In fact, it became the only thing to hold on to. As he looked around, every other soldier had his own method of coping with the fear none of them would admit to. One clutched the wooden beads of a rosary. Another wove an unlit cigarette back and forth through his fingers. One strummed a guitar that didn’t exist. And another puffed his chest in and out in an almost lionlike show of forced bravado as the man next to him sat stone-faced in terror.
All of them had black stripes painted across their faces, additional camouflage to their green army fatigues. But while their features were hidden and unrecognizable under the greasepaint, their anxieties were on display in this moment that delineated their passage from boys to men.
Boom!
The plane shook and Tom grabbed William’s arm with enough force to bruise him.
“Thunder?” he mouthed.
William shook his head. “Antiaircraft fire.”
Tom’s hands found their way to his seat and he gripped the cold metal edges.
So much for the element of surprise.
He was seated near the front and could see through the pilot’s window. Below them was a cloud cover so dense that he wouldn’t have known if they were already over land or still over water, save for the flashes of light refracted in the wet sky. The plane rattled with a terrible turbulence that was all the more terrifying because it was man-made. Someone down below—a faceless stranger—was firing into the sky hoping to shoot down other faceless strangers in a war that none of them had designed or particularly wanted. But as Tom looked around at the painted faces of his fellow soldiers, they were not anonymous. In fact, they were all sons and brothers. Some of them fathers. Which meant that the men on the ground were sons and brothers and fathers as well.
How could one greedy man cast the world into such a horror?
His heart, already clenched in fear, tightened even further at the tragedy unfolding. Humanity highjacked.
Boom! This one was more than a flash. The plane in front of them received a direct hit and turned into a fireball before their eyes.
Tom held back a cry. Who was in that plane? Anyone he knew? Projected losses that had looked so analytical on paper suddenly took on flesh and blood and form.
Boom! Another fireball.
The pilots jerked right, though they couldn’t predict the aim of the ground guns any better than the ones that had just been hit. Something impacted the left window and glass shattered onto the main pilot’s lap. He brushed it off and continued as if it was nothing.
Tom heard the wheeze of air as it whooshed through the plane like a scream.
“Stand up! Hook up! Let’s go, Easy Company!”
Winters had a voice that could remarkably be heard above the roar of engines and gunfire and racing pulses.
Tom and William and the rest of the soldiers stood on wobbly legs that struggled to find their place as the plane was tossed to and fro. Their position was questionable, and Tom heard the pilots arguing about the need to gain altitude and the concern that if they didn’t level up with the other planes, the parachuters could be hit by one of their own. Sucked into propellers.
It was a gruesome thought.
Danger in the sky. Danger in the descent. Danger on the ground.
Hank. Dr. Weinstein. The McClintocks. William.
Tom repeated their names over and over, reminding himself who he was doing this for.
Hank. Dr. Weinstein. The McClintocks. William.
Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam and the red, white, and blue.
Red, white, and blue. Panic rose in his chest and he clung to every familiar word as if it were a life preserver and he felt it clinch like a vise.
Tom looked around. The cords attaching all of them to the plane looked like overcooked spaghetti noodles, flapping back and forth as they were pitched about by the wind.
“Okay, check!” shouted Winters.
Tom took a deep breath and exhaled.
“Okay!”
“Okay!”
“Okay!”
It was repeated throughout the back of the plane as each man acknowledged their readiness.
The red light at the open door held steady until the first man was ready to jump.
It turned green, and he disappeared.
Red.
Green.
Another man jumped.
Red.
Green.
William jumped.
Red.
Green.
And then it was Tom’s turn. He’d jumped so many times. Maybe hundreds. But never when the air was saturated with enemies.
He took a step and then another and felt the exhilaration of that first free fall. He closed his ears to the chaos around him and focused instead on the sea of parachutes that he knew were white but looked green as lightning and gunfire flashed and reflected off of them.
It seemed like the sky had a bad case of smallpox and Tom almost laughed at the observation.
Is this what it’s like to go crazy? Thinking things that weren’t fitting in the moment?
The ground got nearer and nearer as he passed through the cloud cover. He released his parachute and said a silent prayer that it operated as it meant to. Since losing John, he hadn’t taken a single jump for granted. He twisted his shoulder to adjust the rifle attached to his back, one of the new M1 Garands that were coveted in the army over the older 1903 Springfields. Airborne was considered an elite unit with first pick of the artillery.
He gripped it as if it were his salvation. Because it might have to be.
He raised it to eye level, as he’d been taught, and kept his finger far off of the safety catch. An accidental pull of the trigger could kill one of the other men falling through the area. Some motions, thankfully, had become second nature. The result of endless training that made these things instinctual.
Hello, France. I’d hoped we’d meet under different circumstances.
The gentle glide and the groans of the cows in the pastures below felt incongruous—he spared a thought there for Margaret—as the harsh sounds of warfare surrounded him. He bent his knees in preparation for the landing.
As his feet touched French soil, he curled into himself as he unlatched the parachute and removed the life vest they’d been issued in case of an unexpected landing over water. He swung the rifle around to his front and immediately set off, crouched as he ran in the direction they’d been instructed. They were supposed to meet up at Sainte-Mère-Église before heading to Carentan, but he was beginning to worry that they weren’t where they were supposed to be. Had the plane been blown off course?
He looked around as he hurried forward and saw that he was alone. Or so it seemed as the tall, wild grasses rose high above his minimized stance. He could hear rustles, but certain that they’d landed far off course and possibly into enemy territory, he didn’t know if they were friend or foe.
He reached into the pocket that covered his heart and pulled out the issued clicker.
Click. Click, went the thin metal plate.
Two times. That was the signal.
Click. Click. He heard in response.
He inched toward the sound and saw the white spade painted on the green helmet of the 506th PIR. Someone from his regiment.
His heartbeat slowed just a bit, making him aware that it had been racing in the first place.
“William!” He forced a whisper when he wanted to shout. There was no one he would have wanted to see more.
“Tom!”
The men embraced. Quick. Tight. Amazed that they’d made it this far alive.
Even as they knew that they had so much farther to go.