With a grin and a nod for emphasis, he started to bend his knees ready for landing. The night shadow-filled ground was very close, now. As yet, though, the shadows weren't clear enough for him to make out just what they were. Trees, rocks, buildings, or even maybe the cluster of farm barns where he was to contact Freddy again? And so he breathed a silent prayer that there were no trees directly under him, or at least that he'd be able to see them in time. It would be nice, he didn't think, to foul his 'chute on some top branches, and dangle there like a Christmas tree ornament until daylight when some Nazis came by and cut him down, or shot him down! And it wouldn't be the first time that sort of thing had happened, either!
"So don't even think about it!" he growled at himself. And with one hand still hanging onto the bundled up German uniform, he reached up both hands and grabbed hold of the shroud lines to ease some of his weight off the harness straps and make the landing that much easier.
Perhaps the gods were watching over him, or perhaps he was just plain lucky. At any rate, there were no trees under him, nor any big rocks, either, that could give him a nice case of twisted or broken ankle. As a matter of fact, there was just a nice patch of fairly soft ground, and he came to earth, and spilled the air out of his 'chute, without any trouble at all.
The instant he was on the ground, and had spilled air, he wiggled out of the harness, gathered up the 'chute and shoved it well out of sight under some bushes.
"Too bad they don't make these things so's you can use them to go on back up again," he murmured with a chuckle. "A parachute pickup! I must give that some thought when I get back to England, and have a little time on my hands. I—"
He cut the rest off short as part of what he had said came echoing back into his brain. "When I get back to England!" A cold shiver rippled down his spine, and his mouth went just a little bit dry at the thought. Here he was in the middle of Occupied France, with nobody knows how many Nazi butchers quite eager to cut his throat from ear to ear if they should find him. In Occupied France—on foot. His Spitfire was now just a heap of smouldering wreckage many miles away. When he got back to England? That would not come to pass until he had captured a Nazi plane and flown it across the Channel. Stealing a Nazi plane was his only avenue of escape. It—
He shook his head to drive away the bothersome thought.
"So what?" he grated at himself. "Freddy's in the same boat. And what you hope to do, you did once before, didn't you? Well, stop sniveling and blubbering around. Just make this the second time, that's all!"[2]
All the time he had been carrying on the conversation with himself he had been changing into the uniform of a Nazi Ober-Leutnant. To his surprise and delighted satisfaction, he found that it fitted him perfectly. But when he gave that a second thought, why shouldn't it? Sure! Major Barber wasn't the kind of a man who did things hop-skip-and-a-jump style. The Major, of course, had made sure that the uniform would fit.
He stood up and moved around a bit, as though he were in front of a mirror.