#leslie sheppard 56: where you go I'm going/so jump and I'm jumping

[sergeant-spoons]

56. Where You Go, I'm Going/So Jump, And I'm Jumping

Leslie Sheppard

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June 5th came and went in a blur. Before Leslie knew it, night had fallen. Where the lamps would usually have been lit stood dark, empty poles that more than one man had run into by not looking up from the shadows. Leslie ducked around the metal beast, knowing she'd never see it again and not sure why she cared enough to think about that. She'd be in France by morning, and it would be dismantled as soon as the airfield could shrink again post-Normandy. Strange things. A relic from old London, she suspected, nothing like the electric lamps she knew from home. These ones stood alone, entirely disconnected from one another. They had to be lit by hand individually, lighting up the night in a slow spread from the center outward. They stood alone. Like the men always said about Currahee.

We stand alone—

Together.

The sun set just after 8:30 in the evening. 20:30 in military time. Leslie's mind had kept slipping all day, falling back upon old manners she once knew. In that last fading light not ten minutes ago, Mama E had gravely informed the Mechorps that their DZ had changed. Gathered in a clump outside their commander's tent, the men and women of the company kicked at the crusty, dried mud and muttered condolences but never fears. They couldn't be afraid. Not soldiers. Leslie was afraid but not surprised to hear they'd be jumping to meet up with the 2nd Armored Infantry now. Kiko, hollow-faced and silent, seemed to have completely forgotten Mama E ever gave them that warning in the long age that had passed since yesterday. Tink was somewhere else, busying herself with packing or food or what have you. She knew someone would tell her if there was news.

"We've got news."

Once told, Tink sat quietly on her bunk, staring at the emptiness of the tent. Everything but her bunk and the support pole in the center of the tent frame had been dismantled and packed away for another regiment's use somewhere to the north. Leslie blinked for a moment, then looked out the tent flap at the beckoning stars. She took a deep breath and crossed herself, small, so maybe no one but God would see if he cared to look.

"I'm gonna go find a priest or somethin'," she said.

"I think I'll pray here," Tink replied, looking at Kiko, who hesitated. Tink beckoned her over to the bunk, and she went and sat, leaning on Tink's shoulder.

"I think I'll stay here," she told Leslie, weary in the eyes.

"Okay."

Leslie stepped over, kissed them each on the forehead, and left.

Now, walking through the night towards the last remaining sector of light in the camp, she looked out towards the lights of the Airfield and took another deep breath. She stopped to let a British platoon pass by uninterrupted and ducked into a tent with a torn side. No luck; just a mess tent that had been raided for last-minute snacks. Leslie couldn't imagine how anyone could eat before the advance. She'd barely touched her dinner.

Feeling her stomach lurch, she picked up a half of an orange and kept going.

The only man of the cloth she could locate in the darkness was Father Maloney, a chaplain who served with Easy Company. She found him by following the words of his prayers, though at first, she hadn't been able to hear what exactly he was saying. As she drew closer, she recognized some of the Latin, in the sense that she would have recognized a face from her childhood or a story she hadn't read in many years. Maloney's face, lit by candles, appeared around the bend of a brick wall, and Leslie continued forward over the mossy ground until she'd joined the makeshift congregation. They stood clumped together in the shadow of a large tent that now housed a group of British anti-aircraft gunners. Not three hours ago, American paratroopers had laid their heads in those beds for the last time.

Skip was there, fingering his rosary near the back of the group. He wrapped his arm around Leslie protectively as she came up to his side, almost as if he'd known she'd come.

"No Tink?" he whispered.

Leslie shook her head, leaning into his arm as if she needed the warmth despite the early June air.

"Said she'd rather pray with Kiko."

He nodded.

"We'll see you on the ground, then."

Leslie froze. Skip felt it and squeezed his arm around her.

"Won't we?"

"No," she sighed, her shoulders falling as her chest tightened. "No, you won't."

"What?" He stepped back and stared at her, even though Father Maloney had started up a new prayer. "Why?"

"Hey, Sheppard!"

Archie Potts didn't seem to notice he was interrupting a service. Maloney glanced at him but kept leading the prayer. Archie waved at Leslie, his watch glinting in the light from the torn-side mess tent.

"C'mon, we gotta go, we gotta go!"

"Gimme a sec!" she whisper-shouted back, then turned back to Skip, grabbing his hand to squeeze where it still hung close to her side. "We just got the news, right before I came over here."

"Shit."

"Yeah, no shit. I mean, yes, it's shit, but no shit, it's shit."

They laughed, but there wasn't much humor to be had, and after a beat of silence as Maloney's even voice filled the air, they pulled each other into a tight hug.

"Watch out for yourself out there," she told him.

"You watch out, too."

"I will. Tell Don I love 'im, yeah?"

"I can't do that," he refused, shaking his head. "That's something you've gotta tell him yourself."

"Oh, I know," she replied without thinking about it. "I didn't mean like that, not yet."

He stared at her, astonished, but then he smiled, and she knew he was trying to find the silver lining in all this.

"Not yet?"

She flushed.

"Skip—don't."

"You could go find him. Right now. You could-"

"No. Just tell him the way I always mean it, alright? Please?"

"I'll tell him," he promised, softening. "Not like that, but— I'll tell him."

She grabbed his hand and squeezed, looking him in the eye for what she prayed would not be the last time.

"Godspeed, Skippy old boy."

He squeezed back.

"See you on the other side."

Archie came over to drag her away, and Leslie went with him, muttering a quick amen so as not to offend Father Maloney with her early dismissal. Archie scolded her for making the both of them late and as Leslie went back around the brick wall bend, she lost sight of Skip in the dark.

22:00 hours. 10 p.m. Whichever time you called it, the time was ripe. Time to load up the planes.

Out of all her friends, Skip was the only one from Easy who Leslie had seen since early that morning when she and Tink snuck over to have their breakfast with him, Don, Alton More, and a few of the other Easy boys they didn't know all that well. Kiko said she wasn't hungry and stayed in bed. She was still there three hours later when they came back from the morning run, and Tink bribed her to get out of bed with a Hershey bar and a few rounds of canasta to get her mind off things. Leslie had said goodbye to Don right after that breakfast, and that was it. It felt strange to be without him, especially now since she knew they would no longer have a chance of meeting up on the ground.

She missed him already.

It didn't take long to load up the planes, but then came the waiting until everyone had boarded and checked their equipment and cleared the runways. Officially, D-Day would begin on the 6th of June. It would be past midnight by the time the Mechorps—and Easy, and all the 506th, for that matter—flew over their DZ. Leslie was starting to doze off when she felt the engines of their plane start. Not doze off into sleep—into a trance. She saw shapes in the shadows around her friends' legs and boots. They started taxiing to the runway and that was that. No turning back now. Not there ever had been before. Not for Leslie. She stuck her clammy hands into her pants pockets and found the paper wrapping of a stick of gum sticking to her left hand. She pulled it out and squinted at it, feeling the engines thrum louder and louder behind her head.

The planes lined up on the runway and waited for their signal to take off.

Leslie folded the wrapper into and out of the shape of a crane over and over again until her hands became too sweaty to get the little folds right. Thinking about all the things she could have said to Don but didn't as they were saying goodbye, she felt the crane slip through her fingers. It fell from her lap and bounced away across the unsteady floor. No one else saw or noticed, and she looked away from it, focusing on the stars outside instead.

Don fiddled with his hands and wished he'd kissed Leslie when he had the chance.

Skip wrapped his rosary beads around his finger and prayed to live to see his home, his family, his friends, and Faye again.

Penk listened to the sounds of the plane—the engine, the shifting of his comrades' boots across the floor and their bodies across the benches, the rattling of the metal frame as the wheels inched forward over the asphalt—and tried not to think about all he could lose. Life. Limb. Happiness. His friends. Kiko—if he hadn't lost her already.

He bowed his head.

Next to Leslie, Danny Huff pointed out the open door at the spotlights turning on all down the runway. The planes in front began to move, propellers pulling them forward.

Kiko tried to focus on her breathing. Now was a bad time to let her emotions get the better of her. If she had only done it sooner. Or later. Or never.

She wished it had been never.

Tink thought about her brothers back home. She thought about her cousin Janie. She held her rosary to her lips and ushered up a prayer that everyone she loved would live through the night.

Especially George, she thought, feeling guilty for the preference but unwilling to take it back.

George thought about Tink. About how long she hugged him in the shadows behind the tent after the last dinner they'd shared. About how long it took her to let go, and about the kiss she ran back to press to his cheek, her eyes shining with tears, before she left for good. Even as Liebgott started to cough and dry-heave and the other men shied away from his impending vomit, George stayed lost in his mind, sitting still and cold and afraid.

Captain Eades, Mama E, sat at the front of the pack, gripping the edge of the doorframe with her good hand. The metal felt warm against her palm from how long she'd held it there. She looked across at her mechanics—her soldiers—her boys and girls—and saw their faces, one by one. She saw the fear they tried or didn't even bother to hide. She saw the nausea and the calm. She saw the strength and the weakness. She saw Luchette reach across the aisle and grab Sheppard's hand, then again beside her to take Palekiko's. Sheppard and Palekiko leaned forward and connected the third side of the triangle, and the minds of the men looking upon them seemed to ease at the sight. Captain Mercedes Eades looked at her watch, lifting her tiny flashlight to read the surface as the plane began to gather speed.

Tick-tick-tick.

Hands met at midnight and the plane bucked into the air. Flight, flight from all things known and toward the great, black night. Flight across the Channel and on to France, to war and bloody glory.

So be it. The 506th Mechanical Corps—the first in history, the unsung heroes of 101st Airborne—would get the job done.

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