His body trembled with fear as the massive engines of the plane roared. His hands shook as they held a black and white picture of her. The machine shook and thundered around him and he breathed slowly. Moments dragged by without an apparent end and his helmet weighed heavily on his weary neck. He could feel a feeling unlike any other deep down in his stomach, he knew what it meant. “Hey Johnson,” his buddy James yelled over the engines, his Jersey accent flavoring his words, “did you hear about that guy from Delta company?”

“No,” the man with the picture replied.

“Poor guy’s ‘chute didn’t deploy right, and boy did he drop like a rock. That’s one helluva way to die.”

“Jimmy, can we not talk about that right before a jump?”

“Whatever ya say,” James said with a chuckle. Muffled explosions boomed in the distance. They became his heartbeat. The lights in the long hallway of the plane where all the soldiers sat went off, and a solemn red light quietly flicked on. Images of the guy from the other company flickered through his head like a movie projector. A body falling through the air. Slowly. Tumbling. So Slowly….

A dull yellow light flicked on. It was the only illumination in the dark cargo bay. We’re right over France. “Stand up,” the Sergeant Major yelled against the rumbling. The soldiers stood; their packs and parachutes weighing heavily on their backs. The man put his black and white picture away in his left chest pocket; he would be the first one out the door. As he clipped his parachute to the static line, another one of the platoon’s sergeants moved in front of him to the steel door and unlatched it with a terrible screeching noise. Blue light flooded in and the distant booms of explosions became louder. Nasty black puffs of Flak exploded around the plane. The yellow light in the bay flicked cheerfully to green and the soldier took a running step out the door. Icy wind slammed into his face and knocked him backwards and down. Ping. Click. Snap. His body slammed against the air just as it did in the practice jumps back home. It felt smooth. Everything felt right.

After a few seconds he reached up to grab the canvas straps to turn the parachute, but his hands gripped the frozen air. Instantly, he looked up to see a green sheet with cables as tails fluttering, snagged on the side of the green plane, against the back blast of the propellers. He panicked and pulled his reserve parachute’s cord. The silken blanket shot out, but the risers and suspension lines wrapped around his legs and torso like a ball of yarn. The lines snapped one-by-one and he rolled and flipped violently around in the air. His reserve parachute’s canopy floated innocuously in the air high above him now.

The terrible drop tugged on his stomach. The emerald Earth was nearly a mile below him. It approached him slowly, so slowly. The subzero wind pierced his uniform; it froze him to his bones. Why me, he thought, why not the next guy? Then, as the man fell through space over the world, he thought something that surprised and saddened him, why not me?

He thought about that girl in the black and white picture. She was the girl he had left behind, back home. The days he had loved and laughed ran through his mind over and over again like a broken record. They wouldn’t stop. He thought about everything. The green ground moved closer. He could see crystal lakes and rocky hills and flowing valleys and winding rivers as far as the Earth could curve. The sky blue atmosphere was lightly painted over the edges of the terrain. His face was emotionless in the unforgiving freefall, but inside, he was flooded with emotions. As the ground became larger, and he could begin to pick out houses, he quickly composed a mental letter to his girl back home. Again, he looked at the amazing scene around him as he fell to his death, and for the last time, he smiled.