by John Dalmas
The officer told them that parachute regiments were being formed. The requirements for joining were stringent, but if you were accepted, and if you made it through the training, you'd be in one of the toughest outfits in the world, outfits that would be given the most difficult assignments. And in addition to the regular pay for your rank you'd earn fifty dollars a month jump pay. "Any of you who are interested," he concluded, "be at the orderly room at 2000 hours." Macurdy's guts had tightened like a fiddle string, and he felt a powerful, Inexplicable, even shocking desire to volunteer. My God! he told himself, this isn't something for you! You're a married man!
The announcement dominated conversation in the showers and mess line that evening. Mostly the talk was of the supposed near certainty of getting killed, and the fifty dollar a month bonus-a bonus twice the base pay of an ordinary buck private: "Talk about sitting ducks! The fucking krauts (or japs) will be shooting at you all the way down. Anyone who'd volunteer for that kind of bullshit is out of their fucking mind." And "the extra money's for your funeral."
At 2000 hours, Macurdy and twelve others were at B Company's orderly room. He was, he told himself, just there to hear more about it. From there they were marched to a nearby lecture shed, where some thirty-five candidates from the battalion's other companies also were gathered. There the parachute officer described the training; it made infantry training sound leisurely. When he'd finished his description, he asked how many were still interested. Some thirty held up their hands.
"All right," he said, "the men who raised their hands remain seated. The rest of you fall in outside and wait at ease." When the others had left, the men who'd raised their hands were lined up in front and ordered to "drop down and prepare to do twenty-five pushups. GOOD pushups! Airborne pushups! None of that halfway crap! Your sergeants will be watching. Anyone who cheats will be on company punishment. Now! By the numbers!" And he began to count, pausing now and then to shout "Touch those chins to the floor! All the way! All the way! Straighten those arms! Get those butts in line! Sergeant, take that man's name! The one with his ass in the air like a goddamn tent ridge!"
In spite of getting little serious exercise during his years as a deputy, Macurdy hadn't lost much strength. What he had lost was condition, endurance. But during nine weeks of infantry training, he'd gotten a great deal of exercise, and his endurance was at least as good as it had ever been. After reaching twenty-five, the officer had continued to count, for those who were still pumping. Macurdy, despite his two hundred seventeen pounds, had lasted through fifty-eight. Only two had surpassed. The seemingly tireless Shorty Lyle, from Macurdy's squad, was still grinding them out when the officer stopped counting at one hundred.
When Shorty was on his feet again, the officer put his hand on the trainee's shoulder. "This," he said, "is the kind of man we're looking for." But obviously didn't require, because all nineteen who'd done twenty-five had their names taken down; they were accepted. Seven were from B Company.
They were all pleased with themselves. Shorty Lyle was a bit miffed, though, that the officer hadn't kept counting, so he could show how many he could do.
12
Jump School
The airborne volunteers left for Fort Benning on June 6, 1942. Though they didn't know it, 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment had just shipped to England, the first airborne outfit to go overseas. Several other parachute regiments were in training, and in mid-August, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would officially be formed, and begin theirs. The armed forces were shifting out of military conservatism, trying new methods.
At Fort Benning, as at Camp Robinson, assignment to squads was alphabetical. Thus Macurdy and Shorty Lyle were in the same squad again. Even more than Macurdy, the flamboyant Shorty-five feet four and one hundred forty extremely muscular pounds--caught the attention of the airborne training cadre because he was tough, cocky, and seemingly fearless. He was twenty years old, had been a high school track and field star, a member of a local gymnastics club since age ten, and a sometime Golden Gloves boxer who'd spent two years in the CCC. They were an odd pair. Macurdy large, mild-mannered, and seemingly deliberate, Lyle smi, flamboyant, and impulsive.
The first week of training was the most grueling; fewer than forty percent got through it, the rest being shipped back to whatever command they'd come from. And the daily four hours in the physical training pits weren't the end of it. They ran everywhere they went-would as long as they were there pausing on command to drop down and pump out twentyfive pushups. Even in the packing hangar, where they learned to pack their own chutes, they were stopped frequently to "give me twenty-five." The man who, on leaving the mess hall, wasn't tanning on his first stride out the door, regardless how full his stomach, might be ordered to "give me fifty," an order few could meet, though a clean thirty-five might avoid a training gig. All in all, that first week, the trainees probably average at least 700 pushups a day.
Friday was make or break day: The trainees did 1400 side straddle hops, by which time a lot of gigs had been recorded. (A gig-a penalty point was given for failing to complete an exercise; three gigs and you were washed out, eliminated.) Then they lay on their backs, legs straight, booted feet some twenty inches above the ground-and were left like that. Soon little grunts of pain and effort could be heard, with occasional and increasing thuds as heels dropped to the ground. When about half had failed, the order was given to lower their feet.
During the final hour they ran. Running gigs were especially potent; each one got double value. And while the trainees were used to fifty-minute runs, this day's was different, with spurts of sprinting-a sort of gruesome interval training in boots-and for the first time, their trainers cycled in and out, taking turns. Well before the fifty minutes were up, men were peeling off to heave their guts, or falling headlong, until the sixty percent wash-out was attained.
In every training exercise, Shorty Lyle excelled, even at running, short-legged though he was. Once, for doin his pushups more rapidly than the count (to get in extras he was ordered onto the demonstration platform and told to "give me twenty-five."
"Which arm?" he asked.
The captain's gaze turned to steel. "Right arm." So he did. That was followed by "now the left," and he did twenty-five of those, too. By that time the captain was grinning like a wolf. Without giving Shorty time to recover, he ordered, "Now fifty with both." Shorty gave him fifty without a struggle, then bounced to his feet The captain put a hand on Shorty's shoulder and turned him to face the other trainees. "Men, take a good look. This is the kind of soldier we want here." Then he sent Shorty back to his place among the others without a word about having mouthed off. The trainees knew for sure now that this was a truly different kind of outfit, and for most of them, the only kind to be part of.
Shorty reveled in the training-until the third week, and the tower drops. Then he turned morose. Because though he allowed himself to be hooked up, when he was raised from the ground, he froze, paralyzed, filled with dread, and his limbs turned to jelly. Cut loose at 250 feet, he rode his chute down like a sack of potatoes, his mind numb, non-functional. Nor did he feel better with repetition.
The next week they'd make their qualifying jumps from planes-four by daylight, one at night-and he knew he couldn't do it, not even if his life depended on it. Yet he couldn't bear the thought of returning to an ordinary ground unit. So he took his problem to the 1st sergeant. It wasn't exactly fear, he insisted, but being hauled up on the towers paralyzed him.
Several of the training cadre were due to jump that Saturday, to retain their jump status, and they decided to take Shorty with them. They'd jump singly, rather than as an entire "stick" of men. They assumed that by encouragement and cajolery they could get their star recruit to jump too, and that once he'd jumped, he'd be all right. Jumping him without authorization would be a serious breach of regulations, but that didn't bother them in the least: They were going to save a good man and his pride.
They failed
: He remained frozen in his seat.
Shorty returned to the barracks in despair. The company was to make its first training jumps on Monday morning, and he knew he'd fail, wash out.
When Macurdy saw him, he set his paperback aside. "What's the matter?" he asked. Asked quietly, though only a few men were there, on their bunks writing letters or reading. Shorty just shook his head.
"Come on," Macurdy said. "Let's sit on the back stoop." They went out and sat in the shade of the building. "I'm your buddy," Macurdy told him, "and you've been holding out on me. Now give!"
Miserably, Shorty described the whole wretched situation, while Macurdy watched intently-watched an image take shape in Shorty 's subconscious, of a steelworker on a bridge girder, leaning back, clutching at air, eyes wide with horror.
"Okay, look at me!" Macurdy ordered. Shorty's gaze raised to his, and for a moment Macurdy held it. "Now," he said, "who is it that's scared?"-and without warning clapped his hands like a gunshot! Shorty jumped as if slapped, and suddenly the image was visible to him, live now, for both of them, the figure hurtling down, down.
For a moment neither man said anything. Then Shorty spoke. "I-I- Hell, I don't know. Not me though. It's not-it wasn't me." He stared at Macurdy, dumbfounded.
"Good. What did he look like?"
"Kind of dark complected… Wiry hair… Wore work gloves. Hell, I never saw him before." He shook his head, astounded. "I never saw anything like that in my life!"
"And that's who was scared? Not you?"
"Uh…" Shorty stared at Macurdy, then nodded decisively. "Yep. Not me."
"Good. So that's handled. You want to go to town tonight? Celebrate? We don't need to get drunk, just have a few beers and relax."
They did. After a couple of beers, Shorty wanted to walk, so they left the bar and went to Promenade Park, where they strolled on a path beside the Chatahoochee River. "Macurdy," Shorty asked, "what happened back at the barracks? When you said what you said. I mean-I saw that guy, saw him fall, and then- All of a sudden, I knew I could jump."
"What did I ask you?"
"You asked me-" Shorty frowned. "You asked me who it was that's scared to jump."
"And you told me it wasn't you."
"Right." Shorty's head bobbed a brief affirmation. "But who was its "
"Some poor sonofabitch working on a high bridge, and fell off. You saw it when I clapped my hands."
Shorty nodded, still frowning, then asked, "Was it real?"
Macurdy looked sternly down at him. "Absolutely," he said, wondering if it really had been. "Would I lie to you?"
"No… No, you're one guy I trust completely."
"Good. You see, I've got the sight. I see things other people don't. It wasn't Shorty Lyle that was scared."
They kept walking, a thoughtful Shorty looking at the path in front of his boots. Finally he looked up at Macurdy. "You're a strange guy, you know?"
"Yep, I am. For me it's the only way to be. But we won't tell anyone what happened."
Shorty put a hand on Macurdy's arm, and they stopped. "You're not only a helluva man, Macurdy," he said, "you're one helluva friend. Sure as shit, though, someone's going to ask what happened that I can jump now-Sergeant Bryant for sure-and I'd like to tell him it was talking to you that did it. Okay? But I won't tell him what happened."
Macurdy grinned. "Okay. But now you owe me a beer, for services rendered."
They arrived back at the barracks not actually drunk, but Shorty was a bit oiled. They'd obviously been in a scuffle somewhere, but weren't much the worse for it.
And on Monday, Shorty jumped next in the stick behind Macurdy. Without difficulty, and found himself hooked on parachuting.
After qualifying as jumpers, they were sent to the expansion area in Alabama for advanced training. On completion, Macurdv was one of a handful promoted to private first class. Afterward the troopers were assigned to various new regiments in training, except for a few, including Macurdy, who were assigned to 2nd Battalion, 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, in England, as replacements for men injured in training, or lost for other reasons.
13
Leave
Because they were headed overseas, the men assigned to the 503rd were given leave-two weeks plus travel time. Macurdy gave his destination as Nehtaka, Oregon, but went first to Salem, Indiana, where Charley and Edna met him at the depot.
They hadn't seen their youngest son for more than nine years, and Edna hugged him, weeping, a remarkable display of emotion for a Macurdy. Charley simply stared. "Good God," he breathed when Curtis was able to give him his attention. "You're another one. You haven't aged a day." Then he too embraced their son.
Curtis spent two days with them, and his parents told him some old family lore, stories he hadn't heard before-that very few had in his generation. His great great gram pa was said not to have aged. He'd disappeared when his oldest boy reached seventeen, only to turn up again, briefly, on one leg and two crutches, at the end of the Civil War. Even then he'd looked young, though scar-faced and short a limb like so many who were young. To learn that his wife had died sixteen years earlier. His two sons recognized him when he told them who he was, but at his request referred to him as "Cousin Martin from back east."
But after "Cousin Martin" was gone again, one of them told his wife who their visitor had been, and the story leaked to others in the family. But not all, and mostly it stopped there. Until one of the "old man's" grandchildren-one of Edna's uncles, who was also a second cousin of Charley's-had left his wife and children when he was thirty-six and looked about twenty-five. Left without warning, but semi-regularly had wired money from California until about 1915.
"You can probably understand how we felt when Varia didn't age," Charley said. "We thought she might be one of my cousin's kids by some second wife out west. Although from what you told us before, I guess she couldn't have been."
Edna took Curtis's hand. "And now here you are, thirty-eight years old and still so young looking, no older than Frank's oldest boy. And married, you say."
Curtis nodded. "Mary knows about me. About how I don't age. I told her before we got engaged, and she married me anyway. I guess it wasn't all that real to her then; even I wasn't entirely sure. And of course, she's still not quite twenty-six. We'll probably leave Nehtaka when the war's over." If I'm still alive, he added silently.
Liiset, or whichever of Varia's clones it had been, had returned just once, a few months after Curtis had left. After that it was as if the Sisterhood had given up on him. So Curtis gave his parents his Nehtaka address.
His reception in Nehtaka was also marked by hugs and tears. The next day he got hold of some black market gas, and in their '35 Chevy, he and Mary drove south down the coast, where they rented a cabin and spent three days alone, walking the beach, hiking the old spruce forest, watching the surf beat on massive black boulders and ledges… and loving each other. It seemed to both of them they were more in love than ever.
His leave melted like snow on the stove, but when Mary delivered him to the train, she didn't cry. She waited till she got home. And Klara, the tough old Prussian peasant widow, half blind now and three-quarters crippled, comforted her granddaughter. The old woman's tears were for the young wife, not the soldier. Soldiers were expected to die.
14
England
England's southern ports were often visited by German bombers, thus the 503rd replacements disembarked in Greenock, Scotland. There they were put on a train and taken south, almost the length of Britain, to rural Berkshire County, where 2nd Battalion 503rd was camped in Nissen Huts on a sprawling manorial estate called Chilton Foliat.
Only the 2nd Battalion was in England; the rest of the regiment remained in the States. 2nd Battalion was proud, cocky, and close-knit, and replacements like Macurdy were looked upon at first as outsiders. Especially in his squad, where he'd replaced a happy-go-lucky sort of wildman named Joe Potenza. Private Potenza was currently in the stockade, and would be for a
nother five months, for starting a fight while on a weekend pass in London, a brawl that had seriously embarrassed the Army. Previously in trouble for starting a fight with British servicemen, he'd been treated as an example by the American high command.
In his squad, several resented Potenza's replacement, and one morning Macurdy awakened to- find his boot laces cut from the bottom up. That evening he went to each member of the squad and asked if he'd done it, at the same time observing the man's auric reaction. When he found the culprit, a private named Carlson, he hit him without warning-whop! in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Carlson dropped like a stone.
Unfortunately, Carlson was about five feet eight inches and one hundred fifty pounds, so this did not commend Macurdy to the rest of the squad. The next night a trooper named Cargill who'd been Potenza's closest friend, came into the but and saw Macurdy asleep with no cover. Carefully he slipped a safety match head-first between Macurdy's toes, then? the other end and gave him a barefooted hotfoot. Macurdy awoke with a yell, then looked around and found Cargill glaring at him, jaw set. "I did it, asshole," Cargill said. "Now let's see if you've got theguts to tackle someone your own size."
Actually Cargill, though about as tall, was twenty pounds lighter than Macurdy. Macurdy didn't quibble though; he went outside with Cargill and beat the snot out of him. After that, the majority, who'd accepted him in the first place, were Macurdy's buddies; he was their kind of man.
Meanwhile, though he had a nasty burn between his toes, Macurdy didn't report the injury or go on sick call. He handled it himself, with a shamanic technique.