by Susan May
From my dropped position, I surveyed my immediate surroundings. Bodies of the fallen were everywhere. Now I was in the middle of it.
Three feet to my left, one poor fellow had lost half his head, the eyeball socket empty except for a dark red cave which I could see light shining through. The other eye stared at me—a gentle brown eye that had once looked upon the hills of California, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the skyscrapers of Chicago, or even some small country town, a whistle-stop on the way to the city. That eye was seeing nothing ever again. It was a hideous, frightening sight, but I had to ignore my revulsion, or that would be me soon enough.
A black army boot lay on its own above the head, abandoned and missing its partner. It didn’t belong to the man with the eye. He still wore both of his.
What a strange place to kick off a boot, I thought, until I realized that within the boot nestled a foot and part of a leg. Above the bloodied calf, with its jagged white bone protruding through the torn and pulped muscle and sinew, was nothing. A quick scan revealed no owner nearby. Abandoned, forever lost to its owner who must have somehow staggered away. It left me with only one question. How far had he gotten?
Beyond these two horrors were many more bodies, more parts of bodies. It was a slaughterhouse gone crazy. Pieces of men thrown everywhere. I could hear some men farther away still alive, still calling for help or screaming in a hideous, hysterical pitch, but there was not a soul left alive near me.
The idea hit me like a chiming bell at the exact same moment a bullet whizzed past. It hit the sand inches from my face, flicking up sharp grains that stung my eyes.
I tried to dismiss the idea, but each time I did, my mind dragged it back and stubbornly held it before me. My instinct to survive just wouldn’t let it go.
If I stood up and kept running—no matter how much I zigzagged—those gunners would get me. No doubt in my mind. I might make it to the landing parties, but what would be left of me? The image of my leg or my arm lying somewhere farther down the beach, while I crawled away in agony, filled my imagination.
This injury, which I’d thought was a terrible piece of bad luck, was perhaps my salvation. Here was my plausible excuse.
It was, wasn’t it?
I took the story out for a spin—ran it through my mind. Backward. Forward. It was reasonable. Nobody could ever say any different. I was hit, and I blacked out. What happened after that, I couldn’t say.
If it weren’t for the other brave soldiers’ bodies falling on me, covering me, I would have died, too. I tried to get through, I would tell them. If it weren’t for that bullet…Yes, if the bullet hadn’t found me, I would have carried out my orders. I wanted to be a hero, but it was terrible bad luck. Blackey had said that the beach would shortly be ours. I only needed to wait it out.
Who would know?
Another bullet skimmed overhead, only inches away. That was all the encouragement I needed. Pushing my gun away, I crawled the few feet toward “One-Eye.” Stretching my neck up, just over his waist, I peered over. There was the owner of the boot. He hadn’t gotten very far. His body lay in a shallow trench at a crazy angle just a few feet away. Thank God his face was turned in the other direction.
With all the strength I could muster, I half-dived, half-crawled over One-Eye to land between the two bodies. Then I pulled One-Eye inward, trying to keep his face out of my sight. I couldn’t bear to look at his face for too long. I cursed the weight of the body. It was heavier than it looked. It only needed to be moved a foot at the most. The sand gave a little with the force of my tugging and that made the job of pulling it toward me easier.
Once he was in place, I turned my attention to the other body, grabbing it by the belt. This was more difficult because I couldn’t move around too much or I would dislodge One-Eye. After several sharp tugs, I managed it.
Now I was sandwiched between the two, and all I needed was to snuggle beneath them and lay still. The overpowering smell of blood and gunpowder, combined with the exertion and the heat, made me feel sick. I turned my head into the sand and retched violently, as I’d never vomited before. The heaving didn’t stop until the only thing left in my stomach was bile, and still it came.
It surprised me how calm I had become. The thought of surviving was a balm to my terror. My leg, though, had started to throb and itch. I reached down to scratch at it, gritting my teeth against pain that was increasing with every second. Each movement I made was slow and careful, even though I wanted to scratch the hell out of it. I thought the bodies would provide protection, but I was uncertain how much.
Tears ran down my cheeks, as much as I tried to hold them back. I didn’t sob; they were silent tears. If I cried, my chest might heave, and I couldn’t risk the movement.
I closed my eyes in an effort to stem the flow. With my eyes closed, my hearing became more acute. The whistling of the bullets, the punch and crack of the explosions in the distance, the shouts from both sides, the screaming of nearby men mortally wounded. Hell on Earth. Hell on Earth and beyond.
A string of bullets laced through One-Eye, the soft thwack sound and the slight jump of the body as each one found its mark. I was terrified. I wanted to jump up and run. Once it stopped, I realized no bullets had found me.
My heart took off again.
Thu-ump. Thu-ump. Thu-ump.
It beat so hard I thought it would lift me off the ground.
I held my body rigid, hardly daring to breathe. Playing dead was easier when death surrounded you.
I counted to one hundred, not breathing until I reached fifteen, and then each ten after that. Then I would take a shallow breath through my nose, just in case a sniper had seen me and was waiting for my movement. I imagined him patiently watching through his scope. When he saw no movement, he would blink and then swing his rifle to another unfortunate target.
After one hundred, I opened my eyes, the only part of my body I dared allow to move. Another minute passed as I lay there, breathing every count of ten, only my eyes moving as I scanned the immediate area.
I realized that when the bullets had struck my savior’s body, the force had moved him slightly off of me. My legs were now exposed. I needed to get him back over me, and again burrow myself into the cave created by the two corpses. Again, I began the strenuous process of moving the body. As I half-twisted around, pulling at the belt of One-Eye, prodding at him, trying to maneuver his body over mine, he came upon me—almost stepped on me.
I saw him at the same moment that he saw me.
Charlie O’Shea was in the 5th Ranger Battalion. I knew him because, in the previous week, we had shared training games with them. We weren’t friends, but we knew each other enough to nod and say hello. It had gotten around that he was one of the best lightweight boxers they had in the company. They’d said when he got home—if he got home—he had a future in the sport. World class, apparently.
Now Charlie O’Shea, champion boxer and soldier, was staring at me. He stood there, facing up the beach, his rifle clutched in his hands. His face, though, turned in my direction, revealing by just the lift of his eyebrow that he’d recognized me for sure.
It dawned on me if I’d kept going, followed my orders, and made it to Colonel Ryan, Charlie O’Shea wouldn’t be heading up to the bluff and facing the gunfire. Instead, he’d be on an assault boat, motoring back to safety.
I could tell by the way he stared he’d seen what I was doing. It was obvious. My story of my injury being too serious, of passing out—well, it wouldn’t stand now. He saw me for what I was: a coward, hiding under two brave men who’d given their lives.
His face changed as he looked at me, as the realization dawned. His eyebrows furrowed, his lips tightened, the muscles in his neck stiffened and stood rigidly. He began to shake his head.
I knew what he was thinking.
Suddenly I saw me through his eyes, and the scalding shame burned through me and colored my cheeks. He started to mouth something, but the whip of the wind and the explosions carr
ied away his words.
A thick ball of emotion filled my chest. In my mind, I began a reply to his accusations. He would report me, and I would be court-martialed or worse. Until then, I’d had an exemplary record. Until then, I was a hero to my family.
I thought to get up, face him, and explain that it was the fear, the death, the horrors. That I’d never expected them. I’d even begun to push myself up, moving through the bodies that, as the sun rose higher, had already begun to stink of rot—when he was suddenly gone.
One moment he was there, mouthing, staring, accusing me with his eyes, and in the next his head was gone. Exploded. Thick, wet drops landed upon the exposed parts of my body, my arms, my face. A piece of flesh hit me just above the eye, along with splatters of blood. For a moment, it blinded me, and I felt a wild panic erupt. My heart raced off again. Thu-ump. Thu-ump.
It was instinct that caused me to dive back under the bodies again. I couldn’t help him; I could only help me. Hell, I could have been him, if I’d followed my orders. That was my alternate fate, played out before me in all its Technicolor horror.
With the gore thick in my hair and upper body, I lay there praying, looking as much like a corpse as did the bodies on top of me.
I lay there crying, not worrying if the sobs caused my chest to rise, with the sand cradling me, the fallen men protecting me, and the weight of what I had done forever frozen at the moment when Charlie O’Shea shook his head and mouthed those words. His words that I would never hear and never know would forever haunt me.
Five thousand would die on the beach that day. Every day after I would wish I were one of them.
Chapter 5
When I looked out the window again, they were still there: the soldiers, the gunfire, and the hellish battle. This couldn’t be real.
I shook my head, which made the world spin like a slot machine. Cursed vertigo had set in ever since that day. Always striking me at its convenience, never mine.
Even as the vertigo slowed, I saw nothing had changed. They were still out there. Now advancing toward me. They never did that. It was always as if I had a side-window view of the battle. Tonight’s vision seemed even realer than last night’s. I slumped back down under the window, my breath coming in short, sharp pants. I twisted around so my legs lay out straight before me, my back pressed into the wall.
The room was a wreck, torn to shreds by the bullets. The sofa stuffing floated in the air like clumps of snow. Mavis would have been devastated. She loved that sofa. The desk lamp across the room lay shattered on the floor. All around me was the glass from the room’s windows. It sparkled orange and red from the flares outside, and it was almost beautiful.
At some point while my mind traveled back to that beach, the lights had gone out. Of course, they’d taken them out. That would be protocol. Blind the enemy.
I needed to get away. If I could get through the kitchen to the back door, there was a gate out the back to the neighboring property. Surely, they wouldn’t dare follow us.
A moan came from beside me. Small like a child’s.
Caught up in my memories, I had forgotten Claire. I’d turned a blind eye to the human being right beside me. The poor girl must be terrified.
I turned to her and leaned over, anxious to reassure her that it would all soon end. The sight of her was as shocking to me as the specter of Charlie O’Shea next to my mailbox had been.
Claire sat only two feet away, and like me, her back was against the wall. She looked, at first glance, as if she were resting, as if the two of us were playing hide-and-seek together.
Except for the blood.
Down the front of her lemon-yellow blouse, near her collarbone, a patch of red expanded as I watched. Her face was pale as a sheet, and her hand dabbed disjointedly at the material. After a few jabs, she held it out before her, her eyes saucer-wide at the sight of the blood. A bullet had ripped into her. I thought it was my touch that had broken the window earlier, but I saw now that it had been a bullet.
Her breath came in hiccups. As she pulled air into her lungs, her stomach, beneath her skirt, sharply expanded and contracted as if manipulated by a machine.
She rolled her head to look at me. My immediate thought was to reassure her. “Don’t worry. It will go. It’s just some serious guilt haunting me. You’ll be okay. It’s me it wants.”
This wasn’t a mere vision or manifestation of post-traumatic stress. This was us, somehow, in a war that had already been fought. Claire—with the two children and the husband and the opinionated views—the health worker who loved to talk, whose only mistake was to come back to check on me, had become a casualty of that war.
I pushed myself to my knees and crawled the few feet to the sofa. A ghastly multi-colored wool headrest, crocheted by Mavis while watching Mod Squad in the seventies, hung over the arm. Yanking it away, I clutched it in my hand, carrying it back to Claire.
Bunching an end of it into a ball, I pushed it into the wound. Claire cried out. It hurt me to hurt her, but I had to stop the blood flow.
“Claire… here.” I held the cloth to her chest. “Can you hold this? Push it in. It will help to stem the bleeding. Pressure. You need pressure on it.”
She attempted to take the bunched cloth in her hand. Due to either the shock or the loss of blood, she lacked the strength to hold it. A pool of red formed on the floor. Tears streamed down her face and slipped into her open mouth. She kept repeating only one word. “How? How? How?”
“I don’t know how,” I said. “It’s in my mind.”
I patted her hair as my own tears traveled down my cheeks. What could I do? How could I prevent this thing from happening to her? This had nothing to do with her.
She looked down again at her chest, then back at me, and said, “What have you done? Not in your—mind.” Her eyes looked lost and worn.
Her words tugged at me. She was right.
I had done something, and it had come to claim me. All the guilt I couldn’t shake, the guilt that had piled up—day after day, year after year—filling my heart, filling my subconscious, until I couldn’t hold it anymore, and it spilled out into this world.
One mistake under terrible circumstances. How could I know that my one act of cowardice would never be forgiven? How could I know that even though no one would ever know—except for Charlie O’Shea—I would still be condemned? That my own conscience would mete out a justice far greater than my superiors of the day? I had become both judge and defendant; prisoner and jailer.
I leaned toward Claire, my hand outstretched. She met my eyes, and I could see the same look I had seen on so many dying men in that war. That look never left you. I couldn’t take another person looking at me that way, dying in front of me, dying because of me.
The cloth had fallen into her lap. I grabbed at it and pushed it again into the wound. She winced, but she was so weak now, she barely made a sound.
“Claire. Claire! Look at me. Hold this.” I grabbed her wrist and forced her to take hold of the cloth. “You must hold this to stop the bleeding. It will be over in a minute. I promise. Do you hear me?”
She barely nodded, but her eyes, which had been frantically moving between half-open lids, slowed. A whispered “yes” escaped her lips.
I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “Claire, thank you for always caring about me. I didn’t deserve you. I haven’t deserved anyone.”
Crawling backward a few feet, away from the window and the line of fire, I stood up, far more quickly than I could remember having done in the past decade. It was as if the years had bled from my body. My muscles, no longer withered, had now grown stronger.
It took only five strides to reach the front door. I paused for a moment, gathering my thoughts, thinking back over the years I’d enjoyed. Years I hadn’t deserved.
There was Mavis’s sweet face when she’d said “I do,” quickly replaced by the guilt of knowing that all those men would never hear these words from their sweethearts.
Ther
e were the children and the grandchildren. How tall and proud they stood whenever I marched in the remembrance parades, my purple heart and all the other awards proudly displayed on my jacket. Awards I was sure I had never earned.
These images filled my mind, the emotions traveling through my body, fueling my resolve. My hand reached for the doorknob, and with the flick of my wrist, it turned. In that instant, it was as if I’d turned the off switch on a radio. Suddenly the air was empty of sound; my mind was clear.
I flung open the door, expecting the vision to be gone. I’d finally had the courage to face it, and, in return, it would dissolve to nothing, and Claire would be fine.
The scene before me was exactly as I remembered from 1944. I quickly glanced back at Claire: she hadn’t moved, still sat in a pool of her own blood, her tiny body heaving with the exhaustion of each breath.
I turned back to the door, and stepped outside.
As I walked down the steps, the odor of gunpowder and death assaulted me. The gray cloying mist swirled below my knees, and I heard the crunch and squelch of sand beneath my feet.
Across the way, I noted the sniper’s sight trained on me, as he awaited his order from God-knows-who. By Mavis’s favorite elm—whose dropping autumn leaves I cursed every year—the machine gun battlements spat out their stinging rounds. Dirt and grass flew up around my feet, spraying my pants and dressing gown. Still I walked. No zigzagging this time.
Just as before, I heard the bullet before I felt it, in the millisecond before the slug pulped my calf muscle and shattered the bone. Still I kept walking, limping as I went, and ignoring the pain, even glad for the pain.
Under my breath, I began to chant, “I understand, sir. They’re counting on me.” The men. Poor Claire.”
I dragged my injured leg behind, each step now causing sharp, shooting pains to travel to my brain. This time I missed nothing. My penance, no doubt.