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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 1967390" data-attributes="member: 26473">Stepping into space, each jumper is blasted by the prop wash as he begins the agonizing count in his head – one-one-thousand…two-one-thousand…three-one-thousand – WHAM! A jerk as the ’chute deploys, followed by a rush of air marking the steady descent from 250 meters to the desert floor.The ground is sparsely vegetated, scattered clumps of grass and shrubs. The twilight renders the desert in shades of gray, dark shrubs against the sand and rocks underneath. To the north the imposing bulk of the Aurés Mountains form a slate colored mass devoid of detail – to the east a low rise of hills are in deep shadow. The desert plain extends south and west as far as you can see in the dim pre-dawn glow.Pyotr scans the ground as he descends, intently searching for a spot to land, slipping slightly to avoid a patch of scrub. As he does so he notices a dark shape, then another moving low to the ground about 50m to the east as his boots strike the sand and he rolls to the ground, reeling in the lines of his ’chute, spilling the remaining air in the canopy.Marcel and Normand reach the ground unscathed – Vidal unexpectedly discovers a collection of low, flat rocks directly that give way beneath his feet, landing hard, a sharp pain in his side, the wind knocked out of him. (Vidal: 4 points non-lethal damage). He looks up to see Sergeant Duval standing over him, leering. “Nice landing, radio.” He offers a hand to Vidal.The rest of the men in the training section are gathering their parachutes, unlimbering their weapons: Neumann, the German sergent who served in the Afrika Korps; caporal-chef Lavareaux, the former fisherman from Picardy who survived a Vietminh PW camp; caporal Martinez, the half-Spanish half-Berber from Ceuta in Morocco; the two German légionnaires Dinter and Berg, the inseparable former Hitler Youth from Hamburg; and légionnaire Gonzalez, the young Spaniard from Barcelona. Together they move toward Sergeant Duval as the sound of the Dakota’s engines fade into the distance, replaced with the silence of the desert.</blockquote>

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