First to Jump by Jerome Preisler Read Free Book Online Page B

below in a hurry. He’d hurtled down into one of them, unable to get clear of it, twigs and branches tearing at his skin, his chute and static lines getting entangled, leaves flying everywhere, pale green June apples dropping all around him.
    Smith’s descent finally came to a halt when he found himself dangling from a limb of the tree, suspended by his twisted lines. He’d landed in a churchyard enclosed by a low stone wall and could see the church close by in the moonlight.
    Then he noticed the vague silhouettes of helmets about fifty feet away across the grove. Alarmed and helpless, he peered in their direction, knowing he’d be able to recognize German coal scuttles if he got a halfway decent look at them. But despite the brightness of the moon it was too dark to make out the helmet shapes.
    With a deep breath, Smith struggled to escape his harness. Whether the soldiers were friend or enemy, he had to get out of the tree . . . but all he accomplished trying to unfasten his straps was to shake more apples from the branches. They rained down amid a flutter of leaves and twigs and then went bouncing off his body to the ground.
    Pulling his trench knife out of its boot sheath, Smith cut his shroud lines and dropped among the apples. It was a hard spill, but he quickly discovered that wasn’t the worst of it. Something was seriously wrong with his foot. He couldn’t rest his weight on it without pain, and it was swelling up fast.
    He instantly realized he’d broken a bone, or even suffered a compound fracture. As a medic he knew all the indications, and his weren’t good.
    Smith knew he couldn’t just wait there to be discovered, though. His first order of business was to locate his teammates, and the first step would be to identify the shadowy forms across the churchyard.
    He reached into a pocket, fishing for his cricket. Given to every Screaming Eagle before D-Day, the little metal clicking devices were military-issue versions of the novelty toys found in Cracker Jack boxes. Since the cricket would click once when its tab was depressed and a second time when it was released, it had been determined that one set of clicks would be the challenge and a double set the response.
    His clicker in hand, using the trees and bushes for cover, Smith crept toward the indistinct forms he’d seen moving about him. His injured foot felt like a huge swollen lump in his boot. He would need to give himself a shot of morphine if he was going to keep walking on it, and he had no way of telling how well he’d get around even with a hypo. But first things first.
    Squatted behind a patch of shrubbery with bated breath, aiming his rifle in the direction of the men, he raised the cricket and snapped it in front of him.
    Click-clack
.
    Thankfully the answering signal came almost at once:
    Click-clack, click-clack
.
    He relaxed and lowered his weapon. It had been a double snap—the correct identifier.
    He emerged from the shrubs that had lent him cover. Stepping forward, he could see more than just their American helmets now, and recognized Mangoni and another paratrooper. His foot throbbing badly, he limped over to join them.
    Lost, disoriented, and frazzled, the men exchanged very few words as they came together, sharply aware that they needed to get on with their mission. But Smith could barely put pressure on his foot and knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the others without a painkiller. Nor could they afford to have him slow them down.
    He got the morphine syrette out of his kit. It would be too agonizing to take off his boot, so he rolled up his pants and injected the lower part of his leg. That helped a little.
    Half-carrying him along between them, aware time was running out, the Pathfinders moved off across the field to search for the rest of their team.
    12.
    Private Delbert Jones, another of the men to jump from Plane Number 1, had landed hard in a small courtyard, his