“What’s up?” she asked Reggie, and he looked at her in dismay. “We’ve got an engine failure in the right engine.” And two minutes later, he turned to her. “We’re going down, Pru. Put your parachutes on,” he told the crew. He radioed their position in code, and he knew the fighter pilots would communicate it to the base. He showed a hand signal to one of the fighter pilots, and the plane started going down fast. Pru looked at Emma, and she looked scared. They both had their chutes on, and Pru grabbed a backpack of supplies for an emergency like this one, with a limited amount of food, a thermos of water, and a gun. The corpsmen did the same, and Reggie shouted at them. There was no controlling the plane. The copilot had opened the rear door and Reggie ordered them all to jump. Pru let Emma go first and followed her as closely as she could. She thought the corpsmen were right behind them, so they’d land near enough to each other. What they had to avoid now was getting caught by a German patrol, when they landed in the vicinity of battle lines.

Emma took a long time to pull her rip cord, but she finally did and the chute opened sharply, then she drifted gently down clear of the tree line. This was the part she had hated most in their training, but she made a smooth landing and got rid of her chute quickly, under a thicket of bushes. There was no sound of gunshots nearby, although they could hear heavy artillery in the distance. And another C-47 was going to have to pick up the wounded Pru’s flight wouldn’t reach now. She made a sharper landing than Emma but got rid of her chute swiftly too. They headed into the trees as silently as they could. Pru put a finger to her lips and Emma nodded. They started walking away from the German front toward where they believed the British line was, near the French border. But technically, they were behind enemy lines now. The plane had come down hard in a field, and damaged a wing, but there was no explosion. The crew had made a smooth getaway too, in the opposite direction. They knew to spread out rapidly. Pru and Emma had no idea where they were and didn’t see them again after they landed.

They walked steadily until nightfall, but didn’t see any houses or farms. They wouldn’t have approached them anyway, since they were in occupied territory on the frontier of France.