Fox from His Lair

by John Harris

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Colonel, they won’t take any notice of a government issue soldier like me! I got no rank.’

  ‘Then, for Christ’s sake, promote yourself!’

  ‘I can’t do that, Colonel.’

  Pargeter fished in his pocket and, withdrawing a blue pencil, he grabbed the soldier’s arm. ‘Any NCOs about?’ he asked.

  ‘No, there ain’t.’ The soldier looked at Iremonger, his face grimy and stained. ‘Who the hell is this, Colonel?’ he demanded.

  ‘Never mind who it is,’ Iremonger said. ‘Just accept that he knows what he’s doing.’

  The soldier looked at Pargeter, his features white under the dirt. ‘There’s a sergeant down there,’ he said in a stiff prideful manner. ‘He’s got his head down and he’s pretending he’s hit, but he ain’t. He’s shit scared, that’s all. Shit scared.’

  Pargeter smiled and, licking the blue pencil, began to scrawl three stripes on the soldier’s sleeve. ‘This makes you a sergeant, old boy,’ he said. ‘Promoted in the field. Best way to be promoted. Get back up there to your friends and tell them you’ve just been made up. And get ’em doing what you want ’em to do. By the look of you, I think you can.’

  The soldier stared down at the three stripes on his arm, faintly awed. ‘They’ll take no notice of that,’ he said, but he sounded as if he didn’t believe it.

  It was now around eight o’clock and the rhino ferries were heading in to unload. Their arrival had been planned on the assumption that sixteen gaps would have been cleared through the obstacles and wire, and they were in immediate trouble. Only six gaps had been cleared and there was an immediate snarl-up. There were trucks, jeeps, bulldozers, half-tracks and cranes, and, since no paths had been cut through to the road behind the beaches, there was nowhere for them to go, while the beach was narrowing all the time as the tide pushed onwards towards the bluffs.

  Shells began to drop among them and a petrol lorry exploded in a vast ball of fire that scattered fragments of metal and wood all over the beach and into the sea. Every time a vehicle was hit and disabled, it jammed up still further what slight movement might have been possible. Offshore, other landing craft and DUKWs, trying to find a place to land and nudging each other in their efforts to force a way in, had to retreat. Scores of dead lay about, and on vast stretches of the beach nothing moved. Groups of men huddled behind broken vehicles or grounded landing craft, waiting for someone to clear a route for them to the bluffs. But the engineers had been decimated and the German gunners turned their weapons on them whenever they gathered to destroy some obstacle.

  ‘This sure is the nearest thing to hell I’ve seen,’ Iremonger growled.

  The Germans were cutting the beach in half with their weapons, a blast of fire hurtling down so that it was virtually impossible to move from west to east. Further along, the firing seemed slacker and they made their way back and huddled once more under the sea wall. A sergeant scrambled across the shingle and dropped alongside Iremonger.

  ‘Colonel, sir,’ he panted. ‘Get on your hind legs, for Christ’s sake, and tell these bastards they’ve gotta move forward!’

  Iremonger’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not me, Sergeant. It’s not my job.’

  ‘Colonel, sir, with respect, I guess it’s anybody’s job.’

  ‘Anybody’s but mine, Sergeant. I have an important job to do already.’

  The sergeant’s face became bitter. ‘What’s more important than getting these guys forward, Colonel?’ he said.

  ‘What we have to do could be a lot more important – if not for today, then for tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.’ Iremonger gestured towards the sea. ‘For your information, we’re going back down there to find a landing craft to take us off this beach and put us on again further east.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure! I heard that one before, Colonel.’

  The sergeant’s eyes fell on Pargeter’s flat helmet and they narrowed at once. ‘Who’s this guy, anyway? He sure as hell ain’t no American.’

  Iremonger looked at Pargeter and then at a group of dead men sprawled in the shingle under the wall, their helmets scattered about them. Abruptly he reached up, snatched off Pargeter’s helmet and sent it skimming down the beach. While Pargeter was still protesting, he reached for one of the pudding-shaped American helmets and clapped it on his head in its place.

  ‘This is Major Pargeter, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘And, due to a misplaced pride in his own uniform, he insists on wearing a half-baked helmet which gives no protection to his neck or ears. Now, for Christ’s sake,’ he ended with some satisfaction, ‘he’ll be wearing a decently designed one. Come on, Cuthbert, let’s go.’

  As they started to move away, the sergeant yelled after them. ‘Colonel, sir, we need officers!’

  ‘Then find them, sergeant!’

  ‘Right, Colonel, sir!’ The sergeant’s voice was angry. ‘And, by Christ, we’ll find real officers not chicken-shit pen-pushers. And I hope to Christ you do your job, because guys like you ain’t no goddam good to us here!’

  Six

  Crouching with his back to the sea wall, the Fox stared at the grey murk above his head. Nearby, an American soldier was moaning over a shattered arm. Around him other men were chattering angrily, blaming their senior officers for the shambles.

  He listened with only half his attention on what they were saying, enveloped in his own loneliness and almost unaware of the insane din. There had been a devastating simplicity to the disaster, and no dry landings. Omaha beach was strewn with stove-in craft, drowned vehicles, burned tanks, and scores of bodies sprawled wet and shapeless on the shingle. Only the lightly wounded were being taken away; the more serious cases were still lying under the sea wall and, from one end to the other, the tidal shelf was littered with water-soaked debris washing in the surf. There had been enormous losses of equipment, of supporting artillery, and of the bulldozers that were needed to clear the obstacles for the second tide later in the day.

  For a moment he felt physically sick. In all his career he had never experienced anything as awful as this, and even though the Americans were his enemies he felt a tremendous compassion for them in their misery and fear. The less resolute crouched behind the beach obstacles. Those who had crossed the beach hugged the sea wall, helpless, shocked and leaderless, enfiladed by German guns from the bluffs on the other side. No one could raise his head for the machine-guns behind; and all along the beach, disunited and confused men, without cohesion or artillery support or armour, waited for help to come. Even the gaps that had been blown in the beach obstacles had not been marked before the tide had covered them, and the following landing craft had no idea where they were and wouldn’t have until the tide ebbed.

  Despite everything, however, despite Hitler’s wild promises and the vaunted strength of the Atlantic Wall, the Americans were ashore and, staring back at the sea, at the immense weight of shipping, the Fox had a feeling that they were not going to be driven back. Despite the appalling casualties they were suffering, despite the damage, despite the complaints of the men huddled around him. He was an experienced man and he knew that if they had the courage to hang on, they would still be there at nightfall because the naval guns were stopping any counter-attacks from building up.

  A mortar bomb exploded nearby. Though the men round him ducked their heads and flinched, he didn’t move. He wasn’t afraid of dying. Only of dying too soon, because all at once he wanted to survive long enough at least to put right some of the things that, for the first time, here on this awful beach, he had seen were wrong. He had been startled at the hatred there had been in England for the Nazi Party and, regarded from the distance of an opposing country, it did seem to be run by perverted, cruel and stupid men corrupted by too much power. Even Hitler’s edicts these days smacked of senility, obsession and madness. Politically, he was already finished because he’d not had the sense to compromise, to stop when he’d achieved everything Germany wanted, and the Fox now desperately needed to be
alive to see present policies dropped in favour of subtlety – to align the Americans against the Soviets and make the eastern border secure.

  Another cluster of mortar bombs fell and he started, aware that he’d been daydreaming. A young lieutenant appeared, running towards him, and landed alongside in a flat dive.

  ‘The captain’s been killed,’ he said. ‘What should we do? There’s a pill-box at the top of the draw.’

  The Fox had no doubts at all as to what they should do. There was only one way to go and that was forward. The papers stuffed in the inside pocket of his uniform demanded exactly that. But he knew there were machine-guns covering the pill-boxes, because the Wehrmacht had always been expert at covering fire, and he realised the lieutenant was asking the impossible.

  He turned his head. Guns were firing over him towards the sea where men huddled against the beach obstacles and behind wrecked landing craft. They hadn’t a chance of moving forward at that moment, and it occurred to him that enough casualties could make the shaken men around him retreat. And if they did, if the beach were evacuated, he could feign death and stay where he was until the advancing Germans arrived.

  His body warmed at the thought. ‘Who have we got?’ he asked.

  ‘Danvers, Kuski, Ryan, you and me. And about thirty-five men, and three sergeants.’

  ‘Get them together. Can Danvers lead?’

  ‘He’s an ex-sergeant. He knows what to do.’

  ‘Right. Me, Danvers and Kuski. Then Ryan and you.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be at the front?’

  ‘We can’t all be at the front.’

  They assembled the men on either side of a gully. None of them was very eager but they seemed willing enough to follow anyone who was prepared to lead.

  ‘You know where the pill-box is?’

  Danvers nodded. He was a square-shouldered, tough-looking man, but his face was grey as though he were looking straight at death.

  ‘Bazooka?’

  ‘Right here.’

  ‘Plenty of grenades?’

  ‘Every man has them.’

  ‘Right, let’s go!’

  He stood up and began to run up the gully. Danvers and Kuski stood up with him, yelling at their men to follow. Immediately, a machine gun opened up, and as he saw the bullets scattering the sand in front of him, he was caught by an uncharacteristic and wholly unexpected terror. Where it came from he didn’t know – perhaps from the wish he’d had to survive, to help put right the things in Germany which had suddenly seemed so wrong – but it was powerful enough for him to fling up his arms and throw himself instinctively into the shelter of the dunes.

  When he scrambled to his knees, the panic had gone as fast as it had come and his head was clear again. He saw Danvers stumble to his knees, his head down in an attitude of prayer. Then another burst caught Kuski in the neck, almost tearing his head off his shoulders. A corporal appeared, carrying a bag of explosive charges. As he reached the pill-box, he threw the sack against the base of the concrete wall and began to poke a charge on a long stick into the ventilating hole. The fuse began to splutter and he began to run, but a machine gun caught him and he went down, rolling end over end like a shot rabbit. As he fell, the explosions came, one on top of another, and chunks of concrete flew into the air and thudded into the sand. The pill-box was split open, smoking and black, and behind it a German soldier was running in circles, burning from head to foot and screaming. A sergeant dropped him with a single shot, then fell himself, and the forward move stopped again as the attack melted away and men dived for shelter. Standing up, feeling he must redeem himself, the Fox grabbed at a man crawling back on hands and knees, and, hoisting him to his shoulders in a bone-cracking heave, stumbled back down the gully.

  At the bottom, the lieutenant flung himself to the sand alongside him, his eyes wet with tears. Of the forty men who had started up the gully only twenty had found their way back, their eyes wild, their faces shocked. The Fox dragged the last of them out of sight, still startled that the instinct for survival in him had proved stronger than the ingrained discipline of years. For a moment, he was even faintly ashamed, but he was consoled by the fact that twenty or more casualties added to the total of disaster on Omaha could be directly attributable to him.

  ‘Get down,’ the lieutenant yelled. ‘Get down!’

  The Fox turned to look at him. His fear was gone now and he was eager to prove to himself that he wasn’t afraid. He knew the machine gun firing down the gully couldn’t reach him, but, as he turned, a cluster of mortar bombs hit the beach with a series of nerve-shattering crashes, and something struck him at the side of the head, spinning him round. At the same time, something else tore into his thigh just above the knee with the kick of a mule, and he spun round and sprawled in the sand.

  The lieutenant dragged him to safety. ‘Jesus God,’ he was babbling. ‘It was my fault! I talked you into it!’

  Conscious of the sky whirling about him, his eyes and mouth full of grit, a tremendous feeling of lassitude welling over him, the Fox realised he was muttering in German and forced himself to concentrate.

  ‘How bad is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve been hit in the face but it doesn’t look bad. Your leg’s different.’ The lieutenant had taken out a knife and ripped up his trousers. ‘We’ll get you to a dressing station.’

  ‘I wish to stay here.’

  ‘Look, you’ve done all a man could do. Leave it to me.’ He tried to protest again but it was no use. Things were fading and little lights were clicking out inside his mind. Doors were shutting one after the other and his thoughts became a jumble as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Seven

  The thin wet line of khaki was still dragging itself ashore. Despite the disaster, fresh waves of men were continually adding to the number sheltering at the head of the beach. There were still a lot of men crouching among the obstacles, but the Germans were turning their machine-guns on them now and only those who could summon the courage to dash up the beach seemed to have any chance of life.

  In the congestion offshore, a landing craft was sinking and a control vessel was circling to pick up survivors. The demolition teams trying to blast a way through the obstacles had suffered paralysing casualties but, here and there, crouching in the lee of a scattered bulldozer or a truck, men were still bravely struggling to plant their explosives.

  The German artillery continued to harass the circling landing craft, and Pargeter noticed that some of them were turning towards the east. Then, as he crouched under the sea wall, he heard a signaller, trying to snatch some sense out of the tangle of messages in the ether, turn to his next-door neighbour and announce that gaps had been blown in the defences on Easy Red beach and that reinforcements were being directed there.

  A small landing craft heading for the shore, caught in the cross current, was swept against one of the tetrahydra obstacles, and there was an immediate explosion. As it swung away, burning, men jumped overboard, only to drown under their heavy equipment, while the German artillery turned their fire on the damaged craft. After four direct hits, it disintegrated and sank.

  Every now and then more men arrived with the tide like flotsam, their units mixed, sometimes separated from their commanders by half a mile, and inexperienced leaders were unable to get their bearings. Another landing craft came ashore, but the tide was rising so rapidly its commander kept having to heave his vessel off and rebeach to land his shipload of men. The German gunners over the hill were firing at his barrage balloon, and it suddenly seemed to dawn on him that it was drawing their fire. A sailor ran towards the hawser and swung at it with an axe, and the balloon was swept away by the wind, still fired at by the German gunners.

  Three more small landing craft were heading in now and three more sheltering behind the broached-to vessel began to back off. Iremonger jabbed Pargeter. ‘Cuthbert, boy,’ he shouted above the racket, ‘I figure we’re in the wrong goddam place! You don’t hitch a lift a hundred yards back fr
om the road. We should be down there.’

  Pargeter nodded and, jamming his helmet down on his head, he set off after Iremonger. As he ran, a 75-mm gun concealed in the exit from the beach began to fire and was joined immediately by an 88 in a concrete casemate. An explosion just in front of him flung up a shower of wet sand and water and knocked him flying. As he picked himself up, he saw Iremonger still running for the sea. Reaching the water, he flung himself down behind a wrecked bulldozer, and a moment later Pargeter joined him.

  There were a dozen men crouched behind the vehicle, poking their heads round the sides to watch the firing. Iremonger nudged Pargeter and, rising to his feet, started running again. As Pargeter set off after him, the men round the bulldozer started shouting.

  ‘You yellow bastards,’ they roared.

  They splashed down again, soaking wet, near a smashed landing craft.

  ‘One of the hazards of this job,’ Pargeter panted, ‘is that everybody thinks we’re afraid.’

  ‘I’ll buy that,’ Iremonger yelled back. ‘Because they might be goddam right!’

  The three landing craft approaching the shore were just grounding. The ramps slammed down and the men poured out. As they emptied, Pargeter and Iremonger leapt to their feet and started to splash through the shallows.

  ‘Hold it,’ Iremonger shouted to the coxswain of the nearest vessel. ‘For Christ’s sake, hold it!’

  The ramp was just lifting as he scrambled aboard and pulled Pargeter after him. The coxswain started yelling from the stern.

  ‘Get the hell outa here, you yellow bastards! I’m dumping men, not picking ’em up!’

  Iremonger struggled to his feet. He’d long since lost the carbine but he still wore a pistol in its holster at his waist, and he advanced down the length of the craft to the man at the tiller with it in his fist.

  ‘Listen, soldier,’ he said, ‘if any other bastard calls me yellow, I’ll blow his goddam head off! Now shut up! I’ve got a job to do, and you’re going to help me do it!’