Tom could see the wistful look on John’s face as he tied his boots and knew he was thinking about Dottie. “It’s all well and good to be here with the two of you. But I, for one, can’t wait for all this to be over so I can go back to my girl. Dottie and I—we were going to get married and then I got called up. But maybe it worked out better. Now you boys can come to the wedding.”
Tom and William exchanged a look. As with all of Margaret’s letters, William had showed him the one where Margaret revealed the news about Dottie and the baby. He’d agreed to keep it from John for now, but he didn’t like having that kind of news sitting between them, unspoken. The three of them had held back nothing in the dark hours in the English countryside. Except this.
William spoke up. “I’m curious, John. Why didn’t you marry her before you shipped out? Lots of boys did. That way they get to, well, you know, be with her before leaving if they haven’t already. And on a more practical front, as a war widow, she’d have a pension if you bite the dust.”
John shrugged. “I asked her. For that very reason. Well, the second one. And she refused.”
Tom looked up from buttoning his jacket. “She said she wouldn’t marry you?”
“We’re definitely getting married. We already had the date planned and the church booked. But it was the other part. The pension. She said that moving the wedding up just to account for something horrible happening made it feel like she was signing my death warrant. Her very words.”
“Is she superstitious?” asked William.
“I’ve never known her to be. But I think war does certain things to people. And she just got it in her head that planning for my death would be, well, expecting it, I suppose. Or bringing it about.”
“And the other part?” William winked, and Tom blushed at the implication.
“I don’t kiss and tell,” said John. “But I will say, our goodbye was a special one.”
More special than he realizes.
William looked at his watch. “Get the lead out, boys. We’re going to be late. And you know how Sobel gets if we’re not at the airstrip on the nose.”
* * *
Training at Camp Toccoa had been unlike anything Tom had ever encountered in rural Virginia. He’d never even been up in an airplane let alone imagined jumping from one. His mother asked him why he’d chosen the Airborne and he gave her some bit about wanting an adventure. But in the quiet moments of the night when he asked himself the same thing, he came up with only this answer: that it was something none of the men in his family before him had ever done.
And therefore, there would be no one to whom he could be compared.
His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather. They had such illustrious military achievements to their names. All medaled marksmen who could handle rifles with speed and deftness and accuracy. Family photos lined the mantel and certificates of merit hung in expensive frames around their fireplace. Taunting Tom, tempting him since before he could even walk, with the glory of a soldier.
An uncle who’d died in the Battle of Cantigny had his own shrine in the dining room.
It was a history to be proud of. But he’d known them long after the boys they’d been in those days. When they’d been whittled away, no longer the robust and muscular carvings of men who’d seen battle but old men who clung to the glory days and smoked cigars while they told stories of those they’d served with.
Tom was still untested. Patriotism mingled with unspoken fears. Could he do what they’d done? He wasn’t sure. But it was expected of him all the same.
Paratrooping offered a unique solution. It was a brand-new division of the army. Neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great-grandfather had done it. Nor any of his uncles. And so, they could not worthily comment on his success or his failure at it. Because it would be an experience that was all his.
And what he’d told his mother had turned out to be true. It was an adventure, and he’d begun to understand why the men in his family reminisced with such regularity. His years at college and grad school paled in comparison to the exhilaration of jumping out of an airplane. The utter freedom of it. Even if he spent his career doing it, he knew he would miss the thrill of it once age forced retirement. Not to mention the camaraderie between the men, unlike anything he’d experienced at the university. A mutual pledge of shed blood if war demanded it was a hearty exchange that no study group could replicate.
He’d passed the requirements and medical exams and set off for training. The sticky summer—one of the hottest on record—found him in the swamps of Georgia. Sweating on grids of wood constructed many stories high as they conditioned their bodies into lean perfection. Marched endless miles in the large leather boots specially constructed to strengthen ankles as they landed. They jumped from ten feet, a hundred feet, two hundred feet in succession as they became accustomed to the kind of bounce unique to jumping out of an airplane. They entered wind tunnels designed to blow against their parachutes so they could learn how to maneuver with them on the ground.
They bore the monotony of being instructed on how to fold their parachutes. Bit by bit. With meticulous precision. All the while being told that “on your parachute hangs your life.” It felt like a threat, though they knew it to be a warning. They coiled the cords until their vision turned dizzy from spiral upon spiral. Even in their sleep, they folded, coiled, jumped. Repeat.
The first time Tom jumped from an airplane, William and John were right behind him. On that occasion, they’d agreed that among the three of them, the one who landed farthest from the target had to buy the others a round of beer later that night. Or whenever the next opportunity presented itself. The precursor to their competitive arm wrestling.
Men, Tom discovered, were at their best when they had something to prove. Even in the company of friends.
The whir of the plane’s propellers made it nearly impossible to hear each other talk, but Tom knew there were no finer two men than the ones on the line behind him.
He jumped. At first, the fall through the wind sounded like thunder. The skin of his cheeks flapped with the fluidity of a flag, and the scant contents of his stomach threatened to resurrect themselves. But at the right altitude, he pulled the cord of his parachute—desperately praying that it would work. And in a second, he was being pulled up higher and higher into the sky before the parachute found its place and he began the gentle glide to the ground.
From the air, he could see green farmland. Jagged ridges of scattered hills. The people waiting below who looked like colonies of ants. And as he descended, all of it grew closer to their proper proportions. He yanked the cords to manipulate his position in the air and landed—thunk—within the wide circle of the landing target. The velocity of the action tried to pull him off his feet, but he’d done well in the rehearsals and managed to steady himself.
He gathered the vast white canvas in his arms and looked up. John had jumped behind him and was nearing the landing zone as well.
Bull’s-eye! He’d hit the center as if he’d done this a thousand times. William was not far behind him and landed on the outer edge of the chalk circle.
William bought them a round of beers that night, as Dick Winters had given them the evening off for a job well done. He also managed to keep Sobel busy so that he didn’t realize that the men had slipped out.