First to Jump by Jerome Preisler

Pathfinders because you can speak German,” he told Haller.
    It was a lame explanation, but Haller took his hint with predictable bluster. “If it’s my time to die, I’m going to die no matter where I am,” he said, adding, “You want me in the Pathfinders, I’ll join the Pathfinders.”
    To Simmons’s great delight, Dejanovich and Hadley followed suit. The Three Kings were hastily shoved off to England, where they would train under Joel Crouch and Frank Lillyman at North Witham. Lieutenant Albert Watson, a mess officer with the battalion who’d also fallen into disfavor with Simmons, would be encouraged to go on his way with them.
    As their senior commander, Watson would have doubtless had a major say in choosing Haller and crew for his stick on the night of the invasion, which may account for how they all wound up aboard the same transport.
    True to form, Haller had managed to irritate his stick mates while crossing the Channel. He’d been drinking coffee nonstop at base to calm his nerves, and once in flight had needed to answer to his bladder for all the cups he’d consumed. Glancing toward the bathroom stall at the rear of the troop compartment, he decided he would never fit inside it with his equipment load, and instead went to the open jump door and relieved himself—not taking the backdraft into account.
    If Haller had been the only one to wind up dripping with urine, the other troopers might have gotten a good laugh at his expense. But when the men closest to the door got it blown in their faces, they bombarded him with curses and insults.
    Their aggravation notwithstanding, it wasn’t long before everyone aboard the plane quieted down. Bound for Drop Zone D between the villages of Vierville and Angoville-Au-Plain, their serial started taking heavy flak as soon as it turned overland—and the machine-gun and antiaircraft fire would intensify as they neared the DZ. Here the German troops were even more prepared than those to the south at Drop Zone C, where the Pathfinders were already meeting with stiff resistance.
    Its central area a flat, open pasture with a big farmhouse at one side, the DZ offered the paratroopers little cover as they descended, while providing the defenders with numerous convenient hiding places at the field’s periphery. With flare guns to light the darkness and confuse the troopers, they had machine guns and mortars concealed in the hedgerows on three sides, aiming them into the pasture to cover the areas where the invaders would touch down.
    The Germans would also benefit from an unhappy pair of delays that had beset the American transports en route.
    The first hitch for their formation had been running into the belt of clouds along the coast. All three C-47s had gotten lost in the vaporous gray mist, missed their last turning point, and flown clear across the peninsula before their aircrews sighted the east coast below them.
    Sweeping around in a wide circle, they had turned back toward the DZ from the southeast, only to meet with outbreaks of heavy flak as they sped overland to make their passes. The pilots had repeatedly jinked left and right to avoid incoming fire, contributing to the delay in their arrival at the drop zone. When they finally gave the Pathfinders the green light, it was 12:47 A.M. , seventeen minutes later than planned, and thirty-five minutes after Lillyman and his men had made their landings to the north.
    It was a critical lag. By this time German troops across the Cotentin had been roused from their barracks and frantically sent out to man their posts. At first none of the defenders, including Rommel himself—who had left the coast for Berlin to attend his wife Lucie’s birthday party and was there when he received news of the airborne attack—suspected that the Allies had begun their invasion. Most believed they were fending off a limited commando strike. But despite their surprise and