First to Jump by Jerome Preisler Page A

and find their brothers.
    14.
    Mangoni and John Zamanakos had sat elbow-to-elbow aboard the transport and jumped one after the other. But the demolition men had been separated when they landed on different sides of a large hedgerow.
    Alone in a tree-studded field, Zamanakos—like Jones—had trouble unbuckling his parachute harness. He’d hooked his Eureka unit under his chest packs and over the harness’s straps, and the big piece of equipment had gotten in the way of things. Finally, he had to use his trench knife to cut his risers.
    Free of the chute now, he looked this way and that, saw a long, deep ditch running parallel to the hedgerow, and crawled down into it, hoisting his radar unit over the dirt embankment. Then he waited and listened.
    For a few moments, he heard nothing but winged insects flittering and buzzing past his ears. Then at last the sounds he’d been hoping for reached him from the near distance:
Click-clack . . . click-clack . . . click-clack . . .
    A cricket
.
    He took out his own device without leaving the drainage ditch. It offered him more than vital cover; when he’d checked his compass, he seen that it roughly traced his transport’s line of flight. Since the other members of his stick also would be heading that way, his path was sure to converge with theirs if he stayed down in it.
    Grimed and sweaty, Zamanakos tramped through the ditch with his transmitter box, repeatedly clicking the little signal device in front of him as he moved along. He didn’t have much time before the planes appeared from the west seeking the drop zone. However far off it might be, he and his teammates had to get there first to bring them in.
    15.
    Click-clack . . . click-clack . . .
    Click-clack, click-clack . . . click-clack, click-clack . . .
    The signals given and received, Jones hurried toward the three shadowy forms across the graveyard. One was Snuffy Smith, the outfit’s medic. He’d clearly been injured and was being half-dragged along by the others.
    The Pathfinders assembled at the edge of the cemetery and then moved into a neighboring orchard, where more troopers from their flight joined them after hearing their clickers: Mangoni, Rocca, Wilhelm, T/5 Owen Council, and then Zamanakos. His helmet and uniform covered with mud and soil from trekking through the ditch, his face smeared with camo paint, he looked to all eyes around him like he’d clawed his way out of a nearby grave.
    Together in the field now, the men hastily compared notes. Though most reported seeing the church and enclosed courtyard, no one had noticed any German soldiers or vehicles around the structure Jones had thought might be a barracks. This led them to agree that it was probably still occupied by the local parson.
    Flustered and discombobulated, Wilhelm now shared his own experience of landing in a wood-ringed pasture; spooked by the heavy darkness, he’d nervously turned on his Holophane.
    â€œI wanted to see if it would work,” he said, realizing how crazy that must have sounded.
    As it turned out, he explained, the panel had done more than “work”—it had lit up the night around him with its brilliant reflectorized glare, startling him out of his momentary confusion and making him realize that he might as well have turned on a neon sign revealing his position to enemy soldiers. Fueled by that thought, he had left the field in a hurry, fortunate not to have alerted every German in the area.
    With almost half the stick assembled, the troopers now had to decide how to carry out their orders. They knew they were southeast of Pouppeville, where they were supposed to have dropped—but none of the men were sure how far to the southeast, making it all the more urgent that they not waste a minute. Although Captain Lillyman and the rest of their team were still unaccounted for, they would have to move off toward