We got back together and were on our way in just a few minutes; Cora and Wade had insisted on finishing up the treatments of a few of the wounded paratroopers first. There were no more roads where we were going, so we just walked across the countryside, through wide open, empty grass field and over small grassy hills. At least it wasn’t raining that time.

“This prick better be worth it,” Reiben muttered, once again walking next to me.

“Who? Ryan?” I asked, confident in my guess.

“Yeah. James Fuckin’ Ryan. Two of our guys have died for him already, and we don’t know shit about him!” Reiben ranted. “I mean shit, he went to Ramelle what, two, three days ago? He could have died there already. Or on the way. He could be rotting away in a German prison camp as we fuckin’ speak.”

“That’s true, Reiben. The guy had better make something of himself,” I grumbled back. “He’d better cure cancer or invent a flying car or something if we get him home.” Reiben shared the sentiment, apparently; he nodded then grunted.

“When we get him home you mean,” Miles suggested. “He’s gotta be alive. This can’t all be for nothing.”

“Your optimism is overwhelming, Porter,” I replied, shrugging. “Well, I hope we can find him too. Norton and Caparzo died for this mission, I don’t want that to be in vain.” Reiben just shook his head at that and we continued on, the three of us silent for awhile. I decided to just listen in on some of the other conversations going on for a bit.

Miles, Reiben, and I were off to the right, while Captain Miller lead the way along with Wade and Sergeant Horvath. Mellish, Maxley, and Jackson took the left side, while Cora and Zach took up the rear. Those two seemed to get along pretty well, almost always staying together. Well, I usually stuck around Miles and Reiben myself, so it wasn’t that weird.

“Hey Cora, you know, you never told me where you’re from. I mean, you know I’m from Phoenix, so, uh, what about you?” Zach asked her, as they trailed behind the rest of the group.

“I am from Athens,” Cora stated simply.

“...As in the capital of Greece? Not like, Athens, Nevada?” Zach asked, to clarify.

“Yes, I am Greek. I went to New York for university. My cousin lives in Phoenix, so I went to live with her until I could afford to go back to school. I want to be a real doctor, someday,” she finished, a faint smile crossing her face.

“Oh. You’re a paramedic now, right? Or, uh, were, before we came here?”

“That is correct. And you were still in high school, yes?” Cora asked, grinning and looking back at him. He just nodded weakly at that, and their conversation soon petered out. I couldn’t really hear any of the others from our position, so I was content to just walk along in silence for a while.

“Hey Lee,” Miles started, breaking us out of the lull in conversation. “You ever been outside the States? Before the, uh, war, I mean.”

“Yeah. Mexico a few times when I was a kid, and all around France a few years ago. That one was through school, actually. What about you?” I asked back, glad to get free of the monotony of mindless marching. There was a small hill in the distance, and I really wasn’t looking forward to hiking up it.

“Oh, yeah. My mom’s Canadian; most of her family’s still there. So we go up to Toronto every year or so to see them. That’s it, though,” Miles replied, reminiscing. I smiled at his answer and was about to ask Reiben if he’d traveled much, when our march was halted by a hail of gunfire!

“Get down!” Captain Miller yelled, as we took fire. Miles just stood, frozen, so I pushed him down with me as I went down. The grass was tall enough that I believed we might have been obscured, but none of us had any real cover.

“On the hill!” I heard Reiben shout from nearby, before he began to return fire. Reiben used a BAR, the same type of automatic rifle that I had inherited from Keith. Though of course, his was a regular version with limited ammo, like the one Miles continued to lug around. I readied my own weapon, and opened fire on the figures I could see on the hill we’d been marching towards. Several enemy soldiers, maybe a dozen, lay prone atop the hill and fired on us nonstop.

I held down the trigger, spraying lead straight into a cluster of three enemy soldiers. One of them jerked then went still, a rifle rolling partway down the hill. I stopped firing then, crawling through the field to a new position. Even though I didn’t need to reload, I wanted to at least keep up the appearance that it was a normal gun. Plus, I could feel the heat emanating off of the barrel; I was afraid the thing might melt if I abused it too much. Miles stayed put, clutching his rifle and shakily aiming at the enemy. He squirmed for a few seconds before he fired, then cringed after he took his shot, at either the recoil or the sound of the gunshot, if not both. He fired until his clip was empty, as far as I could tell, but he didn’t start up again after that.

As far as I could tell we’d only gotten three of them, when a distinctive shot rang out. Jackson’s sniper rifle! The shot was quickly followed by another, then a third. Each one had found purchase, taking out another of our enemies. The remaining soldiers fell back, hiding themselves on the other side of the hill. Sergeant Horvath soon gave the order to cease fire, though most of us had long since stopped shooting, since there was nothing to shoot at.

“Medic!” I heard someone, I think Mellish, shout, as I picked myself up off the ground. I went to help Miles up, and found that his face was pale and his eyes were unfocused. He took short, rough breaths, and sweat poured down his face.

“Miles? Hey, Miles!” He lay prone unresponsive, his BAR discarded out in front of him. I touched his shoulder, and that was when I saw a small pool of blood flowing out beneath him. “Fuck! Medic! Cora! Over here!” Reiben joined me then and we turned him over, not sure what we were supposed to do until Wade or Cora could arrive. He had been shot once in the abdomen. I applied pressure to the wound, but that was the extent of my medical knowledge.

“How bad is it?!” I heard Cora shout, before she made it to us. She held the potion bottle in her left hand, the little glass bottle already half empty. She quickly evaluated the wound, then sprinkled just a bit of the red elixir over his abdomen. Cora put the bottle to his mouth and tilted it upwards, the life-saving fluid dripping into his mouth. He was fortunately able to swallow it, and while his face scrunched up into a grimace, his complexion improved immediately. The bleeding from his abdomen stopped, and Reiben, Cora, and I watched in awe as a bullet was slowly pushed out of him, rolling to the side when it was finally clear. Scar tissue formed when the bullet was finally gone, leaving nothing more than a hole in his shirt and a whole lot of blood.

“What the hell is that stuff?!” Reiben asked, staring at the bottle in Cora’s hand, barely one dose remaining.

“We don’t really know,” I hastily replied, before Cora could say anything. “Keith- Uh, Corporal Norton had it. He said his brother is a big-time doctor back in the States…”

“Uh-huh…” Reiben replied, simply. By then Miles’ breathing had returned to normal and, for all intents and purposes, he was perfectly healthy again.

“Is everyone else alright?” I asked Cora, who simply shook her head. “Who?” I asked, gravely.

“Wade is dead,” Cora started, and I could see Reiben wince. “Zachary and Maxley were both hit as well. This was enough to save them,” she finished, indicating the potion bottle.

“You got anymore of that stuff?” Reiben asked incredulously.

“That’s the last one,” I answered, shaking my head solemnly. Reiben just swore at that, and he went over to the others, most of them gathered around their fallen medic. I looked down, to find that Miles had passed out at some point. I didn’t blame him; he’d been pulled out from the jaws of death, just like I had only a few days ago. “Should we carry him?” I asked Cora, indicating Miles’ unconscious form with a nod. Cora shook her head and said she would stay with him for a while. “I’ll leave it to you then,” I replied, then went off to see what the hell we were going to do next. This whole confrontation was outside of my knowledge; I didn’t remember a scene like that and Keith hadn’t gone over anything like it with us, so it definitely wasn’t in the movie.

“Quinn, there you are,” Captain Miller stated, as I joined the rest of the group. They had covered up Wade’s body just before I arrived, apparently ready to move on. Mellish, Reiben, Maxley and Jackson were all at the ready; they watched the hill, their weapons raised. Miller asked me, “Siskou and Porter?”

“Porter was hit, Sir, but he should be okay, according to Siskou,” I revealed, smiling faintly. “Siskou said he’d stay with him for now.” It felt awkward to refer to Cora as a male, but I had to just roll with it.

“Fine. We need to take this damn hill, now,” Miller declared. “We’re splitting up. Reiben and Mellish, you go around to the right. Mike, you’re with them,” Miller continued, nodding towards Sergeant Horvath. “Quinn, you take Maxley and Michaels and hook around from the left.”

“Yes, Sir,” I acknowledged. I checked Maxley and Zach with a glance, and found that Maxley had a new scar on the side of his neck. Those damn potions were incredible; he never should have been able to recover from that. For what it’s worth, the gash under Zach’s right eye had scarred over, now that he’d finally taken some of the potion. The right leg of his pants had a fresh bloodstain as well. The kid was a damn bullet magnet; that marked the fourth time he’d been shot since we’d started the damn Mission, not even a week before. I just shook my head at that thought, before Miller relayed the rest of his orders.

“Jackson, you’re with me. We’re going up the middle as soon as the others draw fire. We stay low and you pick off any hostiles while they’re engaged. I’ll cover you if it comes to that,” Miller finished, then took one last look at each of us. “Understood?”

We had a round of “Yes, Sir”s before we all got ready. The others checked their weapons and ammo, so I made a show of doing the same. Then we were ready to move out.

“Let’s go,” I said to Maxley and Zach, who both simply nodded and fell in on either side of me. As far as we could tell, the enemy had abandoned the hilltop, but we moved cautiously and quietly anyway. We slowly made our way up the left side of the hill, Horvath and the others mirroring us on the right side, twenty or so yards away. We marched up the hill at an angle, so we would wrap around it like a spiral rather than reach its summit. We practically walked right into the Germans on the other side of the hill; I was barely able to get Maxley and Zach to back up before they opened fire on us. We were lucky, all three of us getting out without a scratch. I drew one of my three remaining grenades, pulled the pin, and held onto it for a second or two longer than I had the last time I’d used one. The first grenade I ever threw had been thrown back, and I did not want a repeat of that. I lobbed the grenade overhead, while I heard the Germans shouting in their own language. I didn’t understand a word of it, but it made for a pretty easy target.

The grenade landed and subsequently went off just before they came back into view, killing one of them and knocking another two forward and off their feet, one of them rolling several feet down the hill. Maxley and Zach fired two shots each with their M1 Garands, before the Nazi soldiers could had a chance to get to their feet, disabling them both if not killing them outright. I readied my automatic rifle while they fired, then slowly advanced, walking up the hill diagonally.

I looked down on a cluster of German soldiers from above, and opened fire before most of them could notice me. One of them saw me right away though, an older soldier wearing a fancier uniform and another of those damn hats. I focused my fire on him first, but he raised his pistol and once before I could get him, the shot hitting me in the left shoulder. Several rounds from my rifle hit him at the same time, and he managed to fire another shot as he fell to the ground and perished. That one went wide, and the bullet dinged off of my helmet. I killed his four remaining men before they knew what hit them; only one of them even saw me before they expired.

“We’re clear over here!” I called out, turning to see Miller and Jackson at the top of the hill. Jackson was firing on someone unseen from my position, Miller covering him between shots. I wasn’t sure what it was called, but the captain wielded some kind of submachine gun. “Let’s keep going,” I suggested, and the others agreed. We continued our movement around the hill, but the battle was over by the time we could have made contact. We’d taken no further casualties in the encounter, and I was the only one of us to be wounded. Captain Miller waved us in, and we regrouped around him at the hilltop.

“Talk to me,” Miller ordered, as we approached his position. Jackson continued to scan the horizon through his scope, Reiben doing the same with a pair of binoculars.

“There were eight of them on our side of the hill, Sir. One was an officer, I think. They’re all dead,” I stated simply, finally coming down from an adrenaline high. I winced as the pain in my shoulder began to register, then clutched my right hand over the wound. “And, uh, I’m hit, Captain.” I showed him the blood on my hand and flinched again.

“Quinn, go to Siskou, now,” Miller ordered, exasperated. I saluted weakly and handed my BAR off to Zach, then trudged back down the hill. I shrugged off my uniform’s jacket and pulled up my already blood-soaked sleeve.

“Hey, Cora?” I called out, as I approached. I was glad to see that Miles was sitting up and looking healthy. “A little help here?” I laughed faintly, my right hand once again pressed against the wound.

“Lee! What happened… Okay, come here, let me see it,” Cora said frantically. “Well, there is an exit wound,” the medic revealed as she examined my shoulder. “You could lose movement of your arm, Lee. You need to to drink this.” She held up the bottle, the final dose of our miracle potion sloshing around inside.

“I can’t… We should save that for someone that’s dying…” I argued, hesitant to finish off our one lifeline.

“No, Lee.” Cora stated simply, shaking her head. “We need you to be strong.”

“She’s right, Lee,” Miles agreed, with a faltering smile. “You and Zach are the only ones acting like real soldiers here. You’ve gotta stay at the top of your game, man.”

“...Fine. I’ll take it,” I acquiesced, accepting the proffered bottle. I downed the final dose in one swig, closing my eyes as I felt the familiar sensation of extreme heat in my left shoulder. I grunted and grit my teeth hard as the flesh on my shoulder seemed to regenerate, leaving a seemingly-old and healed gunshot scar.

“Did the other men see this?” Cora asked, and I opened my eyes to see her motion towards the no-longer-wounded shoulder. I nodded, still struck with a tingling sensation in the healed area. “I must bandage it then,” Cora announced, picking up her kit. I noticed then that she now carried most of Wade’s gear as well.

“Ah, I guess that’s fine. So they don’t realize it’s already healed?” I asked, in understanding.

“Yes,” Cora replied. She cleaned the wound expertly, leaving just a bit of blood still on my arm. “To make it look real,” she stated, answering my question before I could even ask it. Next she wrapped a bandage around it and proclaimed me to be treated. I thanked her for her efforts then helped Miles to his feet at his request, the younger guy apparently ready to get going. We marched back up the hill, where Miller and the others seemed to be engaged in some kind of argument.

“It ain’t right just leaving him there, Sir,” Jackson asserted, Reiben shaking his head.

“We need to get out of here,” Reiben shot back. “Our fight just called in every kraut within five miles!”

“I agree with Jackson, Sir,” Mellish stated, joining the conversation. “I don’t want to leave him out here if we don’t have to.”

“We’re staying, Reiben,” Captain Miller decreed, nodding. “It’s getting dark anyway. I doubt we’ll find a better spot to rest than this damn hill. First we bury Wade, then we set up camp. Any objections?” He asked, giving every squad member a cursory glance. “No? Then let’s get to it,” he finished, handing Reiben a shovel.