Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

"I'm a lawyer."

"Oh, Lord Jesus.,, His reaction said it all. It was so absurd, I laughed out loud. As I left to tell Biddy, I heard the sergeant explaining my situation to his crew. "Poor sod," he said, "thought he was going to Bastogne in the royal carriage.''

Biddy couldn't even manage a pained smile.

"Parachute? Shit, Captain, my knees are lard when I get up on the roof of our tenement. I don't know about no parachute. You got any parachute training?"

I'd had none. Yet I had told myself for three days that I would do whatever I had to to win this war. It was a vow I'd taken and now would keep. If Martin was really intent on impeding our troops in Germany, I had to do this.

"Biddy, there's no need for both of us to go."

"Aw, hell, Captain. You know I'm just blabbing. Ain't no way I'm gonna let loose of you now, so let's not bother with that talk."

The plan, as it was explained to us, was essentially an experiment. For the moment, there was no way to resupply the troops in Bastogne. The main road from Neufchateau had been cut off and in Hitler's weather, flyers could not navigate by sight to make airdrops at heights safe from antiaircraft fire. The RAF pilots had agreed to try one low-altitude night flight, thinking that if it worked, more planes would do the same tomorrow evening. Three pallets of medical supplies were going to be parachuted in with us. If Biddy and I made it, doctors might follow.

There were a couple of hours before the plane was due and in that time we got what would pass for jump instruction: toes down, knees and feet together, eyes straight ahead. We made dozens of efforts to practice rolling as our boots struck the ground. The knee I'd cut when the dump exploded had healed well and had given me no pain for weeks, but now there were little phantom throbs each time we reenacted landing. After the first half hour, it was clear to me that our instructors, with all but one exception, had never jumped themselves. Nonetheless, they made a good case that if the chute released, we didn't have much to do but hang on and try not to break our legs. Real training, which addressed maneuvers in the event the chute ripped or inverted, or the suspension lines or risers snarled, would do us no good anyway from five hundred feet. None of those problems could be fixed before we hit the ground.

"Telling you the truth, Captain, t'ain't the jump what ought to concern you. Hanging like an apple on a tree, if Jerry works out you're there-that's a worry, sir.

The crew packed our chutes for us, then bundled our overcoats and cinched them beneath our valpacks, which would come down behind us with the medical supplies. We donned jumpsuits over our wool outdoor uniforms, and traded our headgear for paratroopers' helmets with their leather chin cups, the better to absorb the shock of the chute opening. Then we waited. Every ten minutes, I wandered outside to pee. My body temperature was about the same as marble. I simply could not imagine the circumstances under which I might be alive in another two hours.

Nearing 8:30, the truck convoys that would carry off the supplies on the arriving aircraft began to form in the field, but there was still no sign of the planes. By 9:00, I began to suspect they would not get here and wondered if I could pretend to be disappointed, when the mere thought flushed me with relief.

And then they came. The initial drone might have been insects if it were another season. The ground crew ignited dozens of Coleman lanterns and ran them out to illuminate the borders of the strip, and the planes came down with barely thirty seconds between them. The convoy crews rushed forward to unload.

The flight sergeant who'd been assisting me helped me into the rest of my parachute gear. First was a Mae West, the life vest required because there was no guarantee we wouldn't settle in a lake or pond, then I stepped into the harness, a web of straps and buckles that were tightened on each side of my crotch.

"Not exactly comfy knickers, but your nuts might still be rattling round once you land, Captain." What I had on already was cumbersome, but it turned out I'd just made a start. Since we could put down on enemy ground, the sergeant inserted a Thompson submachine gun under the waist web, and clipped on two five-pound boxes of machine-gun ammo, then strapped a fight knife on my leg and, for good measure, a small Hawkins mine, looking like a can of paint thinner, against my boot. He turned my woven waist piece into a combat tool belt, hanging off it a trenching shovel and a canteen, my pistol in its holster, a skein of rope, a pair of wire cutters, and a folding knife. An angle-headed flashlight went under a band on my chest. Then, when I thought he was done, he put a reserve chute across my belly. I expected to topple any second. Even Biddy, huge as he was, looked weighed down.

"You're traveling light, mate, 'cause you're firsttimers. Paratroops usually carry a Griswold bag under one arm.

Biddy and I were jeeped to our plane, a light bomber called a Hampden. It had two engines, a silvery fuselage, and a low glass nose that made it appear like a flying turtle. We stood with difficulty on the car's hood and with two men steadying us from below climbed a ladder through the bomb bay into the bare sheet-metal belly of the plane.

There was a four-man crew there-pilot, bombardier, gunner, and radioman-but their attitude toward us seemed slightly standoffish, even for Brits. I wondered if the RAF would have been trying this run without Teedle's-or the OSS's-insistence at Supreme Headquarter's on the paramount importance of Biddy and me reaching Bastogne. Perhaps, I decided, these four were just exhibiting a natural reluctance to develop attachments to the doomed.

With all the gear on, we could get only the rear edge of our butts onto two fold-down seats bolted to the fuselage, but the radioman harnessed us in with the strapping that had secured the unloaded cargo. The pilot, a Flying Officer, came rear to brief us. We would reach Bastogne in twenty minutes, he said. As soon as the joe hole, the bomb bay in the silver floor in front of us, opened, we should hook our rip cords to the line above and get out on the double. Our drop area was in open fields just west of Bastogne, near a town called Savy. If the Germans figured out we were in the air, the gunner and radioman would put down covering fire with the Vickers machine guns on turrets in the gun wells in front of us. However, the pilot thought the Nazis would never see the chutes in the dark, because the sound of the plane would draw all the fire. He was businesslike but made it plain that if there was a fools' contest here, they were probably the winners. I understood then why we'd received such an unenthusiastic greeting.

Sitting there in the instants before the plane took off, I felt completely detached from myself. I thought I had given up on life, but as soon as the engines triggered, a sharp whinny of protest rose straight out of my heart. This is crazy, I thought. Crazy. Men down there are going to try to kill me, men who have never met me, men I've never tried to harm. Suddenly, I could not remember why that made any sense.

We built speed, enduring that second of weightlessness when we left the ground. I looked to Biddy, but he was staring at the floor, clearly trying to contain himself. As we climbed, I remembered that I'd passed all that time waiting without writing to my family or Grace, but I couldn't think of what I would have said besides 'I love you, and I am going to leave you for the sake of madness.'

As we flew, the interior grew unbearably hot, but I was principally preoccupied with trying to ignore the urgency of my bladder and my bowels. The bombardier came over and crouched beside me. He was a Leading Aircraftsman, the British equivalent of a corporal, a handsome dark-haired kid.