They all knew this day was coming. Months of briefings had lead up to it, steadily filled with more higher-ups sporting more decoration, all pointing to the same tiny corner of the map on a string of islands whose names they weren't sure how to pronounce.
The effort was starting to feel endless. Reports from Europe were promising: a foolish winter invasion of Russia had set the Krauts back on their heels, and a unilateral assault on the coast of occupied France had been in the works since he'd enlisted. But on their side of the globe, little had changed since their arrival. They were still confined to bases on islands and carriers, and the Japanese showed no signs of retreating or being beaten. The revenge they'd hoped to inflict, the payback for Pearl Harbor, had not yet happened.
He and Poe had flown four successful strafing missions apiece over the port before they got the order to muster at o-four-hundred on February 16.
"Shit," Poe muttered under his breath, crossing his arms belligerently. A sour expression set in on his handsome features.
Ben shifted forwards to lean his elbows on his knees, but said nothing. They both knew this day might come.
Dropping bombs was one thing. Live men was an entirely different matter.
"Your way will be cleared by several more rounds of low bombing passes. The bombardment over the last three weeks has definitely softened the enemy's defences." The latest general stood ramrod straight in front of them, his fingers laced behind his back. "Each craft will be carrying four units of troopers. Aerial assault is scheduled to begin at oh-eight-thirty sharp."
Poe's hand shot up.
"Yes, Captain...?"
"Captain Dameron, sir," Poe stood now. "How low and slow do you estimate we'll need to fly to safely make the drop?"
The general hesitated and while the pilots shifted nervously at Poe's boldness, they knew by the pause they wouldn't like the answer.
"Max 3,500 foot," the general replied.
Ben hung his head. The C-47's were slow as molasses and handled like a stubborn cow.
"Thirty-five hundred?!" Poe repeated in disbelief. A murmur of agreement ran through the room. "Do you want us to get shot out of the sky?"
"Jesus, Dameron!" Ben muttered into his hands, but he knew Poe was right.
"Yes, thirty-five hundred, and the large number of troopers will necessitate two passes," the general went on.
The murmur became an outright groan. This was suicide.
The troop general spoke up now. "Gentlemen, as you know, the target area is very small. Even flying that low, there won't be time for all the men to jump and reach the target. If they go all in the same run, they risk being blown straight over hostile territory."
Poe dropped back into his chair with a huff. Ben straightened up and glanced at his friend. A muscle twitched in his jaw but Poe said nothing further.
Ben woke long before the call on the day of attack, and lay restlessly in his bunk. The air in the quonset hut was still and humid, but he could hear the wind moving the palm trees outside. He wondered if the wind would affect the drop.
Never until now had he been that concerned with his own mortality. Being an airman meant being above the fray, but this mission seemed designed to throw them down in the muck with every sailor and infantryman they'd been with for the past eighteen months. If they were meant to die, it would be together.
When faced with the possibility of his own death, Ben thought not of what it would feel like - if it would hurt? Would he know it in the moment? If he would suffer?
He thought of Rey. He imagined the look on her face when she got the news, wondering how she would take it. Would her face crumple as it had when she'd seen him off at the dock? Was he being arrogant to believe she would shed tears for a man she barely knew? Would she remarry- or even tell people she had been married at all? What kind of a marriage would they have had?
They all dressed in the dark, trying not to disturb their fellow men still hoping to get a moment's peace before launching into the thing they thought they had all come for.
Ben found himself unable to look at the paratroopers assembling near the cargo door his designated bird. He didn't want to look in their eyes, to know if they felt the same fear he did, or for them to see it in him. He envied their courage to leap into battle.
Huddled with the other pilots, they bowed their heads and said a prayer to guide their hands and hearts true, to keep them and their cargo safe, and to watch over them and their families.
"Remember," Poe intoned, his eyes closed. "The First Order will always find its way home."
They nodded and dispersed to their craft.
Buckling his seatbelt in the cockpit, Ben flipped on the radio and placed the headphones over his ears.
"Skywalker," he gave his call sign.
A second later, Poe's voiced echoed in his ear as if through a tin can. "Rebel."
Ben set to his checklist as the others reported.
Flaps - up. He cocked them to their downward extend and then back to neutral.
"Scavenger."
Carb - on.
"Gold Leader!"
Mixture - rich. He pulled the knob to its hilt.
"Cowboy."
Fuel - both. He set lever on the floor between him and his copilot to both tanks.
"Clear prop!" He yelled out the window and waited for the groundsman to answer before hitting the starter for the left side.
"Clear!" The groundsman gave him a gloved thumbs-up and draped the heavy chock over his shoulder, backing safely away with his eye on the engine.
The engines spluttered then caught, shaking the craft before smoothing out. He leaned up the mixture and the faint puff of smoke from the engines cleared so he could do his run-up. He flicked the fuel gauge on the instrument panel with his fingernail and watched in satisfaction as both tanks rose up slightly over the full indicator. They were loaded to the gunnels, but they'd need every drop. It was an hour to the target each way, and with two passes, they'd be on fumes by the time they coasted back to the base.
If they made it back.
They spent most of the hour of the outbound flight to target safely at altitude before beginning their descent to the perilously low mark appointed for the drops. The wind was not in their favor, blowing straight on the nose and slowing them past their appointed hour.
And, Ben noted in his log, burning more fuel than expected. The auxiliary tank had been removed to make room for the paratroops.
Their wingmen in lightweight fighter craft continued to strafe the area ahead of them, and once the light fog and low-lying clouds cleared over the port, several pillars of smoke framed the target clearly.
"Alright, boys," Poe's voice was scratchy over the com. "This is it. Low 'n slow, just like the general ordered."
"Just like your momma ordered," Scavenger's joke cut the tension, their laughter echoing round-robin on their channel.
"I didn't hear any complaints from yours last night!" Poe's retort was sharp but teasing.
Ben composed himself before switching channels to notify the troop leader.
"Lieutenant, we're nearly at the target altitude," he relayed, cocking the flaps back to neutral and slowing the engines up even further. He watched as the needle of the altimeter dropped from 4,000… 3,900… 3,700... 3,600…
"Ready on your mark."
"Roger," the lieutenant confirmed, and then he heard the fray of the first two units of troops leaping from the rear door.
They went through a patch of rough air and he held the stick as steady as he could. It was too close to see the trajectory of the troops as they fell, but he could spot a few 'chutes popping open ahead and below as they drifted from Poe's plane. The target was a steep hill, and sure enough, the headwind that had plagued them was carrying some of the troops backwards, away from the intended drop into the thick green foliage.
Almost immediately, he saw bullets whizz past a few troops and one man convulsed midair. His hands went cold inside his gloves to realize what had happened, and he had to fight his instinct to pull up and just get the hell out of there.
"First two units are away!" The lieutenant's voice startled him back to action and he grabbed the stick almost to his naval, revving the engines to climb and bank as steeply as the C-47 would allow. He followed Poe's path to the southwest, switching his channel again to listen to the pilot chatter.
"...lost a couple boys!" He came in a the tail end of Poe's statement. A chorus of fucks and other blue language ensued, much of it directed at the higher-ups for this suicide mission they were currently on.
"With the headwind, they should jump past the point," Ben offered. "With any luck they'll drift back to the target."
"Skywalker, if we do that we're gonna be flying real low right over the Jap guns!" Scavenger's gruff voice filled his ear. "Unless you feel like dying today?"
"We're already flying right over their artillery!" Ben argued. "And you're not the one jumping! I'm not gonna risk 50 more kids' lives because it makes me nervous to fly low, are you?"
The line was quiet for a moment with only the static white noise filling it.
"Skywalker's right," Cowboy spoke up, his Texan twang drawing out the vowels. "It ain't about us. We need these boys to make it safely down."
Poe finally spoke up. "This ain't dusting crops, Teach, but I think you're right. Follow my lead."
They banked again and began their second descent into the port. A few white parachutes were visible in the trees even at their altitude and Ben noticed with dismay that his left tank already read slightly less than half-full. The right sat a touch above the mid-way mark. He switched channels once more and relayed their plan to the the troopers.
"See you at base," the lieutenant confirmed. "I'm going out this round."
"Copy that, and good luck," Ben replied, slowing the engines further. They were no more than 3 minutes out, and he could see the men free-falling from Poe's plane. He had gone past the point of the hill before they had begun their jump, and sure enough, the wind was carrying them backwards towards the target.
Poe was climbing already when Ben gave his okay. The amount of time it took the second wave to jump, knowing they were directly over hostile territory, was an eternity.
"Yeeeee-haw!" The lieutenant's voice was swept away as he jumped from the plane, and Ben followed Poe up, up into the sky. They were both climbing and turning towards home when Gold Leader's panicked voice lit up the coms.
"I'm hit!"
They looked back just in time to see a plume of black smoke coming off the trailing edge of Gold Leader's wing, and a second later, the plane was engulfed in a fireball as the tank caught. Some of the men had managed to jump but their parachutes were on fire, and they were spiraling towards the jungle at a deadly rate.
"Shit!" Poe swore.
"Making my drop now," Scavenger steeled himself to fly right into Gold Leader's path. "Fuck these motherfuckers!"
"Careful," Ben warned, continuing the climb to safety.
"There's nothing we could've done," Cowboy said softly. "Could've been any of us."
A rock formed in his stomach as he looked out at the line of the horizon. Scavenger and Cowboy formed up behind them, and the coms were silent as they lit out for base.
When it finally came on February 28, the news felt anticlimactic. The fighting had dragged on for over ten days following their mission, and after Banzai and the horror of Malinta Hill, Corregidor was secure once more.
The celebration in the mess hall was muted but sloppy, with many glasses of whiskey being hoisted to their achievement, but it felt hollow somehow. It was one defeat in what felt like an impenetrable wall of defense all around the Pacific Rim.
The air inside was thick with smoke and he stepped outside to clear his head. The night sky was clear and a few stars glittered already.
It was yesterday where she was. The idea still addled his brain that he was a day ahead of her here. What he did today was still in her future. What was she doing, yesterday? As out of sync as he felt with her, the notion that he might yet go to his grave in this terrible corner of the world without her even knowing how he felt haunted him. The dreams of the Chancellor had only grown more intense over the past several weeks.
He flicked his cigarette into the sand and lit out for their barrack.
"Teach?" He heard someone call after him, but pretended he didn't hear. The fray grew quiet behind him as he stalked through the night.
For once, Ben wrote without hesitation. He pictured her at the funhouse on the beach, the steady breeze off the ocean whipping her freckled cheeks a ruddy shade and the salt air tangling her brown curls. It was then he had noticed how her fingers were stained from her work. The bed of her nails was grey from grease and the pads of her fingers had traces of dark in the grooves of her fingerprints. He loved that she didn't care, didn't wear gloves and plucked handfuls of cotton candy and shoved them in her mouth with her dirty fingers. This was the girl he wrote to, not the one she played for him in her pinups. The one who had let him capture her, scoop her up in his arms and accepted his unstudied proposal.
"Marry me," he whispered in her ear, close enough to taste the salt left on her skin by the sea. "I feel like I've known you my whole life."
If he weren't already besotted with her, the look she gave him when she reared her head back to look at him would've made him so.
"Yes," she whispered back. "Don't be afraid- I feel it too."
He kissed her with his eyes open so he could memorize how she looked in that moment.
Yes, she was the girl he wrote to, his Rey. A brief introduction about the state of things, then he got to it.
Forgive my candor, he began with an apology he did not mean, but being so recently faced with mortality has us all counting our blessings and reminiscing more than usual about those we left behind to come to this forsaken place.
Until now he had been veiled in his letters, even embarrassed to put his thoughts of her to paper. But why? He had helped dozens of his fellow soldiers define their basest wishes to their sweethearts. He scribbled out his before his cautious nature could get the better of him.
I cannot stop thinking about what we would do if I were there, or you were here.
His own advice echoed in his mind. Be specific.
I miss every part of you, from the odd freckle on your lower back to the lock of hair that won't stay put behind your ear, to your permanently stained hands.
He pictured her sucking the cotton candy residue off her fingers once more and the light in her eyes as he trailed after her on the boardwalk like a lost puppy.
I want to taste your dirty fingers in my mouth while you suck on my cock, and I will swallow my name from your lips as I fill your tight pussy with my own hand in return.
Rereading his lowbrow sentiment, he nearly struck it before shaking his head and deciding to continue. This wasn't an academic paper. Why should he be embarrassed? She was his wife.
I will spread your beautiful thighs and worship you with my tongue, and I will gladly fuck you until neither of us can walk anymore. I would do anything you asked, no matter how crude, to satisfy this ache that will not subside.
If only she knew how many nights he'd lain awake picturing her. She would no doubt think him a monster if he revealed the dark character his fantasies sometimes took on, and he chose to concentrate on her participation. She had been more than willing in the week they'd had.
Some men around me feel it is our right as husbands to take whatever we want, but I refuse to submit to such thinking, knowing the gift of your desire is more satisfying than any way I could force myself on you.
Surely they were nearing the end of this madness? How could the Japanese keep going?
I pray this is over soon so that I may make good on this promise. The nights are too long without you.
Forever yours,
B.
A/N: Consider this chapter 4.5-ish. My apologies for the long break in this story! I just started a brand-new job so I'm hoping to get this story tied up before things become totally nuts.
Again, the Battle of Corregidor was in late February, 1945. The Douglas C-47s were used both in Europe & the Pacific by the Allies.
Artistic license has been taking with how low the First Order have to fly to accomplish this mission; I'm told paratroopers typically drop from 20K+ foot so 3,500 almost certainly seems like a suicide mission.