It's National Airborne Day!

Today is National Airborne Day! 

Here is an actual photo of my husband Gregg jumping out of a plane:

I thought about it, and while I have MANY books with military characters (find them here: https://halleebridgeman.com/collections/books-with-military-characters), I'm pretty sure I only have one scene where a character is actually jumping out of a plane. That book is Grace's Ground War, part 5 in the Virtues and Valor series. I haven't put it in a special sale, because it's part 5 of a serialized story and I thought that might be a little mean. However, I am very thrilled to share scene 1 of chapter 1 -- the airborne scene.

Outside of Milton Keynes, England: 1941 Outside of Milton Keynes, England: 1941

THE roar of the aircraft engines drowned out nearly every thought in Ruth Aubertin’s head. The endless clamor deafened her until she genuinely feared for her ability to hear anything ever again. The cold seeped through the loose fitting uniform she wore and her fingers fumbled as she bound her ankles with ribbon.

The British forces had limited fuel, limited resources, and limited aircraft for training missions. The first 4 and up to 6 parachute training jumps were made from customized barrage balloons. Only the final “graduation” jump involved an actual airplane. Ruth’s next jump from an airplane would be into enemy territory.

After four uneventful jumps from Barrage Balloons, Ruth had climbed on board this Avro Anson 652 with a cocky skip to her step that she almost immediately regretted. The training balloons had large gray wicker gondolas mocked up to simulate the Avro’s cargo areas with bright painted lines and taped off lanes of approach. Other than a light breeze, the ride up in a balloon was completely silent, serene, even peaceful.

By contrast, once the heavy, noisy, smelly, all metal aircraft clawed its way free from the cradle of the earth, it felt as if her stomach had fallen out. She had never before flown in an airplane. To be heard over the powerful engines meant that the jump master had to scream in everyone’s faces, nose to nose, at the top of his lungs. Everyone had to exaggerate their motions, pantomiming, using large, slow gestures as if playing a silly game of underwater charades. What she suddenly realized, despite nearly a month of airborne training, was that she was deathly afraid of flying.

After the horrible events during that bloody August in Hebron, her family had fled the ancient burial place of the patriarchs and traveled by truck to Tel Aviv. From there, they embarked on a ship to Barcelona, Spain. Then by bus, truck, and foot to their home in the wilds of central France. The first time Ruth had ever risen above an altitude of 3 stories had been in the training balloons.

Now, aboard this incredibly loud and apparently unsteady aircraft, this woman who had trained from birth to fight as a warrior, to face any situation with confidence and courage, realized that the emotion clawing at her far exceeded normal and perfectly healthy anxiety. She realized that the stark fear she felt bordered on panicked terror.

Ruth spared a glance at the man strapped in beside her, the agent code-named Augustine. Augustine knew her only by her code name as well; Grace. He made it sound like a curse each time he pronounced it. Next to him sat the agent code-named Scorpion, who appeared to be enjoying a nap. How was that man sleeping through the insane tilting, the occasional shuddering, and the unbelievable noise?

Augustine turned his head and stared back at her, his expression blank and somehow still mildly mocking, as if daring her to fail. He’d acted as her most vocal adversary, objecting to having her train with the men in the group. Most of the time, Ruth ignored him. Today, she worried he could read through her stoic expression and see the terror etched painfully into her heart.

Whispering a Hebrew prayer meant to focus her mind and calm her nerves, she watched the jump master open the door. She thought the sound of the engines was loud before. Now with the final barrier removed, her ears actually started to ache. The cargo bay suddenly filled with an acrid smell like burning kerosene as the exhaust from the nearby engine permeated the space.

Despite her previous thought that she’d left her stomach on the ground somewhere on the runway, she felt it fall again and a sick feeling of nausea rose up her throat. Might she get airsick? How humiliating would that be?

Then Ruth Aubertin, the SOE operative in training code-named Grace, came to the realization she most dreaded since the engines first fired up. She realized she couldn’t do this.

Panic increased her heart rate. Adrenaline caused her skin to grow cold and her blood pressure to spike. She would freeze up in the door. She would cause the entire stick to miss their timed exit. She would have to leave the program in shame.

She saw little spots dance at the corners of her eyes. She tried to reason with herself, but she lost the internal argument. In the name of Jehovah God, she wouldn’t have the strength of will to go out that door.

She watched the hand signals and knew that she had to move forward and crouch in a fetal position in front of the door. Gripping her static line by a four inch bite held tightly in her left fist, she slid that lifeline along the steel anchor-line cable that ran the length of the cabin floor. Slowly, inexorably, she approached the small door, thankful she had to fall to the ground since she didn’t think her legs would continue to support her.

“God, help me. Just help me get out of this airplane. Please, Father!” Ruth mumbled a prayer.

She assumed the position and, at the not so gentle tap on her shoulder by the jump master, she closed her eyes, drew upon every ounce of strength she could muster, and rolled out of the door into the empty sky. The airplane’s tail section vertical stabilizer whizzed by her face, close enough to touch had she felt so inclined. More than one trainee had sustained an injury by colliding with the Avro’s tail section.

The jerk of the static line twisted her like a cheap yo-yo at the end of its string until the cotton webbing in the deployment bag separated from her silk circle, staying with the aircraft she had just abandoned. The shock of the flat circular canopy opening jarred the breath out of her body. Though her chin remained tucked tightly into her chest, the opening shock snapped her helmeted head forward and her chin punched against her sternum hard enough to bruise. Instantly, she looked up and grabbed the risers as high as she could reach while she watched the canopy of the parachute fill completely with air. She felt incredibly grateful that her suspension lines had not twisted and her risers had good separation all the way up to the skirt. Relinquishing the risers, Ruth snatched at her reserve parachute with both hands.

A parachute malfunction, a streamer, a cigarette roll, a Mae West, a blown gore, more than three broken suspension lines, or a ripped panel could mean that Ruth would have to immediately deploy her reserve parachute if she intended to live through the next few minutes. She kept her fingers tight on the stainless steel ring at her belly while she counted to four and inspected the gigantic umbrella overhead.

Her main parachute deployed into a nearly perfect circle, the leading edge folding and furling slightly in the gentle breeze. She relaxed her grip and uttered a quick prayer of thanks.

Almost immediately, the quiet engulfed her. This was the sensation she remembered from the Barrage Balloon training. For the first time since that dreadful machine left the ground, Ruth felt herself calming down. Parachutes, she could handle. Giant metal coffins with incredibly loud airplane engines, apparently not.

Taking the next few seconds to refocus herself and fight down the panic that had threatened to overwhelm her, Ruth fixed her eyes on the landscape below and took several calming breaths.

The stick had departed the aircraft at about two thousand feet above the ground. While it felt like she would just peacefully glide to the earth, the fact was that she was only in the air for about three minutes. One moment, it felt like she could float forever, the next, her brain registered the distance to the ground and her rate of descent and it felt like the ground suddenly rushed up to meet her. To avoid letting the feeling overwhelm her, Ruth clamped her jaw shut, fixed her eyes on the horizon, and concentrated on pushing her knees tightly together until impact.

When she felt the ground hit the balls of her feet, Ruth executed a passable parachute landing fall. They had rehearsed this hundreds of times, leaping from a three foot platform into a soggy sawdust pit. When the balls of her feet touched the ground, she relaxed and let her body fall to the right. Her calves rolled her onto her buttocks, then onto her shoulders. The maneuver allowed her small, light frame to absorb the brunt of the impact without injury, though she hit with such force that she ended up rolling over twice.

It took her a moment to catch her breath as the adrenaline rushed through her veins. The parachute began to catch air and tug on her. She quickly rolled onto her knees and released the left capewell while screaming “Riser!” just in case anyone was nearby. The whip-lashing riser buckle flung outward by her collapsing canopy could easily take out an unwary eye.

No longer worried about being dragged across the drop zone by her parachute, Ruth took her helmet off, annoyed at her shaking fingers and weak knees. She clawed at the ribbon binding her ankles until the knot surrendered and normal circulation began to restore the feeling in her toes. After the canopy fully collapsed, she loosened her harness and unstrapped the reserve parachute. She opened her kit bag, which she had worn tightly folded and tucked up inside her leg straps, and gathered the silk canopy into the roomy cotton duffel. Feeling calmer the longer she worked, she rolled it into an ‘S’ roll hand over forearm and packed it into her kit bag along with her reserve parachute and heavy steel parachutist helmet.

As soon as she finished, she dragged the bag behind her by one handle as she walked toward the recovery point. The bag weighed about ninety pounds. Since she barely breached one-twenty, carrying it would exhaust her, which she considered rather foolish. So, she dragged it until she spied Augustine and Scorpion. Then she heaved the bag over her shoulders and caught up with them, feeling her muscles burn with the exertion. As she drew closer, she noticed that Augustine had stripped down to his white linen T-shirt and trousers, which puzzled her.

“Hi guys,” she greeted, straightening the cap on her black curls. “How was your jump?” No sooner had she asked then she noticed Augustine’s limp. She also noticed that he dragged his kit bag on his uniform blouse, using the shirt like some sort of makeshift sled. “You okay, Auggie?”

He snarled at her, but did not reply. He had never pretended to like the fact that she was part of their class. She let his rudeness roll off of her shoulders, knowing that half of his issues stemmed from her besting him in the boxing ring.

Instead, she eyed Scorpion with a raised eyebrow. “Feet and knees together, the jump masters all said,” he repeated with a half grin. “You’ll break your legs, the jump masters said. Some of the more thick in this class apparently need object lessons.”

“It’s just sprained,” Augustine asserted. “I’m sure of it.”

Scorpion kept his tone completely droll. “Perhaps Grace can loan you her pretty ribbons and you can tie your ankles together like a girl when you jump into wherever it is you’re going next. What do you say, old boy?”

Ruth smiled and reached for Augustine’s kit bag. “Need help?”

Augustine stopped and she watched his pale face turn bright red. She had never seen a man’s pallor change so completely in just a few heartbeats. “What have I ever done or said that would make you think that I’d want or need your help?”

“Chacun à son goût.” To each his own, she answered with a shrug, not realizing she’d switched to French. The language was so much easier for her than English. Apparently, Augustine was angry enough that he didn’t realize he’d switched to French as well.

“I’ll tell you what I need help with. This blouse here is going to have some mad grass and dirt stains on it when I get to the rally point. Why don’t you be a good girl and handle that for me?”

She clucked her tongue. “Poor Augustine,” she said, shifting the straps of her kit bag. “First, I beat you up in the boxing ring. Next, I jog my little self to the rally point while you limp behind me. I wonder, will you always come in second to me?”

She started off at a jog again and smiled as she looked over her shoulder, “Au revoir, garçons. I’ll ask the truck to wait for you.”

She moved as quickly as the heavy kit bag allowed and considered Augustine’s childish attitude. What did he mean, be a good girl and take care of his shirt? She knew he meant it as an insult. She simply didn’t understand what kind of insult he intended. Was he implying he wouldn’t know how to get stains out of his own clothing? Wouldn’t that make him inferior to her? She could get all kinds of stains, including blood, out of all kinds of fabric. Hopefully the man was a good spy. Otherwise, he might be utterly useless.

In her time here, Ruth had learned that she had to perform identical tasks better or faster than her male counterparts. Consequently, she didn’t mind jogging all the way back to the rally point. She would admit to no one how exhausted her stomach and leg muscles felt after carrying that weight at a jog.

When she reached the tarmac of the recovery point, one of the jump masters lifted the bag from her shoulders as if it weighed no more than a cup of tea. “Well done, Grace. Good show running the length of the drop zone. Of course, this was your graduation jump so you could have walked, you know.”

Ruth grinned, took a few deep, unencumbered breaths, and shrugged. “Felt like a run.”

The jump master chuckled. “Well, it’s a good day for a run whilst carrying half your weight. Don’t forget to fill your canteen and don’t forget to drink it all when you get back to barracks.”

He tossed her kit bag into the back of the truck. Ruth climbed in next to it. She was the first one there. It made no sense because she’d been the first one out of the plane so she had landed furthest from the recovery point. She leaned against the kit bag and closed her eyes, idly wondering how much the silk parachute beneath her head might bring on the black market if she were actually inclined to try selling it.

When she first arrived at the training grounds to become a member of Britain’s intelligence community, most of the men had treated her with condescension, not just because she was a woman, but because she was a foreign woman, a fact betrayed by her accented English. Over the last several weeks, as she had shown her mastery of weaponry, hand-to-hand combat, espionage, and basic survival skills, she had gained respect from about half the class, and contemptuous derision from the other half. She had gained no friends among her male counterparts. That had surprised her. Her brothers and father had always treated her with equality. She didn’t understand the blatant sexism, or this culture that had obviously produced it. It took her some time to learn not to even bother trying to forge friendships with the male British operatives.

Regardless, she refused to let it matter to her. Her high skill level and her intended mission had her training with the men instead of the women, but she still bunked with the women, dined with them, and over the course of time had developed a very strong bond with the six other women on her special team – Major Charlene Radden’s Heavenly Virtues.

Charlene had put together a team of women strong in faith and skill, an experiment that her superiors had condescended to allow her to undertake. The women prayed together, read their Bibles together, and encouraged each other. They neared the end of training now, and they would all soon serve together as well.

She wondered what the friends she had grown to know and love would think of her if they knew she came from a Jewish heritage, though she had long ago accepted Yeshua as Christ Messiah. She wondered if they knew that she kept her father’s prayer shawl with its beautifully embroidered phylacteries in her room and used it to cover her head to pray in private. Would they still consider her a friend?

Thinking of the quality of women that comprised the Virtues team, she thought perhaps they would still love her and ignore cultural prejudice. Sometimes she wanted to tell them everything – about the massacre in Hebron that she’d witnessed as a young girl, about the loss of life and family, about living in the wild and training and training and training.

Of course, she could never say anything. They had to do their jobs as secretly as possible, and that meant no personal information shared between them. That way the Nazi pigs couldn’t use them against each other in the event of capture.

Ruth checked her watch. They would head back for the graduation ceremony soon. Doubtless, the colonel would have some words of wisdom and inspiration to impart. Then, the Sergeant Major would inspect the ranks and hand each of the graduates a set of cloth parachutist wings that they were to sew onto the right shoulder of their dress uniforms.

She hoped she would have time for a quick cup of tea before meeting her friends at the pub. Her formative years, spent in near isolation with just her brothers and father, lent her a somewhat male-centric outlook on life. It surprised her how much she had grown to love the female interaction with her friends. She would relish it while she could. Soon Ruth would have to go to work – and do the job she’d trained for her entire life.

FIND THE VIRTUES AND VALOR SERIES HERE (AND GET BOOK 1, TEMPERANCE'S TRIAL FREE!): https://halleebridgeman.com/collections/the-virtues-and-valor-series