Half Sick of Shadows » Band of Brothers [2]

07: It's No Use Going Back

"'I could tell you my adventures - beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.'" - Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

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Juliette slammed into the ground and rolled, minimising the damage that could be done to her body. The damage that would be done to her mission, however? Unavoidable. For as much work as she'd been putting in as far back as September to try to divert German artillery to Calais or Norway, they seemed to have a hell of a lot of it aimed at the sky over Normandy. Aeroplanes had fallen to the ground like rain, the midnight sky as bright and orange as a sunset.

She didn't know where she was, but she knew damn well that it wasn't Drop Zone C.

Wary of the fact that Germans could be anywhere, Jules made quick work of unhooking her parachute and rolling it up. She ran to a wood she saw close by and hid the chute in amongst some shrubbery, her head shooting up when she heard gunfire back in the direction she'd just come from. The Germans really were close, it seemed.

Juliette made her way further into the woods, taking cover in amongst the trees. She knew they had gotten the green light to jump about ten minutes too early, which put her likely to the south of her objective. Removing the watch from her breast pocket, she squinted through the darkness to make out the compass readings on its face. She turned in the direction displaying north and began to walk; that was the only start she could think to make.

As she walked - and indeed, she seemed to be walking for hours, the paranoia spurred on by unforgiving silence and sporadic gunfire elongating the minutes - Jules wondered where Will was, and whether he was already at the meeting point waiting for her. Or perhaps he'd been there so long he had already gone to the beach to do his job. The entire thing was so frustrating she could have screamed, but that would have drawn dangerous attention, so she had to be content to chew on her lip and clench her hands into fists.

After what was likely about an hour and a half of walking, Juliette reached the edge of the wood and crouched between the trees to scour the open field before her. A little ways to the left of her she spotted a bridge and knew it was highly likely there was a signpost around it somewhere. The open space she would have to expose herself in to get there was an issue, so she made her way as far left as she could in the wood until she was opposite the bridge. She resolved to army crawl her way over to it, and threw herself down onto the floor before beginning to crawl on her stomach.

Jules let her forehead fall into the mud and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw the words 'Ste. Marie du Mont' painted on the signpost, along with an arrow and a mile count of how far away it was. Her prediction had been correct; she had landed south of the drop zone.

By the time Juliette had found cover again she was covered from head to toe in mud. Even her face was caked in it, the dark brown of the dirt covering the majority of the black paint she had been wearing. She had long since left her helmet behind - with how big it was on her, it had covered her eyes too frequently, and would have only marked her as a target when she was crawling. She imagined what Thomas would say when he found her without it yet again, and smiled to herself as she made her way through the line of trees separating one field from the next.

When Jules eventually made it to her meeting point with Will, she had only had to hide from Germans three times, and beyond that had had little more trouble. She waited for him for about half an hour, worrying increasingly that he hadn't been quite as lucky in navigating Normandy as her, before checking the time and realising the landings would be soon.

She sighed. Will had the equipment they needed to take out the radio signals, so she needed to find another way to hinder the Germans.

Juliette made her way closer to Utah Beach, covering the mile that led to it in varying degrees of nervousness and paranoia. By now, she was worrying that Will hadn't even made it out of the plane. After all, how many planes had she seen go down before any of the paratroops had even had the chance to jump? How many had she seen go up in flames?