"Come down below, sweetheart, it's bedtime. Come and let me help you forget. There are so few nights left." * * * * * I rolled over in the soft sandy ground and pulled hard on the risers to spill the air out of my parachute. The breeze was dying. The spotted cloth wavered, flapped, and the canopy collapsed. I got to my feet, hit the box and stepped out of the slack harness. Slowly I straightened the canopy, folded it over my arms down to the back pack and tightened the straps over it. I picked the whole thing up and zipped it into the carrying bag. The trucks were waiting across the drop zone. I heaved the heavy bag up across my shoulders with the handles on each side of my neck and started towards them. My first jump was over. I was tired ... tired... tired and quietly proud. The first one was past. I was a paratrooper again. "How was the jump, Colonel?" A small black haired officer of about my own age came up behind me. Captain Balakireff, the son of White Russian refugees and lately of Shanghai, China, spoke with a faint accent. His thin lips and hollow cheeks reminded me of the ascetic saints on a Russian ikon. He should be wearing a beard, I thought. "Pretty good, Blackie. It's been a long time." Trudging beside him through the loose sand, a tall blond and thick chested Lithuanian Captain called Makstutis grinned down at me. "Need a hand with that pack, Doc," he said, completely unconscious of the difference in our ranks. "No thanks Mak. I may not be in shape but I'm not that decrepit." Closer to the trucks Lieutenant Pak On, a native born Korean imitation of Balakireff awaited us. With him was Lieutenant Kim Cho Hup, a living embodiment of the Chinese god of happiness with his round smiling face and the figure to go with it. For all his weight, the result probably of too much feasting on his Hawaiian island home, Kim was quick and tough, a veteran of the early days in Korea with the 25th Division. These four, all war veterans and career men formed, with me, the officers' component of a Special Forces team. With us, as we assembled around the trucks were twenty-five enlisted men. All were Orientals, a few native born, but mostly Hawaiian sons of immigrants. They too were Special Forces volunteers, qualified both as paratroopers and rangers. Each had a specialty, weapons, demolition, signal, engineer, medical, and each could take over at least one other job in an emergency. They had to be fluent in one of three languages, Korean, Japanese or Mandarin Chinese.