The Last Jump: A Novel of World War II

by John E. Nevola

  Derek explained his interpretation each time Macie got stumped by the censor’s deletions. Roxie was describing a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a fast twin-engine pursuit plane. She was doing a good job communicating through the censor’s erasures.

  Our destination was (blacked out) using the northern ferry route. At the last minute, the brass found out that a woman pilot was involved and they pulled me from the mission, which was called Operation (blacked out).

  “I’ve heard of Operation Bolero. It’s a massive effort to get planes to England quickly.”

  I was really disappointed they wouldn’t let me finish the mission. I was told they couldn’t risk losing a woman. When will they ever let us decide what risks we’re willing to take? Anyway, the flight ran into some serious weather and had to set down on the (blacked out) icecap. They all landed safely to ride out the storm. The army sent a rescue party. They had to leave the planes but saved all the pilots.

  “It had to be the Greenland Icecap she was referring to,” Derek concluded.

  The thing I like most about this job, aside from actually flying the planes, is the look on the men’s faces when they see a woman is flying it. That awesome look of wonder always brings a smile to my face. It’s the best feeling in the world. Please write back. Tell me how the ships are progressing at the yard and how our lady recruits are doing. You too.

  Your friend, Roxie

  When Macie finished the letter, she handed it back. “Oh my gosh! She’s amazing. She is one strong woman. I really do want to be more like her.”

  “You will…you are,” Derek corrected himself. “When I write back, I’m going to tell her our lady recruits are doing just fine and that our prized recruit from Bedford, Virginia, just got promoted to supervisor.” He had a huge smile on his face.

  Macie blushed. “So, my good friend Derek. You didn’t do anything to help me get this promotion. What kind of friend are you, anyway? Not helping your friend get ahead.” She was toying with him, just having some fun.

  Derek didn’t realize she was joking. He got defensive. “I’m trying to be the best friend you ever had. I’d be more if I could but I’ll settle for friend if that’s all there is.”

  She turned on her stool to face him. He had broken the unspoken rule between them. Ever since she met him he intrigued her. She knew, as much as a woman’s intuition could assure her, he liked her a lot. The fact that he was always a perfect gentleman was part of the reason she enjoyed his company. And he made her laugh. In fact, she not only liked to spend time with him but also felt safe with him. There were flirtations, of course, hugs and gentle kisses on the cheeks but he had never outwardly professed any love for her nor made any intimate advances. There were even times, she had to admit to herself, that she purposely tempted him with any number of playful, teasing gestures. He never bit. Derek, she concluded, would never make a serious sexual advance toward her. Nor would he speak of any. She was happy he never forced her to decide to accept or reject his advances.

  “You want us to be more than friends?” Her candor shocked him. Derek became embarrassed and was not sure how to respond. He brushed back a wisp of blond hair from his forehead with his prosthetic hand.

  “I know it’s not possible,” he replied slowly to her question. “You have Jake and I respect that. But in another time or in another life, I could easily see myself with you.”

  “And what about this life?” she probed.

  “Yes,” he confessed. “I want that all the time. But I’m not going to screw up our friendship. I’m not even sure you would choose me if things were different.” He briefly waved his crippled hand.

  “You’re a good guy, Derek. You’ll make some girl very happy someday and your handicap won’t matter any more to her than it does to me. Nobody even notices any more.”

  “Thanks, Macie, but if it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to rock the boat. I’m perfectly happy to keep things between us just the way they are.”

  She too enjoyed the status quo. The last thing she wanted to do was to have this conversation. He didn’t even date other women as far as she knew. “Maybe I shouldn’t be taking advantage of you this way, Derek. I’m feeling a little selfish wanting to have both Jake and your company and friendship at the same time. You should be dating and not spending all your time with me.”

  “It’s perfectly fine with me and besides,” he stopped in mid sentence.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind, this is coming out all wrong. There’s no right way to say it.”

  “Go ahead. Say it. Let’s get it all out in the open, once and for all.”

  Derek was struggling with this conversation. “I just want you to know, if anything happens to Jake…I’ll be here for you.” He took a deep breath. “There, I said it.”

  Macie just stared silently at him. There was no emotion on her face to betray her feelings.

  “I’m sorry, Macie. I didn’t mean to offend you. Please…”

  She held up her hand to silence him. “You’re right, Derek.”

  “About what?”

  “There was no right way to say that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Rome, Italy - September 7, 1943

  “Secret operations are essential in war;

  upon them the army relies to make its every move.”

  Sun Tzu (544 BC - 496 BC), The Art of War

  Jake Kilroy peeked through a small clear spot in the translucent glass side-pane of the Italian military ambulance. The heavily armed German guard on the other side of the glass was speaking to the ambulance driver. Lying on a stretcher, Jake could see the long trains parked at the sidings in the rail yard. What he observed in the rail yard and from the soldier’s collar insignia disturbed him even more than the proximity of the guard.

  Johnny Kilroy lay on one of four stretchers secured to the interior sides of the ambulance, two on each side, stacked like bunk beds. Brigadier General Maxwell D. Taylor and Colonel William T. Gardiner occupied the last two stretchers. An Italian officer disguised as a medical orderly sat quietly on a small seat between them. Jake gently pressed the barrel of his M1911A1 .45-caliber sidearm to his lips in a gesture to silence the two officers on the other side of the vehicle. They nodded their understanding.

  The German guard waved them through. This was the fourth and last checkpoint on their bumpy seventy-five mile trip to Rome along the historic Appian Way from the port city of Gaeta. Italian soldiers manned all the previous checkpoints and thus far no one had searched the ambulance. After a grueling nineteen-hour sea and land trip, the four soldiers were finally making their nocturnal entrance into the Eternal City.

  Before the guns were silenced on Sicily, Allied strategic planners were already contemplating their next move. Against American objections, the British preference to invade the Italian boot prevailed.

  On 23 July, while Allied forces were still fighting on Sicily, the Combined Chiefs of Staff ordered General Dwight D. Eisenhower to mount an invasion of Italy by 9 September. The ideal invasion objective would have been up the peninsula somewhere near Rome. Rome, however, was beyond the range of fighter cover. After their bloody experience in the waters off Sicily, Allied Commanders demanded continuous superior air cover for the invasion force. Thus, the choice was narrowed down to a wide bay just to the south of Naples called the Gulf of Salerno. The operation was codenamed Avalanche.

  Just after Eisenhower received orders to plan Operation Avalanche, there was an astonishing political development. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy arrested and deposed his Prime Minister of twenty-one years, Benito Mussolini, and exiled him. The king replaced Il Duce with the aging ex-military officer Marshall Pietro Badoglio. Hitler was furious. Although Badoglio publicly reaffirmed the “Pact of Steel” which bound Italy and Germany as partners, Hitler remained unconvinced and suspicious. He sent German troops to Italy under the guise of helping his ally defend their homeland.

  King Victor Emmanuel, influenced by
the first Allied bomber raid on Rome on 19 July, gave Badoglio secret orders to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. Badoglio ordered Lieutenant General Guiseppe Castellano to make clandestine contact with the British and open direct negotiations.

  Secret dispatches began flying immediately to Eisenhower’s headquarters in Algiers from London and Washington. He was prodded to make an aggressive move to capitalize on this remarkable development. In response, Eisenhower busied General Ridgway to plan various airborne missions to take advantage of the possibility that a carefully placed airborne drop might facilitate Italy’s surrender.

  Eisenhower was then ordered to send representatives to the negotiations in neutral Lisbon, Portugal on 19 August. He sent American General Walter Bedell Smith, his Chief of Staff and British Brigadier General Kenneth D. Strong.

  The Allied negotiators took a hard line with Castellano. They reiterated President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s demand for “unconditional surrender” announced at the Casablanca Conference in January. They told Castellano if Italy wanted out of the War, they would have to sign an unconditional surrender agreement. Castellano was shocked. He came to negotiate but instead he was given an ultimatum and a deadline to accept or reject the Allied conditions.

  Castellano returned to Italy, conferred with the Prime Minister and the king and radioed his governments’ acceptance of the terms. However, when he showed up in Sicily on 31 August to sign the surrender documents, he had both reservations and conditions. After an angry exchange between he and General Smith, Castellano explained that the Germans were becoming stronger around Rome and that Castellano’s first priority was to protect his government and the King. However, if the Allies would parachute troops into Rome, Italy would surrender on the morning of the invasion. If the Allies refused, Italy would not surrender until the Allies were in Italy in adequate strength to protect the King and the new government.

  General Smith flew to Bizerte, North Africa with Castellano. Armed with the airborne idea, Castellano pleaded his case directly to Eisenhower. The opportunity to knock Italy out of the War with one stroke of the pen was too great to disregard. In addition to the forces on the Italian Peninsula, Italy fielded twenty-nine divisions in the Balkans and five in France. Eisenhower concurred and he and Castellano signed the surrender documents on 3 September. The Americans agreed to drop the 82nd Airborne to secure Rome in synchronization with Operation Avalanche.

  When Ridgway received these orders from Eisenhower he was beside himself. The plan called for parachute and air landing operations at five airports in Rome’s northern suburbs. It was codenamed Giant Two but immediately took on the nickname, the “Rome Job”.

  Ridgway tried to convince his superiors that the operation was flawed. He explained to the supreme ground commander, General Sir Harold Alexander, he didn’t have enough time to train for this operation. His division was scattered all over Sicily and North Africa, as were the planes of Troop Carrier Command. The mission required yet another long night flight over water for which no level of competence had yet been demonstrated and no training had been accomplished since Sicily. If that were not sufficient to cancel the operation, the flight was too far for fighter escort. That left the transports vulnerable to prowling Luftwaffe fighters. Even if these obstacles could be overcome, Ridgway had serious doubts the Italians could even hold the airfields for the drop and subsequent re-supply missions. If the Germans were around Rome in strength, and even Castellano admitted they were rushing in more troops, the division could get slaughtered. Ridgway desperately wanted Alexander to cancel the Rome Job.

  The lure of knocking Italy completely out of the War was far too great. With Churchill and President Roosevelt solidly behind the endeavor, it would have taken a compelling reason to abort the mission. Besides, as Alexander pointed out, the Rome Job was already committed to the new Italian government and was a key component of the armistice they just signed.

  Ridgway did manage to get an important concession. He was convinced the Italians could not deliver on their promises but he needed first hand evidence of his suspicions. General Alexander permitted Ridgway to smuggle two of his senior officers into Rome just before the planned drop to make a first hand assessment of the situation. If they suspected a trap or the inability of the Italians to guarantee their safety, they could call off the Rome Job.

  General Taylor, Assistant Division Commander of the 82nd Airborne, volunteered to go. He was fluent in five languages and had Ridgway’s complete confidence. Taylor was also highly respected by Eisenhower who was becoming more skeptical of the Rome Job as additional problems came to light. Taylor would bring Colonel Gardiner, an intelligence officer from the 51st Troop Carrier Group. Together, they would collaborate on the feasibility of success.

  The wheels began to turn at 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters. Working with the British and Italians, transportation was arranged. It was determined that bodyguards would be needed. The division’s Personnel Officer, the G-1, found three paratroopers with Italian and French language skills. One was an officer who had been wounded in Sicily and was in a hospital in Tunisia. Another was a sergeant killed in action in a place called Santa Croce Camerina. The third was a private in the 3rd Battalion of the 505th PIR that was currently bivouacked in the town of Castelvetrano. Immediate Priority AAA orders were cut for Private John P. Kilroy. The orders were sent over field telephone to 505th Regimental Headquarters (HQ).

  High priority orders from Division HQ were not unusual but always a big deal. 505th HQ sent word down to 3rd Battalion HQ who bucked them over to Item Company. They were to detach and transport Private John Kilroy to Palermo for special assignment on the fastest available transport to be at the main warehouse on the wharf by 2330 hours, 6 September.

  Staff Sergeant Gene Bancroft had only one question. Which John Kilroy did they want? When no one up the chain of command could answer that simple question quickly, Bancroft decided to cut orders for both. They could always send one back. Besides, this was the best way he could assure that his temporary lapse in courage would never be revealed. He had the company clerk type out the high priority orders and the officer of the day signed them for Colonel Gavin.

  Both men were told to leave everything and were hustled onto a waiting C-47 that was officially “hijacked” from ferry duty between Sicily and North Africa. This bird had only one mission; fly two soldiers to Palermo.

  Jake and Johnny were flabbergasted. At first they believed they were in trouble but then soon realized they were involved in a hush-hush operation. The flight was short and a waiting jeep sped them through town to the wharf and dropped them at a dilapidated warehouse. The armed guards outside checked their orders. Nobody along the way could tell them where they were going or why they were there. But here they were, in the dead of night, standing in the fog outside the doors of an old warehouse on the docks of Palermo.

  The dark spacious warehouse smelled strongly of fish. In one corner under a bright lamp were two men. One was a sergeant and the other an officer, a tall, stout-looking colonel. The colonel was removing his rank insignia from his uniform. The two soldiers stepped briskly into the light and right up to the officer and were about to salute when Colonel Gardiner stopped them with a raised hand. “No saluting. From now on, I’m just Bill.” He extended his hand.

  “Johnny.”

  “Jake.” They shook hands.

  Gardiner didn’t question the order for two escorts but was a bit surprised neither of them were officers. He continued. “I’m from Troop Carrier Command. Tonight we’re taking a trip into Rome with General Taylor.” He ignored the stunned looks on their faces. “You won’t be saluting him either.” The two soldiers nodded, unable to speak through gaping jaws.

  “You’re my language-skilled bodyguards, right?”

  “That’s right Bill,” answered Johnny while he nudged Jake.

  “Yup, that’d be us,” Jake offered.

  “Thanks for volunteering,” Gardiner snickered.

&nbs
p; Taylor was not at all keen on the idea of bodyguards but Gardiner convinced him otherwise, especially if they could find paratroopers who could speak the languages. The negotiations with the Italians were to be conducted in French. However, there would be collateral Italian spoken, hence the requirement for those two languages.

  “Now empty your pockets of everything, especially personal items, tear off your unit and rank insignias and give everything to the sergeant here. Your belongings will be sent back to your units.” The two troopers complied.

  “Boots also,” Gardiner pointed.

  “Jeez, the boots too, Bill?” Jake complained.

  “Boots too. You’ll wear standard issue boots and bare basic uniforms under plain wool navy pea coats. If we’re captured, hopefully that will prevent us from being shot as spies.”

  Captured? Jake looked hard at Johnny through squinted eyes. Johnny cocked his head slightly and flicked his eyebrows in response. They would talk about that later. Gardiner continued, “The sergeant here will arm you with forty-fives. Just in case.”

  Each trooper was given a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and an M36 belt with holster. The belt carried eight extra clips of ammunition. Both troopers worked the slides of their semi-automatic pistols, dry fired the weapons, eyed the sights, slapped in a clip and holstered the weapons. The pistols were nicely concealed once they donned their pea coats.

  They waited patiently for an hour until Taylor entered the warehouse from a dockside entrance. “Bill, the PT boat will be here shortly. Everything is all set.”

  He turned to the two paratroopers. “I’m Max.” He didn’t extend his hand. “Remember that. No slipups.”

  “Johnny.” He didn’t extend his hand either.