As one, the men rose from their seats, their movements lumbered by their heavy and bulky equipment.
“Equipment check!”
Each man checked the static line of the man in front of him to make sure it was securely attached before jumping, so their parachutes would open properly. If they didn’t, it was just one more way to die.
Matthew craned his head to look out the wide-open exit door, and something in him jolted in ridiculous surprise when he saw the clouds of smoke and orange lights from the tracer fire. It looked eerily beautiful, until he watched, incredulous, as a plane nearby suddenly exploded in a fireball and pirouetted gracefully towards the sea. Behind him, a man muttered something that sounded like a prayer, or maybe he’d just said “Jesus”.
The plane shuddered beneath them, and someone cried out and then fell silent, ashamed. The air was full of crackling, thick with smoke, and still Matthew had trouble believing any of it was happening, even as the plane shuddered again, and then jerked like a living thing. It took him a stunned moment to realize they’d been hit.
The jumpmaster cursed as the plane started to lurch like a drunk beneath their boots, and the men staggered, grabbing onto each other to stay upright, no one meeting anyone’s eyes, afraid of what they might see there.
Time seemed to have slowed down and sped up all at once, and Matthew heard a roaring in his ears—whether it was the sound of the battle now raging all around them or simply the rush of his own beating blood, he didn’t know.
The plane continued to twist and turn, writhing like an animal, and one of the men crossed himself, mutteri
ng the Hail Mary in a strong Brooklyn accent. Matthew wondered, in a distanced, disinterested sort of way, if this was actually the end. He might be dying, and he wasn’t even sure.
The jumpmaster shouted for them to pay attention, and then he began to push the equipment bags out the door, a jumpsuited Santa with his sacks of crucial toys. Then, as Matthew watched, the first man went, stepping straight out into air, like a magic trick. They’d all had to complete at least five jumps during training, but those seemed like child’s play compared to this. The sky was full of gunfire and smoke. They were parachuting not into a muddy English field or a bayou in Louisiana, but enemy territory. Matthew might be dead in five minutes, maybe less.
He shuffled forward as one by one the men stepped out into the air and disappeared. His moment was coming, and it made him think of Lily, her letters tucked away in his pack. He hadn’t seen her since that night by the Underground, when she’d told him she’d thought he was a German spy because of those ridiculous pigeons, and then he’d kissed her. When his whole world had shifted on its axis, and he’d realized he needed to survive this war, not just for his family, but for himself—and Lily.
Although the 82nd had been kicking their heels for the better part of May, they hadn’t been granted leave, and so Matthew had had to content himself with letters. He did not consider himself an emotional man, and any tender feeling he might have nurtured had been suppressed for the sake of his situation.
No one had cared what he’d felt when he’d been one of a hundred blank-eyed refugees packed in the cargo hold of a Spanish freighter. And no one had cared when he’d washed up on the shores of New York, having to convince a bored immigration inspector that he wasn’t a drain on the American people or their economy.
When the US had declared war in 1941, Matthew had found himself in the surprising position of being classified as an enemy alien, and once again no one had cared that he was a Jew, not a Nazi. When he’d first enlisted, after his basic training, he’d been regarded with suspicion; after just three months, he’d been rounded up with a dozen other German-born Jews and sent to an internment camp in Illinois, where they’d been subjected to hard labor without any explanation.
Eventually he’d discovered he’d been sent there because a German spy had been caught off the coast of Canada whose contact had the same last name as he did. He’d realized then that in Germany he’d been made to be a Jew first; in America he was just German.
After nearly a year of such treatment, he had, without explanation, been ordered to Camp Ritchie in Maryland, where, thanks to his knowledge of German, he’d been earmarked for the course in Interrogation of Prisoners of War. He’d changed his name to a gentile one, not wanting the same mistake to happen twice, and now he was here, about to jump, Lily’s letters in his pocket the only thing anchoring him to this earth anymore.
Dear Matthew, I’m no good at writing letters; I don’t know what to say except that I think of you often. So often…
Someone jabbed Matthew in the back and he realized he was next. He stepped to the edge of the plane, its floor tilting under him, nearly making him stagger right out the door. Beneath him, by the light of the tracer fire, he could see the fields of France spread out in a patchwork of dark greens, punctuated by thick swathes of pine forests. The sky was so full of sound, Matthew had somehow tuned it out, and it felt weirdly and utterly silent as the jumpmaster gave his order, and without a thought but obedience, Matthew stepped out of the plane.
For a second or two, but what felt like an eternity compressed into a moment, he simply fell, windmilling and whirling through the air that rushed by him in a cool, surging stream. Then he felt the painful, breath-catching jerk as his parachute opened like a flower above him. His training took over and he pulled the risers to reduce oscillation as he stopped falling and simply began to float, the sensation strangely gentle in a world that was exploding savagely all around him.
When he blinked the darkened world into focus, he saw another paratrooper floating down in the distance, too far away to call to him or even to wave. The planes that had filled the sky were now far above, a separate, fiery universe as he continued to spiral downwards, entering a dark, silent, dangerous world.
The ground began to rush up to meet him and he saw he was going to land in a field, utterly exposed. He dropped to the ground, hitting it hard; he let out a grunt as he came to a stand and unhooked himself from the parachute before quickly bundling it up. He looked around but could see no one; the only sound was his breathing, loud and ragged. He needed to find cover.
Fumbling for his compass, Matthew checked it and then set off to the east, where he believed their planned meeting point to be. His mind felt cold and clear and as weirdly detached as when he’d been about to jump, but his heart was hammering hard enough to hurt, and he could still hear his own breathing, as if he were gasping for air.
Every nerve and sense was on high, tautened alert, and yet part of him felt as if he were hovering above this scene, idly wondering what might happen next. Would a German sniper blow his head off? Would he step on a mine and be torn to pieces? He had an absurd urge to laugh, and he wondered if it was shock—or hysteria.
He stayed silent, moving steadily across the field, towards a cluster of pine trees that provided the only possible shelter. Once under their covering branches, he released a shaky, pent-up breath and the tension banding across his shoulders and clenching his jaw relaxed, if only a little.
As he stood there, surveying the darkened scene, he realized there was nowhere safe, not from here, all the way through a war-torn Europe, to Fraustadt. He was utterly alone, wandering around the French countryside like some sort of drunk tourist, yet in the uniform of the enemy. He couldn’t see another soul, which was both a relief and a worry. No soldiers of any description—but no friends, either.
Where were the rest of the 82nd, not to mention the other divisions, who had parachuted down with him? The wind must have blown everyone off course.
Matthew had no idea where he was, or how close he was to safety, or the enemy. With no alternative but to keep going, he kept to the trees as he began to make his way east. After about twenty tense minutes of skulking along the ridge of pines, he came to a road.
He dropped to his belly at the sound of a car engine, and then watched with that same sense of unreality as a Jeep with four German soldiers in it came and went. He recognized their uniforms, as part of his training had been to learn the emblems and insignia of every single division in the German army, to help with his interrogative abilities. Yet to actually see living and breathing German soldiers wearing those gray greatcoats—four of them—made him shake his head in wonder. Again he fought that unwise urge to laugh.
He waited another ten minutes, as several motorcycles with German riders passed. Another ten minutes, as sweat trickled from under his helmet and down his back, and then finally a further ten before he felt safe enough to dart, crouched, across the road.
On the other side of the track, he let out another shaky breath. The unfamiliar landscape stretched away endlessly in the dark.