David Healey: Ghost Sniper

In the house below him, he could hear movement as the gunshots near and far brought the farmhouse awake. There would be no more sleep for anyone in the house tonight. The old farmer who owned the place had long since been taken away by the SS on suspicion of helping the maquis —the French Resistance—but his wife and daughter still lived there. They kept Von Stenger and the other German officers billeted there well fed in the futile hope that it would help the farmer’s case.

He called for coffee, lit another cigarette, then picked out another parachute. There did seem to be an endless supply. More planes moved overhead, emptying their cargo, the parachutists spilling out like down from a milkweed pod.

As one parachute after another bloomed in the sky, Von Stenger targeted them out and fired. Dawn was still some hours away, but it was shaping up to be a pleasant morning.

Corporal James Neville took off his steel helmet, placed it on the jump seat of the glider, and then sat back down.

“Neville, what the hell are you doing?” asked Dooley, who occupied the seat beside him. He had to shout the words to be heard over the roar of the twin 1,200 horsepower Pratt & Whitney engines powering the Douglas C-147 Skytrain bearing them aloft.

“Insurance,” Neville explained. “When the Jerries start up with their flak guns, I don’t want me arse shot off.”

Dooley snorted, and shook his head. You could always count on Neville to do something, well, unusual. He was a bit gung ho, even for a paratrooper. “We’re about to jump out of a glider at low altitude behind enemy lines—at night, mind you—and you’re worried about a random piece of shrapnel biting you in the arse?”

“It’s best to be prepared for all contingencies,” Neville said. He patted his front pocket. “I’ve even got a couple of rubbers in case my chute comes down in a brothel.”

“In your dreams, Neville.”

“A man can hope, can’t he?”

That was the last they spoke, because the light flashed giving them the two minute warning to the drop site. Neville’s stomach did a little flip-flop in time to the blinking light. Some of the men had actually vomited with fear and anxiety. Neville didn’t blame them. The way Dooley had described what they were about to do made it sound, well, like a suicide mission. But they had trained again and again for this night. In other words, they had done it all before.

Some men now bowed their heads in prayer, but he didn’t go in for that sort of thing. To keep his mind occupied, Neville went over his mental checklist. He had his rifle and ammunition, the standard-issue knife to cut his chute away once they landed, and rations.

He had added extensively to the basic equipment they had been issued. He also had a short, very sharp knife tucked into the top of each boot, a length of garrote wire wrapped around his canteen, a wristwatch with a dial that glowed in the dark, and an American .45 automatic because he loved the fact it had been nicknamed “the flying ashtray” due to its slow, fat bullets. You couldn’t hit a thing much more than twenty feet away, but if you did hit something with a lead ashtray moving at just under the speed of sound, you tended to knock it down.

He also had the rubbers he’d mentioned to Dooley, just in case any French girls showed special gratitude at being liberated. All things considered, he was about as prepared as any man could be to jump out of an aircraft into hostile territory.

Now the jump light stopped blinking and glowed with its steady, red light. The door to the glider slid open. If anyone’s thoughts had been wandering, the sudden rush of cold night air brought them into sharp focus.

The men stood and silently attached the static lines that would automatically open their parachutes as they hurtled from the aircraft. Dooley was in line in front of him. They had all been through this so many times that there was barely any need for orders other than the jump master shouting, “Go, go, go!”

Then it was Neville’s turn, and he tumbled out into the darkness. He positioned himself as he had been trained to withstand the sharp snap of the parachute deploying—it was a little like going off a diving board into a pool of nothing. They were jumping one after the other and he saw Dooley’s chute blossom into a sudden puff of silk in the darkness. Then his own ’chute opened behind him with a sound like whuff and he was drifting with all the rest of the boys, the ground coming up fast.

He strained to see the landing zone. The area had been mapped carefully. The intent was that they would land in open fields. But the fields were ringed with trees, so that landing required a bit of maneuvering. Neville saw branches reaching up at him and pulled the cords to spill some of the air from his parachute to bring him down even faster, before he could drift into the trees at the edge of the field.

Something zipped past his head and a distant part of his mind thought bullet , but he was too busy trying to miss the trees to dwell on the fact that he was being shot at. He hadn’t seen a muzzle flash or heard the report of a rifle over the roar of wind in his ears, so the shooter must have been far away.

He missed the field. The trees clawed at him, attempting to snag him, and he swung his legs up like a child trying to go higher on a swing. A branch snatched at the seat of his pants, but he kept out of the worst of the branches. Then he was coming down again, dodging a hedge, and the ground came up so hard that it seemed to swat Neville out of the sky. He was spinning a bit and going sideways, so he was disoriented. He rolled and rolled just as he had been trained, breaking his fall as much as possible. He came to a stop and took stock.

All right then, Neville old chap, you seem to be in one piece. Rapidly, he began struggling out of his parachute harness. He stayed down on his knees to present a small target, just in case any Jerries were out and about with their Mauser rifles. But aside from that bullet while he had been in the air, he didn’t hear a sound. So far, so good.

He gathered up his parachute and ran to the edge of the field, where he stuffed the tangle of silken fabric and ropes deep into the brush. In the starlight, he could see that he had come down in a small field that appeared to be ringed by high hedges. A crop of wheat was just barely ankle high this early in the growing season.

He appeared to be alone, which was a good sign in some ways—no German soldiers about—but neither were there any British troops visible. That was definitely not part of the plan. There were supposed to be at least some men nearby. These groups of men were to join up into squads, and then the squads would become platoons and regiments to become a genuine fighting force. Looking up, Neville could see more parachutes coming down, but much too far away from his own drop zone. He could hear a distant rifle, measured and deadly, firing at them. Probably the same Jerry who tried to do for me, he thought.

Scattered about the French countryside, it might take the British countless hours to find each other.

It’s all a bloody cock up. In Neville’s experience, almost every large military operation had that very outcome, which was why he had paid so much attention to his own training. The knives, garrote and the .45 were added insurance.

He started off through hedgerow country, hoping to find some of his own troops to join. But if he did not, Corporal Neville was fully prepared to be a one-man fighting force. He clicked off the safety on his rifle and started trudging toward the sounds of firing.

If it was a fight the Jerries wanted, it was a fight they were bloody well going to get.