Invasion

  The math was easy: two hundred and fifty yards from the water to the draw, maybe another forty if we had to run at an angle. Even with combat boots and equipment it shouldn’t take more than two minutes. The guys lugging the machine guns, which weighed about fourteen pounds, and the tripods, which weighed over forty, would be slower, but that’s why I was supposed to lay down covering fire.

  “If the enemy has to keep his head down to keep it from being blown off, he can’t shoot you!” Stagg had said a thousand times. “Keep the Kraut’s head down and you’ll save your ass!”

  I looked at my watch. A Company had hit the beach! I said another quick prayer to God and asked him to kill as many Germans as possible. The hell with Mark Twain!

  Our division would do well, I was sure. They were 29th and proud. I was 29th and proud, too. We’d do Virginia proud.

  “In your files! In your files!”

  We closed our positions and crouched as we neared the beach. In the background I heard the Navy guns sound off again. They seemed closer than they had before. I wanted to turn and look to see if I could see the ships, but my body wouldn’t move.

  A series of pings hit the side of the boat, and I looked up and saw a row of bullet holes nearly two feet long. Jesus!

  To our left, two LCVPs, one smoking badly, were headed back out to sea.

  A loud thump! and our boat went up high, nearly turned over, and then came crashing down. Everyone was sprawled on the deck. Another series of shots hit the side of the boat, and I felt us lurching sideways. The back of our boat had swung around so that we were parallel to the beach instead of facing it!

  The ramp dropped, rattled as it got caught up, and hit the water with a loud bang!

  “Everybody out! Everybody out! Let’s go, 29!”

  Out of the boat. Cold water rushing against my legs. Water going into my boots. I am stumbling forward. I am shaking.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” someone is shouting.

  Something brushes against my legs. I look down — an arm! The bloody socket still bleeding. Red specks, red specks of blood on the white foam.

  Oh my God!

  I look toward the beach. It seems miles ahead. To my right an amphibious vehicle burns. Smoke pours out from its side. The top opens and a soldier starts to climb out. His arms wave in the air. The churning sea buries his cries. I see his body jerk and go back as he is hit. Other arms push his lifeless body out. They are trying to climb out, away from the flames. The next soldier is hit in the head. The Germans have the vehicle zeroed in.

  “Move out! Get to the beach!” someone is calling out.

  Move. I tell myself to move. My legs are heavy as they fight against the water. I think that I am crying.

  Oh my God! Oh my God!

  I start toward the beach. Each step is like lifting a huge weight. My feet are unsteady as I push myself forward.

  My heart is racing. I am gasping for air. Gasping! I hear the pop! pop! of bullets going past me. My eyes are narrowed, almost closed. I can’t see as I wait for the bullet that will end my life. Push the feet forward.

  “Move! Move!”

  An ugly explosion, a spout of dark water and black smoke, lifts a DUKW from the water. It turns over like a huge turtle in agony and falls on its back. I know the crew is dead. They never had a chance. Never saw France. The blast makes me change direction. I am going sideways, confused.

  “Come on, guys! We got ’em! We got ’em!” Sergeant Duncan waves us forward. Then … then … his shoulders rise in the water. Almost as if he is going to fly away. His body turns, and I can see he has been hit. His body is tossed backward, toward me. There is a huge hole in the top of his chest. Blood pumps in short spurts from the wound. I am almost in a state of panic, but I look at his face.

  The mouth is open, twisted. He might be screaming. I can’t hear him. For a moment I look into his eyes.

  “Move! Move!” someone is shouting.

  I turn away from Sergeant Duncan. Half filled with panic and half filled with shock. I am not mourning Duncan, I am mourning myself; I think I am dead.

  The shore is less than a hundred yards away. I can see men running up the beach. Some fall at once, silently, sliding backward into the cold sea. Some throw their arms into the air to fall in a spasm of pain. Others fall quietly, as if they were tired.

  I am so scared! I am so scared!

  There are explosions on the beach to my right. Tanks burning. There are men crouched behind the tanks. I run, and the water is lower. Bullets trace a straight line next to me. Little spouts of water fly up, fly past. I am still alive. My eyes are stinging. I push my legs forward. I am pushing as hard as I can. What have we got into? A body is in the water ahead of me. He’s lost his helmet. His wound is dark. There is a hole in his pale white face.

  Oh my God!

  His wound looks like a third eye. It is grotesque. I am so scared. I am so fucking scared. I turn away from him.

  Fifty yards from the beach.

  There is a steel beam, as tall as me, sticking up. Three men are crouched at its base. The bullets slam against the iron. Someone has seen the men trying to hide. Someone is trying to kill them.

  “Keep moving! Keep moving!”

  The water is less deep, and my knees begin to bend. I am trotting. I want to live. The water is below my knees and the ground is firmer. I see someone facedown in the shallow water. He is alive and struggling to get up. It’s Minkowitz.

  I grab him and try to pull him along with me.

  “Leave him, he’s dead!” I look up and see Stagg. He’s pointing toward the beach. “Move! Move!” he barks at me.

  Minkowitz’s face is pleading as he tries to struggle up. I can’t leave him. I pull at his shoulders. He grunts, and I think he’s crying.

  Suddenly someone is grabbing his other shoulder. It’s Stagg. He pulls Minkowitz forward with a jerk, and I am pulling his other shoulder. Minkowitz comes to life, his legs move, and he stumbles to his feet. We are all running.

  We are at the water’s edge. A soldier runs past us onto the sand. Suddenly he falls to his knees and clutches his belly. As his body bends forward, I see the bullets rip into his bowed back. We move away from him. Move away from the terrible bullets.

  We have reached the sand. There are bodies everywhere. Men are dead or dying, their legs and arms sometimes flung out, sometimes tucked under their lifeless bodies. Some are crying out.

  Oh my God! Oh my God!

  There is a group of men huddled against the base of the cliffs, and I run toward them. I think I can make it when suddenly something hits me. My rifle shatters with a clanging noise, and I fall forward. Quickly someone is pulling me up. Somehow my legs bend and I am running. My rifle bangs against my knees. I reach the base of the cliff and fall down among the other men.

  I look at them. They look at me. We are dazed, confused, terrified. Looking back at the sea, I see more boats coming in. Some are hit before they lower the ramps. One boat comes in close. The ramp is lowered and we can see the men screaming. Their screams are silent in the distance as the storm of chaos drowns out their dying.

  A shell hits the beach fifty yards away, sending up sand and debris. It is too far away to affect us, but we cringe. I feel myself moving against the boots of the soldier behind me.

  There is a soldier walking along the beach; he stops and kneels next to a wounded man, does something to his wound, and quickly moves on. For a moment I think he is Jesus, but then I see he’s a medic.

  Two men are trying to set up a mortar. They get the pieces together and set off one round, and then another. They begin to argue, and somebody says they haven’t armed the shells. It’s like throwing a rock at the enemy.

  Another shell hits. It’s closer than the first, but still away.

  “They’re trying to zero in on us!” Stagg’s voice is familiar. “They’re walking the shells in.”

  I reach for my rifle and see that it’s shattered. They’ve shot my rifle, and the stock is splinte
red. The barrel is twisted. That’s how close I was to death. The rifle, across my chest, took the bullets that were meant to end my war.

  I don’t know if anybody can see my tears. I know they are there. Maybe they are falling inside.

  I don’t want to look at the small stretch of beach I have just crossed. But I do. I am trembling, and I am crying. There are bodies everywhere. Medics are running from man to man, trying to see if any are still alive. Sometimes an arm or leg moves, but there is no sure life in the figures.

  There are still soldiers everywhere. Their lifeless bodies scare something inside of me. I am trembling. Some of the bodies look as if they are reaching for something. What could it be? I don’t want to see them, but I can’t look away. When I look away I still see them.

  A medic is hit and falls to his knees. He is crawling away from the man he had hoped to save. More bullets hit the medic and he is still. We are in a killing zone, and we are dying. Beyond the edge of the beach, where the sand blurs with the water’s edge, there are more bodies. The waves move them in and out, turn them, mock them. And farther still, there are more boats coming in.

  One blows up as it is hit…. By what? A mortar shell? Fate? The hand of God? Did the Germans simply out-pray us?

  A boat drops its ramp, the soldiers start out, and they fall before they hit the water. Arms flailing, hands vainly in front of their faces trying to stop the onslaught of bullets. I am dying with them. There is cursing around me. Men grunt and snort. We are becoming animals, trapped, fearful, wanting to live.

  More of the men coming in make it to the beach. I see the ships have come closer, their guns roaring, pounding the cliffs. The noise is deafening. It fills me up and takes away anything that is sane in me.

  I will never be the same again. I am new. And ugly. And fearful. But I will never be the same again.

  “We’re going to die here!” A voice to my left. I turned and saw a guy I once played softball with. His face was bandaged and there was something dark oozing from his nose and mouth. “We’re going to die here!”

  “If we’re going to die, then we’re going to die up on the hill, soldier!” An officer, tall, angular, a .45 in his hand. “Get ready to move out!”

  “I don’t have a rifle, sir,” I said.

  The officer looked at me, looked at the rifle I still held, and then looked away. Suddenly he stood, walked out on the sand, and picked up a rifle next to a dead body. He brought it back to where I still sat and handed it to me.

  “Now you got one!” he said.

  I glanced at the body that had once held the rifle I now held. Poor bastard, I thought. He never even had a chance to use it.

  “The draw is to the right, thirty yards,” the officer said. “We’ll move to it and figure a way to get up where the Germans are waiting for us. Let’s go!”

  He crouched low and started toward the draw. Nothing in me wanted to move, but somehow I knew I had to follow him. I got to my feet and tried to close the gap between us. Behind me another shell hit in front of the area where some of the men still crouched. I turned once more to the beach and noticed, for the first time, that none of the bodies were together. Like good soldiers, they hadn’t bunched.

  The draw widened at the bottom and was exposed. On the far right side there were several small fires. They poured black smoke. Rubber or fuel. I couldn’t see through the smoke, but I welcomed it. It was something between me and the enemy.

  I hadn’t yet seen my first live German. The dead and wounded, twisted and still on the wet sand, said that they were there. We had run onto a great invisible death machine. It was looking for more victims.

  “If they send a company down the draw they’ll wipe us out in minutes!” someone was saying. It was the man who had picked up a rifle for me. “If we’re going to die, we’ll die up there fighting, not down here hiding!”

  A ranger, crawling on his belly, went a few yards up the draw. I saw his body jerk from the force of the bullets ripping into him. He turned over slowly until he faced the sky, only to have more bullets hit him. A feeling of nausea came over me.

  The draw was nothing more than a wide road. It was easy to imagine families making their way from the town. Their arms would be filled with baskets of food, bottles of wine and soda. They would have blankets to lay on the sand.

  But now, June 6, 1944, thirty feet up, perhaps higher, it was not a place for families. There was an ugly roll of barbed wire at least four feet high above us. The roll was thicker than the wire we had climbed through in the water and ran the width of the draw. Cutting through the wire would mean standing still for precious seconds in front of it. Standing for those seconds would mean certain death. The Germans knew what we would have to do to defeat them. They were waiting for us.

  Two men came toward us, one hauling a bangalore torpedo.

  Bangalore torpedoes took too long to set up. They could blast a path through barbed wire, but whoever placed them would be exposed to enemy fire. Everybody knew that. Everybody.

  “When they start up we need to lay down some covering fire!” the officer who had given me the rifle said crisply.

  “It won’t work!” I heard myself saying. “They’ll be —”

  “They’ll make it work!” the officer said.

  I looked at him to see if he was serious. He was. I looked at his name tag: COTA.

  It won’t work! I said to myself.

  A bangalore torpedo is just a tube filled with explosives. You put it under an obstacle or over antipersonnel mines and the explosion it creates will clear the obstacles or detonate the mines. But you have to place it just right. I knew the Germans had their guns ready to kill any man who tried it, as they had killed the ranger.

  A minute — no, seconds — later, a short soldier ran up the draw, the bangalore torpedo like a stiff snake at his side. He fell forward as the first bullets hit him, then pushed himself to his knees and twisted as the second blast ripped through him.

  He rolled backward, hands beating the cold, damp air above his head. Before he had stopped moving, before his already dead body had stopped twitching, another soldier had already grabbed the bangalore. Had pushed it forward. I saw him grabbing his legs as he was hit. I saw him spin away from the torpedo, and then saw it go off in a great cloud of smoke and debris.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go!” Cota was on his feet and starting up the draw.

  Somehow I was moving, running as hard as I could up the draw. There were men to my left and my right. I was glad I wasn’t alone.

  Phut! Phut! Phut!

  “Oh my God!” The man on my right stumbled forward, his body twisting as he went down, his arms reaching up.

  I kept running. We were past the barbed wire, and now there were trees and boulders. Some of the men got behind the boulders and started shooting in the direction where they thought the Germans were. Others kept going forward toward a two-story building.

  “Aim for the slits!” someone yelled. “They’re shooting from the slits!”

  What were they talking about? What the hell were they talking about? There was a ditch, maybe six feet across and twice that distance deep. I tried to jump it and didn’t make it across, sliding down, clutching at dirt and rocks until I finally stopped. Then I scratched my way up as others half flung, half scrambled their way across the ditch.

  At ground level I brought my rifle up and looked to find something to shoot at.

  On the hill to my right I saw what looked like a mound of bricks and concrete, but it had dark spaces, and I knew those were the slits from which the deadly fire was coming.

  I got the M1 to my shoulder and aimed at the first dark spot I saw. The kick from the rifle felt good. I didn’t see anybody, I didn’t know if anybody was still behind those slits, but at least I was fighting back. At least I was fighting back.

  Without turning my head I could feel the guys who had come off the beach running around me. The changes in their voices, from desperation to sharply barked commands, meant that w
e were a fighting force again; we were soldiers instead of lambs being led to the slaughter.

  I felt a hand touch my shoulder and jumped.

  “Good work,” a voice said. “Let’s move into the town. We need to clear it out. Work with any officer you find to set up a perimeter. What’s your MOS?”

  “Infantry, sir. The 29th.”

  “Good, keep up the good work!”

  The men coming up the draw weren’t running anymore. Now they were moving quickly, confidently. None of us knew who we were with at that time, but we moved into the small city. I remembered its name, Vierville-sur-Mer, knowing that I would never forget it.

  Confused, tired, I moved into the town. Soldiers I had never seen before were all around me. A lot of them wore 29th patches; some were First Army.

  An old woman, thin, tall, stood in front of what remained of a white building. Her shoulders moved up and down as if she was crying somewhere within the fragile shell of her being. Waving a pale hand to us as we approached her, she tried to speak and couldn’t. Getting closer to her, I could see her tear-streaked face. Her eyes darted from soldier to soldier as if she was wondering who we were. As if she was wondering what we were.

  Officers grabbed men as we went by. A short major called me over, asked what outfit I was in, and told me to fall in with him.

  “I’ve got the eastern perimeter,” he said. “We’ll dig in on the edge of town for the night. You got that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, sir,” I said.

  “No, I mean do you really understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think I do,” I said. “We have to do something on the east. Then we’ll move on.”

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Nineteen, sir.”

  “That’s a good age,” the officer said. “That’s a damn good age.”

  He ran ahead of me and I followed him the best I could. My legs were going in every direction and I was moving, but nothing made sense. There were guys lying on the road and just off of it. Some were wounded and others already dead.