Now.
I yank the ripcord ring.
The parachute blossoms, braking my fall, and I'm rocking gently in the winter sky. Below me, the hills and fields are crawling with Germans. I see the black smoke from my airplane wreckage and sweat the slow ride down. I'm easy target practice from the ground.
I hear a dogfight raging far above me-the chattering machine guns and roaring engines of dozens of fighter planes spinning across the sky above a dull gray cloud deck. I'm dropping down over southern France on a deceptively peaceful countryside. I work the shroud lines toward a pine forest.
Trees rush up at me. I reach out and grab on to the top of a twenty-foot pine. I bounce a couple of times on that limber sapling, leaning it over to the ground, just as I did as a kid in West Virginia, when we'd ride pines for miles through the woods. In only seconds, I'm six inches from the ground; I step down, gather in my parachute to use later as a shelter, and limp off into the woods. There's blood on my pant leg, blood on my torn leather gloves, and blood dripping down the front of my flying jacket from my head.
The woods are dark and still, but even as I move deeper into them, I hear the distant rumble of army vehicles and the sounds of voices shouting in German. They pick you up fast in occupied territory, before the locals can hide you. The bastards saw me coming down.
It is slightly past noon on Sunday, March 5, 1944, and I'm a wounded, twenty-one-year-old American fighter pilot, shot down and on the run. After only eight combat missions, I'm now "missing in action," World War II shot out from under me by the twenty-millimeter cannons of a Focke-Wulf 190. The world exploded. I ducked to protect my face with my hands, and when I looked a second later, my engine was on fire, and there was a gaping hole in my wingtip. The airplane began to spin. It happened so fast, there was no time to panic. I knew I was going down; I was barely able to unfasten my safety belt and crawl over the seat before my burning P-51 began to snap and roll, heading for the ground. I just fell out of the cockpit when the plane turned upside down-my canopy was shot away.
I treat my wounds in deep brush. There are shrapnel punctures in my feet and hands from the shells that hit around my cockpit, I've got a hole in the lower part of my right calf from a fragment that tore through my fleece-lined boot, and a gash on my forehead from banging against that CO2 canister when I fell out of my dead airplane. I sprinkle sulfa powder on the leg wound and bandage it, then study a silk map of Europe that is sewn into our flight suits. I'm about fifty miles east of Bordeaux, near the town of Angouleme, where our bombers had blasted a German airdrome five minutes before I was shot down.
Man, I can't believe how fast luck changes in war. Just yesterday I landed back in England after scoring my first kill over Berlin. The weather was stinking, but I spotted a Messerschmitt Me109 below me, dove on him, and blew him to pieces. Today some kraut is drinking mission whiskey, celebrating hitting me. Flying as tail-end charlie, I never had much of a chance. Our squadron of eighteen Mustangs took off from our base on the British coast to escort B-24s on their bombing run. Sixteen Mustangs, four flights of four, provided air cover; the two extras joining the mission only if there were aborts. I was an extra and when a Mustang from Captain O'Brien's flight of four turned back over the Channel with engine problems, I pulled in as the fourth plane- the tail-end charlie. Krauts attack from above and behind, and it's the last tail that gets hit first. I saw the three Focke-Wulf fighters diving at me, and radioed a warning to O'Brien, "Cement-Green leader three bogies at five o'clock. Break right." We turned sharply to meet the bastards head-on. As I turned, the first Focke-Wulf hammered me.
I study my escape map, trying to figure my best route across the Pyrenees into Spain. The deep mountain snows should begin melting by late spring; if I can stay clear of the Germans, I might be able to contact the French underground for help. There would be no help if these were German woods. I'd wind up a POW, or, worse, fall into the hands of angry farmers who'd rather use axes and pitchforks than take prisoners. All of us carry forty-five-caliber automatics; mine is gripped in my right hand.
Even now, in shock from being shot down, cold and scared, I figure my chances are good for coming out of this alive. I know how to trap and hunt and live off Mother Nature. Back home, if we had a job to do, we did it. And my job now is to evade capture and escape.
I can survive in these woods for as long as it takes to keep the damned Germans from finding me and hauling me off to a POW camp. But whatever happens, for me the war is over. If I make it over the Pyrenees and manage to get back to England, I'll be sent home. No more combat-a rule meant to protect the French underground from pilots they assisted, who might later be shot down again and tortured by the Gestapo into revealing escape networks. So far, none of the guys shot down in my squadron have been able to make it back.
Our commanding officer, Capt. Joe Giltner, was shot down on a strafing run near Antwerp. Joe bailed out, tried to evade the Germans and get to the coast. But his wounded foot hurt so much he was forced to hobble. Finally, he sat down, undid his boot, and discovered the cause of his pain when his shot-off big toe plopped on the ground. The Germans captured him. Because I was a junior officer, but a good pilot with exceptional eyes, I flew my first missions as wingman to the group commander, Col. Henry Spicer, a daring pilot with bristling mustaches, who loved to dogfight and could care less about the personal risks. Spicer smoked a big briar pipe, and on the return home, he always dropped down to below 12,000 feet unhooked his oxygen mask, and had himself a smoke. As his wingman, I dropped down with him right over Paris. German flak guns began pounding at us, but I could see Spicer in his cockpit tamping his tobacco and lighting his Zippo. We were practically over the rooftops when tracers flashed by my canopy. I spoke up into my mike: "Christ Colonel Spicer, we're gonna get shot down." I saw him chuckle through a cloud of pipe smoke. "Relax, laddie," he replied. "Those bastards couldn't hit a billboard." Colonel Spicer was later shot down by a burst of white flak near the French coast, after he had descended to 12,000 feet to light that damned pipe. He bailed out over the Channel, but the Germans picked him up.
I decide to stay put in the heavy brush until dark. Several times I hear low-flying planes-Germans hunting for me. I'm sweating, but stay well-hidden under thick brush. I saw a lot of farmland coming down, and at night I'll pop out of these woods long enough to raid some turnips and potatoes. I figure a French farmer is no match for a hungry hillbilly. Before dark, it begins to rain, and there are no more search planes. I eat a stale chocolate bar from my survival kit. Then, wet and cold, I huddle under my parachute and try to sleep. I doze on and off but at first light, I'm wide awake, gripping my pistol.
I peek out and see a woodcutter shouldering a heavy ax. I decide to rush him from behind and get that ax, killing him if necessary. I jump him and he drops the ax, almost dead with fright. With eyes the size of quarters, he stares at the pistol I'm waving in his face. He speaks no English, so I talk at him like Tarzan: "Me American. Need help. Find underground." He jabbers back in excited French, and if I understand right he tells me he will go get somebody who speaks English. I read his face, which is scared but friendly. He grins and nods when I say I'm an American. Puts a finger to his lips to whisper, "Boche," then hurries off into the forest, after signaling to me to stay hidden and wait for him to get back. I keep his ax and watch him run off; then I move across the path into a stand of big trees, wondering if I should take off or wait for him. Can I trust the guy?
Long before I see them, I hear returning footsteps. Definitely more than one person, but whether they are more than two, I can't tell. It's been more than an hour since that woodcutter took off. I move back into the stand of trees and drop down. My pistol is pointing at the path. I won't get very far if he's brought a squad of German soldiers. I'm burrowed into the wet ground, my heart thudding like a five-hundred-pound bomb as the footsteps stop. My impulse is to turn tail and run, but I check it. Then I hear a voice calling to me in a whisper. "American, a friend is here. Come out." I can't see them and it takes all my courage to slowly pick myself up. I'm on the opposite side of the path from where the woodcutter left me. My .45 is aiming at the back of an old man staring into the brush. The woodcutter is with him. Silently, I move forward.