Band of Brothers recs
And Chaos Is Luck by falseeyelashes
If you only read one of these fics, because you’re only skimming or because you don’t want to get spoiled or whatever your reason, read this one. It’s a 1sentence challenge, fifty one-sentence stories all building and building and building on each other until you’re just overwhelmed with the intensity of the experience. It’s a fantastic overview, even if you’ve never seen the show.
“Stay on your toes,” Winters hisses, and Normandy whispers back in haste.
Before I Spill the Things I Mean to Hide Away by eudaimon
Tipper and Liebgott post-”Carentan,” and it’s both a wonderful portrait of Tipper and a reminder that the Liebgott we see falling apart at the end of the series isn’t the be-all end-all Joe. The last line is just killer.
You’ll be okay, Tipper. He hears that. He’s sure he does. And the Doc smiles at him, or maybe, that part, he dreams. Gene Roe has a soft smile, rarely used, so maybe he does imagine it. Who the fuck knows? He drifts in and out. [...] This isn’t a story that Ed Tipper ever tells.
European Theatre by skew_whiff
It’s their last night in London before their seven-day pass runs out. Skinny, Webster and Christenson go to the theatre, with unexpected results. Wonderful ensemble piece set during the infamous week after Normandy when the Airborne overran London, full of truly marvelous details.
“Oh my god,” he said. “You didn’t tell me this was a burlesque house.”
“It’s not,” Christenson said, focus never leaving the stage. “It’s art.”
“How is this art?” Webster said, in a voice an octave higher than usual.
Falling Faintly by kaydeefalls (Winters/Nixon, PG-13)
A gorgeous, atmospheric Bastogne piece from Nixon’s point of view. When it’s that cold, the mind goes many places.
Nixon’s flirtation with sobriety ends that day.
Ficlets: Winters and Babe by freak_pudding
Two short postwar drabbles, sharp and tragic and not.
“I died in combat, Donnie,” he says quietly. “Go back to sleep.”
Four Things by likethesun2
It wasn’t getting hit that did Buck in. It was the hospitals. One reviewer calls this story harrowing, and that’s the right word.
Buck knows only four things about the soldier above him. One, he’s shorter than Buck, because his feet don’t stick out over the edge of the litter the way Buck’s do. Two, he’s lighter, because the orderlies had no trouble lifting him. Three, he comes from farm country, because the hand that dangles over Buck’s head is heavily calloused, the nails black with soil that will never quite be washed away. Buck keeps trying to figure out which farm country, the Midwest or Texas or maybe even a ranch in California, but when the soldier screams his voice carries no accent.
Foxhole Philosophy by skew_whiff
Harry and Nix in a foxhole in Bastogne. The banter is marvelous, Harry’s optimism is as blindingly wonderful as his grin, and Nixon’s own beliefs are wonderfully close to my own.
“Forgive me, but I’d rather our salvation came as a delivery of supplies or a German retreat than hoping for divine intervention,” Nixon said, passing the cigarette back.
“I’m not sure you quite understand how it’s meant to work,” Harry said. Nixon shrugged.
If You Give Webster a Smoke by dustywillow (Webster/Liebgott, G)
I’m really not in the fandom for the slash, at all, but this story is just freaking irresistible.
If you give Webster a smoke, he’ll always wait until you have one, just one, left in your pack. Webster will wait oh so patiently, face set as intelligently innocent as he can be, and ask for a stick. You know you’ve desperately been saving that last one for yourself, your last smoke, but you hand it over.
L’Apologie by sparowette
Bill and Babe, in Bastogne, and after. I feel a bit horrible saying this, but I’m almost as much a sucker for Bastogne stories as postwar fic, and this delivers both. I love how this gets inside Babe’s head, how it shows you how war will just fuck up the simplest human impulses, and how Bill takes care of Babe.
When Winters said, “Glad to hear it,” and walked away, Babe figured the man was either sleep-deprived or completely nuts. It didn’t matter one way or the other to him, since everyone was. Winters was a good leader, but he wasn’t really disappointed to see that he was in the same boat as the rest of them. Maybe a worse one; they felt helpless, and they were—but Winters was helpless and he didn’t seem to know it yet.
Sunrise by cunien
Babe and Doc Roe, before the jump into Holland. I love Babe. I love what a blunt South Philly scrapper he is. And it’s nice to see him contrasted with Gene pre-Bastogne.
It startles him a little: this word – not a name, not his name – when it is spoken quietly and tentatively, instead of bellowed roared screamed and moaned. It is after Normandy and he is already beginning to forget his name.
The Green Grass Stretches by falseeyelashes
Ronald Speirs is a modern man, and all the more terrifying for it. Dick Winters says he actively cultivated the legend of his being vaguely insane and totally cold-blooded.
It is different for him. From the first burst of that first shot, it is a kind of complete coalescing of the world, the sounds, the colors, the tightness of his muscles all merging into a singular entity. It all makes sense. There is a finger and a trigger, there is the pull of it, the kickback dulled by parceled strength. There is a you and there is a me and there is nothing in between but empty ground, the grass overturned by incessant mortar rounds.
The River by cunien
This is one of those stories where authors love to play in the idea of Eugene Roe and his traiteuse grandmother, of his bayou childhood and a world where hands can heal. The juxtaposition between that sleepy-eyed Southern otherworld and George Luz’s desperate attempts to survive through humor is jarring and all the more touching for the men’s differences.
When he was 10 years old the river took some of him away with it: the water turned into wine and it felt like God was looking straight at him.
Whose Faces I Do Not Recall by likethesun2
Here’s a perspective I’ve never seen written before: Father Maloney’s. There are a few spots here and there where I didn’t agree with characterization, but those are more than eclipsed by a truly wonderful understanding of the experience and job of a combat chaplain. Maloney’s take on Lipton in particular is beautiful; watch also for the single, chilling observation on Speirs. Definitely read this.
When the men have settled into their positions, he begins to walk down the line. He thinks that perhaps this will be like the day before the jump, a time for confessions, but the men look at him blankly as he goes by, lost in themselves. There is no Bill Guarnere to swagger up with his strange mixture of deference and aggression and say, “Father, gotta tell you somethin’.” There is no Skip Muck to flag him down enthusiastically and say, “Father, I’ve swum the Niagara and I’ve jumped out of a plane and I’ll do this, but I’m sure not gonna do it before I get rid of some little liabilities.” There are no more pressing secrets to be shared among the living. The only secrets left are in the blasted foxholes, the blood in the snow: the abstruse codes of disappearance.