by Dean Hughes
Chapter 14
In late May Alex and his entire regiment—the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment—took a train to Sturgis, Kentucky. There the troops were to participate in highly realistic war games—a necessary preparation for the combat that lay ahead. From the little train station, where Red Cross girls served doughnuts and coffee, the battalion marched into the country and set up tents. That night they received the army’s favorite dinner: creamed chipped beef on toast. The soldiers made all the standard jokes, but Alex didn’t mind the stuff—he was hungry. He didn’t even mind sleeping on the ground. What he dreaded was making a parachute drop into this hill country, where winds were tricky, and open drop zones were hard to find.
That night Lieutenant Summers called E Company’s Second Platoon together and explained the plan. The “five-oh-six” was designated red and would fight against blue troops, who were infantry units, not airborne. Alex’s squad had the assignment to drop behind enemy lines, to secure and then hold a bridge on a little creek. Alex listened to the plan and noted the landmarks, but he didn’t think much about the operation. Sergeant Foley, the squad leader, was the one who would have to worry about the details.
At the end of jump school a group of noncommissioned officers had been assigned to the company. Ernie Foley had taken over Alex’s squad. All the guys from Alex’s barracks stayed in the same squad, but some new people had been added. One of them was a fellow named Calvin Huish. He had three years of college behind him and was a little older than most of the recruits. He was witty but caustic, and most of the younger guys didn’t like him. Alex didn’t particularly take to him either, but at least the man could carry on an intelligent conversation.
Sergeant Foley was from the boot heel country of Missouri. He was a big man with red hair and freckles—and a permanently confounded look on his face. He had been in the army longer than the trainees, but Alex could think of no other reason he had earned his rank.
The next morning, early, the men ate breakfast and then double-timed to a little airfield. After that, for reasons no one could explain, there was a long delay. Finally, at about eleven o’clock, the men boarded a C-47 that was hot inside from having sat in the sun all morning. And then, predictably, there was another delay. Curtis was sitting next to Alex, the last two men in the twelve-man “stick.”
“What are we waiting for?” Curtis asked. He was obviously nervous. At Toccoa, the drop zones had been flat and clearly designated. This would be their first drop into rough terrain. The troops were also fully outfitted this time, not only carrying their rifles but also packs, ammunition, grenades, shovels, and all the rest. It seemed more than a parachute could handle.
“We’re waiting because we’re in the army,” Alex said. “We were supposed to drop about four hours ago.”
“At least it’s not a night drop. I’m scared about that.”
“Stick around. That’ll be next.”
“Are you hot?”
“Melting.”
All the gear and webbing felt like a straitjacket, and no air was moving inside the airplane. Alex was sick already, but he was hardly prepared for what came next. The C-47 finally lumbered down the runway, lifted into the air, and then almost immediately began to bounce and twist as it caught the air currents coming off the surrounding hills. The men had experienced turbulence in Georgia, but nothing like this.
The airplane hadn’t been up for more than ten minutes when Alex realized he was getting sick. He kept breathing deep and trying to control himself, and he held out fairly well until Sergeant Foley shouted over the noise of the engines, “We gotta circle back and come at the drop zone again. There’s a lot of wind, and we gotta allow for that.”
The C-47 banked left, pushing Alex back in his seat, and then, just as the craft came level, it took a sudden drop. Alex was still resisting, but suddenly Curtis jerked his helmet off, bent forward, and vomited into it.
The smell hit Alex and he was gone. He grabbed for his own helmet, but it was too late. He was already losing his breakfast on the floor in front of him. And now almost everyone was doing the same thing. Splats were hitting the floor, or men were hunched forward, their faces pushed into their helmets. The stench was overwhelming, and Alex lost control again. He got his helmet off this time but then decided against using it. The floor was a mess anyway, and he saw no reason to fill his helmet.
Foley was the only one who showed no signs of being sick, and gradually the others lost all they had to lose. They were looking white and miserable, but most were staring ahead, and Alex was sure they were feeling the same thing he was: he just wanted to get outside, into the air.
After a few more minutes, Foley shouted, “Clear those helmets. Put them on.”
Now Alex was glad he hadn’t used his. Poor Curtis decided to do what others were doing. He dumped the contents of his helmet on the floor, shook it, and then stuck it on his head, but the very act of doing so set him off retching again.
“Stand up and hook up!”
Alex, with the rest of the men, stood and snapped his fastener over the line, jerked it a couple of times, and then inserted the cotter pin to secure the fastener on the cable. The jumpmaster opened the door. The rush of air and the roar of the propellers filled the airplane. “Check equipment,” Foley called out.
It was a pointless little exercise. The men had checked their shoulder straps—and each other’s—a dozen times, at least. But each took a tug at the straps on the guy in front of him. Then Alex, as the last man, called out, “Twelve okay.” And up the line the shouts came. “Eleven okay. Ten okay. Nine okay.”
As the men shuffled forward, they clung to each other and worked their way over the slippery floor to the door—as awkward as first-time ice-skaters. Sergeant Foley made it to the door and assumed the jump position: left leg forward, right foot back and ready to drive forward, hands on the sides of the door. The second man, Lester Cox, shuffled in close and set his foot at a right angle to Foley’s back foot—to brace him.
The green light by the door suddenly came on, and the jumpmaster yelled, “Go!”
Foley screamed, “Geronimo!” and leaped out the door.
Alex’s insides were still in an uproar, but when he finally made it to the door and jumped into the slipstream, he felt better almost instantly. He twisted left to make the quarter turn that he had been trained to execute; he held his chin down, so the risers wouldn’t catch his head; and he clutched the reserve cord.
“One, one thousand . . . two, one thousand . . .” Wham! The chute blossomed, and he felt the tremendous jerk on his shoulders. The risers were squeezing the sides of his helmet, but he glanced up at the white canopy, and he was thankful to see that it was wide open and catching air. But then he saw that the men who had gone out ahead of him were drifting too far north. He could see the creek below and the hill they had all been told to spot. But they were supposed to land south of the hill and the creek, and they were actually going to be strung out on a line beyond the hill or, as in Alex’s case, somewhere on it.
Alex pulled hard on his risers and tried to hold himself as far south as possible, but the wind was strong, and he was drifting fast. The ground was already rushing toward him, and he could see that he was going into a heavily wooded area on the south slope of the hill. He pulled hard to the left and avoided a little grove of oaks, but he crashed into some low brush. The parachute yanked at his shoulders and doubled him over and then dragged him through the brush—scratching his hands and face.
When he came to a stop, he was caught—helpless—in the brush with his feet off the ground. The chute was billowing ahead of him, pulling hard, and he had no way to collapse it. He flailed about for quite some time before he could get his hand to his leg and pull his knife out. Then he slashed his parachute cords. Once he had done that, he sank a little in the brush and got his feet on the ground. It took some work, but he managed to stand up, and he released the harness and threw it off. By the time he had worked his way clear of the
deep brush and got under some oak trees where the undergrowth was thick but more manageable, he had begun to wonder where everyone else was.
“Alex,” he heard someone shout.
Somehow Alex wasn’t surprised to see that Curtis was hanging from a big red oak a little farther up the hill. “Just a minute,” Alex yelled to him. “I’ll get you down . . . one way or another.”
Alex trudged through the bracken to the base of the tree. By now he could see that the problem was not so great as it had seemed. He was able to grip a low limb, swing up onto it, and then climb high into the tree, where he grabbed the lines of the parachute and pulled Curtis to a place where he could get a limb under his feet.
“Okay, release your harness and work your way over to the trunk of the tree,” Alex told him. Alex was above him, and so he waited for Curtis to move—more slowly and cautiously than seemed necessary. And then the two climbed down.
The problem now was that they couldn’t see anyone else, and Alex knew that most of the squad was on the wrong side of the hill, far from the creek and the bridge. “Aren’t some of the blue guys camped over on that side?” Curtis asked. But now he had taken a good look at Alex. “Hey, your face is all cut up.”
“I got into some briars over there.” Alex wiped his hand across his cheek and then looked at the blood on his hand. “It’s not as bad as it probably looks.”
“I’m still a little sick.”
Alex laughed. “That’s better than being a lot sick.”
Curtis pulled his helmet off. “My hair is full of puke,” he said. “It was even running down my face.” He grabbed some leaves, which he used to wipe at his face and hair and then to run over the liner of his helmet. “What are we going to do now?” he said.
“I don’t know. The two of us can’t take that bridge by ourselves.”
“If our guys came down in the middle of enemy troops, they probably got taken captive.”
“Maybe.” Alex was thinking. “Why don’t we work our way over the top of the hill and see if we can find anyone? We might have to free those guys from the enemy. If we can get them loose, maybe we can still take the bridge.” For the first time this all seemed rather fun to Alex—like the games of war he had played in the foothills above Sugar House when he was a boy.
“Why don’t we go to the bridge? Then Lieutenant Summers will know we got to the right place, even if the rest of the squad didn’t.”
“What good does that do? We won’t get the bridge that way. Not two of us. We might as well try to finish our mission.”
Curtis was looking up the hill, which was covered with thick growth. The heat was terrible. “That’s a big hike,” he said.
“Not for us. We’re paratroopers.” Alex grinned. He knew he was in the best shape of his life, but he had never bought into the Superman image the airborne tried to sell to its troops. What he liked was the thought of pulling off a commando raid and freeing the other men in his squad. If the blues “shot” him, so what? It was only a game.
So Alex and Curtis worked their way up the hill and eventually found a path that cut through the heavy growth. Along the way they found two of their own men, who were sacked out under a tree. “Hey, what are you doing?” Alex asked them.
The two troopers—Huff and McCoy—jerked and then got quickly to their feet. Alex saw Huff relax when he saw who it was. He was a small kid, a guy who strutted like a street fighter and always bragged about his exploits back home in Ohio—his conquests with girls, along with his fistfights. He also took every chance he got to catch some sleep. “Most of our guys got dropped over there,” he said, pointing to the north. “We’re waiting for them. We have to go back the other way anyway.”
“That area is all held by blues,” Curtis said. “I doubt our guys had much of a chance.”
Huff shrugged. “So what are we supposed to do?”
McCoy said, “Let’s go take the bridge. Four of us can do it. Those blue guys are just straight legs.”
Alex smiled. McCoy loved being a paratrooper. He and Huff came back from every leave with another story about fights they had gotten into with infantry troops.
“We’d be better off if we could get the rest of our squad together,” Alex said.
“Yeah, but how can we do that?” McCoy asked. “The plan was to have that bridge by tonight. If we give it a try, at least we’ll get credit for that.” McCoy was a powerfully built man with heavy black eyebrows over brooding eyes, but he was about as straightforward as anyone in the squad. He didn’t defend Alex when others started in on him, but he never had anything to say himself. Huff, on the other hand, never passed up a chance to give Alex a hard time.
“That’s right,” Huff said. “We can take that bridge. The two of us were going to do it if those other guys didn’t show up soon.”
Alex thought of making a crack about finding them asleep, but he decided he’d better not get anything started. “That’s fine with me,” he said. “What do you think, Curtis?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to find Foley. He’s the one who’s supposed to decide.”
“Yeah, and your mama is supposed to tuck you in at night, Bentley. But she ain’t here.”
The four of them stood for a moment, as though waiting for someone to make the decision, but it was Alex who finally said, “Let’s do it. The guys at the bridge won’t expect us to come in from this side of the creek. Let’s stay above them and get a look at how they’re deployed. Maybe we can take them by surprise.”
“Sounds good,” McCoy said, so the four started down the path, and it was Alex who led out.
Over the next hour or so, Alex worked his way along the hillside, staying in the trees, and he guided the men to a point where they could see into the valley. “You were right,” Curtis said. “All their troops are on the other side of the bridge.”
“Yeah, but there’s a bunch of them,” McCoy said.
Alex was thinking the same thing. The rules of this kind of game also made things tough. Alex and his men couldn’t snipe at the troops from a distance and shout, “You’re dead.” To claim victory, they had to rout the unit with overpowering gunfire.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Alex said. “We could send one guy across the creek, and he could move into those trees on the other side of the bridge. He could draw some fire and pull a patrol in his direction. Then three of us could move in close to the creek. One guy could lay down covering fire while the other two charge across the bridge and take them by surprise.”
“Who died and made you the president?” Huff said.
“No one. Have you got a better plan?”
“I don’t know. Maybe . . .” But he offered nothing.
McCoy said, “Sounds good to me. I can probably make it across that creek as easy as anyone. The current might be pretty swift, but I can buck it.”
“Hey, I can do that,” Huff said.
“You’re too short,” Alex said. “You might get your rifle full of water.”
“What are you talking about? I can—”
But McCoy cut him off. “He’s right. I’ll head straight down from here and get across. You guys work your way toward the bridge. How soon should I start firing?”
“Whenever you get in place and ready, start shooting. We’ll be ready.”
“All right. But if there are troops anywhere along the river, I might have to make a wide circle to get into place. I could even get bumped off.”
Alex looked at his watch. “If we don’t hear anything by 1500, we’ll figure you got taken. Then we’ll just have to do the best we can without you.”
“All right.” McCoy started off through the woods, down toward the river.
Alex led the way along the hillside. When he reached a safe point, with good cover, but where he could see the bridge, he halted. “Let’s wait here now,” he whispered. “We can move in closer when we have to.”
Huff swore. “I can’t believe you, Thomas. You’re just a trainee, the same as the rest of us.�
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“Okay. Go ahead and take over,” Alex said. “You decide from this point on.”
“Hey, I’m not saying that. I just don’t think you have to act like you’re the squad leader.”
“Someone has to lead,” Curtis said.
“Shut up,” Huff whispered, and he cursed. But then he sat down in some tall grass and lay back. “I don’t care what we do. The way you said is all right. Thomas, you and me can make the run across the bridge. Bentley can put down the cover fire.” He shut his eyes, and in a few seconds he seemed to be asleep.
Alex kept watch on the bridge. It was a humid afternoon, and he was sweating profusely under his uniform and gear. The wait was tedious, but when he figured McCoy should soon be in place, he gave Huff’s boot a little kick and said, “Okay, let’s move in.” The three got up and worked their way down the hill. They stayed low and watched for any sign of movement. The blue troops on the other side of the stream seemed bored. Some of them were sleeping, and others were sitting in a little circle on the grass, playing cards.
“We should charge them when they’re not ready,” Huff said. “As soon as McCoy shoots, they’ll all sit up and pay attention.”
“There are too many of them. If McCoy can pull some away, we have a better chance.”
“I wish we could take them for real. We could handle ‘em hand to hand, no problem.”
Alex doubted that, but he didn’t say so. He waited until the first shot echoed through the valley. Immediately the men at the bridge jumped to their feet and ran to the creek bank. They jumped over the edge, where they had some natural cover.
McCoy moved a little and fired a couple more times. Then, after another minute or so, he fired from a third spot.
“Hold tight,” someone shouted. “This looks like a feint. Second Squad, move across the bridge and cover from the other side.”
Huff swore. “Hot idea you had, Deacon,” he said.
“Okay. We’d better charge. Run as far as you can and then drop and start shooting. Let’s catch that squad coming across the bridge, while they’re out in the open.” Suddenly Alex jumped up. “Let’s go.”