Those Who Dare - [Raiding Forces 01] Read online

  When they caught up with him a mile and a half later they found him leaning nonchalantly against the giant hangar where they would conduct synthetic training. His merry band of sadistic assistants swaggered from within the building.

  Mad Dog announced, “You lads are going to have to do a lot better than this if you expect to become parachutists in the British Army.”

  As he lay on the ground breathing fire, Major John Randal decided that being in the British Army was the worst idea he had ever had in his entire life.

  Captain Terry Stone groaned. “I think I coughed up a piece of my lung.”

  The RAF parachute instructor staff arrived and synthetic training began. Why it was called “synthetic” was a mystery to Major Randal; there was nothing artificial about it.

  The subject of the first day was their old nemesis from week one, the parachute landing fall. They performed PLFs from ground level into the sawdust pit, from the three-step platform, and then from the five-foot platform. They performed them from the right side, from the left side, the front, and from the rear.

  “Keep your feet and knees together!” the instructors shouted continuously. “Keep your feet and knees together!”

  A small mistake when landing by parachute could have serious consequences, so the parachute instructors were meticulous. They were also utterly ruthless. In the harsh, cruel military school training environment where the idea is to learn and profit from repetition and pain, they were, quite simply, outstanding.

  The Raiders and Commandos then climbed up onto a ten-foot platform. Four cables were strung from it to the ground, with wooden spars in the form of an “X” attached to the top of each cable. Four men lined up on the platform, each holding a pair of the wooden spars. On command, they lifted their feet up and raced down the cable at full speed, feet and knees together. On the command “Drop!” they let go of the spars and crashed into the sawdust, attempting to make a forward PLF, utilizing the five points of contact, while traveling at full speed and in about the same amount of time it takes a bolt of lightning to strike. Few succeeded.

  “You look like a bloody sack of coal, Midshipman Seaborn! Get back up there, go to the front of the line, and try it again, sir!”

  It began to slowly dawn on the students that transition week really was going to be worse than the first week. The harassment was much diminished, and the PT, while tough, was reduced, but the constant, unrelenting banging into the ground soon took its toll. The students were steadily being pounded to pieces.

  Then the pace picked up a notch. After performing landings from the right and left sides off the ten-foot platform, to the students’ disbelief they practiced PLFs from the rear, which were the worst. They came sailing down the cable backward with no way possible to turn their heads to see where they were going because, as instructed, they had their chins screwed down tight on their chests. Then, upon the command “Drop!” they had to land—feet and knees together, knees bent slightly and relaxed, elbows tucked in, almost touching on your chest, with fists facing inward, protecting your face—swivel either left or right, and execute a PLF utilizing the five points of contact. The whole exercise proved to be a little tricky.

  “Virtually all my actual jumps have resulted in a rear landing,” Sergeant Reupart confided during one of the breaks to a banged-up, disbelieving group of Raiders and Commandos sprawled out on the ground nursing their wounds. It was not what they wanted to hear.

  Next they moved to another ten-foot platform where they lined up four abreast again, but this time they strapped into a parachute harness. On the command “Go!” they jumped off the platform, swinging back and forth, dangling down over the sawdust pit. It was about then that they noticed each harness was connected to a rope and pulley that was held, in turn, by an instructor standing directly behind each of the four students. Each student was individually given the order, “Prepare to land,” whereupon the instructor released the rope simultaneously with the command, “Land!”

  There was only a split second for the trainee paratrooper to discover whether fate had dictated that he was going to need to make a forward or a backward landing and to execute the prerequisite PLF. Most of the students smacked into the sawdust in a crumpled, tangled pile.

  Then something strange happened that proved to be a moment of pure magic, though no one recognized it as such at the time.

  As the senior officer, Major Randal was always the first man to perform each new training exercise. The next apparatus was a thirty-four-foot tower on which a simulated Whitley troop carrier fuselage had been built—the “praying mantises” Major John Rock had shown the Small-Scale Raiding Company officers the day before. It was designed to give the student a realistic experience of exiting through a simulated hole in a Whitley troop carrier while experiencing the feeling of height. The tower would also introduce the trainees to the “Whitley kiss” and “ringing the bell.”

  The thirty-four-foot tower was, in many ways, the most frightening training apparatus in the entire school. The rumor was that army psychologists had determined that height to be the best for inducing the maximum amount of fear in a student. Why that was so was difficult to say, but many graduates of No. 1 Parachute Training School claimed the apparatus was scarier to jump from than jumping out of an airplane.

  While the Raiders and Commandos watched anxiously from below, Major Randal disappeared into the apparatus, accompanied by an instructor. As he was moving into the sitting position to exit the funnel-shaped hole, his haste, exhaustion, and high state of anxiety combined to make him slip, lose his balance, and slide through. When he tumbled out of the exit hole, he windmilled for a split second before being jerked up violently by the risers attached to the cable.

  He also screamed.

  British officers did not scream; it was simply not done. British officers were expected to keep a stiff upper lip even if they were being boiled alive in peacock oil—and that dictum included foreign officers serving in His Majesty’s Forces.

  Major Randal realized what he had done and managed to catch himself in mid-scream, turning it in to a garbled Rebel yell. The two No. 2 Commando troopers assigned to catch him were so startled by the noise that they let him sail right on past and plow full-speed into the turnbuckle at the end of the cable.

  “That was the worst exit in Airborne Forces history!” the senior parachute instructor roared. “What was that sound you made, sir? It sounded like something one might expect to hear from a pregnant elephant.”

  “A Rebel yell, Sergeant,” Major Randal responded in the most even voice he could manage.

  “What, sir, is a Rebel yell?” the senior parachute instructor bellowed.

  “A cry designed to strike fear and despair into the heart of your opponent, Sergeant,” Major Randal answered defiantly, still dangling limply in the parachute harness.

  “It sounded more like you forgot to cinch up your leg straps tight enough, Major. Spare us from any more Rebel yells, sir, if you please.”

  And that would have been the end of it. Standing up to the instructors even when one had committed a serious faux pas was considered good form, provided one’s excuse—even if totally outrageous—was delivered with a straight face and serious demeanor. But no one reckoned on the reaction of nineteen-year-old Scottish Highlander, free spirit, and independent thinker Lieutenant Percy Stirling, 17/21 Lancers—the “Death or Glory Boys”—to the incident.

  At this point in the training, Lieutenant Stirling had decided that he had taken all the harassment he was going to take from the instructors and was looking for a way to give some back. On the very next break, before the noon meal, he and his new best friend, Midshipman Randy Seaborn, approached Major Randal. After offering the major a Player’s Navy Cut, Lieutenant Stirling proceeded straight to the main point.

  “Sir, would you teach us how to do that war cry?”

  “Sure, but why would you two want to know how to give a Rebel yell?” If Major Randal had not been so banged up, his alarm
bells might have gone off right then. But, alas, they did not.

  “Midshipman Seaborn and I have always been interested in military trivia, sir. Neither one of us has ever actually heard an authentic war cry like it before. Where did you learn how?” Lieutenant Stirling inquired, not lying—exactly.

  At this point, Major Randal’s internal alarm jingled. He suspected, wrongly, that the two young officers were having a little fun at his expense. “The high school I attended in Los Angeles had a Confederate cavalryman as the school mascot. At football games a trumpeter in the band would blow ‘Charge’ and all the students would give a loud Rebel yell.”

  “Would you teach us how to shout one, sir?”

  “You give a Rebel yell,” Major Randal answered carefully, not sure where this was headed. It paid, he knew, to be very careful when dealing with bright young officers. “You don’t shout one; they’re a sort of art form. No two are exactly alike, and there are a lot of variations.”

  “We would like to know how to give one, sir.”

  Major Randal took a drag off the Player’s Navy Cut. He studied the two serious-faced bright young officers through the cigarette smoke. “Okay, if you insist. Like I said, there’s a lot of different ways to go about it. The most common goes: ‘Yeeeeeehaaaaaa!’ You come down real hard on the ‘h’ in ‘haa.’”

  “Yeeeeeehaaaaaa!” Lieutenant Stirling yelled. Midshipman Seaborn quickly followed suit with a yell of his own.

  The two looked at each other and grinned.

  Then they went into the mess hall and Major Randal did not give it another thought . . . until just before the formation to recommence the afternoon’s training, when he came outside and found the Raiders and Commandos gathered around the two young officers.

  “That does not sound anything like the noise I heard the major make,” one of the Commando corporals argued skeptically.

  “There are a lot of different variations to the ‘Comanche yell,”‘ Lieutenant Stirling explained. “No two are exactly alike.”

  “In that case, I am bloody well game if you are, sir,” the hard-looking corporal announced in a tone of grim resignation. There was a rumble of determined agreement from the rest of the men.

  At that point, Major Randal’s alarm bells did go off, loud and clear. But by then it was too late. Airborne Forces history was about to be writ—large.

  ~ * ~

  11

  THE COMANCHE YELL

  SYNTHETIC TRAINING PICKED BACK UP RIGHT WHERE IT LEFT OFF before lunch. The troops seemed strangely eager to get started. Major John Randal sensed their change of mood immediately.

  Now that the Raiders and Commandos were familiar with each apparatus, they could train more efficiently in smaller groups. The syndicate was quickly broken down and dispatched to the various pieces of training equipment in the hangar. It did not take long to find out what the troops were up to.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!” Lieutenant Percy Stirling let out a bloodcurdling scream as he stepped off the platform of the swing-landing trainer.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!” Midshipman Randy Seaborn yelled as he dropped through the hole in the Whitley mock-up tower.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!” shouted Commando Jeff McKinsey as he executed a PLF from the three-step platform.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!” Captain Terry Stone bellowed as he raced backward down a cable.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!” sounded off Lifeboat Serviceman Matt Pinkney, standing in line at the ten-foot platform, just because he felt like it.

  The parachute instructors were caught off guard by the initial wave of yelling. True to form, they quickly recovered and swung into action in a frenzy that resembled ants whose nest has been imperiled. The instant a yelling trainee hit the ground they swarmed all over him, doing some pretty heavy-duty screaming of their own.

  “What is that noise? A Comanche yell? Drop and give me twenty-five!”

  The yells—in Cockney, Scots, Canadian, Welsh, and the other rich and varied accents of the Commonwealth, plus that of one lone American—echoed throughout the hangar.

  It was a defining moment. A quantum shift in momentum had taken place in the blink of an eye. Troop morale blasted sky-high.

  Men who had spent the last week feeling like victims decided they had had enough. Collectively the Raiders and Commandos closed ranks and forged into a close-knit team; it became “us against them.” Major Randal’s men were planning to show those parachute instructors that they could take anything the cadre could dish out and throw it back in their faces. Bring it on!

  The parachute instructors immediately recognized the gathering rebellion. Being the trained professionals that they were, they knew exactly what they had to do. And they knew exactly how to go about it. They brought it on—hard!

  Ten thousand—or maybe it was ten million—push-ups later, the enthusiasm for what the Raiders and Commandos had labeled the Comanche yell had waned substantially ... but had not died out entirely.

  A winded Midshipman Seaborn summarized the situation to an exhausted and battered bunch of Raiders and Commandos on the next break: “They can kill us, but they are not allowed to eat us.”

  “Ach, and what makes you so bloody sure, sir?”

  “Because it is against the Geneva Convention.”

  Even though they were paying a heavy price for the yells, morale went up and stayed up. The Raiders and Commandos attacked the training like madmen. For the first time they actually started having fun. It required a special brand of soldier to absorb the kind of abuse they were taking, enjoy it, and ask for more.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!”

  “Drop and give me fifty!” The base number of push-ups had doubled.

  “YEEEEEEHAAAAAA, Sergeant!”

  “Make that a hundred!”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  The Ringway parachute instructor staff was more than a little impressed—secretly, of course. There was no way the students could possibly win or even fight their way to a draw. Their effort was, at best, a forlorn hope. Everyone knew what the outcome would be: The Raiders and Commandos were going to be ground into dust. But that was what made it all so noble.

  “Forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine—”

  “Don’t do it, lad—”

  “Fifty! YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!”

  “Give me fifty more, you bloody fool.” And so it went for the rest of Monday and all day Tuesday.

  On Wednesday three things happened to Major Randal. The first took place as one of his Raiders was knocking out push-ups for screaming the dreaded Comanche yell. Sergeant Roy “Mad Dog” Reupart made direct eye contact and gave him a clearly defined, slow-motion wink, keeping a perfectly straight face. It happened so unexpectedly and was so out of character that later Major Randal wondered if it was possible that he only imagined it.

  Second, it occurred to the major that he was hitting all five points of contact on virtually every parachute landing fall. He was coming in fast, identifying what type of landing he was going to make, doing the correct things to get into position to make the proper landing, then twisting, turning, falling, relaxing, rolling, and bouncing right back up. The PLF was becoming automatic, exactly as it was supposed to.

  Third, that evening Sergeant Major Maxwell Hicks pulled him aside for a private conversation. What he wanted to discuss was scouting the ranks of No. 2 Commando for recruits to help expand the Small-Scale Raiding Company to its newly authorized strength.

  “Good idea, Sergeant Major, but don’t make a big deal out of it,” Major Randal advised. “Quietly let the word get out that we’re going to be accepting a small number of volunteers at the end of parachute training school. We don’t want to make it look like we’re trying to poach No. 2’s men, even though we are.”

  “I’m keeping a list of names, sir,” Sergeant Major Hicks informed him. “There should be no shortage of volunteers. The men in No. 2 joined to see action. The lads realize now that forming a Parachute Commando is going to take a long time and con
sist of a tremendous amount of training, which is what they all volunteered to get out of in the first place.”

  “I can always count on you being one step ahead of me,” Major Randal said. “What else have I not gotten around to thinking about yet, Sergeant Major?”

  “We need to find some way to evaluate the No. 2 men in the other training syndicate, sir. There are bound to be some fine lads over there, and we don’t want to pass up any likely candidates.”

  “I’ll work on it,” Major Randal agreed. “We’re sure to lose some people when we travel to Achnacarry for Commando training. How many men do you think we should take?”

  “Sir, the fact that we are only authorized a certain number of troops should have absolutely nothing to do with how many we decide to evaluate in order to reach our authorized strength. I recommend we take as many as we want, then make our selection slowly and carefully. We can always RTU the ones we decide not to keep.”