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Nov. 30th, 2006 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
over_europeThe men of Easy Company had been through so damn much together.
They’d survived Toccoa, the march to Fort Benning, the incompetent leadership of Herbert Sobel; the training, the hardships, the wash outs; the steamer voyage to England, the mock jump, the days of agony and the three dreaded words: “No jump tonight.”
And still, there was no preparing for June 6, 1944.
They sat in the aircraft, seventeen men pressed shoulder-to-shoulder on the two long benches, and some of the paratroopers would tell you that that moment was the worst. Sitting on the runway in Upottery, listening to the propellers kick to life and knowing that outside, the camp had come to a standstill as all personnel, American and British alike, stood and solemnly, silently watched as the convoy left for France. The bottom dropped out of the men’s stomachs as the wheels left the ground and – that was it. They were finally going to see some action, boys, Hanley whooped above the roar of the propellers, but most soldiers sat silently.
As day turned to night, most of the planes opted to open their door. Given the choice between the ability to talk in normal tones in stifled air, or to breathe freely and smoke, most sticks chose the smoking. Hearing each other wasn't important. There wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been said on the airstrip at Upottery.
A certain Lieutenant Nixon had already said his piece — “Look, Dick, if I go down — you can have my whiskey. No, yeah, yeah, really. I know. The generosity of a Nixon knows no bounds.” — and he’d made his peace, too, of a sort. He'd signed his GI insurance bill, sent a stilted, awkward letter (what do you say to your estranged wife when you're about to jump out of a plane and into the war in Europe? Nix wrote the letter and he still didn't know) to Cathy. He was ready to go.
He sat on a bench in plane #66, the line of men swaying with each bump, and he watched the others. He wondered idly if his face was as pale under the streaked black pitch as theirs were. The medic prayed with a set of rosary beads. A mortarman smoked and clicked the standard issue cricket. Several compulsively checked their equipment, the shoulder straps of their parachutes, and Nixon sat with his forearms on his knees and he let them do it. All the rest sat silently, hands fidgeting or tapping cigarettes or clenched into fists. They waited.
Nix didn’t watch the view nearly as much as he watched the men over the course of that plane ride, but he became inured to the sight that greeted him outside the open door, after a while. The combined might of the Allied Expeditionary Force steamed along in the steel gray ocean blow, troop ships and battleships and every damn kind of ship you could think of. Planes stretched as far as the eye could see in the air, formation V’s disappearing into the dark gray-blue clouds in the distance.
And when the clouds began to light up in the distance, he couldn’t hear the bangs yet, but he knew they were coming. He doublechecked that his helmet was on tight, and he sat upright.
* * *
The sight was incredible; searing white-hot tracers flashing up from what seemed to be every square inch of farmland, fields spread out like a crooked patchwork quilt; planes flying every which way and open parachutes and red-orange-yellow explosions already beginning to blot out the sky. Nixon didn’t, couldn’t pay it too much attention; he kept his eyes on the light and the jump master. The jump master got them up, hooked up, checked out, sounded off, all under the harsh lines created by the red light, all under the plane rattling and jerking and roaring. This was it. This finally was it, and Lewis Nixon still wasn't sure what the hell he was doing in the airborne when that light went green and the first man in the line hurled himself out the door. Turning back sure as hell wasn't an option now, though, not when he was fourth in line and the second man was already gone. And, he mused as he moved to the door, he'd always been a stubborn bastard, anyway.
Lewis Nixon threw himself into chaos.
He hit the ground hard, harder than they had in any practice jumps. He nearly came down on top of a Kraut machine gun nest; didn't know how they didn't notice him but thought, a little hysterically as he untangled himself from his parachute and harness and bolted as fast and quiet as possible, they must have had their backs turned. Either that or he was going to have to start rethinking his ideas of the afterlife. Very quickly, as he ducked into the woods, crouched low with his rifle in hand, he realized that the battalion was in trouble.
"Flash!" hissed a hoarse voice from a clump of bushes, four figures rising out of the darkness, weapons unmistakably drawn and aimed at him.
"Jesus — Thunder, thunder!"
"Sarge? S'at you?" asked one of them, the two rifles lowering as they tramped out of the bushes.
"No, it's not Sarge, now who the hell — " They came closer, and Nixon realized abruptly that he didn't recognize a one of them. "Who the hell are you?"
"Littlefield and Fuller from Able," said the shortest of them.
"Bickerson, from Fox Company, sir."
"Wylie," said one of the two without a visible weapon, "from Charlie. Who are you, sir?"
"Lieutenant Nixon, 2d Battalion S-2." He peered at them. "You're with the 101st?"
All four dirty faces looked at him silently for a moment, then one said, "No, sir. The 82d."
That was the moment that Nix realized exactly how fucked up everything was.
The next realization came after he'd gathered them up and gotten them moving, toward the set of train tracks he'd seen while coming down. He glanced to his right, rifle held loosely in both hands and pointed at the ground. "Wylie, Bickerson, decided to go for a stroll in Normandy without your M-1?"
Bickerson shook his head. "No, sir. Those damn leg bags, the prop blast tore 'em off the second we got out of the plane."
"And your rifle was in yours." A sharp crack rang out and three of them immediately dropped onto one knee; Wylie's unsteady voice said, "Sorry. Stepped on a stick."
They rose again, and Bickerson glanced at Nixon. "Yes, sir."
"Fantastic," Nix muttered, and they forged ahead.
They gathered more and more wayward soldiers through the night and into the morning. "Did anyone land in the right goddamn drop zone?" he'd demanded of them, but they hadn't had an answer, either. Neither had the armored unit they'd met.
At least the boys in the tanks had been able to offer him a ride.
Nix gladly gave up his patchwork platoon to a louie from the 82d, said his goodbyes, and he hopped up onto a tank. All damn night and day spent getting through this country. He'd been here before, but so far, he damn well preferred the lights of gay Paris to mud-slopped, cow-filled Normandy.
Still, it looked like he was finally reaching some semblance of civilization here, as his behemoth of a mount creaked and rattled its way along. It also looked like the troops had already been seeing some action; the only color in the little town was the red staining the road and the lines of stretchers.
Nix abruptly recognized the stance of one lanky soldier amidst the sea of humanity, the little thatched roof houses, and something eased up just a notch in his chest. He started to grin.
Standing by the side of the tiny road, standing alongside the major and waiting for the small convoy to pass, Lieutenant Richard Winters looked up at the second tank — and a smile flashed bright in his dirty face.
Nix slapped the hatch hard, and the tank rumbled to a halt. "Going my way?" he called down over the sound of its engines, grinning easily now, like it was nothing and he always ran into Dick Winters in a shithole town in France after running around being shot at all night.
Dick surprised him; he grinned right back. "Sure," he said, and he tossed up his M-1. Nixon caught it and shifted it to his right hand, and he leaned down and offered Dick his left.
The other lieutenant clasped his hand, turned briefly to the officer he'd been speaking with and said something Nix couldn't hear, and then he looked up and Nix helped haul him up onto the tank. "Careful," Nixon drawled as the other man climbed up, fully aware of the irony, knowing Dick and knowing that he'd probably been throwing himself right into the thick of things all night and day. "Don't hurt yourself."
Dick sat down hard beside Nixon as the tank started up again, wrapping his left arm around the barrel of the tank's huge gun for support. He smiled broadly again (two in one day; it had to be a record) and reached over to clap Nixon on the shoulder. "Nice ride you got here, Nix."
Nix grinned, face bright under all that muck. "Straight from Utah Beach," he said loudly, over the noise as the tank motored on down the road. "We should put 'em to work before they're missed."
Dick smiled and wanted to know where he had been, and Nixon, as he began to explain, decided that maybe Normandy wasn't so bad after all.
[Last bit of dialogue from Band of Brothers.]
They’d survived Toccoa, the march to Fort Benning, the incompetent leadership of Herbert Sobel; the training, the hardships, the wash outs; the steamer voyage to England, the mock jump, the days of agony and the three dreaded words: “No jump tonight.”
And still, there was no preparing for June 6, 1944.
They sat in the aircraft, seventeen men pressed shoulder-to-shoulder on the two long benches, and some of the paratroopers would tell you that that moment was the worst. Sitting on the runway in Upottery, listening to the propellers kick to life and knowing that outside, the camp had come to a standstill as all personnel, American and British alike, stood and solemnly, silently watched as the convoy left for France. The bottom dropped out of the men’s stomachs as the wheels left the ground and – that was it. They were finally going to see some action, boys, Hanley whooped above the roar of the propellers, but most soldiers sat silently.
As day turned to night, most of the planes opted to open their door. Given the choice between the ability to talk in normal tones in stifled air, or to breathe freely and smoke, most sticks chose the smoking. Hearing each other wasn't important. There wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been said on the airstrip at Upottery.
A certain Lieutenant Nixon had already said his piece — “Look, Dick, if I go down — you can have my whiskey. No, yeah, yeah, really. I know. The generosity of a Nixon knows no bounds.” — and he’d made his peace, too, of a sort. He'd signed his GI insurance bill, sent a stilted, awkward letter (what do you say to your estranged wife when you're about to jump out of a plane and into the war in Europe? Nix wrote the letter and he still didn't know) to Cathy. He was ready to go.
He sat on a bench in plane #66, the line of men swaying with each bump, and he watched the others. He wondered idly if his face was as pale under the streaked black pitch as theirs were. The medic prayed with a set of rosary beads. A mortarman smoked and clicked the standard issue cricket. Several compulsively checked their equipment, the shoulder straps of their parachutes, and Nixon sat with his forearms on his knees and he let them do it. All the rest sat silently, hands fidgeting or tapping cigarettes or clenched into fists. They waited.
Nix didn’t watch the view nearly as much as he watched the men over the course of that plane ride, but he became inured to the sight that greeted him outside the open door, after a while. The combined might of the Allied Expeditionary Force steamed along in the steel gray ocean blow, troop ships and battleships and every damn kind of ship you could think of. Planes stretched as far as the eye could see in the air, formation V’s disappearing into the dark gray-blue clouds in the distance.
And when the clouds began to light up in the distance, he couldn’t hear the bangs yet, but he knew they were coming. He doublechecked that his helmet was on tight, and he sat upright.
* * *
The sight was incredible; searing white-hot tracers flashing up from what seemed to be every square inch of farmland, fields spread out like a crooked patchwork quilt; planes flying every which way and open parachutes and red-orange-yellow explosions already beginning to blot out the sky. Nixon didn’t, couldn’t pay it too much attention; he kept his eyes on the light and the jump master. The jump master got them up, hooked up, checked out, sounded off, all under the harsh lines created by the red light, all under the plane rattling and jerking and roaring. This was it. This finally was it, and Lewis Nixon still wasn't sure what the hell he was doing in the airborne when that light went green and the first man in the line hurled himself out the door. Turning back sure as hell wasn't an option now, though, not when he was fourth in line and the second man was already gone. And, he mused as he moved to the door, he'd always been a stubborn bastard, anyway.
Lewis Nixon threw himself into chaos.
He hit the ground hard, harder than they had in any practice jumps. He nearly came down on top of a Kraut machine gun nest; didn't know how they didn't notice him but thought, a little hysterically as he untangled himself from his parachute and harness and bolted as fast and quiet as possible, they must have had their backs turned. Either that or he was going to have to start rethinking his ideas of the afterlife. Very quickly, as he ducked into the woods, crouched low with his rifle in hand, he realized that the battalion was in trouble.
"Flash!" hissed a hoarse voice from a clump of bushes, four figures rising out of the darkness, weapons unmistakably drawn and aimed at him.
"Jesus — Thunder, thunder!"
"Sarge? S'at you?" asked one of them, the two rifles lowering as they tramped out of the bushes.
"No, it's not Sarge, now who the hell — " They came closer, and Nixon realized abruptly that he didn't recognize a one of them. "Who the hell are you?"
"Littlefield and Fuller from Able," said the shortest of them.
"Bickerson, from Fox Company, sir."
"Wylie," said one of the two without a visible weapon, "from Charlie. Who are you, sir?"
"Lieutenant Nixon, 2d Battalion S-2." He peered at them. "You're with the 101st?"
All four dirty faces looked at him silently for a moment, then one said, "No, sir. The 82d."
That was the moment that Nix realized exactly how fucked up everything was.
The next realization came after he'd gathered them up and gotten them moving, toward the set of train tracks he'd seen while coming down. He glanced to his right, rifle held loosely in both hands and pointed at the ground. "Wylie, Bickerson, decided to go for a stroll in Normandy without your M-1?"
Bickerson shook his head. "No, sir. Those damn leg bags, the prop blast tore 'em off the second we got out of the plane."
"And your rifle was in yours." A sharp crack rang out and three of them immediately dropped onto one knee; Wylie's unsteady voice said, "Sorry. Stepped on a stick."
They rose again, and Bickerson glanced at Nixon. "Yes, sir."
"Fantastic," Nix muttered, and they forged ahead.
They gathered more and more wayward soldiers through the night and into the morning. "Did anyone land in the right goddamn drop zone?" he'd demanded of them, but they hadn't had an answer, either. Neither had the armored unit they'd met.
At least the boys in the tanks had been able to offer him a ride.
Nix gladly gave up his patchwork platoon to a louie from the 82d, said his goodbyes, and he hopped up onto a tank. All damn night and day spent getting through this country. He'd been here before, but so far, he damn well preferred the lights of gay Paris to mud-slopped, cow-filled Normandy.
Still, it looked like he was finally reaching some semblance of civilization here, as his behemoth of a mount creaked and rattled its way along. It also looked like the troops had already been seeing some action; the only color in the little town was the red staining the road and the lines of stretchers.
Nix abruptly recognized the stance of one lanky soldier amidst the sea of humanity, the little thatched roof houses, and something eased up just a notch in his chest. He started to grin.
Standing by the side of the tiny road, standing alongside the major and waiting for the small convoy to pass, Lieutenant Richard Winters looked up at the second tank — and a smile flashed bright in his dirty face.
Nix slapped the hatch hard, and the tank rumbled to a halt. "Going my way?" he called down over the sound of its engines, grinning easily now, like it was nothing and he always ran into Dick Winters in a shithole town in France after running around being shot at all night.
Dick surprised him; he grinned right back. "Sure," he said, and he tossed up his M-1. Nixon caught it and shifted it to his right hand, and he leaned down and offered Dick his left.
The other lieutenant clasped his hand, turned briefly to the officer he'd been speaking with and said something Nix couldn't hear, and then he looked up and Nix helped haul him up onto the tank. "Careful," Nixon drawled as the other man climbed up, fully aware of the irony, knowing Dick and knowing that he'd probably been throwing himself right into the thick of things all night and day. "Don't hurt yourself."
Dick sat down hard beside Nixon as the tank started up again, wrapping his left arm around the barrel of the tank's huge gun for support. He smiled broadly again (two in one day; it had to be a record) and reached over to clap Nixon on the shoulder. "Nice ride you got here, Nix."
Nix grinned, face bright under all that muck. "Straight from Utah Beach," he said loudly, over the noise as the tank motored on down the road. "We should put 'em to work before they're missed."
Dick smiled and wanted to know where he had been, and Nixon, as he began to explain, decided that maybe Normandy wasn't so bad after all.
[Last bit of dialogue from Band of Brothers.]
