Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

22: Such Sweet Sorrow

"Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow."
-  William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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Juliette, Will, and Martin were all lounging in the living room when Tom entered, rather unceremoniously, to tell them they had new orders.

"We're jumping with the paratroopers again," he explained, holding up the envelope which contained their mission details. "Which means yet another wave of secret revealing. We should've just told the replacements from the start."

"What's the job?" Will asked.

"Operation Market Garden," Tom said. He looked down at the pieces of paper he was holding on top of the envelope. "We'll be jumping into Holland. Their job is to liberate Eindhoven and create an invasion route into northern Germany."

"How exciting," Martin commented drily.

"Unlike D-Day, this is a British plan -" Tom was interrupted by cheers, "and Montgomery is leading the Airborne part of it."

"Got to love old Monty," Jules said with a wry grin. "What will we be doing?"

"Well," Tom began, which already didn't bode well, "HQ has received reports from the vast majority of agents operating in the Netherlands that they're in dire need of reinforcements. We'll be jumping with the Americans so that the Germans don't pick up on any new spies entering Holland, and we'll help the yanks until they reach Eindhoven. From then on we have to hook up with another agent who'll give us further orders. It's the nature of the situation in Holland that information being passed via radio is limited. It's safest that it's passed on by word of mouth.

"We are, however," Tom continued, "being told to bring as many weapons as we can manage, so I reckon it'll have a bit to do with weaponising the Dutch resistance."

Jules hummed. "Good for them."

"Will we be sitting in on another yank briefing to break the news?" Will wondered.

"What, the news that we're gatecrashing again?" Tom asked with a laugh. "Probably. I'll have to talk to Nixon about it."

Jules shrugged. "Won't be as good a reaction as last time. We don't really know any of the replacements."

Tom nodded solemnly. "Most unfortunate."

Juliette and Thomas ventured out together a little while later in search of Nixon. They found him, as always, accompanied by Winters. Jules smiled when she saw Harry Welsh with them too. She had become rather fond of him.

"Harry!" she exclaimed as soon as she knew she was close enough for him to hear her.

"Jules!" he called back, mimicking her voice. She rolled her eyes. "To what do we owe the pleasure?" he asked with a grin.

"Do you know about Operation Market Garden yet?"

"Thomas!" Jules exclaimed and thumped him on the arm. "For a spy you're awfully good at being anything but discreet."

Nixon laughed. "Yeah, we just found out. We hear you're jumping with us again. Might as well make you honourary members of the company at this point."

"Thought we already were," Tom replied with a grin.

"We wanted to know whether we need to be there when you brief the enlisted," Jules went on to explain, looking to Nixon expectantly.

Nixon began to smirk. "The replacements don't know about you yet, do they?" Both Tom and Jules shook their heads. "Right, in that case then yes. I'll introduce you just like with D-Day, it'll be a lotta fun." He was wearing that cheeky grin again at the mere thought of eliciting a similar reaction to the one they'd gotten with their first reveal. Jules laughed.