Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,36
over the bottom copy.
‘You’re healthy,’ the orderly said jovially. ‘Next patient.’
Marc found himself waiting outside the medical hut in the cold. The scenery was striking, but eyes were drawn to a full-figured WAAF1 private, who stood outside her hut pegging up washing which steamed into the cold air. She looked no more than eighteen, and wore a tight-fitting singlet and gym shorts. Marc blushed when she gave him a smile.
‘What an eyeful,’ Joel said eagerly, as he emerged with his medical certificate. ‘Cold weather does wonderful things to nipples!’
Marc laughed, but then shrivelled with embarrassment as Joel crammed two fingers in his mouth and blew a loud wolf whistle.
‘Don’t,’ Marc grimaced, as the girl turned away from the line. ‘You’re so embarrassing.’
The girl didn’t seem to mind and she blew Joel a cheeky kiss.
As she picked up the laundry basket and took three steps towards an empty strand of washing line, Joel looked at Marc. ‘Have you ever kissed a girl?’
‘I had a thing with this girl called Jae, back when I was in the orphanage,’ Marc replied. ‘She was the daughter of the farmer whose land I worked on after school.’
Joel sensed longing in Marc’s voice and couldn’t resist the urge to tease. ‘I bet she’s got a German soldier for a boyfriend now.’
Marc tutted with contempt. ‘She’s our age.’
‘Marc’s in love,’ Joel grinned, before adopting the dramatic tones of a movie trailer. ‘Marc and Jae, two young lovers separated by fate. But will the winds of war blow them back together?’
‘Shut up,’ Marc said, as he swung a soft punch at Joel’s belly. ‘We just chatted and I snogged her a few times. And I bet that’s more than you’ve ever done.’
By this time Luc was out of his examination and the WAAF private was bending over her washing basket. ‘Nice view!’ Luc grinned, before sticking both fingers in his mouth and giving a wolf whistle.
This time the girl didn’t seem nearly as amused.
*
While the Brahms hangar housed the parachute school’s two Wellington bombers, the larger Liszt hangar was fitted out for ground training. The equipment inside looked like a mix of oversized playground apparatus and a medieval torture chamber.
There were harnesses, swings and two mock-ups of aircraft fuselages. Most dramatically, the back wall furthest from the hangar doors had a specially raised section from which you could drop twenty metres on to feather matting.
Sergeant Parris and four junior instructors were in charge of twenty-four trainees. Besides Takada and the six kids there were four Polish intelligence officers, a group of five Norwegian women plus their male instructor and seven thuggish-looking Frenchmen in British Army uniform. By the time they’d watched a fifteen-minute introductory film on the history of parachuting and listened to a rapid-fire lecture from Parris, the junior instructors had decided to name the groups the Poles, Birds, Frogs and Kids.
The instructors took one team at a time on a different set of apparatus. The kids started in the aeroplane fuselages, with a red-faced Scottish corporal named Tweed. He gave them time to familiarise themselves with the cramped aircraft interior and explained the differences between aircraft where you jumped out of a door and aircraft where you jumped through a hatch in the floor.
They practised lining up and jumping out of the aircraft on to mats less than a metre and a half below. The crash landings were fun and the kids were in a cheerful mood. Paul particularly enjoyed himself as he realised that parachute training was all to do with nerve and skill. He wouldn’t have to worry about being the smallest and finishing last.
For the next stage Takada and the kids were each given a parachute. Tweed showed them how to put the chutes on. After this, Marc and PT were lifted on a hoist and left with their legs dangling at head height.
As they swung gently with the chutes on their backs, Tweed talked the group through the procedure for controlling their descent angle by using the lift webs and gave instruction on the correct body position during flight. After this, Tweed raised a laugh by accidentally-on-purpose releasing the pulley holding the boys in midair too quickly and sending the boys crashing to the ground in a heap.
‘I just illustrated the most difficult part of parachuting,’ Tweed explained, as a rather shocked Marc and PT found their feet. ‘Any idiot can fall out of an aeroplane. The skilful part is landing without smacking into a tree and bloody well killing yourself.’
Tweed then