Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

05: If He's Afraid

"Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' / 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him." - George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

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Upon returning to the airfield and watching the paratroopers mill about, Juliette didn't feel so nervous anymore. Sure, she would have to make the jump without any of her team members, but it was something she'd done so many times she realised that she didn't really need them there for that part, anyway - the jump was her favourite part.

She didn't know how many practise jumps the paratroopers had had to complete in order to pass their training, but either way, they were all practically vibrating with nerves. As they sat on the concrete floor of the airfield there were so many bouncing legs and tapping fingers it was a wonder the ground wasn't shaking. From where she sat in the jeep they'd been transported in on, she watched with a small smile; that had been them once upon a time.

The airfield was vast, there was no other word for it. They would usually take off from a special operations airfield, though none of them had even the faintest of ideas where it was (a precaution, in case of capture). This one, however, was so incredibly big it must have been easily spotted from the air - Juliette had scarcely ever been somewhere so expansively huge.

It was, of course, also filled to bursting with paratroopers, British and American alike.

Jules, Tom, Martin, and Will had been given ODs to change into before they left the previous day that would allow them to blend in better. However, their lack of webbing and the other bits of heavy duty equipment that would soon be attached to the paratroopers would make them stick out a little bit. As such, they had been taken directly to the vicinity Easy Company had been delegated, and were only allowed out of the vehicle once the men of the company had already set themselves up.

As she jumped out of the car, forgetting her helmet and thus making Thomas thrust it at her with an exasperated eye roll, Jules looked around at the many Easy Company men who were organising their equipment. They weren't set to leave until 0000 hours, and boarding the planes was likely to take an hour in and of itself, so they still had about six hours to go.

When the jeep that had transported them to the airfield had driven off, Thomas told them all to follow him and led them to a seemingly unoccupied tent. He let them enter first before he closed the tent flap behind him.

"Recite to me a play-by-play of what we're doing," he ordered, and nodded to Jules so that she would start.

"We'll load into planes in the midst of the paratroopers, I'll be with Welsh, you'll be with Winters, Will'll be with Nixon, and Martin'll be with Heyliger. We'll take off at 0000 hours, due to jump at roughly 0115 and land in Drop Zone C, about a mile west of Sainte Marie du Mont."

"Martin," Tom directed.

"We'll link up on the ground and you and I will head straight for Utah Beach. We'll cut every telephone line we find on the way."

"Will."

"Jules and I will set ourselves up about a mile away from the German artillery at Utah Beach and take out their radio communications. Once we've done that, we'll link up with you and Martin."

Tom took over, then. "We'll all four of us take out every German transport vehicle we find, and every bridge that links the German troops to the beaches to prevent them from sending reinforcements. We'll gather whatever intelligence we can that details their plans for troop deployments and report it back to US Airborne intelligence. Do we all follow?"

"Yes," they told him in unison.

"Good."

Tom went over a few more of the details with them - what to do in case of not meeting up on the ground, what to do in case of losing weapons, and what to do in case of not being able to get to the beaches - and ensured they had everything they needed before nodding to all of them.