Oglio River Valley, Italy 0300 November 12, 1943
The pathfinders had landed slightly north of their target. They had jogged across the almost endless fields that had fed Rome for almost three thousand years without contact. Once they had arrived at the Gold 1 and Gold 2, the teams split into two. Each team began to inspect the fields. There were a few minor obstacles including a stone wall that was not evident in the last set of photos taken by a high speed, low level Apache pass. However, and shockingly, most of the plan was intact even after they had landed. Neither landing zone was perfect but both were good enough for training jumps much less combat jumps.
An hour later, the pathfinders had set up their lamps and were now assembling to begin marching towards the brigade's highest priority objectives. Even as the elite of the elite were forming up, a dozen troop carrying squadrons were slowly approaching the drop zone. Even as the first paratrooper was yanked upward by their static line pulling open their chutes, two corps worth of artillery started to fire on a narrow front north of Parma and south of the drop zone. Two German infantry divisions were going to be caught between the ad-hoc paratrooper division, a pair of American armored divisions and another three American infantry divisions.