June 5 1944
RAF Ramsbury
County Wiltshire, England

Dusk had settled, the sun was well beyond the horizon and the sars of the 24th Airborne Division were preparing for battle, laden with gear and looking like walking burlap sacks. The “All-American” Division had tasted battle before, in Africa and Galicia, and it will again in Normandy, across the English Channel from the airfield. They would parachute in the dark, to meet battle with the Communards and begin the long struggle to aid the French people in ousting a tyrannical regime that had been in power for nearly a decade. It would be a bloody fight and the paratroopers were ready for it, Calvin Barnes being among them.

Barnes was a replacement for one of the rifle squads, a greenhorn who had enlisted in 1942 and was about to get his first taste of combat. He was a tall, hulking tyrannosaur from Omaha who was a wee bit shy but was privy to a good joke or prank, leaving employment at his father’s store to sign up for the Airborne. He was motivated by seeing news footage of Devischer, Lundun, Cologne, and Warsaw aflame, reports of the Army’s new experimental units, and by hearing of the deployment of paratroopers by both the Comintern and the Germans fighting them.

Physical training was generally a cinch for him due to working as a stock boy back home, it was the mental condition by the instructors that rubbed him the wrong way, trying to instill harsh discipline and get recruits like Calvin adjusted to the harsh realities of military service and warfare. Months of running, of rifle drilling, of memorizing weapons and terminology, and finally of practice jumping eventually proved grueling but it did shape Calvin into a sar who thought he could take on the entirety of the Communist forces all by himself. Departing New York, he and his unit would find themselves in Ireland, the first time he had ever been overseas.

Whether it was in Ireland or in England, the sar had always attracted the eye of the local girls, much to his great embarrassment. T

Singleton was the other volunteer of Pathfinder for Baker, a veteran of the African and Galician campaigns and one willing to work with greenhorns like Barnes. 

T

The C-47 lifted off into the night sky, 

Over the Cotentin Peninsula

The flight had 

T

Calvin engaged his parachute just as he was above the treetops of a little grove; his parachute snagged on a branch, leaving him hanging a few feet above the grass. The bulky theropod struggled to unbuckle his harness, fearing an enemy patrol might spot him and kill him while he was vulnerable; he finally managed to free himself and dropped to the ground. Calvin checked his gear and weapons, all were intact, and then, staying crouched, he slowly moved through the grove to a nearby field. Once out from the cover of the trees, he was extremely cautious, for there was a chance someone could spot him in the darkness as he walked parallel to a road a few hundred feet away to his left. He could see what seemed to be one of the beacons lying in the middle of the grass-and-weed-filled field, “Jackpot.” Now, all he needed was to reconnoiter with Cpl. Singleton and-

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted headlights in the distance, moving along the road. Calvin immediately hit the deck and lay still next to the beacon, hoping the vehicle wouldn’t spot him. A truck passed by with little fuss, it had a canopy over the bed and in spite of his limited night vision, the paratrooper did spot a three-pointed red star on the canvas (a symbol used by the Republican Spanish). Once the vehicle was some distance away, Calvin got back on his feet and proceeded on his route, heading towards a farmhouse on the other side of the field, away from the road and adjacent to some woods. He hoped Singleton was there so they could assemble the beacon needed to signal the big wave of C-47s coming in from England.

The farmhouse had some lights on the outside but no one was around, save for one soldier standing next to a tree to the right. Calvin could clearly see that this fellow was urinating, his olive green uniform, dark green helmet, and brown boots almost made him blend in with the darkness were it not for the house’s exterior lights. The para slowly approached the Spaniard from behind and, just as the enemy was finishing up, he whacked the soldier on the base of neck with his carbine’s wire stock. With a soft grunt, the Spaniard dropped to the ground snout first, his tail flailing around in the process; Calvin was tempted with whacking the fallen enemy a second time but decided it was unnecessary. He quickly searched through the Spaniard’s pockets for anything useful but only found personal trinkets, which were useless to both him and the Allied war effort.

Stepping around the body, Calvin began making his way toward the forest, checking to make sure no one in the house had spotted him or had gone outside to check on the guard he took out. T

“Greece!”

“Sparta!”

Lance Corporal Sweetwater and Privates Allen and Lightfoot

Irish para, dressed like a German Fallschirmjager