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and aligning itself for a second run.
    Hislop felt his heart pounding like a jackhammer as his stick shuffled closer together. The tighter the pack at the moment of the jump, the faster they would get out and the more likely they were not to miss the DZ. The wait seemed to last for an age, and Hislop could feel the tension spiking.
    By the time the jump light flashed green for a second time he was shaking with nerves.

Chapter Three
    A second row of stick-like figures plummeted through the gaping maw of the bomb bay and tumbled into the dark and howling void. The Whitley’s engines had been throttled right back, but still Hislop was sucked into the churning maelstrom of the aircraft’s slipstream, the pummelling taking his very breath away.
    He was spat out on the far side. Hislop sensed himself falling for just an instant, before the static line pulled taut, ripping away his parapack and releasing his chute. A split second later, there was a distinctive crack in the night sky above him, as if a powerful gust of wind had caught a yacht’s mainsail, and a canopy of silk blossomed grey-white in the darkness.
    Hislop felt as if a giant hand had pulled him up by the shoulders, leaving him suspended in mid-air. As the oscillations of the chute diminished, he became aware of the vast and arresting silence and stillness of the Vosges night. After several hours cooped up in the aircraft’s suffocating hold, the emptiness felt deafening, but at least no one seemed to be shooting at him.
    He reached down to pull the cord that was supposed to release his leg bag and let it fall away. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the mechanism failed. One strap unfastened but the other did not, leaving the heavy bag dangling awkwardly, as if a rabid dog had grabbed one trouser leg and would not let go. With over 50 pounds of kit unbalancing him, there was a good chance that he would land badly, breaking a leg.
    The flare of the bonfires was growing ever brighter as he reached down, grabbed the release cord and hauled on it for all he was worth, trying to wrench the dead weight into something like a vertical position. But, even as he was doing so, a sharp burst of gunfire cut the night, hot tracer arcing through the dark heavens.
    Hislop had little time to worry about whether the shots were aimed at him, or whether it was just some over-excited Maquis loosing off in high spirits. If he didn’t get this irksome kitbag under control, he was about to break his leg again – and this time deep inside enemy-occupied France, as opposed to the comparatively benign environment of Cheltenham racecourse.
    Hislop was so preoccupied with his bag-wrestling antics that he had little time to steer for the clearing. He crashed into a copse of saplings, which fortunately bent and flattened, serving to break his fall. He tumbled through the last of the branches and was deposited on his backside amidst the dew-kissed undergrowth, with nothing but his pride suffering any form of hurt.
    Before he could struggle to his feet, three figures were upon him. From their dress – the odd piece of khaki battledress, interspersed with moth-eaten tweed capes and French-style black berets – Hislop figured this was no Gestapo reception party.
    ‘ Nous sommes les guerriers de Malicoco! ’ he blurted out, in his best Wellington schoolboy French.
    There was no answering cry of, ‘ Bamboula vous attend! ’
    Instead, the Maquis got to work disentangling his parachute – it constituted dozens of yards of highly prized silk – while trying to cadge some cigarettes. One grabbed Hislop’s Bergen, another his helmet, and a third the downright murderous leg bag, and together they made their way towards the firelit muster point, where dozens of excitable figures could be seen flitting through the shadows.
    Unbeknown to Hislop, their stick commander, Druce, had suffered a similar, yet far more debilitating equipment malfunction. Druce’s leg bag had dropped only as far as his right foot