by John Harris
‘Jump!’ someone shouted and he jumped, fully expecting a long drop. But the boat was coming up to meet him and jarred against his heels in a way that shook his spine and set his teeth rattling.
Away from the shelter of the big cruiser, the little boat lifted and fell in a terrifying fashion. They had left behind an atmosphere of tension, uncertainty and intense readiness. As they had gone over the side, the crew of the ship had been dressed in full combat equipment, and medical stores had been placed at hand in every alleyway, with sick-berth attendants waiting in the wardroom. Tank landing craft were closing up now, and between them and the beach were several control craft. Gunfire and support ships were also moving into position between the transports and the shore, ready to fire if the Germans discovered them.
‘Gussie’s moving up.’ The sailor who spoke did so in a tense whisper.
A transport loomed up above them, its grey sides like cliffs, and a rope ladder with wooden rungs clattered down.
‘You first,’ Iremonger said.
‘Better you,’ Pargeter replied, staring pointedly at the equipment with which Iremonger had festooned himself. ‘Then I can catch you if you fall.’
Iremonger scowled at the jibe but didn’t argue. The picket boat was still heaving in an alarming fashion and, as he grabbed the ladder, he felt the deck suddenly fall away beneath his feet and he was left dangling.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ The cry came involuntarily. Then his scrabbling feet managed to find a rung and he started up the side of the ship, climbing with difficulty. At the top, someone grabbed his jacket and hauled him to the deck with a crash. Pargeter followed.
It was difficult to move among the crowding men. They seemed to be everywhere, already prepared to board their landing craft. The tannoy was crackling and a cheerful American voice was blaring over their heads. ‘Now hear this: This is the biggest party you guys are ever going to go to. So let’s all get out on the floor and dance.’
An American colonel met them, frowning. He was obviously on edge and desperately anxious that things should go right. ‘You’ve arrived at a goddam fine time!’ he snarled.
‘Never mind the happy talk,’ Iremonger snarled back. ‘Let’s see this goddam man, Gavin!’
At that moment a bell clattered and an officer shouted from the bridge. ‘Lower all landing craft!’ Immediately there was a surge forward that almost swept them apart. Davits screeched as the boats dropped to the water.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Iremonger exploded. ‘Tell ’em to hold it!’
‘Hold what, for God’s sake?’ the colonel snapped. ‘The invasion? The order’s been given! The guys are debarking!’
The cargo nets had been lowered and men were climbing down, laden with equipment. But the slippery decks of the landing craft below were rising and falling wildly, and one of them disappeared between boat and ship. He was only saved from being crushed by a huge fender that was hurriedly thrust over the side, and was dragged to safety dripping wet, white with shock and enraged at the indifference everyone showed.
As Iremonger watched, furious, the colonel started yelling at the men waiting alongside him. ‘Get into those boats!’
‘Listen!’ Iremonger pulled at his arm. ‘I want to see this goddam Gavin!’
‘What unit?’
‘Seventeenth Rangers.’
The colonel pointed to one of the landing craft just beginning to pull away from the side of the transport.
‘The Rangers are in that! They’re due to land with the DD tanks!’
‘Then hold the bastards!’
‘Are you crazy?’
Pargeter stepped forward. ‘Put us in the next boat,’ he suggested. ‘One that lands in the same sector.’
The colonel turned towards Iremonger. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ he asked, staring at Pargeter’s strange helmet.
‘This guy,’ Iremonger yelled, ‘is a top British intelligence officer and he’s working with me. For your information, I’m the top American. Now get us in that goddam boat!’
The colonel’s jaw thrust forward and he pointed. ‘That goddam boat,’ he said, ‘is full! And I’m not going to take anybody out of it for General Eisenhower himself. These boats have been planned to the last round of ammunition, and I’m not changing it!’
‘There are only two of us,’ Pargeter said. ‘We can cram in.’
The colonel glared at him but, despite his distrust, he seemed to prefer him to Iremonger. ‘Get going,’ he said. ‘I’m not supposed to do this, but for five minutes I’m not looking.’
Pargeter pushed Iremonger forward. ‘It’s our only chance,’ he said.
Iremonger stared with horror at the net he was expected to climb down. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he grated, ‘we’ve only just climbed up.’
Pargeter seemed unperturbed. ‘We can pick up our man on the beach as soon as we land. He’ll not be moving forward until the situation’s stabilised.’
‘Suppose he’s not our goddam man?’
‘Then we nip along to the next beach. And if he’s not with the cavalry recce squadron, we move along to Fox Green. One of ’em must be our man. The whole landing area’s only eight miles long. We ought to be able to cover that before they start moving inland.’
Iremonger scowled, irritated by Pargeter’s matter-of-fact manner. ‘You are allowing for the Krauts shooting at us, aren’t you?’ he said sarcastically.
The colonel was glaring again. ‘This boat leaves in thirty seconds,’ he said pointedly.
As they clambered down the net, Iremonger could hear someone below him quoting the Twenty-third Psalm – ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’ Next to him on the net was a man carrying mortar bombs attached to his neck in a rolled blanket. ‘If I go overboard,’ he wailed, ‘I’ll sink like a brick!’
As they squeezed in among the crowded soldiers, the boat was cast off. As it came beam-on to the sea, its plunging movement became a wicked roll and a man near Pargeter groaned as the spray came over in a drenching sheet of water.
A loudhailer roared – ‘Follow me! Follow me! Get into line! Get into line!’ – and as the boats swung away from the side of the ship there was a cheer from the British crew of the transport.
As they turned, one of the craft was caught by a heavy wave and capsized at once, throwing its entire complement of men into the water where they struggled for their lives in the half-darkness and the impersonal violence of the sea, fighting to cling to the upturned craft, their sodden equipment a menace as they reached out for friends floating past in their lifejackets.
The men around Iremonger watched silently, their minds filled with thoughts of German secret weapons. They’d heard of them often enough on the radio from ‘Invasion Calling’, and now they were wondering ‘What were they?’ There had been hints that there was oil under the sea, which could be ignited at the moment of landing so that they would all be incinerated as they stepped ashore; and they all remembered how the Germans, stymied on the Western front in the last war, had produced the Flammenwerfer. Would the sea be a sea of roaring flame? Or would there be gas? Somebody high up had thought there might, because they’d been issued with gas masks. Goebbels had done a good job on many of them, and most of them knew what had happened to Exercise Tiger off Slapton Sands.
The darkness diluted and three Spitfires went overhead, making a whistling noise. Higher, relays of American fighters formed a second layer of air cover. Augusta moved further in towards the shore, blurred in the morning mist. It was daylight now but the sun was hidden in haze, and the land was only a grey panorama. There was still no firing and the landing craft were now moving like water beetles towards the beach, away from the follow-up craft circling near their parent ships. Every time the bow lifted on a wave, the following plunge left Iremonger’s stomach in mid-air. He heard a wretched soldier groan. ‘The bastard who invented this goddam boat sure has nothing to be proud of, he wailed.
It seemed almost too quiet ashore to be healthy. Mine-sweepers, whic
h had cleared the entrance channel, were now heading back to sea, their jobs done, and a naval officer in a landing craft began pulling lost assault vessels out of the confusion in the murky daylight and sending them dodging among the bigger craft to their positions. There was still no enemy reaction.
‘There ain’t no Germans there,’ one disgruntled soldier growled.
But even as he stopped speaking, the first enemy gun – what sounded like an 88 from a light battery – opened up. Five minutes later, other batteries started to fire and as the destroyers replied, the big ships followed, until the whole sky was a sustained roar of gunfire. Then the very air about them shook and there was a tremendous flash. Heads jerked up, and they saw ginger smoke surrounding Augusta and a perfect smoke ring rolling away as her 8-inch turrets opened up. The concussion seemed to lift the deck beneath their feet. Then they saw a flickering line of exploding shells just behind the dunes on the shoreline, and smoke was added to the mist.
Texas was firing now at the Pointe du Hoc, a spotter plane circling overhead, the shells digging huge craters in the cape and tumbling chunks of cliff into the sea. As they watched, they heard a rushing, whistling roar, like an express train flashing past overhead. There was a crash and a fountain of water was flung skyward two or three hundred yards astern. It looked so clean and so clear it was hard to believe it contained anything lethal, but as it collapsed they heard the ominous sound of automatic weapons over the heavier guns.
‘No Germans?’ a grizzled sergeant said bitterly. ‘You’re out of your goddam mind, son.’
Four
Flash-masked gunners on the destroyers were firing on machine-gun posts and pill-boxes and the radar station near the Pointe du Hoc, every available gun hammering at the shore in an attempt to pick out strongpoints.
‘I don’t know which worries me most,’ a man near Pargeter observed. ‘What Goebbels said about them waiting for us or my goddam stomach.’
‘One thing,’ Iremonger said, his face grey-green and miserable with sickness, ‘if anything’s more likely to make troops going into battle care less about living or dying it was that climbing down from the transport into this goddam thing.’
As he spoke, his heart was thumping chokingly in his chest. He could see the land quite clearly now. In front of them lay a high plateau with precipitous cliffs and steep sandy bluffs, here and there eroded by gullies leading inland. It had a gaunt and desolate aspect, and seemed charged with danger.
‘That goddam place looks easy to defend, even with rifles,’ the grim-faced sergeant said, and there was a growled assent from the men.
‘Don’t be daunted if chaos reigns,’ Pargeter advised. ‘Because it undoubtedly will.’
Above them low scuds of cloud whipped past. The men were silent again now, wrapped in cocoons of loneliness. As they crossed the bows of an LCT, a weary voice came through a loudhailer.
‘Keep away from me! I’ve got seventy tons of explosives on board! It wouldn’t do either of us any good if we collided!’
They appeared to be on the wrong heading and the leading landing craft turned slightly. Immediately all the others followed suit.
‘When father turns we all turn,’ Pargeter observed, and the wretched Iremonger, who was in no mood for jokes, gave him a sour look.
The landing craft was a bad sea boat and seemed to whip in the waves. It was difficult to hold on course in the strong wind, and, like the other vessels, was veering in every direction as the coxswain fought to hold it steady, one minute riding up the stern of the boat in front, the next fighting to avoid the boat behind. Signal flags snapped in the breeze on the naval ships as the columns formed up and headed for the shore where they could see the orange reflections of huge fires started by the bombers. Then a flight of Lightnings passed overhead, the bold black and white stripes on their wings clear in a sudden burst of sunshine.
Onshore, dust was rising from the bombs and shells, opaque-looking and ominous, and a man near Iremonger pointed to the line of landing craft in front. ‘They say that first line contains all the veterans of North Africa and Sicily,’ he said. ‘If I’d done it there, they’d have had to hog-tie me to make me do it again here.’
Iremonger became aware of water sloshing about his feet. Not far away, another infantry landing craft was obviously in trouble. It was low in the sea, wallowing badly. Its engine had stopped and it was swinging beam-on to the waves.
‘I think we’d better bail,’ Pargeter said quietly and, using his helmet, he began to scoop up water and throw it over the side. A lot of it fell back on the men surrounding him but nobody complained. Iremonger took off his own helmet and began to do the same, reckoning that if Pargeter had escaped by boat from Dunkirk and Greece, he ought to know something about what he was doing. One after the other, more men took off their helmets and began to follow suit.
The coxswain bellowed from the stern above the din of the sea and the gunfire. ‘Just keep that up, Colonel,’ he said. ‘It cain’t do no harm!’
There was a crash alongside and a man shouted. ‘Oh, Jesus God almighty,’ he said, and their eyes followed his pointing finger. A shell had landed in the next landing craft, and where men had been massed there was a sudden gap, which could only mean heavy casualties. The LCT didn’t waver on its course but men were already jumping over the sides and trying to swim away from it, yelling for help. As their own coxswain swung towards the swimming men, the loudhailer on one of the control craft bellowed metallically.
‘You’re not a rescue ship! Get ashore!’
‘For Christ’s sake, those guys are drowning!’
‘You know the orders! You don’t stop to pick up anybody!’
The coxswain of the foundering landing craft had lowered his ramp, so that the remaining men could fight their way out but he’d forgotten to stop his engines and the ramp was ploughing over the screaming soldiers. Then, abruptly, the bow went down and the vessel slid beneath the grey sea, leaving a scattering of heads dotting the surface and the cries of drowning men coming thinly over the buffeting wind and the slash of the water.
The cries died away and several men bent their heads to avoid looking. The smoke was thickening as British, American and French warships roared in answer to the raking fire of the German guns. Through the din they heard the rumble of aircraft out of sight above the cloud, then the crash of the bombs sent more smoke billowing out of the mist.
‘The bastards have dropped them too far inland.’ The sergeant’s eyes were full of hatred for the airmen. ‘All they’ve done is kill goddam cows and sheep!’
The landing craft were jockeying for position now, trying to arrive in the correct spot at their scheduled time, Iremonger glared at the beach, his head down to avoid the spray lashing into his eyes. As he turned, he saw Pargeter, his head down also, studying the soaked papers that Hardee had given them. He pointed to the right. ‘That’s where Gavin’ll be,’ he said. ‘The Rangers’ job’s supposed to be to blast a way through the wire, and if Gavin’s Kechinski, he’s going to be first through.’
There were so many landing craft now, they were in difficulties from each other’s washes. Then the LCT(R)s sent off their rockets in a crackling rasp of sound and, in a billowing sheet of flame, nine thousand rockets hurtled shorewards. Curving upwards and downwards, the rockets exploded in a second great drenching of explosive, again too far inland to be of any use to the men in the landing craft.
By now the packed soldiers had stopped bailing because scattered shots were coming close to them and, jamming their helmets back on their heads, they started checking their life jackets and nervously lifting the safety catches of their loaded weapons. Up ahead the first lines of boats, swarming like sea lice, were crashing through the surf, pitching violently in the waves. They saw the ramps go down, then an escorting patrol craft struck a mine, and at the crash their own boat shook like a piece of sheet tin. The other vessel rolled over and sank, and a few minutes later one of the tank landing craft also struck a mine and went d
own. As she upended, they could see tanks sliding forward towards the ramp and hear the screaming of crushed and trapped men.
‘At least, they’re not seasick no more,’ someone said in a high, strained voice.
Despite the casualties, craft were managing to reach the shore and the soldiers began to pour out into water churned by fire. Men disappeared and rose, struggling to the surface, their loads of bazookas, mortars, bangalore torpedoes, radios and other equipment dropped in their efforts to save their lives.
Immediately behind them, the LCTs were discharging DD tanks with their aprons up. But as the great machines rolled off the ramps, almost immediately half of them were swamped and foundering, their crews struggling to escape through the hatches.
‘What a goddam snafu.’ The sergeant jumped on to the side of the boat and began to yell. ‘Take the goddam things closer in, you bastards. We need the sonsabitches!’
A boy next to Pargeter, his jaw sagging, was staring at the shore with eyes that were glassy with shock. Pargeter nudged him, feeling he needed something to take his mind off what was happening.
‘Not as bad as it looks,’ he said lightly.
The boy turned, his eyes wide. ‘It looks goddam bad to me,’ he observed.
‘There are a lot of bullets,’ Pargeter agreed. ‘But there’s also a lot of space between them.’
The noise was indescribable. Destroyers were weaving among the big ships now, laying a smoke screen to hide them from the deadly shore batteries, and the head of the boy alongside Pargeter turned slowly, mechanically. ‘You done this before?’ he asked.
Pargeter smiled stiffly. ‘Not going this way. T’other. This time the odds are on our side.’
‘I sure wish I felt as certain as you do.’ The glassy look had left the boy’s eyes as he became interested. ‘You an officer, sir?’ He was obviously puzzled by the air-raid warden’s helmet.