Sure enough, Yanai shuddered and said, “I don’t want to go hungry!”
“Who does?” Fujita agreed. Inside himself, he smiled. Damned if the training didn’t work.
As a veteran U.S. Marine, Sergeant Pete McGill had done almost everything a fighting man could do by land or sea. He hadn’t done much in the air, though. At any rate, he hadn’t till now.
The C-47 droned along over central Oahu. He’d already fitted the long strap that connected his parachute to the static line that ran along the starboard side of the transport’s fuselage. They didn’t trust you to pull your own rip cord. This did the job for you, and made sure you wouldn’t end up as a big splatter on the ground several too many thousand feet below.
A gunnery sergeant with a drill instructor’s lemon-squeezer hat firmly strapped to his head stood by the portside door. “In about a minute, the light’ll start going green,” the gunny yelled over the noise of engines and wind. All the twenty-odd paratroopers were supposed to know that, but he was a good instructor, and took nothing for granted. “Every time it flashes, one of youse goes out. One! Youse guys got that?” He thrust out his chin and looked very fierce.
“Yes, Sergeant!” the men chorused. Pete hid a grin as he shouted out his answer. He said youse and youse guys, too-he came from the Bronx. The gunny’s accent wasn’t the same as his-he would have guessed Philly-but there was another big-city man among the hicks and Rebs who filled out the Corps.
“Okay,” the instructor went on. “Slide forward one place every time a guy goes out of the plane. You get to the door, hang on to the sides, one with each hand. Put your left foot on the sill. Swing your right foot forward and step out. Don’t jump. That’ll take you too goddamn close to the tailplane, which you don’t want. Just step. You’ll fall. Oh, yeah. Bet your ass you will.” He looked at the guy closest to the door and barked, “Take your place!”
The leatherneck obeyed. Everybody else slid down one. Pete moved from sixth to fifth. The jump light went green. The first Marine half stepped, half jumped from the C-47. No matter what the gunny said, the urge to leap if you were going to go at all was strong.
“Number two, take your place!” the instructor shouted. The next Marine did. The light turned green. Out he went. “Number three, take your place!”
Number four didn’t go out as soon as he saw the green light. The gunny put a strong hand on the small of his back and shoved. That took care of that, and wasted less than a second. McGill had heard they had somebody like that stationed by the door on every combat run. No paratrooper with a sudden case of cold feet would be able to gum up the works.
Number five stepped out into space according to plan. Then it was Pete’s turn. The wind tore at him and stripped tears from his eyes. He grabbed at cold aluminum with both hands and planted his left boot on the metal sill. When the light turned green, he brought his right foot forward and fell away from the plane.
You were supposed to yell Geronimo! when you jumped. What came out of his mouth that first time was a long, heartfelt “Shiiiit!”
It cut off abruptly as the strap attached to the static line yanked the chute out of its canvas pack and opened. His world went gray for a second at the jolt. Then the blood came back to his brain. Here he was, floating in the air under the world’s biggest umbrella canopy.
In battle, he’d go in a lot lower. The Japs would be shooting at him while he descended on them. The less chance to do that they had, the better. But this wasn’t battle. It was training. He could look around and gawk and admire a view only soaring birds had enjoyed till a few years before.
Down he came. Much of northwestern Oahu didn’t have much on it and wasn’t soaking wet. The combination made good landing country. You needed to bend your knees and tuck your chin against your chest. When you hit, you took the impact as best you could. They told you to roll with it.
The ground swelled-not anywhere near so fast as it would have if he were falling free, but it did. He’d thought about soaring birds in general a moment before. Now he thought about albatrosses in particular. Some other Marine had told him about watching them glide in at Midway and crash-land every goddamn time. The way he made it sound, it was hilarious.
Well, if any albatrosses were landing on Midway these days, the goddamn Japs were watching them. And watching a crash landing might be funny. If anybody was watching Pete right now, the bastard might laugh his ass off. Going through a crash landing was a whole different ballgame.
An albatross who didn’t like the way things were going could flap and gain height and try it again somewhere else. A guy under a parachute didn’t have that luxury. You were supposed to be able to spill wind from the canopy by shifting your weight. So the instructors claimed. Maybe you could, too, after a few more practice jumps. This first time, Pete wasn’t inclined to experiment.
Here came the ground. He bent and tucked as he’d been told to do. Wham! He might have controlled his crash a little better than an albatross did, but not a whole lot. And he hit hard. Not long before he joined the Marines, his girlfriend’s musclebound brother unexpectedly walked into the apartment they shared with their folks. He’d gone out a second-story window then, and landed like a ton of bricks. He thought he hit harder now.
Now, though, he had boots, knee and elbow pads, and a helmet on his head. He rolled a couple of times, realizing he hadn’t sprained or broken anything. Then he used the lines that attached him to the chute to get the air out of it. He didn’t have to cut himself free to keep from being blown all over the place. The bookkeepers would be happy-here was another parachute they could use again.
More and more men came down from the sky. They landed to the west of him, in the direction the C-47 was flying. One of them let out a yell he could hear from a couple of hundred yards away. The luckless guy didn’t get up. He lay there clutching an ankle and howling like a wolf.
A jeep chugged up to Pete. “Hop in,” the driver said, so he did. The little utility vehicles could go damn near anywhere. The only trouble with them was, after they’d jounced over rough terrain for a while, you thought your kidneys would fall out.
McGill pointed toward the hurt Marine. “Pick him up next,” he said. “He landed bad.”
“Okey-doke.” The driver put the jeep in gear and went over to the man. “Give you a hand, pal?”
“You better,” the other leatherneck answered. “I sure as shit busted somethin’ in there. I heard it crack when I hit, an’ it hurts like a mad son of a bitch.” He did some fancier cussing as the driver and Pete hauled him up and got him into the back of the jeep.
“Got your morphine syrette in your wound kit?” Pete asked him. “If you want, I’ll stick you.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” the other Marine said. His face was gray and drawn; he had to be hurting bad. Pete knew what that pain was like. He’d broken bones before. He fumbled in the pouches on the guy’s belt till he found the one with the wound dressing and the sulfa powder and the syrette. Pulling off the cap, he drove the needle home and pushed the plunger.
“I’ll take you both back to Schofield Barracks,” the driver said. “They got a hospital there.”
Even on the road, the jeep didn’t have the smoothest ride in the world. The injured Marine groaned at every bump till the morphine took hold. Then he let out a soft sigh of relief.
Schofield Barracks, west of the central town of Wahiawa, had taken damage from Japanese air raids. It was an Army base. The hospital accepted the injured man without any trouble. The driver had to talk to a light colonel, though, before he got permission to return Pete to his fellow leathernecks.