Twice Departed

Upon being dropped into Salerno, Italy on September 14, 1943, PFC Ernest Deal and the rest of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment are ambushed by German artillery. But this ambush only begins Fox Company's strange journey into the afterlife. PFC Deal awakens to a strange set of conditions and dreams where he realizes that he is being transported through the night sky by an armor-clad woman, on, of all things, a flying horse. He comes to learn that she is a Valkyrie and that he is being transported to a place called Valhalla. Deal and Fox Company are soon forced into battles for survival under conditions for which they were never trained. They find themselves fighting in places with strange names such as Cannae and Rourke's Drift, and also on war elephants next to a river called the Hydaspes. And perhaps the strangest occurrence of all - Deal finds himself in love.