The din of the German guns was incessant, and the roar of the plane engines was deafening. He must descend and find a ditch. His arms ached, but he could not let go. He had climbed as high as there were limbs to support him, and now he clung to the solid trunk. He noticed one particular plane coming directly toward him. It was etched sharply against a luminous patch of cloud, and he could clearly see the three white stripes that banded each wing. As he watched, he saw the open door at the rear of the fuselage, and instantly something dark dropped from it. Then another dark blob and another. Expecting the whistle of bombs, he shut his eyes, pressed his face into the rough bark, and prayed.... After a few seconds he opened his eyes. Other than the guns and the throttled beat of the engines, there had been no sound. No bombs were exploding. André threw his head back and glanced quickly skyward. In the moonlight, speckled in every direction across the sky, hung hundreds of mushroom shapes that were floating gently earthward as silently as apple petals. Suddenly he saw that they were parachutes! And below nearly every one, a soldier swung. From the lowest he could make out the jut of rifles. CHAPTER FIVE _André’s Warning_ Clinging to his uncertain perch, for the first few seconds André felt stunned. Could this be his own Normandy sky? He watched the flicker of moonlight here and there on the parachutes drifting down through the scudding clouds. “The Invasion!” he thought. He had turned to stare across at his father’s barn in the distance, wondering about the Nazi machine gunners, when the tree beside him was torn by a crashing of branches. His heart leaped into his throat. The topmost branches were entwined by a great, pale, crumpled parachute. And, dangling from the shroud lines, hung a figure that swung like a pendulum. In the meadow beyond, other dark shapes were pelting into the hayfield, their chutes collapsing around them like punctured balloons. The noise was spreading. Isolated shots and short bursts of machine-gun fire drummed, stopped, and drummed again. From the far-off German camp near Ste. Mère came the wail of a Klaxon horn. And there was the distant growl and whine of speeding motors. The echo of distant explosions increased. High overhead, planes whose cargo had been dropped, droned away toward England. And everywhere antiaircraft fire was spitting even more frantically. Who were these men dangling from parachutes? If they had started the Invasion, all Maquis ought to help them. “Then that means me, too,” André thought. He braced his foot in the crotch of the tree, lowered the other to feel his way down. He dropped to another branch--and it snapped! Just then the moon sailed from under a cloud and touched him as brightly as a searchlight. A hoarse cry came from a few feet away. “Look out! Sniper in that tree!” André saw the glint of the gun barrel swinging up toward him.