The sun was nearly down when the word came to buckle their chutes. They’d put them on earlier, leaving them unbuckled. It won’t be long now, Macurdy thought; so did 3,400 others.
It had been breezy all afternoon. Now it was downright windy, enough that the plane shuddered from it. If this were a training jump, he told himself, they’d have cancelled it hours ago. Thirty miles an hour, he guessed. The order came to load, and bent by the snug parachute harnesses, the troopers waddled to the ladders and hauled themselves aboard, to sit in two rows, facing each other. Shortly the engines started, the bird taking life. No one said a word. The abrupt engine acceleration of the final warm-up check made her quiver, then she calmed. After a couple of minutes, Macurdy heard and felt the power swell, and gradually the plane began to move, taxiing. Briefly it stood still again, then rolled into line. Plane after plane surged down the runway, taking off. His own began to roll, vibrating, accelerating, quivering. The tail rose, and they lifted. He looked around at the other troopers. Without exception their faces were serious.
Across from him, one of them spoke, more to himself than to anyone else. “Three and a half hours to drop time. I wonder what I’ll be doing four hours from now?”
It would be a long three and a half hours. The plane bobbed and swayed in the wind, and a few men lost their turkey supper. “It’s that damn ice cream,” one of them said, drawing scattered laughs.
Macurdy was seated across from the door, an opening snarling in the slipstream. Through it he watched twilight thicken, become moonlit night. After a Ion g time, he spotted a fleet in the moonlight. Not the assault fleet, he thought; probably supply ships. Nonetheless the sight troubled him. Their planned flight course was to keep them well clear of the fleets, so they wouldn’t be fired on. Shit! he thought, I suppose we’re lost, like we were on the way to Algeria. But surely the damned airplane jockeys must see them down there!
The ships were soon left behind, and the planes hadn’t drawn their fire. Then there was nothing, until someone saw land ahead in the night. Minutes later, tracers rose past the plane, seeming to float upward almost lazily. White tracers; American and British were red. On this plane he was senior, and jump master, so he got up and waddled to the door. There were flashes as well as tracers, antiaircraft shells exploding, and he realized how thin were the aircraft’s aluminum sides. He could feel the plane climb. Nearby, another exploded in a ball of orange flame; tracer hit a gas tank, he supposed.
Beside the door, the red light flashed on. Four minutes, supposedly. “Stand up!” Macurdy bellowed, and the men stood. “Hook up!” Each man snapped his static line hook onto the jump cable that ran the length of the troop compartment, tuggIng on it to make sure it was secure. Then they checked each other’s chute packs.
“Stand in the door!” he shouted, then positioned himself with his toes over the edge, a hand on each side, and the line of men shuffled forward, nearly touching, guts churning. The plane rocked, bobbed, shook in the wind.
It should be losing altitude, not climbing, he thought, and the sound of the engines told him they were going too fast; the pilot was supposed to slow to one hundred miles an hour. Spooked by the flak, Macurdy decided. I hope to hell the sonofabitch remembers to raise the tail, or he’ll kill half of us.
Next to the door, the green light flashed on. Too soon! Too soon! Macurdy thought as he launched himself. The prop blast flung him backward: The plane was going close to top speed, he realized, and felt brief anger. The men were going to be scattered all over hell.
His chute opened, the shock slamming him, then the gale swung him like a pendulum. If this is a thirty-mile wind, he told himself, we’ll hit at thirty miles an hour horizontally and maybe twenty-five feet per second downward–plus or minus the pendulum speed. There’ll be injuries tonight for damn sure.