UNDERGRADUATE
Parachute
By PETER UNWIN (Christ Church, Oxford) TRAGEDY pays only flying visits, but she leaves her mark behind her. She visited our beach last summer, stayed a few hours, drove out her cousin gaiety. The beach was different after her and it was a week before the sun- light exorcised her ghost. Our beach was a mile from Collioure. It was a bank of pebbles trapped between the Mediterranean and the foothills of the Pyrenees, a hundred yards long, shouldered by rough rock forelands, backed by a tumbled wall of scorched hills.
In the morning, before the sun was high enough to be hostile, a jeep came down the cart track over the hill from Collioure. There were two sergeants in it. They told us that the parachutists would be using our beach that afternoon. Stretched out in the shadow of the jeep, they played with the wireless set. The noisy.child from the big bell-tent abandoned his swim and came over to ask them questions. The para- chutists would come in the afternoon. In an aeroplane. They would jump into the sea. No, by parachute. But it was easy. Of course they could swim; they must swim if they were to fight in Indo-China. Parachuting into the sea was easy; it was ashore, among the trees, that was dangerous. Yes, it would be the first time, but they knew how.
At last the sergeants shrugged us off, and our spokesman went back into the water. One of them took off his khaki shirt and tiptoed across the pebbles. He stood with the water playing around his ankles. The friend threw a pebble. He threw one back. Already it was too hot. They crept back to the shadow of the jeep and we left them alone.
The sun came up steadily. It shortened the rock-shadows along the beach. There were more swimmers now. The com- munist grocer from Nimes rumpled his shoulders in routine gymnastique. Beyond him the provocative blonde was sun- bathing. The big family from the caravan on the hill canto noisily down to the sea.
Round the headland from Collioure appeared the rubber assault boats in which the parachutists did their sea training. paddling out every night from Collioure harbour in a mesh of twinkling lights. The boats spread out upon the sheet in front of us. The sun bubbled with heat. After a time an aeroplane crept up from the horizon. It flew quite low, very slowly. Its twin engines throbbed harshly. The sergeants got into the jeep. They pulled on head-sets and idly timed the aerial. They watched the boats and we watched the aeroplane. It passed overhead, turned out to sea. Someone with a loud-hailer shouted instructions to the men in the scattered boats. The boats shifted a little, restive like fielders filling gaps before a new batsman.
The plane came back, parallel with the coast, perhaps a mile off shore. What breeze there was came off the sea. From the aircraft's tail flies came spinning; they danced spasmodically as the parachutes jerked open; then only the bright canopies mattered and the men were swinging, forgotten pendants. They came in a loose stick. Number four•waved his legs till the voice on the loud-hailer checked him, and then he too was precise. One by one the parachutes toppled and a flurried instant of Water and silk annihilated the calm moments of descent. The men appeared on the water, breaking away from the sodden canopies and the stiff harnesses. They struck out towards our beach, their black heads bobbing between the silver threads of spray while the assault boats. raced to collect the parachutes. We waited ten minutes till the first boy crawled ashore. He wore denims and a jumping-jacket, a steel helmet and skeleton webbing. He had a ,carbine across his back. His face was pale, dark-shadowed under the helmet. There was a trickle of blood from a cut above his eye. The denims clung sodden to his shoulders and his chest. We sensed the heart-beat and saw the strain of the muscles. The only emotion on his face was a tremor of relief. He staggered past us. The baker from Nimes silently pressed a gattIoise into his hand. A corporal, ashore from one of the boats, swore at him : up the beach, find himself a fire-position; no rest for a paraehutiste de choe. . The rest came after him, Much like him. One grinned. One was 'sobbing. There was a hint of weary bravado about them: they mould take Collioure by storm tonight. As they went past, one of the sergeants was counting. " 11 n'y a gue near The whisper hissed along the beach. One was missing. One was 'out there, where the men of two assault boats were strug- gling with a sodden parachute. We could not see him; he had been in ten minutes. He must be dead, le petit. Was there a doctor?' Why a doctor? His fellows came back from their mythical fire-positions; the corporal who had flogged them on was staring at the sea. They were smoking, talking, drunk with fatigue. An assault boat brought the tenth man ashore, another raced round the headland for a doctor. As they stretched him on r,th,e Pebbles and began to move his arms, the crowd pressed Bronzed bulging bodies worked on his pale frail one. ■ -.1uldren pushed through the hedge of legs to see. The blonde ig,!ri had gone, but the rest of us, we were all there. Two boys led pebbles at a mongrel. A woman came over from her cu°1°41ng. The men who were working on the respiration cursed heat. One of them, when they relieved him, plunged into Lb water and came out shaking his smooth black hair back 'rem. his eyes: "Ellë est froide." Among the rocks at the far rIs of the beach a child was paddling; he came running to mother when an assault boat came in, its engine screaming, cut short by the roar of the rubber hull hitting the bank of Pebbles. It brought the doctor from Collioure. From the beach we slipped back into the sea. There was tiwcithing we could do. But it was cold; there was no life in the ater. The sea was clear of boats and parachutes and the ;,:eroplane had long since disappeared into the haze towards terPignan. A jeep brought an artificial respirator down the iren track. The priest came from Collioure over the hill. it Is was the only hat upon the beach; he took it off and clasped to him; his revealed baldness added a tone of despairing ',,esPectability. In one of the tents a conversation mounted, and wen was cut short by recollection. t, The shadows reappeared upon the beach. They crept over ;Ile rocks at the foot of the western foreland and came quickly, 1„aggedlY. over the pebbles. They drowned the tents; the cook- fires stood out like new-filled sea-pools. The shadows bw,,allowed the group round the dead man and drove the th-v.standers to their shirts. The doctor told them to put him, Vth the respirator, on to one of the assault boats. It was rIle. while a man still worked the handle and the air hissed titIld,tile mechanism rattled. The engine started with a shriek; „,e ooat, top-heavy with men and man, edged out into the deep ter; as it disappeared round the foreland towards Collioure arbour the mongrel on our beach whimpered to the dark sea.
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