by David Mack
“If we stay in the boat, we die! We gotta bail! Now!”
The pilot shouted from the rear, “Thirty seconds!”
“We’re almost on the beach!” Sykes said.
Cade looked his section leader in the eye. “Sarge, trust me!”
Sykes shot a look at Leagans. The lieutenant nodded and dropped his own gear. “Follow Martin! Drop your gear! Over the side!”
The Rangers snapped into action, tossing rifles and heavy ordnance. Even as Dutch shed his gear, he asked, “What do we fight with? Dirty words?”
Sykes snapped, “Grab what you need on the beach! Go!”
The seagull took off and retreated seaward as Cade scrambled over the side of the LCA. Behind him followed half a dozen other Rangers. He splashed into the shockingly cold water and sank like a stone, his breath stolen by a gasp of panic.
Submerged, all he heard was the droning of LCA engines and the thuds of mortar rounds detonating. Then he caught the whoosh of bodies falling into the water, and through the stinging-cold murk he perceived fuzzy shadows, blurs of motion—
Pain knifed through his ears as everything flared white. Water rushed away as a blast wave hurled Cade and a dozen other Rangers away from their boat, whose twisted husk rolled over like a burning coffin. Broken bodies and orphaned limbs tumbled from its open deck, pouring blood into the sea. The shattered LCA splashed down with a groan and pinned half a dozen Rangers beneath its smoking bulk as it sank.
Machine-gun fire strafed the sea around Cade. Bullets cut through the water in lazy, drooping arcs, slow enough to see with the naked eye.
He fought his way to the surface. Breaking free of the water’s embrace, he gasped for air as the sounds of battle, briefly muffled, returned with a vengeance. Officers and sergeants bullied the men to advance, to get to the beach. Cade’s feet scrambled for purchase until they struck a corpse. He couldn’t see the body through the swirling sand; the water was murky with blood and fuel, but he felt a man’s neck under his boot. He had no time to feel guilt or shame; he pressed ahead and pushed through the water, grateful for each inward surge of the tide, which offered him brief moments of concealment as well as pushing him a few yards closer to shore.
Waist-deep in crashing surf, he could see barely ten feet ahead through drifting banks of smoke that hid the beach. Mortar rounds detonated on the stony shore, hurling corpses and fouling the air with the bite of gunpowder. Machine-gun fire raked the water’s edge with dogged persistence, shredding men and boats. Cade strained to see where the fire was coming from, but all he saw was an endless gray curtain.
Looking seaward, he saw that the Ducks had failed to mount the beach. They were unable to get traction on the muddy spoil—not that it would have mattered. A slope of rocks and muddy debris had collected at the base of the cliff, making it impossible for the Ducks to get close enough to deploy their ladders. The secret weapons had just become useless.
Most of the LCAs had halted shy of the shingle, and Cade could tell a few had fired their grapples too soon, because they had bounced off the cliff and now lay on the beach. Several others, however, were already in position, and Rangers were scrambling through the water and across the narrow beach—some to take cover at the base of the cliff while setting up manually fired grapples, others to start their ascent in the face of enemy fire and grenades.
Bullets eviscerated a Ranger to Cade’s left, spilling the man’s guts into the breaking waves, which stank of shit and ran red with blood twenty feet out from shore. A mortar round struck to Cade’s right, knocking him flat as it filled the air with carnage, smoke, metal, and fire.
Ankle-deep water. Cade spat out brine as he ran, his heart pounding, his breathing fast and shallow as he sprinted toward the cliff’s base. A German MG-42 peppered the sand around him with an angry rip he had learned to fear during his training at Achnacarry.
He stumbled down the slope of a crater. Three Rangers lay dead at its nadir. He set upon on them like a scavenger, snapping up an M3, a full spare magazine for the compact submachine gun, and another man’s bandolier of smoke and fragmentation grenades. Enemy fire chased him out of the pit and dogged him to the base of the cliff. Bullets pelted the fragile rock above his head, showering him in dirt. His entire body started to shake.
Fuck, I’d give anything for invulnerability to projectiles. Or protection from fire. Or immunity to metal. Anything to get off this fucking beach.
Twenty yards west down the heavily cratered shore, LCA 861 fired its grapples at the cliff as it plowed ashore over sharp rocks. The cumbersome hooks failed to reach the top of the cliff and tumbled to the beach. The LCA’s ramp dropped, and MG-42 rounds tore apart the men in its front ranks as they stormed out.
Cade drew panicked breaths but felt as if he were suffocating. He knew he had to move, but his hands shook and his feet felt like bricks. He recoiled from screams, rips of automatic gunfire, gut-quaking blasts of grenades dropping into the middle of Rangers setting up rocket-propelled grapple launchers. In the haze shrouding the beach, soldiers staggered and fell, or struggled to hold in their mangled viscera.
A grenade’s blast kicked sand into Cade’s face—and flayed two men next to him with shrapnel.
A bloodied hand clamped on to Cade’s shoulder. He blinked until he could focus on the man’s face. It was Dutch. He was shouting. Cade heard his voice, but words had no meaning, they were just more noise in the midst of bedlam. Then Dutch seized Cade with both hands and shook him, hard. “Get up, you prick! We gotta climb!”
Cade shook his head, trapped in denial. “Can’t. Can’t move.”
“Bullshit! You’re not hit! Stop fuckin’ around!” Dutch seized Cade by the front of his jacket and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go, Ranger!”
Dragged into motion, Cade felt his muscle memory take over. He and Dutch scampered up the muddy slope of rubble and spoil, toward dangling knotted climbing ropes. A dozen Rangers were scaling the cliffs, and others were launching more grapples from the beach.
Explosions overhead—grenades dropped from above detonated against the cliffs, sending hunks of rock and wounded Rangers plunging to the beach. Cade ducked a falling body, which rolled down the debris pile to the surf. He froze until Dutch pushed a rope into his hands. “Cheer up, Underdog! This shit takes thirty feet off our climb!”
Too rattled to laugh, Cade started climbing. Bullets from small arms caromed off rocks by his head. To his left, a rope with four Rangers on it went slack, and they plummeted to the beach and landed in a groaning heap.
Ahead of him on his right, without missing a step, a sergeant deadpanned, “Somebody at HQ fucked up, boys. They issued the enemy live ammo!”
It was gallows humor, but it did the trick. Cade and the other Rangers grinned as they continued climbing, pulling themselves up a cliff toward a hostile welcoming committee.
Thunderous booms shook the bedrock as Allied naval artillery dropped a fresh round of ordnance on Pointe du Hoc. The distance between Cade and the top of the cliff shrank with each agonizing step and pull. His hands bled on the wet rope; his shoulders and hips ached, and it felt as if every muscle in his arms and legs was on fire. Icy wind dried the sweat on his face and neck. The only reason he was able to breathe was that he kept reminding himself to do it.
He looked up to see a German soldier staring at him, down the rope.
The German fumbled a pair of cutters as he raced to sever the barbed wire in which the grapple for Cade’s rope was snagged.
Cade snaked his left arm around the rope, braced himself with his feet, and drew his sidearm. The Colt 1911 .45 semiautomatic felt heavy in his hand as he tried to aim.
One length of wire broke; the grapple slipped, and Cade held tight until it caught again. Senses sharpened by adrenaline, he raised the pistol and fired.
The German’s forehead erupted in a crimson splash.
Cade holstered his weapon and kept climbing.
A grenade exploded and peppered him with splinters of rock.
He felt the right side of his face warm with fresh blood. Machine-gun fire sent him scrabbling across the cliff into a crevice, a natural defilade. He winced as bullets chewed up the rock inches from his chest.
Wild sprays of suppressing fire raked the clifftops, forcing the Germans to duck for shelter in their trenches and resistance nests. Cade looked over his shoulder for the source of the fire support. His jaw fell open as he watched a Ranger from Fox Company ride the top of a fully extended ladder as it swung like the needle of a metronome, swaying as its Duck rolled in the rising tide far below. The Ranger held on to the ladder with his legs and focused all his attention on swearing at and strafing the German troops, who for him were almost at eye level, and who found this bizarre moving target hard to shoot.
Never question a gift. Cade put one hand over the other and fought his way up the rope. Six meters from the grapple, the almost vertical slope gave way to a traversable rocky path, where he quickened his pace to a jog. At the top he saw Rangers who had arrived ahead of him. They had breached a path in the barbed wire, so Cade sprinted through it even as he cocked his M3, extended its stock, and braced it against his shoulder.
He looked for Dutch, but the other Ranger was nowhere in sight.
Keep moving, get cover. Instincts and training dictated Cade’s actions. He leaped into a five-foot-deep German trench. Its walls were reinforced with wooden planks, and thick beams supported its corners. The dirt floor was packed solid.
Someone moved near the corner ahead. A flash of gray—
Cade fired as the German rounded the turn. The M3 kicked hard into Cade’s shoulder as he put three bursts into the German’s center mass. As the enemy soldier fell, another pivoted into view, hoping to even the score, only to have Cade gun him down. Neither man moved as Cade hurdled over them, following a path through the trenches that hugged the cliff’s edge and led to the observation bunker the Germans had built at the tip of the point.
More naval artillery rounds screamed past overhead and slammed down a few hundred yards away, in the midst of the Germans’ extended fortifications, the ones made to house a sextet of heavy artillery pieces. Cade poked his head above the trench wall to get his bearings.
Aerial and naval bombardment had reduced the flat sprawl atop Pointe du Hoc to a smoldering moonscape. On his left, German soldiers who had abandoned their posts retreated through tattered curtains of gray smoke, fleeing inland, pursued by groups of Rangers. To his right, other German forces remained inside their machine-gun nests and rifle pits, from which they cut down a wave of Rangers who had just reached the clifftop.
Movement, left—Rangers, men from Cade’s unit. Sergeant Sykes, Corporal Brett, and two privates, men Cade knew only as Clover and KZ. Sykes beckoned Cade into their huddle. “Good to see you breathin’, Martin.”
“Good to be breathing, Sarge.”
“Okay, listen up. Clover, KZ, stay here and watch our six. Martin, you and Brett flank left behind that MG. I’ll go at ’em straight.” He paused as more naval artillery hit and rocked the point. “When I hit ’em with smoke, you light ’em up. Clear?” Everyone nodded. “Move!”
Cade followed Brett. They climbed out of the trench, stayed low as they ran a few steps, then rolled into a different trench.
As they skulked behind the Widerstandsnest, Sykes crawled toward it, heedless of the MG-42 fire blazing from its narrow slit facing the sea. From a sloping patch of dirt, hidden only by a bit of scrub, Sykes rolled a pair of smoke grenades toward the nest.
The charges went off with loud pops and clouded the nest in thick smoke. Cade and Brett sprang from cover, lobbed fragmentation grenades through the nest’s open rear, then sprinted away from the blast. German sharpshooters in the pits beside the nest turned in time to see Cade and Brett open fire and mow them down. East and west along the cliffside, other small teams of Rangers did the same, flushing out pockets of German resistance, clearing the way for the rest of the men on the beach to make their climbs.
Men from Dog and Fox companies pressed inland, toward the villages and hedgerows of Pointe du Hoc. The men of Easy Company, Second Platoon regrouped. Half of them were absent—dead, wounded, or missing.
Lieutenant Leagans surveyed the grimy, bloodied group. “I know we look like shit, boys, but the worst is yet to come.” He pointed toward the observation bunker, at the northernmost edge of the point. “We still need to get Martin in there, alive and kicking, and we need to be quick about it. Move out in twos and threes, and form a cordon around Martin. Understood? All right. Let’s go.”
Like wild animals on the hunt, the Rangers climbed out of the trench, split into small packs, and fanned out for their prowl across the open flat top of the point. Leagans snapped his fingers to draw their attention; then he directed them with hand gestures toward targets ahead.
They were a dozen meters short of the next warren of trenches and tunnels when the buzz of an MG-42 sent them diving for craters, debris, and any other shelter they could find.
Bullets chewed up the ground between the Rangers as small-arms fire picked off a few unlucky men who had been too far from cover when the shooting started.
No one had to tell Cade or the other Rangers to start lobbing smoke grenades; they just did it. A baker’s dozen of the nonlethal charges detonated in the space of a few seconds, shrouding the area ahead of their position in gray smoke.
As soon as the clouds merged into a single obscuring wall, the Rangers pulled on their gas masks and pressed their attack. The moment the smoke enveloped Cade, he lost sight of the men around him, but he kept moving toward the observation bunker. Alone in a gray mist, he dropped into another trench. Advancing with his weapon ready, he listened for anything other than his own footsteps and ragged breathing, any sign he was about to encounter the enemy.
A flare of small-arms fire—bullets pocked the wooden planks of the trench wall to his right. He ducked left, fired his M3. Pained grunts behind the fog, then a wild spray of automatic fire into the air. Cade pushed ahead and found a dead German on the ground. He stole one of the dead man’s potato-masher grenades and continued forward.
Smoke rolled through the trenches and bunched up at the corners. Another shadow in the gray—Cade fired, but missed. Growls of submachine-gun fire hounded him, forced him behind a corner. Then he heard the scrape of boots on dirt, getting closer. Cade pulled the cord at the base of his stolen grenade’s handle, triggering its friction igniter and five-second fuse. He counted to three, then chucked it around the corner, down the trench.
German vulgarities and running steps were drowned out by the blast, which launched a fireball into the air, along with a pair of Nazi soldiers.
Cade dashed around the corner, only to find the trench blocked by smoking debris and caved-in walls. He scrambled over them, onto the flat ground above, and sprinted toward the next open length of trench between him and the observation bunker.
Red-hot and sharp as a scalpel, a bullet ripped through Cade’s right side, below his rib cage. He felt another searing bite as he fell, this time grazing his right trapezius. He landed facedown as more rifle fire zinged by above him. Lying prone, he sighted the muzzle flash of his attacker’s weapon and emptied his M3 until he heard the German drop.
Incoming fire from the Allied fleet howled overhead and detonated far beyond the smoke. Energized by the shock of his injuries, Cade got up and ran. Motion to his right—he pivoted, fired, saw the shapes of men fall. He tried to eject the empty magazine from his M3. It jammed.
No time. Cade tossed the M3, drew his Colt, and advanced, steadying the pistol with both hands. He dropped into the next trench and continued his push toward the bunker. He turned a corner and almost collided with a German rifleman.
The frightened youth hefted his rifle, and Cade put a bullet in the kid’s throat. The German dropped his weapon and collapsed, clutching at his ruptured carotid artery.
Cade was close enough to smell the coffee and cigarettes on the dying man’s breath, count the flecks
of mud on his youthful face—and watch his eyes dim and fade forever.
He reloaded his Colt and kept moving.
Around him, submachine-gun fire mixed with the cracks of M1 rifles. The barks of German machine guns were answered by the bangs of grenades. Lording over it all, the piercing shrieks and tooth-rattling blasts of naval ordnance. Cade tuned it all out and watched the trench ahead of him while constantly checking his flanks for rude surprises.
Above the trenches, Germans abandoned their posts and ran inland, toward the coastal highway and the next line of German defenses. Seconds after Cade spotted them, a barrage of rifle and submachine-gun fire mowed down the retreating Nazis, to the last man.
All was quiet ahead of Cade, but he kept his Colt raised and ready. Then he turned the last bend in the trench. Ahead of him was the entrance to the observation bunker designated H636A. A dozen dead German troops littered the ground near it. Emerging from the smoke with Cade were Lieutenant Leagans, Sergeant Sykes, and most of the other men from Second Platoon. Standing outside the bunker were Lieutenant Lapres, the leader of First Platoon, and a handful of his men, whose boat had landed directly beneath the observation bunker. They waved in Second Platoon. When the two groups of soldiers converged, they squatted into a large huddle.
“Nice of you gents to join us,” Lapres said. He nodded at Cade. “We cleared the bunker but stayed clear of the map room, like the general said.”
“Thanks.”
Sykes pointed at the blood on Cade’s uniform. “You okay?”
“Nothin’ a year in the tropics won’t fix.”
Leagans smirked. “Don’t let the brass hear that. They’ll send you to fight the Nips.”
Cynical chortles filled the circle.
Leagans lowered his voice to ask, “Son? You sure you’re good for this?”
It was a time custom-made for a lie. “Yup.”
Sykes remained doubtful. “It’s just … once you head inside, we can’t go with you. The general’s orders say we need to stay out here.”
“I know. Somebody wet a cloth and clean my hands, please.” Noting their reluctance and confusion, he explained, “My hands need to be clean before I … defuse the bomb.” It was the simplest explanation he could give them—far easier than explaining that he couldn’t risk contaminating the floor of the bunker’s map room with his blood or anyone else’s, lest he foul up the sigils he needed to draw, or add marks that rendered his efforts invalid.