That was Jump Six.
The Marine R4D landed while Steve was still folding up his parachute; and he watched it take on another load of Para-Marines while he was walking back to the staging area after the truck had come and taken up the ‘chutes.
As he and the others were ‘chuting up again, he saw that stick of Para-Marines jump. The R4D landed immediately, and they loaded aboard and jumped almost immediately.
Steve decided that what they were doing was showing the people from Life magazine how it was done.
That was Jump Seven. It was just like Jump Six, except that the guy leading the stick, a corporal, sprained his ankle because he landed on the concrete runway instead of on the grassy area. So he was not going to be able to jump again for a while.
That made Steve lead man in the stick for Jump Eight. He wasn’t sure if he would have the balls to jump first. If you were anywhere but lead man in the stick, it was automatic, and you didn’t have to think about it. But in the end he decided that if he hesitated, the jumpmaster would just shove him out the door.
Another trainee was added to the stick at the end. He would jump last.
And then, after the pilot had already restarted the left-hand engine on the R4D, something very unusual happened. A face in a helmet appeared at the door and ordered the crew chief to put the ladder down. And then Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville himself climbed into the airplane, wearing a set of coveralls. And his parachutes. And all of his field gear-except that he had a Thompson submachine gun instead of a Springfield rifle.
And then they took off.
Colonel Neville pulled Steve’s head close to him and shouted in his ear.
"I’m going to jump with you," he said. "You just carry on as usual."
"Aye, aye, Sir!" Steve shouted back.
This time, instead of just circling the field and jumping the Para-Marines, the R4D flew south. From where Steve was sitting, he couldn’t see much, but he became aware that there was a little airplane out there, too, flying close to the R4D.
During one of the brief glimpses he got of it, he saw that there was a man in the backseat with a camera.
Colonel Neville apparently knew all about it. He was standing in the door, hanging onto the jamb, making what looked like "come closer" signs to the pilot.
And then they were making their approach to Landing Zone Wake.
The commands now came quickly.
"Stand up."
"Hook up."
"Check your equipment."
"Stand in the door."
There were two little lights mounted on the aircraft bulkhead by the door. One was red and the other was green. The red one came on when you started getting ready to jump. The green one came on when the pilot told the jumpmaster to start the jumping.
Steve stood by the door, watching the red light.
"One minute!" the jumpmaster shouted in his ear.
Steve nodded his understanding.
He thought of Dianne Marshall Norman’s breasts, and how their nipples stood up.
The light turned green.
Somebody pushed him out of the way and dove out the door. Steve saw that the little airplane was really close, and that the man in the backseat had what looked like a movie camera in his hands. The jumpmaster shouted "Go!" in his ear and pushed him out the door.
It all happened pretty quickly, maybe in two seconds, no more. As Steve went out the door he saw that something was bent around what he thought of as "the little wing on the back" of the R4D.
And then, as he fell beneath it to the end of the static line and he could hear the main ‘chute slither out, and as he steeled himself for the opening shock, he realized that what he had seen wrapped around the little wing on the back of the R4D was a man. And then, as his canopy filled and the harness knocked the breath out of him, he realized that the man must be Lieutenant Colonel Neville.
And then he looked below him.
And saw a man’s body falling, just falling, toward the earth. There was no main ‘chute, and no emergency chest ‘chute. The body just fell to the ground and seemed to bounce a little, and then just lay there.
PFC Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, lost control of his bowels.
And then the ground was there, and he prepared to land as he had been taught; and he landed, and rolled as he had been taught. And then he got to his feet. He was immediately knocked onto his face as the canopy filled with a gust of wind and dragged him across the hard, snow-encrusted earth.
He had been taught how to deal with the situation, and dealt with it. He spilled the air from the canopy by manipulating the risers, and then he slipped out of the harness.
He stood up and rather numbly began to gather the parachute to him. He knew the truck would appear to pick it up.
And then he saw the body of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville, not fifteen feet away. It looked distorted, like a half-melted wax doll.
He was drawn to it. Still clutching his parachute harness to his chest, he walked over to it and looked down at it.
A photographer, one of the civilians, came running up, and a flashbulb went off.
Oh, shit!PFC Steve Koffler thought. What are they going to do to me when they find out I’ve shit my pants?
Another flashbulb went off, and Steve gave the photographer a dirty look. It didn’t seem to bother him.
"What’s your name, kid?" he asked.
"Fuck you," Steve said.
"That’s PFC Koffler, Stephen M.," a familiar voice said. Steve turned his head and saw that it was Lieutenant Macklin. "He is, understandably I think, a little upset."
"I wonder why," the photographer said, and took Steve’s picture again.
(Four)
Lakehurst Naval Air Station
Lakehurst, New Jersey
1425 Hours 14 February 1942
Major Jake Dillon had returned to active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps sixty days previously. The last time he had worn a Marine uniform was in Shanghai, China, with the 4thMarines in 1934. Major Dillon had then been a sergeant.
In 1933, while watching an adapted-from-a-novel adventure motion picture in Shanghai, it had occurred to Sergeant Dillon that it was a bullshit story and that he could easily write a better one. Blissfully unaware of the difficulties facing a first-time novelist, he set out to do so. It was a melodrama; its hero, a Marine sergeant, rescued a lovely Chinese maiden from a fate worse than death in a Shanghai brothel. Dillon had no trouble calling forth from memory the description of that establishment.
Next, Dillon’s hero slaughtered Chinese evildoers left and right; there was a chase sequence on horseback; and the book ended with the sergeant turning the girl back over to her grateful family and then returning to his Marine duties. Dillon wrote the novel at night on the company clerk’s typewriter. It took him two months. He mailed it off, and was not at all surprised two months after that when a contract, offering an advance of five hundred dollars, arrived in Shanghai.
The book was published, and it sold less than two thousand copies. But it was optioned, and then purchased, by a major motion-picture studio in Los Angeles. The studio saw in it a vehicle for a very handsome but none-too-bright actor they had under contract. With all the fight and chase scenes, plus a lot of attention devoted to the Chinese girl having her clothing ripped off, it was believed they could get the handsome actor through the production without him appearing to be as dull-witted as he was.