The Queen's Shadow

Before the Shit Storm

Gabriel ~~~06/06/1944

We were on the C-46 commando. A plane that had seen many flights in this war may be too many. The aircraft was flying smoothly, but I was still shaking. I could hear artillery fire near the plane tearing through the planes flying beside us, I hear the radio chatter about how one engines is down, but I don't know too much about airplanes, so I tuned it out.

I knew the pilots were not too happy flying The 82nd unit out to Utah Beach. We were a mixed platoon approaching the vicinity of a high risk and reward operation. So it could not have been that bad for them since we were going to be the ones parachuting down. What was terrible was this operation. We were going to knock on death's door and spit in his face and then run. This operation was dangerous at best, but at worst, it was suicidal. It was plausible from what the brass said, though.

'Gabriel, head out your ass, son.' Major Edward interrupted my thoughts, but it was a good thing I needed to focus on the mission. The white guys started laughing, but the black guy just chuckled. Tim then said, 'Niggar forgot that he was about to go to war.' Major Edward Armstrong then shot him a look, and it said it all no one even dared to laugh. He despised racism almost as much as he hated assholes. Who could blame him, though? He spent a good portion of his life, fighting his way to his position. Who knows what kind of bullshit he had to go through.

'We should be at our location in 15 minutes.' The major then sat down next to me on our seats. We were in row seats facing each other. We had no armrest, so we were packed almost like sardines. It was a good thing the major tolerated no form of racism because God would it be a shit storm in this behemoth of a plane. Despite only being 30 guys, it leaves enough room for the imagination of how it will pan out. It was worth sitting in though a lot of my friends back on The aircraft carrier spent a lot of time cleaning it. So I felt like this was a small victory for us to be sitting in something like this despite all of this segregation back at home.

The interior is worn out, but you could hardly tell unless you were paying attention. Unfortunately for me, that's all I was doing. The seats were the primary victims of this, though. It was made out of some kind of cheap padding for seats. It wore down so deep that you could feel the last person's ass. The lights were going in and out probably from the fact that the hell-storm was tearing through the planes and the age. The problem with this plane was that even though it was used to transport troops, it was once a cargo plane, but that had to have been a few months prior, so they had to change out a lot of the equipment on the inside. That's also another reason why it is worn down. In our platoon, it was 30 men, but about 14 of us were Black-Americans. The others were just Americans; this wasn't including Jason. He was a Native American; no one knew much about him. It is highly unusual for us even to be integrated. I guess they were shorthanded. The military was very stringent on everything, especially with segregation. Though from what it looks like, it's slowly dying out. It was still dark out, and this dimly lit plane only served to remind us we were screwed if this operation failed."

Then a loud boom, it wasn't us, it was one of the other planes a fighter plane. I looked out the tiny window and saw an artillery round it went right through the fighter plane like it was nothing, it seems like they were going to move away to prevent us from being harmed, it did get away from us, and we were unharmed. It then broke out in small fires and then it exploded it looked horrible as it just went up in a pile of flames and smoke all I could hope was that the pilot's death was instantaneous. Edward then stood up and, with a smile, said, "our flight might be over, sooner than I thought boys." I don't know what joy he got out of this, or maybe he was trying to lighten the mood. Either way, we were getting ready. He was my squad leader, The major was shorter than me, but he was sturdy. He was pale as hell; his hair was blonde, and he wore crewcuts. I never understood why he spent so much time in the bathroom styling his hair in the mirror, he had a bold face but almost always had a 5 o'clock shadow, he regularly shaves to keep his beard down. He had walnut-shaped winter blue eyes that gave off a form of coldness no matter how friendly he was. His nose was medium-sized with small nostrils. He had semi-thin lips, and of course, he was always smiling. He had a round face with a square jaw, so this made him a natural with a lot of the ladies back home.

He often had a few visitors every night. This guy had women coming like moths to a flame; the problem with this was when they left, they look like they were usually in a daze. Maybe it was part of his charm. Or perhaps it was from all The fun they had from the night before. My problem was that he was always ready for PT at 4 AM, no matter how late it got. He was dressed and ready to run like nothing happened. I was thrilled that we were training in spring and the winter. God knows I could barely run 2 miles, but then PT got me in shape. We usually got no breaks when he was running with us, but that was good because he was the only one who had taken the time to do the drill with the company. Everyone else had us doing cleaning work and kitchen work. We all wore The same uniform, but how Edward dressed, he always seems to have a certain kind of decor with it. We all wore the same olive suit, our rank was on the left side of our shirts, our brown boots were new, but we took time to break them in so we would be comfortable on the trip down if we made it down. Our gear was about 40 to 50 pounds. This was not including that massive ass parachute.

I don't know how we were going to make it down. Many times I've done this, and every time I always felt like this was excessive gear, but they said each piece had a purpose. We had a shovel, a combat knife, a flask for water and bandages for minor wounds, this was all on our bottom half. On top, though, we carry our sleeping gear an extra book bag along with ammo for our M1 Garand and our sidearm. We all had an M1911 sidearm. We had our rank on them and a grenade on our left shoulder.

It's funny now that I think about it we may all die here. Though in all honesty, it was better than dying in America where they would do ungodly things to any poor black American caught by themselves. We all got to the hatch. We all checked our and starter, securing ourselves where it was needed. We prepared to make our jumps. I never really enjoyed jumping from heights; it wasn't the fall that got me. It was the sound of me hitting the concrete that got me, and if I was going to be alive for a few seconds to realize every agonizing pain there.

I had realized I was shaking so hard that my grenade was moving, I am glad I decided to tie a shoestring around it to keep it from coming on loose. The last thing I needed was to accidentally kill my entire squad. Tim then decided to whisper, "don't piss yourself before you hit the ground." I don't know how the hell he followed me through Boot Camp. He was like a goddamn plague. He was worse than everyone else here. I could deal with all the racist comments from the other guys, but this piece of shit was just doing a whole lot more. The fact that he was behind me made me wonder if he was going to push me off the fucking plane. We were in the back of the aircraft it was me, Tim and Jason. I could hear the major sending everyone off one by one. Yelling, "Go. Go. Go." It finally came to me the wind was in my face, and he said, "good luck, son." I made my jump.

End of Chapter: Before the Shit storm.