Chapter 2
It took some time for the many, many Dakotas that were carrying the 502nd to form up in the air. Lynn, who had never ridden in an aircraft prior to joining the Army, still retained a childlike fascination with the airplane. Heavier-than-air powered flight had begun right at the turn of the century, and the early 1900's were only some 40-ish years ago. The airplane, like the automobile, had arrived fairly recently, but had grown in leaps and bounds. This C-47, a sturdy, reliable aircraft capable of carrying cargo across oceans and soldiers into battle, would have been nothing but dreams and theory when the Wright brothers' fragile plane first took flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
There was no arguing that aviation had come a long way since then. It could only make Lynn wonder what the next 40 years held in store. The relentless human pursuit of technology in peacetime only became more intense in war, with scientists and researchers receiving funds and facilities from their governments that they would only have been able to dream about in calmer times. Surely 40 years from now, Lynn's trusty M1 Garand and the C-47 he rode in would seem as obsolete as a Ford Model T was to him now.
Somebody in the back started a song, the notes of which quickly began to be picked up and carried forward in the aircraft. It was "Blood Upon the Risers", a gallows-humor Airborne song that used the tune of the old American Civil War song "Battle Hymn of the Republic". It was actually pretty grim, when you thought about it- the lyrics told the story of a rookie enlisted paratrooper making his first combat jump, having his chute fail, and plummeting to his death. Yet the men loved it, and sang it with gusto.
Lynn, who had disliked the song the first time he heard it, gradually had gotten to like it. He was rather preoccupied with making sure his leg bag was properly secured to his right leg, but had joined in the singing by the time he'd finished.
He was just a rookie trooper, and he surely shook with fright
He checked all his equipment and made sure his pack was tight
He had to sit and listen to those awful engines roar:
"You ain't gonna jump no more!"
Then came the chorus, repeated after each stanza, again in the style of "Battle Hymn of the Republic":
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more!
Just about the whole stick of troopers was singing by now, gaining strength and volume as they went. Like all martial songs, it was designed to foster a sense of pride and create high morale and esprit de corps among men going into battle. And like so many martial songs created since before the days of the Roman Legions, it was working.
"Is everybody happy?" cried the Sergeant, looking up
Our hero meekly answered "Yes", and then they stood him up
He jumped into the icy blast, his static line unhooked
And he ain't gonna jump no more!
X
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more!
X
He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the shock
He felt the wind, he felt the cold, he felt the awful drop
The silk from his reserve spilled out and wrapped around his legs
And he ain't gonna jump no more!
X
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more!
X
The risers swung around his neck, connectors cracked his dome
Suspension lines were tied in knots around his skinny bones
The canopy became his shroud, he hurtled to the ground
And he ain't gonna jump no more!
X
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more!
X
The days he'd lived and loved and laughed kept running through his mind
He thought about the girl back home, the one he'd left behind
He thought about the medicals, and wondered what they'd find
And he ain't gonna jump no more!
X
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more!
X
He hit the ground, the sound was SPLAT, the blood went spurting high
His comrades, they were heard to say, "A HELL OF A WAY TO DIE!"
He lay there rolling 'round in the welter of his gore
And he ain't gonna jump no more!
X
Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
Gory, gory what a hell of a way to die
He ain't gonna jump no more!
XX
Some of the C-47s flew with their side door closed; some had it open, allowing more ventilation in the stuffy, cramped aircraft. All of the Dakotas would have their doors off by the time they crossed the Channel, to make sure there would be no delays in the jump. When that light went green, you wanted to have everyone going out the door. The faster troopers got out of the planes, the better their odds were of making it to the ground alive.
Riding up front, Lynn was as quiet as anyone. There was very little talking. A few men prayed, Lynn among them. A couple men smoked- easier to do with the door closed.
Gazing out one of the windows- it was located right over his shoulder, conveniently enough- Lynn went still with awe when he caught sight of what was out there.
The sky was filled with olive drab C-47s, all of them wearing their black-and-white bands of zebra stripes on their wings and fuselage, to help identify them as Allied aircraft. Everywhere you looked- everywhere- was a dozen Dakotas. In each of them, between 10 and 18 paratroopers. More than twenty thousand in all. It was one thing to hear the numbers spoken, read them on sheets of paper. It was quite another to see them for yourself.
And down below them, ships, some small, some big, more than Lynn could hope to count, all of them sailing across the English Channel under the moonlight. Aboard them, more than ten divisions of Allied soldiers. In the air, on the surface of the ocean, were more human beings than Lynn Jackson had ever seen in his life. All of them, every one, headed for Normandy.
XX
As the C-47's flew and the engines droned on, though, Lynn found himself having a curious amount of trouble staying awake. His body kept relaxing, bouncing and rolling in tune with the periodically shaking, rattling aircraft, and his eyelids kept drooping shut. Looking around, Lynn saw he was not the only one experiencing this problem. Maybe those airsickness pills made you a little too relaxed.
But a lot of other faces were wide awake, having no trouble staying up. Either the pills weren't affecting them, or fear was doing even more.
Out of nowhere, Lynn felt himself standing up. He moved to the center of the aircraft, grabbed onto the steel beam that the men would hook up to when the signal came to get ready. Thus steadied on his feet, the young officer raised his voice- even with the door closed, he had to essentially shout to be effectively heard over the engines.
"You know," he said, almost conversationally, "they were originally gonna send the Marines to do this."
The men were all looking his way- some with surprise, others with skepticism, others with plain disbelief.
Then Lynn added, still very matter-of-fact, "But then Command decided they'd rather not send somebody who'd just fuck it all up, so they called us instead."
That got a positive response right away. Some of the men chuckled, some grinned, some cracked up laughing.
"Are you making this up, Lieutenant?" Sergeant Bixby called. He sounded like he really couldn't tell. Several other men craned their necks to look at Lynn, too. Apparently Bixby wasn't the only one who wasn't sure.
"Hell yeah, I'm making this up!" Lynn shouted, which brought more laughter. "Passes the time, Sergeant!"
He went to sit down, but didn't stay long. The Air Corps pilots flicked the red "Get Ready" light on just a couple of minutes later.
Getting up again, Lynn hooked himself up. There were ominous booms, and rattling, blatting sounds that made the hair stand on end. The Germans were waking up down there. One thousand two hundred C-47 transports made a hell of a lot of noise. Even if they didn't know exactly what just yet, the Krauts sure knew something was happening.
"Stand up!" the young officer yelled, motioning with his hands. The fourteen other troopers stood up as one, the two lines merging into one flawlessly.
"Hook up!"
Again, with the ease of men who had done it a thousand times, the troopers reached over their heads and hooked their static lines up. When they jumped out the door, their main chute would deploy almost immediately. If it didn't, you had the reserve chute. A few men in the various planes were carrying heavy equipment, like bazookas or .30-caliber machine guns, and had opted to do without the reserve. If the main didn't work for them, their luck had simply run out. It was a chance some of the men were taking.
"Sound off for equipment check!" Lynn shouted.
From the rear of the C-47 to the front, each paratrooper checked the man himself and the man in front of him, swiftly and expertly looking for missing gear, poorly packed chutes, wrongly attached or damaged equipment. Finding none, each man shouted up the line:
"Fifteen okay!"
"Fourteen okay!"
"Twelve okay!"
"Eleven okay!"
"Ten okay!"
"Nine okay!"
"Eight okay!"
"Seven okay!"
"Six okay!"
"Five okay!"
"Four okay!"
"Three okay!"
"Two okay!"
And then the jumpmaster, 2nd Lieutenant Lynn Jackson, did checked himself quickly and yelled, "One okay!"
The equipment check completed, Lynn turned and, with some effort, removed the C-47's door and locked it into the open position.
By then the anti-aircraft fire was intensifying. The noise was louder, the gunfire much closer. Red, green, and white tracers shot up from the ground, briefly making Lynn wonder if he'd ever think of Christmas' signature three colors the same way again. That thought vanished as quickly as it came, as a C-47 off to the left suddenly exploded, breaking in two and plummeting to the earth, each half trailing smoke and flame.
Lynn wondered what had happened to that Dakota. These planes weren't carrying several tons of bombs the way the B-24's and B-17's did. All they had was their fuel, and that was in the wings.
For a C-47 to break up like that in midair, something big must've gotten a direct hit on it. Maybe a German 88. That big bastard of an antiaircraft cannon, the FlaK 36.
Lynn was still thinking about that, still waiting for the green light, when his own C-47 exploded about five seconds later.
A/N: This story is as authentic as I could make it. It's set it the universe of Brothers in Arms, and involves the characters and events of both Road to Hill 30 and Earned in Blood. I had to research the 502nd PIR just to learn the names of some of the CO's of units in this story. Everybody from General Taylor down to the CO of Fox Company really was in command of the units I stated they were on June 5th-6th, 1944. Lieutenant Jackson, Staff Sergeant Hassay, Sergeant Baker, Corporal Hartsock, and the other enlisted men in 3rd Platoon are all historically fictional, but are also canon Brothers in Arms characters. Lieutenant Jackson actually doesn't make much of an appearance in the game, and as far as I know is never even seen in person.
Jackson is, in canon, killed on June 6th, 1944 when his C-47 explodes over Normandy. I wrote this story to tell more about him, give him a first name and a background. Some 2nd lieutenants are vain, some are clueless, but some actually learn pretty fast and, more importantly, bust their asses trying to learn the ropes of their job and do it right. I chose to depict Lieutenant Jackson as one of those lieutenants.
The part of the story where 2LT Jackson is griping to SSG Hassay about the number of items he is carrying into Normandy with him and how much it all weighs is directly taken from Episode 1 of the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers"; the trooper griping there is Joe Toye of Easy Company, 506th PIR. Not every American paratrooper jumped into Normandy with a hundred pounds or more in gear on him, but a lot did, or carried something close to that amount. "Mae West" was the popular name for the buoyant life-saving vests that the 82nd and 101st were issued, in case a trooper was mis-dropped and landed in a lake, river, or the English Channel.
Lieutenant Jackson making fun of the Marines is almost quoted verbatim from a dream I had once, in which I was the lieutenant and said almost the same words. It was pretty funny imagining a junior officer making fun of the Marine Corps on the night he jumps into Normandy. Operation Overlord is the largest amphibious invasion in history, and no U.S. Marines were present.
The question of "Are you making this up?" and the emphatic response "Hell yeah, I'm making this up!" are taken from an episode of another HBO miniseries, Generation Kill, featuring the real-life exploits of one platoon of Bravo Company, 1st Recon Battalion in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
I have tried to be true and faithful to both the details of the Normandy invasion, Mission Albany (the specific part of Operation Overlord assigned to the 101st and 82nd), and to the 101st and its featured regiment in the Brothers in Arms video game series, the 502nd PIR, also called the "Five-Oh-Deuce" or just "The Deuce". I may not have gotten everything right, but I did my best. I apologize for any errors or inaccuracies.