we're on each other's team [band of brothers / hbo war]

4: transitions

So every time she had to jump, she let one of the men hook her in. The first time it was Bull, then it was Chuck Grant. Smokey Gordon helped her on the third time (and made short jokes, which pissed Madison off.) while Lipton made sure she was safe and secure on the fourth one. Somehow, Perconte got her hooked in on the final jump. Madison would forever be grateful for those five men because without them, she probably would have never gotten her wings. (However, she did use Nixon's advice when they actually had to jump into combat. It worked and felt satisfactory to know that she could hook herself in.)

That first jump she had to make...that was one of the scariest decisions she ever had to make in her entire life. The first jump would tell everyone if she was going to make it or not.

She remembered only a few things from that jump. One was that she was nervous as hell and she was shaking like a leaf. The second thing was that she could feel Grant pat her down, shouting "eight okay!" or whatever number she was, she didn't know nor cared. She remembered feeling up the person in front of her yelling as loud as she could, telling them that that man was okay.

She was moving. She was walking at a brisk pace so that she could jump out of the plane. She watched the man in front of her jump out. Then it was her turn.

"Are you ready to go?" the man shouted over the engine and the wind.

"Yes, sir!" Madison yelled back.

"Then go! Go!"

Madison took a deep breath and mentally performed the sign of the cross before she jumped.

Madison can't remember what it looked like when she jumped out. Those first couple seconds of fear had paralyzed her. After her short lived fear had passed, she couldn't help but gasp at what she saw.

It was amazing.

Madison could feel the wind blowing across her face and she looked everywhere around her. It was an amazing sight to see and wow, did it really feel this good? Jesus Christ, it did. This was actually really fun!

As Madison landed on the ground, and correctly as she watched the men before her and could clearly hear the instructors on the ground. She remembered that she was laughing as she hit the ground; as she tried to get untangled from her parachute.

"That was amazing!" she exclaimed to Joe Toye as he came over to check on her. "We gotta do it again!"

"Well you don't need to worry about that. We got four more jumps and we'll be good to go."

Madison couldn't wait to write to her family about this.

* * * * *

After the fifth and final jump, which was at night, was completed, Easy Company had received their jump wings.

Madison was so excited to get them. Not too many people thought she was going to last long but if she had received her jump wings then she should be able to advance with the men of her company, right? She hoped.

On the day that she received her wings, she was dressed in her best—the army uniform was nice and crisp and barely managed to fit her small, petite body. Colonel Sink had pinned on her wings onto her uniform (smirking when he saw how she straightened up even more for him; he could see her pride shining out), and that was that. Easy Company had their jump wings!

After the pinning ceremony, all of Easy Company went off to celebrate together, which meant drinking; something that Madison didn't do.

Madison sat at the bar with a drunk Toye, watching as Bill was gulping down his alcoholic beverage. She could hear the men at the table chant, "One thousand! Two thousand! Three thousand! Four thousand! Five thousand! Six thousand! Seven thousand! Eight thousand! Nine thousand!" They were timing Bill's beer chug.