by Alan Gratz
Dee was going to become a United States citizen.
Sid caught up, still slow on his injured leg. “Dang it!” he cried. “I didn’t get to kill a single one of them!”
“You’ll get your chance,” Lieutenant Mendoza said. “We’ve still got that bunker to take. Go! Go! Go!”
The bunker was made of gray reinforced concrete that reminded Dee of the concrete aqueducts in Philadelphia built to handle runoff rainwater. The bunker was flat on top, with rounded corners at the sides; Dee knew that it was what the Germans called a Widerstandsnest—a “resistance nest”—one of almost a hundred strongpoints built up and down the coast to repel an Allied invasion.
For the last five hours, this Widerstandsnest had done its deadly job without interruption, and Dee was ready to put a stop to it.
Dee and Sid came up behind the fortress with the other GIs. Two large black steel doors barred their entry into the bunker. The other side, facing the beach, was the business end of the resistance nest. Dee could hear the chuk-chuk-chuk of a big machine gun and the poom of its mortar from here.
Did the Nazi soldiers inside know Dee and the others were right outside? Were they waiting behind the door to mow them down?
The makeshift Allied platoon covered Dee as he pulled on the doors, but they were bolted closed.
“Anybody got any grenades?” Sid asked.
“Got something better,” a soldier said. He ran up and fixed the door with the same kind of bomb Dee had seen engineers using to explode the mines on the hedgehogs at the beach. Everybody took cover. A few seconds later—THOOM—the big steel doors blew inward, crumpling like a chewing gum wrapper. There was a stunned silence from inside, and Dee and Sid didn’t wait around for the Germans to figure out what had hit them. They charged inside, with the other soldiers hot on their heels.
The resistance nest was a series of low, small concrete rooms connected by tight, dark corridors. A German soldier emerged from one of the rooms, and Dee shot him. He rushed into the room where the soldier had come from and blinked in the bright light—he was suddenly standing outside. But not, because he was still inside the pillbox. A mortar cannon stood in the middle of the round room, and he understood. This room had no roof because the Germans used it to lob mortars at the beach.
A German soldier popped out from behind the cannon and raised a pistol.
Bang!
Dee flinched, but it was the German soldier who fell, dead from a rifle shot from one of the GIs standing behind Dee. Dee was surprised to see that it wasn’t Sid. Where had his friend gotten to?
Gunshots echoed in the tiny corridors. Dee found Sid in the hallway, locked in hand-to-hand combat with a Nazi soldier. Dee raised his rifle, but—BANG—another GI shot the German dead.
“Agh! That one was mine!” Sid cried.
Dee pushed past his friend and burst into a big room at the front of the fortress, rifle blazing. There was a huge gun in the room—a 75-mm cannon trained on the beach below—and four Nazi soldiers on hand to load it and fire it.
The German soldiers fired back with pistols. Dee’s stomach tightened in fear. One of the soldiers beside him was hit and went down. Was it Sid? No. Dee caught one of the Nazis with a bullet to the chest, and then there were more GIs in the doorway. They broke to either side and circled the big gun, pinning the Germans back in the far corner of the room. Rifles thundered in the concrete room, and the GIs finished off the Nazi gun crew without taking another hit.
Dee hurried back through the resistance nest, searching the rooms and corridors with the other soldiers. There was one more mortar, but it and its crew had already been taken care of. The Germans in this pillbox had been routed.
Dee found Sid back in the front room with the big gun, standing over the dead German soldiers in the corner.
“I didn’t get a single one of them,” Sid said. “Didn’t kill a single German soldier in the whole damn place! Not one Kraut, all day long! What am I, cursed?”
Dee smiled at Sid and shook his head. He felt exultant. His heart was still thumping in his chest. They had survived. They had gotten up off the beach and attacked a German bunker, and they had won!
With a start, Dee realized this must have been the big gun that had taken out the tank he’d helped shovel out of the sand. Bill’s tank—Achilles. Dee remembered Bill, sadly. But at least he’d gotten revenge for him. Helped take down the Nazis who had killed the brave tank crew.
Dee peered out the bunker’s window on the beach. Through the thinning smoke, he could see the place they’d just come from, and his happiness wore off quick. Tanks burned. Half-tracks and jeeps lay swamped in the surf. Landing craft were caught on obstacles and blew up as they hit mines. Mortars geysered sand and water. Dead bodies dotted the beach like stones.
But things were starting to look more organized too. A tank was rolling off a landing craft, right onto the sand. Troops were moving up through the seawall in at least three places Dee could see, and as he watched, a controlled explosion took out the barricades blocking one of the roads off the beach. The battle continued.
Dee saw another German bunker to the west, just across a narrow river that drained into the sea. The German resistance nest was still hammering the beach with a big gun like the one Dee and the others had captured. But the big gun they had taken wasn’t set up to shoot at this other one. Theirs could only reach the beach and the sea.
Dee considered rallying some troops and heading for the other bunker, but that wasn’t their mission. Their orders were to get up off the beach and push inland. It had taken them far longer to get off the beach than anyone had thought, and at a far greater cost. But they had done it. Now it was on to the villages between here and Bayeux. They would have to leave the cleanup of Omaha Beach to the people who followed them.
“Come on,” Dee told Sid. “D-Day ain’t over yet.”
Dee and Sid hid behind one of the tall hedgerows that lined the fields and roads of Normandy. The sun was setting, and the sky was orange like fire. All around them were more American soldiers—perhaps two dozen—from different divisions. Most of them had bandages on their heads or arms or legs, sometimes self-treated, sometimes fixed up by medics along the way. All of them were survivors of Omaha Beach. And their reward for living through that hell? Now they got to push on into Normandy, freeing French towns from Nazi control on their way to the city of Bayeux. At Bayeux they would finally rest and regroup.
But first they had to clear this town. On both sides of the road were little houses built in a French style Dee was starting to recognize: two-story, flat-faced rectangular buildings made of light gray stone, lined with windows and topped with a black roof. Each little house had at least one chimney, but none of them were smoking.
Beyond the houses was a row of cafés and restaurants, and at the heart of the village, looming over everything else, was a tall gray medieval stone church with buttresses on the outside and a clock tower sticking up out of the middle. On another summer evening, it might have been a sleepy little picture-postcard French town. Dee didn’t know the town’s name, and he didn’t think any of the officers around him did either. It didn’t matter. It was a French town in German-occupied territory, which made it dangerous.
“I don’t see any Krauts,” Sid whispered. He still hadn’t killed any German soldiers, and he was noticeably anxious.
“I don’t see anybody,” Dee said. The town was silent as the grave.
“Come on,” said Sid. “Let’s go find us some Germans.”
“No, Sid—wait!” Dee called, but Sid had already jogged off in a low crouch for the first house. Dee was scared, but he hurried after him. Lieutenant Mendoza signaled for other soldiers to do the same.
Sid ran around the back side of the house and leaned against the wall beside a door. Dee propped himself up on the other side. Sid held his rifle in one hand and his other grabbed the doorknob. Dee counted down soundlessly, using his fingers. Three, two, one—
Sid threw the door open
and entered the house, rifle at the ready, and Dee followed him in. Dee expected shots, yelling, something—but the house was silent and still.
They were in a small, unadorned kitchen. Pots and pans hung on the wall over a white enamel oven that stood on ornate metal legs. A pot with some kind of broth in it sat on the stovetop, beside a tall teakettle. Against another wall stood a dark brown wooden cabinet that Dee guessed held more cooking utensils. A small door led to an empty pantry.
Dee opened the oven door and felt heat radiate from it.
“Still warm,” he whispered.
Sid nodded and crept into the next room. It was a small dining room with white floral wallpaper. A shelf with a few old books hung above a side table with faded photographs in frames. Another cabinet held plates, glasses, and silverware, and in the center of the room was a table just big enough for four chairs. A white tablecloth with a flower print covered the table, where there were plates and utensils for three people. There were half-eaten pieces of bread on each plate, and some kind of thin vegetable broth sat untouched in a ceramic tureen. Two of the chairs were pulled out from the table, and one had fallen over backward and still lay on the floor.
Sid and Dee shared a look. Both of them understood what they were seeing. Someone had been in the middle of eating a meal here and then left in a hurry. But who? A French family, or German soldiers? And where were they?
Dee lifted the fallen chair back up and stood it on its legs. He didn’t know why he did it, but it felt proper to put it back to rights.
Sid and Dee split up and searched the house. In one of the second-floor rooms, Dee found a small bed with a stuffed bear tucked under the covers. Had place number three at the table been set for a small child? If so, where were they? There was no one upstairs, or down in the basement.
Dee and Sid rejoined the other soldiers outside. More of them had been through the other houses and found much the same thing—signs of life followed by a hasty retreat.
“It’s a ghost town, Lieutenant,” one of the privates said.
“Let’s keep moving,” Mendoza said. “But be careful.”
Dee and Sid inched down the street toward the church, staying close to the houses.
Pa-CHOOM!
A house exploded on the other side of the street from where Dee and Sid stood, throwing shattered stone and wood and glass everywhere. Four soldiers were killed in an instant, including Lieutenant Mendoza, and three more were critically wounded. As the GIs tried to drag their injured comrades to shelter, German machine-gun fire opened up on everyone, on both sides of the street. Dee’s heart stopped. It was an ambush!
An engine roared to life, drowning out the sound of the German snipers. An engine louder than any Dee had ever heard in his life. It snarled like a living thing. Like some monstrous lion.
Clank-clank-clank-clank-clank.
The thing crawled out of the shadow of the church at the end of the street, and Dee’s eyes went wide.
“Panzer!” Sid cried.
The village was protected by a German tank.
Dee and Sid dragged an injured soldier to cover in the alley between two houses, and Dee peeked around the corner. He’d seen Sherman tanks, of course—up close and personal—but he’d never seen the legendary German panzer before.
Panzer meant “armor” in German, and though there were different versions, most American GIs called anything that resembled a tank with a black German cross on it a panzer. This one was painted a light gray, had massive metal tracks that clanked and rattled as it ran, and featured a snub-nosed cannon sticking out of the turret on its top. That little cannon was a 75-mm gun that could do a lot of damage—like punch through the armor of an Allied tank. Or blow up a French house.
Pa-CHOOM!
The tank fired again, and another wall of a house exploded. Dee felt helpless. His rifle wouldn’t do anything against that panzer’s armor. Neither would anyone else’s.
“Bazooka! Anyone got a rocket launcher?” a sergeant yelled. But no one had made it off the beach with one.
“Satchel charge!” cried the sergeant.
A soldier slapped down an empty satchel, and another soldier threw a small block of C-2 explosive inside. Someone else contributed a grenade to act as the detonator. Now all they needed was someone to run out and toss the satchel onto the tank.
Time slowed for Dee. In his mind’s eye he was suddenly a little boy again, holding his mother’s hand as they boarded a boat in the middle of the night, frightened by his parents’ fear but excited for the adventure as they snuck out of Germany. All to save him, they explained, from having to put on brown shorts and a brown shirt and a red-and-black armband and join the Hitler Youth, which had looked like fun to a naive five-year-old.
Then he saw thirteen-year-old Dee in Philadelphia, listening to the news about Germany’s victories in Europe on the radio and understanding just how close he had come to being swept up into the Nazi army. To being D. Kaufmann, dead in a ditch on the wrong side of history at Normandy. Understanding then how his parents had forsaken their homeland, surrendered it to the Nazis without a fight, to save their only child.
And how the United States had saved them all.
It was time to repay those debts.
“I’ll take it,” Dee said. “I’ll blow up the tank.”
“What? No!” Sid said, but Dee had already snatched up the satchel.
It was a suicide mission. Sid knew that, and so did Dee. The Germans would gun him down before he ever got close enough to use it. But like picking up the chair in the French house, it felt right. Like Dee was restoring balance to the universe.
“Dee, there are other soldiers—soldiers who are already dying,” Sid argued.
“They wouldn’t make it as far as I would,” Dee said. “It’s okay,” he told Sid, suddenly calm. “I want to do this.”
“Wait till after the panzer fires again,” the sergeant told Dee.
Dee nodded. He propped the Lucky Soldier’s rifle up against the side of the house. He wasn’t going to need it. Not where he was going.
Maybe the bullets will just keep missing me, like the Lucky Soldier, Dee thought. Then he remembered how the Lucky Soldier’s luck had run out at the last second.
Sid pulled Dee into a hug.
“See you on the other side,” Sid told him.
“Nice to know you, buddy,” Dee said. “Even if you are a Dodgers fan.”
Sid laughed.
Pa-CHOOM!
The tank fired again, and a house collapsed into the street, burying two screaming soldiers.
“Go! Go!” the sergeant cried.
Dee sprinted out into the street. Bullets pinged off the cobblestones at his feet. Dee looked up, and there was the panzer, one block away and larger than life. It was twice as tall as Dee, and six times as wide. Its forward-mounted machine gun spat bullets at him—chung-chung-chung-chung-chung—and Dee ducked and ran diagonally.
“Cover fire!” he heard Sid cry.
Behind Dee, the American soldiers who were left stepped out from their hiding places and shot at the second stories of the shops and restaurants down the street. Dee saw the helmet of a German soldier here and there in a window, but the cover fire kept their heads low for the precious few seconds Dee needed to get closer to the tank. His boots slipped on the uneven cobblestones. He stumbled but kept his legs under him. Closer—closer—closer—he just had to get in range to hit the panzer with a good throw.
The tank’s treads clanked, and it turned, putting Dee dead in its sights. The forward machine gun erupted again—chung-chung-chung-chung-chung. Dee pulled the pin on the grenade. Reared back to throw the satchel at the tank.
Chung-chung-chung-chung-chung.
A bullet struck Dee as he threw the bag, and he spun and fell, hitting the ground the same moment the satchel charge exploded.
KRA-ka-THOOM!
The C-2 exploded a split second after the grenade, booming like a lightning strike in the small village. The blast
lifted Dee up and tossed him across the hard cobblestones. He finally came to a rest spread-eagle on the street, sure he had missed the tank with the satchel and even more sure he was dying. His head spun. His eyes blinked stars. Every inch of him hurt. And then—
Pa-CHOOM!
The panzer fired again, the shell ripping the air just above his head. He was right. He hadn’t taken out the German tank. He was going to die for nothing.
I’m sorry, Mom, he thought as he cried into the cobblestones. I’m sorry, Dad.
“They can’t move!” Dee heard the sergeant cry. “Get around behind it, where the armor’s weaker!”
His eyes still bleary, his head still swimming, Dee looked up. There was something wrong with the panzer. Its turret still turned and its forward machine gun still fired, but it listed to one side, and a long chain of metal planks spilled out into the street like a broken bicycle chain. The tank’s left tread was gone! Dee hadn’t destroyed the panzer, but he had crippled it. Like Achilles back on the beach, the tank could still fire, but it wasn’t going anywhere. And what it could hit with its guns was now limited the same way that Achilles had been.
As Dee’s senses slowly came back to him, he realized he might only have taken partial damage as well. He’d been hit in the right arm as he threw the satchel, but he couldn’t feel any other serious wounds, and his arms and legs and fingers and toes all moved.
Pakow. Pakow-pakow. Bullets still flew on both sides. No one seemed to be aiming at him anymore, but Dee still had to get to cover. He lay in the middle of the street, a few yards away from either sidewalk, and even farther from the protection of any buildings.
The closest cover around was the panzer itself.
Slowly, gingerly, hoping no one would notice, Dee crawled toward the tank. The thing was huge. It was nearly the size of a city bus and probably weighed as much as a herd of elephants. Dee slithered into the open space underneath, between the treads, just as the thing fired again—pa-CHOOM. Dee cringed as dust and debris exploded into the street, but he couldn’t see if anyone was hurt. If nothing else, he’d prevented the panzer from running them all down. How they were going to stop it from blasting them all with its cannon was another matter entirely.