Gods and Monsters

III

Albemarle paratrooper transport plane - Somewhere above the English Channel

The team had been briefed on their mission and were sitting in the Albemarle as they flew to their jumping location. The plan seemed pretty tight, touchdown in Nantes behind enemy lines, and take out the guards at a nearby checkpoint before moving up and scouting suspicious Nazi activity in a nearby town. Reggie couldn't understand what made their activity suspicious, surely all Nazi activity should be treated as such, but he wasn't one to question orders, especially when the colonel was such an arse.

Reggie's chest felt tight as the plane's altitude rose to reach the right height for their drop. He looked across at Daniel who seemed to be in a similar situation with his eyes pressed tightly shut. In fact, most of the lads seemed to be just as disenchanted with their first proper flight. The only one who seemed to be doing alright was Judith, who had seemingly recovered from whatever she was going through earlier. Reggie looked across and gave her a smile which he thought might be reassuring, but from her reaction, she didn't seem overly impressed. Her face remained straight as she stared ahead looking just above where Reggie's helmet was. Judith did come across as a bit of stoic, but Reggie preferred to think that it was all for show; trying to prove she could handle herself among the men, then again, from some of the comments he had heard from the other lads, they

only saw her just the same as any broad back home. Reggie felt confident she'd prove them wrong, though. He decided to redirect his stare elsewhere, but the only face he could find was Julian's, a beaming smile from ear to ear, he looked as if he was about to go on a rollercoaster ride rather than jumping into enemy territory. Reggie decided to join Daniel in shutting his eyes and waiting for the jump.

"Ladies and gentleman, if you look out the window to the left, you should see occupied France, looking just beautiful in the midnight sky." Announced pilot Phillip Sadler, his thick Scottish accent hard to understand over the sound of the plane's engine. It had become clear quite early on in their training that Phillip was a bit of a joker, which was most likely why he was thrown into Zero Company.

Zero Company was made up of all the miscreants and troublemakers that had failed to make it through basic training. They hadn't failed because of their ability, in fact, some of the soldiers were likely better than those in the main army, but their attitude or actions had let them down. The soldiers were considered no-hopers, but while the army had them, they figured they could be put to use in another way. Each soldier had the option of whatever punishment they would usually face, or alternatively, they could sign up for Zero Company, a group of soldiers who would be sent on off the books suicide missions, that the Allies wouldn't dare send anyone else to do. Reggie was up for it, and seemingly twelve others were also.

Thirteen soldiers, Reggie thought. Maybe that's some sort of omen.

Dickie Dean, the seemingly impromptu leader of Zero Company, stood at the front of the line as the soldiers hooked themselves up ready for their first jump into enemy territory. Reggie was third from the front, and as he quickly looked around he saw the genuine fear in all the other soldiers' eyes. Not only were they going to be thrown straight into occupied France, most of them had only known each other for a matter of weeks, and were now expected to trust each other with their lives.

"Listen up boys. I'm not really one for speeches so I'll keep this short. You know what our mission is, and you know what's expected of you all. Watch each other's back and they'll watch yours in return. Now I don't know about you, but I didn't come here to teach these Nazi's how to be better people. I came here to send those bastards to hell, and I expect the same from you all!" With that, Dickie dove out of the plane, and began his descent down to France, with Daniel quickly following.

Reggie wasn't a religious man, but as he saw Dickie and Daniel jump, and he moved up to the front of the queue, he decided that for that day, he was not going to be an atheist. He said a quick prayer to himself, hoping that it would in some way keep him safe. As Reggie looked at the other soldiers terrified faces, he imagined he wouldn't be the only one to accept God for that day.

The roar of the engines was almost deafening in the otherwise silent night sky. Reggie took a deep breath, thought of his parents back home, and finally leapt out of the plane. He was in a mixed state of euphoria and absolute terror as he fell through the night sky, but was quickly interrupted by the sudden explosions of cannon fire from the ground below.

They had been spotted.

The plane managed to avoid one of the shots, but another landed a direct hit on one of the engines, causing the plane to alter its direction and begin heading for the ground. Reggie thought back to the prayer he had made just moments before the explosion had hit. If he had been anywhere else in that line-up, he'd be one of the poor buggers who hadn't managed to jump. A sign from God perhaps, or

just blind luck? As Reggie's parachute successfully deployed and he headed towards the ground, he now prayed for the other soldiers still stuck on the plane, hoping that they would survive.

Reggie's landing was a little bumpy but still left him in better shape than he imaged he would have been when he first jumped. He called over to Dickie and Daniel who continued to stare at the fireball that was their plane, heading towards the ground. "You both in one piece still?" Reggie unstrapped his parachute and moved to the nearby treeline where Dickie and Daniel were waiting.

"Well, I think I may have shit myself on the way down, but other than that, I'm all good pal." Daniel said as the three soldiers looked up at the sky.

"Bloody hell. Do you realise how lucky we were? Now, what do we do?" Dickie questioned as he pulled up his map, looking at where they were in relation to the objectives.

Reggie thought about this as he looked at Dickie. Despite his rather rousing speech, Dickie didn't look cut out for leadership material. The poor bloke was sweating head to toe, and they were all struggling to read the map as it failed to remain still in Dickie's trembling hands. In any other scenario, this would be expected considering their near-death experience, but for a war zone, it wasn't ideal.

"We continue with the objective." Reggie assuredly said. "Like you said, we've got our orders. And besides, there's not going to be too many soldiers at the checkpoint. We're only scouting the town so it shouldn't be too tough. If anyone on the plane survived they should rendezvous with us there and we'll work out what to do next at the time."

Dickie nodded at this and took point as the trio began working their way towards the checkpoint, hoping Reggie was right, and any resistance would be minimal. They trekked through the muddy fields, careful to ensure they weren't spotted by any patrolling Nazis. Reggie remembered these rumours he had heard about the Nazis, how they were capturing enemy soldiers and performing all sorts of experiments on them, all in their pursuit to create "the master race". The Allied soldiers were guinea pigs, being torn apart and put back together until the scientists were sure that whatever their experiments were, they would be safe to use on their own kind. The thought of that made Reggie shudder.

Continued in Part 3