Veronica didn’t let go of Winnie as she stalked in the spotted gathering’s direction.
The crowd stopped sounding joyful and started sounding wrong. Mean. Worse and worse with each step taken forward.
Two men suddenly pushed through, nearly bowling Winnie over in their haste. One of them had a fist wrapped around the arm of a crying woman whose blouse had already been torn open at the shoulder.
“Watch it!” Winnie shouted instinctively, stepping aside before she could fully process what had passed by her. The men didn’t even look anyway.
Ronnie’s grip on Winnie's hand tightened as she craned her neck to get a clearer view. “What the fuck is this?” She muttered; quiet, preemptively. Like she already hated the answer she hadn’t yet received.
The crowd parted enough for them to reach the spot. Ronnie stopped dead in her tracks.
Three women —one older than her, two younger— on their knees. Hair fell to the cobblestones in clumps. A laughing boy held up a fistful of blonde locks like a trophy while another man painted something black on a forehead already stained red from crying.
Swastikas.
“Oh god-” Winnie turned her head to the side, searching desperately for some kind of lifeline. “Ron?”
Across the edge of the crowd she found what she was looking for. Two familiar faces; Bull Randleman and Johnny Martin, two of the Sergeants they had gotten along with in Carentan, now talking to a Dutchman with an armband.
Orange meant resistance.
“W-wait here.” Ronnie didn’t hear her, nor did she notice when Winnie’s fingers slipped away from her hand. “I’ll go ask.”
Ronnie took a step forward. Then another. One feet in front of the other until she was in the inner rink of the circle, seeing the scene unfold too close for comfort.
The women were being stripped. Not completely; just enough to make them cover themselves.
Enough to make them lower their heads.
Enough for the crowd to stare.
And the crowd was staring. Screaming. Some laughed, some spat, some shouted words that Ronnie didn’t need to know to understand. There was some sort of morbid celebration among the mob, and Veronica felt sick.
Not because she’d never seen cruelty, but because she had. A kind of cruelty too familiar, too close to home. Five years spent chasing scraps of news, photographs and clandestine radio frequencies reporting the Francoist repression Veronica’s paisans had been suffering —and were still suffering— reflected in front of her.
She stopped seeing Dutch women and started seeing milicianas instead, stripped and paraded through the streets where Ronnie had played as a kid with her friends. Her friends whose fate she never dared to think of. And how could she not see it? Same shaved heads. Same humiliation. Different uniforms worn by a different side, but the same fucking sickening vice, the same eagerness to rob women of their dignity.
Her fingers moved before her mind did, Leica up, one hand twitching the focus, an index finger on the press button.
Click!
One woman hid her chest.
Click!
Another bowed her head, showing the cuts caused by the careless shaving.
Click!
A heavy hand slammed the camera downward, nearly hitting Veronica in the face as collateral. Her head snapped to her side, eyes finding the perpetrator inches away from her. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
A Dutchman, much older than her, wearing a resistance armband around his bicep and sheer anger on his visage. His finger jabbed toward the camera while he shouted in rapid Dutch.
Ronnie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand a word you're saying.” The man screamed louder, pointing at the camera, then spitting at her. Ronnie’s patience, already poor, worn thin immediately. “I don’t speak your fucking language!”
Some eyes turned at that, not too many, but enough pairs to put Ronnie in a complicated position from where she didn’t have the means to get out of.
The Dutchman shouted again, this time over Ronnie, and something inside her snapped. “¡¿Quieres que gritemos?!” she screamed back. “¡Pues aquí gritamos los dos!” Her finger jabbed into his chest. “¡Puto holandés de mierda!”
By then Winnie had returned, Bull close behind.
“Ron!” She pointed desperately back in the direction from where they’d come from, as if Ronnie was preoccupied with looking at her. “That man— said these girls are collaborators.” Winnie explained, pushing the words out as calm as possible despite feeling the urge to vomit at the distressing scene. “That’s why-”
“¡¿ESA ES LA EXCUSA?!” The Spanish woman’s voice cracked.
Both girls’ pained gazes met, and Winnie’s lump in her throat became impossible to swallow. “Por favor, para.” The Spanish fell from Winnie’s lips coated in her Brummie accent, but still clear enough for Ronnie to understand.
“¡ME CAGO EN DIOS!”
More heads turned, and whether or not the Dutchman had understood Ronnie’s curse was unclear, but he might have gotten the gist of it, because in the blink of an eye, he grabbed her arm, fingers tight enough to bruise.
“¡NO ME TOQUES!”
“LET GO OF HER!” He barked something back at Winnie when she stepped between them, her palm firm on his chest to put distance between him and her friend, trying to force his grip to losen.
The man only tightened his grip and, before either girl could do something stupid, Bull moved—one big hand seizing Ronnie around the shoulders, the other shoving the Dutchman away.
“Back off.” Bull wasn’t loud, nor angry, but there was a certain cautionary ring to his command, and somehow that was enough to do the trick. Bull practically lifted Ronnie out of the circle while she tried to thrash against him. His free hand got a hold of Winnie’s wrist and, with a firm yank, the Brit was also removed from the scene.
Despite Ronnie’s tossing, Bull only released her once they had enough people between them and the circle that the blonde Sergeant would be able to catch her before she could get herself in trouble.
“You girls stay here.”
“Who’s side are you on?!” Veronica damn near shrieked.
“Ain’t about sides.”
“And what's about, then, huh?!”
“About what a mob like this does to girls like you.” Bull stated, looking straight at the photojournalist as if he could see straight through her. “Look, I hated that as much as you did-”
“Highly doubt so-”
“Ron, please.” Winnie begged, yanking her friend's sleeve to make the taller woman turn and face her.
“-but what are you gonna do about it? Get yourself killed?” The blonde tilted his chin up, vaguely gesturing around him, then at the two women in front of him. “We ain’t nothing but foreigners. Welcome or not, don’t matter.” Veronica finally turned her face to Winifred, as if the British girl would have a rebuttal to Bull’s reasoning. She didn’t. Bull spoke again, “you just got here. Don’t get yourself booted before you can make it count.”
Ronnie opened her mouth to respond with what would have been a too weak counterargument, but was promptly interrupted by a frowning Sergeant Martin joining the three pushing his way through the civilians waving flags to grab Bull’s arm. “Peacock said to get your boys moving.” He received a subtle nod from the taller man which he mirrored. Bull turned away from Martin and disappeared into the crowd to start gathering his squad. The brunette gave the girls a wary up-and-down, then asked, “You’re with us?”
“Supposedly.” Winnie’s response got eclipsed by a louder, definitive ‘yes’ from her friend, who didn’t hesitate to follow Martin when he signalled them to follow him.
“How long you’ve been in Holland?” Martin attempted small talk over his shoulder, multitasking by grabbing a Corporal’s jacket on their way across the square.
“A day.” Ronnie shoved a kid out of her way, a little too harsh. “Barely.”
“Barely?” Johnny did a half turn to look at the girls, causing Winnie to bump into him. “How did you get here?
“We dropped into Holland.” Winnie clarified, as if it should be not only expected, but the only logical option.
“You jumped?” Narrowed brown eyes examined Winnie like she’d grown a second head. “You need to graduate jump school for that.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, we graduated from fucking jump school.” Ronnie scoffed, sidestepping Martin, too eager to reach their destination due to the overwhelming amount of people in the streets. “No thanks to the damn teacher, I’ll tell you that much. That yank arsehole had his head so up his ass he walked funny.” She muttered the last sentence, not really addressed to Martin but rather to herself. “Excuse me.” She forced a change of tone when she moved a Dutchwoman out of their way, finally aware of her unprompted acrimony.
“You girls had an American teacher?”
“Unfortunately.” Winnie rose her eyebrows annoyed by the very memory of the lanky dark haired Captain. A hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality, her head tilting in time to see Grant catching up to her.
“You’re good to join us. For now you’re moving between platoons, Compton said he’ll ask Winters where to put you both once we’re out of here.” He informed them, sharing a look with Winnie, then with Ronnie, and finally with Martin, acknowledging his presence with a tilt of his chin. “We’re gathering up the squads.”
“I’m on it.” Martin confirmed, adjusting the straps of his backpack out of habit more than comfort. “You’re taking the girls?”
“Compton wants Second to make sure the buildings are cleared before we leave.”
“So they’re with First for now.”
“If you don’t mind.”
“We don’t really need babysitting.” Ronnie chipped in, her attention going back and forth between the two NCOs.
“You sure about that?” The judgemental undertone was evident in Johnny’s voice, his brow quirked at Veronica until he was sure the reporter had caught on it. Only then did he turn to Chuck, his thumb pointing at the Spaniard for a split second, immediately followed by his index signalling at the Brit standing by his fellow soldier’s side. “You knew they went to jump school?” Mild surprise crossed Chuck’s face, eyes traveling from Martin to Ronnie. “Had an American teacher and all.” The brunette strained his neck to address the photojournalist, “What was his name again?”
“Can’t be arsed to remember.” Ronnie waved her hand dismissively, “Something Sobel. Henry?”
“Herbert. That prick.” Winnie corrected her with a grimace, as if the name tasted bitter. The two paratroopers shared a jarred stare. Instant-long, but obvious enough for the two women to notice. “You know him?”
“Oh, do we know him. Right, Grant?”
“Don’t get me started on that sonofabitch.” Chuck’s first instinct was to tell their new reporters he was surprised they'd even made it into jump school with that man running the place, but decided against it in case the pair would read it as diminishing to their effort, so he settled for a sympathetic pat on Winnie's shoulder instead. “Listen to Johnny while I blow up some building's windows. And don't talk to any officer who isn't Compton until I get there!”
“Yes, Sarge!” Ronnie gave Grant a mock salute and put the cap over her camera’s lens. She’d captured enough evidence of what war looked like for the day, she thought, her stomach still knotted with disgust and frustration.
“You think you can keep yourself out of trouble for a couple hours?” Martin asked with a quirked brow, his question mostly targeting Ronnie as he led the two correspondents to First Platoon’s assembly point.
The photojournalist was quick to respond, curt but earnest. “Can’t say for sure.”
“At least you're honest.” the American attempted to comfort himself, already lacking patience and eagerness to, as Veronica had worded it, babysit them. “Grant said no officers until he's back so-”
“So we don't get close to that man?” Winnie finished, subtly pointing her index at a screaming Lieutenant Peacock, standing atop the tank that, the Brit assumed, was their meeting point.
“How could you tell?”
“How could the snipers not tell, should be the question.” Winifred corrected Martin without missing a beat. “Christ, he's not the brightest, is he?”
He tilted his head ever so subtly at the woman’s sharp mind and thin-veiled scorn. “He does what he can... With what he got.”
“A gracious way to put it, Sergeant.” Ronnie chimed in with a little dig of her own, low enough for just the American trooper and her friend to hear over the crowd’s noise.
Perhaps having them around wouldn’t be such a chore, Martin thought. The pair didn’t seem all that different from him, but only time would tell whether or not he was making the right assumption. For now, he limited himself to keep the two girls blended in among his squad, awaiting Chuck and Compton's arrival and hoping for Peacock to remain as unobservant as always for once.
