by Cody Lennon
The first shot whizzed by my head and left my ears ringing as I dropped to the ground and rolled behind the cover of a pine tree. The air erupted with the boisterous chatter of rifle fire.
“Contact. Contact,” I yelled over the comms.
“First Squad, move up on the left. Second, straight up the middle, meet up with Tennpenny. Third Squad, move up on the right. Fan out. Don’t get caught squatting, move.”
I barely heard the commands as a torrent of bullets zipped by, mincing the branches around me and covering me in shredded leaves and bark. I tucked my arms and legs in tighter as the ground around me exploded in small plumes of smoke and dirt.
My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. This is it, I’m going to die. I had never been so terrified in my entire life. The entire earth around me was ripping and tearing. It was only a matter of time before those bullets found what they were searching for. What a waste. Eight weeks of training to die in the first five minutes of my first firefight with the enemy.
Second Squad crawled their way forward through the hail of gunfire. A soldier I had barely known for less than twenty-four hours took cover behind the tree next to me. I didn’t know his name, but I could tell by how calm he was that he had been in this kind of trouble before.
“Pick up your fucking rifle,” he said and fired at the enemy.
My rifle?
It was laying out in the open. I must have dropped it when I rolled for cover. Elroy is going to chew me out for this. A soldier was to never be without his rifle.
I reached out to grab it, but quickly gave up. There were too many bullets. The noise of the exchanging gunfire was unlike anything I had ever heard or felt. The successive concussive waves of air that fanned out in all directions after each shot fired flowed over me like a bucket of water would.
“Grab your fucking rifle and shoot the bastards.”
Alright. You can do this. Just grab it….one…two…three.
I lurched out, grabbed my rifle and got back behind the tree with the quickness of a rabbit being chased by a hungry snake.
I looked over at the soldier. He was lying on the ground, his eyes blankly staring at me. A thin trail of blood streaked across his face from a hole in his forehead. My stomach twisted and I could feel the vomit churning inside of me.
I couldn’t comprehend how fast his soul was stamped out. There one minute and gone the next. His body was there, but the man wasn’t. I tried swallowing some spit to help tide the urge to vomit. What do I do?
I looked left and right to see if I could see Alex or anyone I knew. Nobody. First and Third Squad moved up on the flanks and were in the process of forming our line. The Yankees were giving us hell. The jolting rattle of rifle fire unsettled me. I looked desperately for the familiar and comforting faces of my friends. A warm wetness spread through my crotch and down my leg.
“Colton!”
I saw Alex crawling up behind a rotten log a few yards behind me. “Alex!”
“Cover me.”
Alright Colton, man up. You can do this.
I flipped the safety off my rifle.
Remember the promise you made to Tess. I popped out from my cover and fired wildly at the enemy. Alex sprinted for cover behind the tree next to me. He was panting and trying to loosen his vest so he could breathe. He looked at the dead body between us with sheer fright.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He nodded.
“Are you?” Yes. I think so.
“MGs lay down covering fire. All squads move up. Push the bastards back.” Elroy sounded like he was teaching a class in Basic. He didn’t have any hint of strain in his voice.
Beauregard came up behind us, installed his bipod on the rotten log and laid down controlled bursts from his machine gun. Hayes was behind him, cussing up a storm. Carrigan moved up to a tree a couple of yards to my right. She was sweating profusely and murmuring to herself.
With my friends surrounding me, my confidence returned, albeit shaky. I pressed the release button on my rifle and loaded a full magazine. Orders were orders. Time to go.
Our platoon laid down a screen of machine gunfire and grenades as we moved forward in a skirmish line. Alex and I stayed in a half crouch as we moved. Returning fire lightened up.
A minute later our fire stopped and the woods were quiet again.
The air was thick with the smell of gun smoke.
“Why’d they stop firing?” I asked.
“Maybe their retreating,” Alex said, without taking his eyes off the sight of his gun.
“Or dead,” I said, as we came upon a body. The soldier was sprawled out on his back. His face had been erased by a bullet. So this is what a Yankee looks like. He looks ordinary enough, except for the different colored uniform and the U.S. flag patch on his shoulder. But his face…I felt lightheaded and the churning knots in my stomach twisted tight again. A foul taste crept up into my mouth.
“Look,” Alex said, as the morning sun vaporized the fog. I followed his eyes to where he was looking. It was another body. This one was hunched over behind a tree. There was another one behind that one. And another. And another.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Carrigan said, after retching her breakfast all over her shoes.
Lt. Elroy appeared from the bushes. He stood over the dead soldier and kicked him with his boot. His radio operator, a nerdy looking kid named Michaels, stuck close to his heels. Elroy snatched the phone off the receiver on the kid’s back.
“Echo Actual this is Echo Two Six. We have enemy contact in sector two one. Platoon size unit, seven enemy KIA. Waiting for further orders, how copy?” He said, and waited for a response. “Roger, wilco. Echo Two Six out.”
Elroy clicked on his microphone. His voice chirped in my ear. “All units. Form a skirmish line, five yard spacing. Keep moving forward. We aint done until these bastards are swimming in the Atlantic.”
Elroy flicked his head for us to follow. I got in line with Alex and Elroy on both sides of me. As long as we had a veteran soldier like Elroy leading us, I knew we’d be okay.
Our company stopped at the edge of the tree line at the base of a T-intersection. We spotted the enemy retreating to the other side of the roadway. There was intermittent gunfire and explosions down the line a couple hundred yards on both sides of us. The rest of the Division was making contact.
“They’re running with their tails between their legs,” Alex said.
“Can that shit! That was a reconnaissance patrol we stumbled on. You can expect them to come back with more firepower next time. All squads move forward,” Elroy said.
When we made it to the other side of the parkway, Elroy ordered us to hold. He was receiving new orders from Command. A minute later, we were told to proceed onward with caution, large enemy units in the vicinity, beware of enemy counterattacks. Reinforcement from a tank company from the Sixteenth Armored Division was on its way up the parkway.
We pushed forward in the woods flanking the road. Two hundred yards later, we came to the edge of the clearing behind a small residential neighborhood. Alex and I took cover behind a blue trailer home that had sheets of chicken wire blocking the crawlspace. The windows were boarded with plywood. The grass overgrown.
I didn’t realize how thirsty I was, until I sat down on one knee to rest for a minute. As I swished around a mouthful of water to moisten my mouth, I saw Shannon making his way over to us.
“Alex, Colton. Hey,” he said, falling heavy against the base of the trailer home. He looked shocked and pallid like the rest of us.
“You alright?” Alex asked.
“I killed one of them.” Shannon’s eyes were glazed as he poured water on his neck. Alex and I looked at each other. Neither of us knew what to say. I supposed we’d know what that felt like soon enough.
We moved across the street to the next set of homes and jumped the chain linked fence into the backyard of a house with a screened-in porch. All of Echo Company moved forward as one flowing mas
s of gray uniforms.
We took cover behind the house. I peered around the corner. Nothing there.
Just then, the squad to our left opened fired on our house. I could hear their shots puncturing the house and breaking glass and shattering furniture inside.
“They’re inside that house Second Squad. Watch yourselves,” said the voice of Hutchens, a soldier from First Squad. Hayes, Carrigan and Shannon kicked in the backdoor and moved in to clear the house. Alex and I slinked along the side yard, ducking underneath the windows. More shots from inside. I heard the front door of the house fling open. Two soldiers wearing Yankee green darted across the lawn.
Before I could shoot, they were gunned down by a dozen other rifles. The bullets tore into them, ripping their clothes and tearing at their flesh. As both of them lay lifeless in the street, the rifle fire continued. Their bodies became target practice for a number of nervous, enraged soldiers wanting to get their jitters out.
My comrades howled wildly and continued their mutilation of the corpses. I could hear the loud thwack of every bullet striking the bodies of those unfortunate souls. The sound was nauseating. Such senseless anger.
“Cut that shit out and get moving,” Lt. Elroy said.
“Let’s move, Colt,” Alex said.
Halfway across the street, the very earth opened up. Huge clouds of smoke and chunks of earth rained down on me in an oppressive downpour. The massive explosions and accompanying flashes of light rattled my vision and threw me off balance. Gut-punching concussive waves ripped the air from my lungs as I ran. We were being bombarded with artillery.
Before I could make it to the other side, an extraordinarily intense noise deafened me and the world flashed yellow and red. My already wobbly legs gave out as I was thrown to the ground in a violent jerk. I was overwhelmed with a soreness all across my body. Bits of dirt and asphalt sprinkled my face as I opened my eyes to the bright and cloudless sky. The day was too beautiful for such destruction.
More explosions rocked the neighborhood up and down the street. Lying there unable to get myself up to move to cover, I thought once again, this time more emphatically, this is when I die.
Just when I thought it was all over, the barrage stopped, retreating as quickly as it appeared. A soldier came running to my side and pulled at my vest, shaking my senses back into me.
“Tennpenny, get up. We got to move. Let’s go,” Gammon Junior said, dragging me to my feet. He held me upright by the collar of my shirt as we ran for the cover of the house.
The ringing in my ears whined painfully. We collapsed to the ground on a pile of bodies. I was lying on Alex’s legs when he turned and asked me if I was alright. I was unsure, but I nodded anyway.
Before we could regain our composure from the debilitating mortar barrage we were fired upon by Yankees from the row of houses on the next street over. Muzzle flashes erupted from all the windows and doorways. Cars were flipped on their sides to provide walls of cover. Smoke screens were laid out to decrease line of sight.
Echo spread out and rebutted with a salvo of lead. The rumble of rifle fire grew to a mountainous crescendo. Update for Command. Large enemy forces found, I thought sarcastically.
No matter how hard we pushed, the enemy wouldn’t budge from their position. The back and forth volleying continued for over an hour.
Lt. Elroy stormed out into the middle of the street, whitenuckling the grip on his rifle. The friendly tanks had yet to make an appearance and he wasn’t happy about it. With them we could clear the houses out in no time.
“Damn it to hell. Where are those tanks? Michaels get Echo Actual on the line.” As the radioman scrambled to reach the company commander on the radio we heard a low, mechanical grumbling coming from down the block. It squeaked and moaned and growled different than anything I had ever heard before. If it was scary for me, the sound of our tanks would surely frighten the Yankees away.
“Sir, we have inbound,” someone said.
“Friendly?”
He was answered with the guttural boom of an explosion that disemboweled the second story of a house that Third Platoon was occupying down the street. Definitely not friendly.
“Contact right,” Alex said. Our attention turned back to the infantry across the way. They had left the cover of their houses and were driving on us.
I followed Alex’s tracers. There were two dozen targets moving forward through the side yard of the house to our two o’clock. I flipped on full auto and let loose. This wasn’t like the firing range at Fort Benning. These were actual flesh and blood targets, moving back and forth and diving for cover.
I couldn’t see them, but as I ducked low to reload I could feel the ground rumble as the tanks lurched closer.
“Contact left,” Shannon said, also reloading.
They were closing in all around us. First Platoon was calling for assistance four houses down on our left and Third Platoon wasn’t faring well in front of the advancing tanks. There’s no way one company can hold off this attack.
“Third is falling back, look!” Shannon said. The Yankee tanks had forced Third Platoon to retreat. I could see men running across the street back the way we came. Some were dragging the wounded behind them.
As the flurry of men fled, a Yankee tank bulled its way through the garage of the house that Third Platoon was just occupying. The gargantuan machine came to a stop on top of a minivan parked in the driveway, crushing it almost flat under its sheer weight.
“Echo Company, fall back.” We only needed to hear it once.
The tank’s turret rotated toward us and fired. The shell whistled over our heads and erupted in a fiery blast forty yards away.
I ran fast. We all did. Infantry couldn’t stand up to armor like that.
The Yankees stayed on our heels firing into our backs as we ran, retracing our steps back to the T-intersection. The Yankee tanks raced down the road parallel with us, firing their guns into our ranks. We needed to get across the intersection back into the woods where the tanks couldn’t follow us, but to get there we had to cross the wide open road. That’s suicide. We’ll be gunned down.
There, the ditch. Alex saw it as soon as I did. “Take the ditch, it leads to the other side,” he said.
We ran for the ditch running parallel with the road. A group of soldiers running ahead of us disintegrated within a swirl of earth, smoke and fire. The tank’s cannon had scored a direct hit. We ran through the bloody mist that lingered after the explosion and rolled into the soggy trench.
There was a drainage tunnel that led to the other side. It was just wide enough to fit in, even with all our gear. We scratched our way through the sticky muck to the other side and joined the rest of the platoon as we fell back the way we came earlier that morning.
The Yankees were right on our tail. Bullets ripped through the air in chase of us. Our squads took turns leap frogging in retreat. One squad would hold and provide suppressing fire as the other two squads caught up. Once passed, the next squad would provide cover fire as the first one fell back.
We stopped at the point of original contact and set up defensive positions in line with the rest of the Ninth Division. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to experience such fanatical resistance. Our sister companies had also run into stiff opposition.
The Yankees probed our lines all day trying to find a weak spot, but they gave up around nightfall and fell back to spot just beyond our sight, giving us a reprieve from the day’s action.
I knelt down on my knees, took my helmet off and tried to breathe. The adrenaline I’d been running on all day was wearing off and the full impact of the days emotions were finally hitting me. What a day.
At the start, I was downright terrified. I thought I’d get hit in the first five minutes of battle. There was so much gunfire being exchanged back and forth it’s a wonder how there weren’t many casualties. First and Third Platoon lost more than a few men, but Second stayed fairly intact. Nobody I knew was hurt, which was a relief.
“You did well today,” he said.
“One day down,” I said, wiping my chin.
“And many more to come.”
We stacked our rifles up against a fallen tree and sat down to rest.
“Alex, I’ve never been more terrified in my life.”
“Me too,” he said, holding out his quivering hand. “My hands haven’t stopped shaking."
“It’s funny,” said Junior, who was sitting a few yards away, eating an MRE.
“What is?”
“Combat.” He didn’t sound like he was trying to be funny. “I remember being petrified all day, but in some weird way I felt kind of, I don’t know, excited.”
There was some truth to what he said. I felt that excitement also. I felt that degree of exhilaration as I ran through the woods chasing the enemy, my heart pounding with every step I took. When I pulled the trigger on my rifle and felt the sheer force of every bullet I fired, I felt powerful. I had the power of life and death in my hands and it felt awesome. Would I still feel that way if I had actually hit somebody?
Regardless of whatever twisted thrill we got out of it, it was only day one and I already learned that war was ludicrous. Senseless. Idiotic. Moronic. Wasteful. Whatever you want to call it. I didn’t like it one bit.
I had escaped one personal hell only to be thrown into another.
What a life.
Chapter 16
May 20
The Ninth Infantry Division saw forty days of continuous heavy and deadly fighting. Echo Company was on the frontline every single day. From first contact, we battled the Yankees for every street and every neighborhood. They were paying a hefty price for every inch of ground they took, yet so were we. Our casualties were enormous and we had nothing to show for it. The enemy was pushing us back half a mile every day, somedays more.
The days blended together in a web of morose memories I’ve since tried to forget. I’ve witnessed the power of war firsthand. It is a wretched thing.