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sounded off, Yes, Sergeant, he did, that his was an Airborne family. Good, said the jumpmaster, knock out twenty-five push-ups for your brother and twenty-five more for yourself. This was a tip-off that Joe was under suspicion; it took Jack and Orv to convince him to give up proxy jumps, so as not to risk splitting the triune by way of either a broken leg or a court-martial.
    Now, for approved jumping, he began to be split from his best buddies. Based on sub-rosa reputation, Joe was selected to experiment with new techniques of putting a paratrooper on the ground with more equipment within reach. The 101 st's planners reasoned that if each jumper could drop something ahead of him, something tethered, his payload could be increased significantly. This load carrier became known as theleg bag. A yardlong sack of strong canvas, holding up to 125 pounds of gear, ammo, demolitions, anything, it was wrapped around the jumper's leg. After opening shock he was to pull a cotter pin, dropping the bag on a thirty-five-foot tether. Because it hit the ground before he did, the additional weight would not make his landing harder.
    A valuable innovation, the leg bag, but one that Joe demonstrated was unworkable after many balloon jumps. The problem was the standard landing method, called the British tumble, which all paratroopers had been taught. With two years' head start on the U.S. Airborne, the British had favored a landing where the jumper tucked his knees, then rolled like a tire bouncing on the ground. Joe could do the tumble in his sleep and in any direction, but with a leg bag ahead, acting as an anchor on the ground, he couldn't tumble at all. Division observers watched him in jump after jump. Wherever he tried to tumble, his leg bag jerked him back. He arose slowly, feeling fortunate, like a test pilot who'd completed something as dangerous and problematic as it was necessary.
    After a particularly violent land-tumble-jerk, an officer from division G-3 went over to Joe, helped him to his feet, and murmured instructions for the final balloon jump of the day.
    “Beyrle, when your feet hit this time, just kind of collapse. Relax and crumple, don't tumble.”
    Joe did, landing as close as he could to his leg bag. They both stuck like darts on a board, the tether slack in between. Consequently the British tumble was discarded in the 101st, to be replaced by what became known as the PLF—parachute landing fall. Joe practiced it day after day till G-3 decided he was ready to demonstrate the PLF for the British, sort of a courtesy, saying thanks for pioneering in this field, but, respectfully, we are bent another way.
    In a demonstration at an RAF airfield, Joe did PLFs forward, backward, and to both sides, with leg bags. He sensed a certain rubber-meets-the-road stardom and for his final jump showboated with a “standing landing,” outlawed in the 101st but admired by the British. With the parachutes of the twenty-first century, a standing landing is easy, but in 1944 the jumper had to judge very accurately how fast the ground rose, chin on his risers, then release them at just the right moment so that his body weight bounced up exactly enough to counteract the rate of descent. It all happened in a moment when Joe landed on his feet with no more impact than stepping off a curb. The Brits loved it. Wolverton heard about it.
    ON A MISTY MORNING in April 1944 Sergeant Kristie looked at him warily and muttered, “Get in that jeep, Beyrle. Report to Wolverton at regimental HQ.” It was a long drive to Sink's headquarters, an ivy-walled manor house in Littlecote, giving Joe time to nervously speculate about the summons. Smoke grenades? No, Joe was never implicated. But the brandy? Civilians, acting like detectives, had been browsing around Ramsbury, and Duber was unusually silent. Joe's orders were to report to the CO himself, not to his first sergeant as an enlisted man normally would. He sensed this would be face-to-face, only his third