Never Just a Memory

by Gloria Cook

  Now it was Nate’s turn to play his part in the biggest war operation mankind had undertaken. With red crosses on his helmet and armbands, he was now in the first wave of the armada about to land at Omaha. The landing craft rolled and heaved in the waves. Ahead was a stretch of sand and shingle three or four miles long, and steel barriers – some mined – and fences of barbed wire. Up above the sandbanks were heavily fortified machine-gun and mortar posts – fate had decreed that the German 352nd Infantry Division were there on a full-scale practice. A soldier retched and was sick over his boots. Off went a small chain of likewise sufferers. Fighting queasiness himself, Nate was determined to stand tall, keep his balance.

  Over the sound of the engine and hissing sprays of seawater, the officer barked orders. Threatened. Encouraged. Herv was praying a Jewish prayer. Todd was a Catholic and was reciting over his rosary. Nate hadn’t bothered much these past years with his Baptist background – here was a good time and place to fall back on it. Jeff, Mort and Brad were there. These men he had trained with, lived with, laughed with, his friends, his brothers. Men just like all the others on board. Men who now sweated. Cursed. Chewed gum. Stayed tight-lipped. Cheekbones protruded over clenched jaws. Heaving guts juddered. Eyes widened. Eyes narrowed. The craft rose and fell and with its unmerciful motion it brought up cool spouts of water. No lips tasted the tang of salt. They all tasted fear.

  Shells now roared around them. The craft ahead of them was hit. Holed. Screams! Men frantically bailed out the rushing intake of water. In vain. Men in the sea. Trying to swim. Survive. Some bobbing, stained with red.

  Five hundred yards from shore. Waterproof wrappings were secured over rifles to protect them as the men waded to the shore. Prayers – that they’d live long enough to use them. Live through. Get through somehow. Todd kissed his crucifix and offered it to Nate to do the same. Nate pressed his lips to it, glancing up at the glowering skies. ‘Please, for Lottie…’

  Someone: ‘Our Father…’

  Another: ‘Shut up!’

  Whisper: ‘Christ help us.’

  A prurient oath against the enemy.

  Family names.

  ‘Mom…’

  Three hundred yards. Two hundred. Low tide to avoid hitting obstacles under water. Obstacles that paradoxically were to offer the only cover on the shoreline from enemy fire. Spray soared up round the boat as a shell whistled close. Too damned close. The boat alongside was hit. Burst into flames. All personnel ablaze.

  Nate swallowed hard, glad as the funeral pyre was left behind that he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell the agonies. His landing craft plunged into the surf. Ramp crashes down. Run off. Hold rifles up high. Try to hold heavy equipment up high. Medical packs too. Muscles already straining. Thrashing through the water. Men felled. Like toddlers just learning to walk, cut down by cruel playmates, tiny black holes appearing, blood spurting crimson flowers and streaming away in the waters. Death and maiming, a harlot of red. On boys who’d not yet had time to learn how to live.

  ‘Medic! Medic!’

  ‘Morphine!’

  It was all an ordinary man could do to thread one thought after another. Pandemonium. Helplessness on faces. Dying faces. Sweet, sickly smell of blood and death. Nate. Not yet advanced out of the water, his services already needed. Fall to knees. Keep head down. Press dressing to a gaping leg wound. Artery severed. No hope. Soldier screaming. Writhing. Dies. One among the first destined to lie under lawns and lawns of white crosses on Normandy soil. Men falling into deeper water, dragged down by heavy equipment, the struggle to disentangle and swim to the surface futile – will not even get a grave.

  Nate got up, splashing through the surf. Surf only up to his ankles now. Soldier ahead of him. Hole through his helmet. Drops lifeless. Water blossoming inky red. Nate leaps over him. A leg bobbing by. Men scattered. All dead. Jeff dead.

  On wet sand. ‘Medic! Medic!’ All around him, he’s needed. Must do what he can. Treat casualty. And another. Stumble on. Blinded by plumes of black smoke rising in the defiled grey air. Deafened. Confused. ‘Harmon, get your goddamned self over here!’ Answer doctor’s summons. Fall on knees beside gut-spilled casualty. Doctor crawls away over body parts of someone, perhaps two someones, to a soldier he might be able to save.

  ‘I don’t want to die!’ the boy Nate is tending screams. Eyes bulging with terror and agony.

  Bullet zips, chews furrow out of Nate’s cheek. ‘You aren’t going to die!’ Stabs boy with morphine shot. ‘You’re going to make it. I promise!’ Has to bawl above the thunder and insanity of battle. Works on the chaos, his hands saturated with blood. Blood is up to his elbows. The boy dies. He moves on. Past mutilated bodies and mutilated DCKWs and amphibious tanks, some of the scant few that have made a landing. The defence is pitiless. Most of it was supposed to have been taken out. Calculations were wrong somewhere.

  Waves lap up the shore, indignantly wash the bloodied sand. Vainly. Bleeding rivers running down from further up the beach. Soldier down. Nate lifts his head. Too late. Suffocated by sand. Behind a steel barrier a boy is curled up in fear, shrieking, shrieking. In front of him, on water’s edge, men have been hit by flamethrower, performing grotesquely beautiful death dance.

  It’s Nate’s task to tend the wounded of the demolition teams, the all-important men needed to blow up the obstacles and make the gaps needed for the vehicles to drive through and press inland – once the pillboxes are taken out, those murderous stations that are killing the troops in great numbers. The demolition crews are losing too many men, their success is being ruthlessly limited. They’re having to plead, cajole, threaten the terrified, the demented, the wounded seeking refuge behind the iron monstrosities, to move out of the way as they scramble to fix their explosives.

  There’s an almighty blast, men fall and die from the sheer dreadful force as well as being blown up. Clumps of iron form deadly shrapnel – the Germans have inadvertently done the job for one crew. Nate feels red hot stabs of pain as skin is shaved deeply off his lower leg.

  Crouching, limping, he makes it to a casualty, a sergeant with a shredded arm. He drags him by the collar to where infantry are pushing on, trying to hurry. Making for the cover of the bank of shingle at the top of the deep incline – close to enemy, it’s out of firing range. Nate goes after them. A hail of fire. Dropping with the casualty he uses a heap of dead bodies as cover to bind up the unconscious sergeant’s gaping wounds. Stabs in the morphine. Hopes the sergeant stays safe as he leaves him for stretcher-bearers. Gets up, lumbers on and dodges on the run. A soldier is at his side. The soldier is felled, his helmet spins crazily through the air as if in contempt. ‘You son of a bitch!’ Nate yells at the anonymous German gunner.

  He’s spun on his feet from a blast. Confused. Disorientated. Shakes his head. Desperately needs his vision to clear. Doesn’t know if he’s facing the right way. Suddenly he’s off his feet. There’s no new pain but surely he must have been hit.

  ‘You crazy?’ It’s Herv who’s yanked him down. ‘Here. Hold these.’

  ‘What?’ He’s still in a daze.

  Herv shakes him. ‘Come on, buddy. I need you to come round.’

  It takes all of Nate’s concentration and willpower to make his brain work, to see right. Herv directs his hand and he finds himself taking over a pair of forceps clamping an artery in a casualty’s chest. The casualty is gritting his teeth. Singing, ‘Glory, glory, alleluia.’ His arm is minced. He’ll lose it, his life too if infection, the next enemy of the critically wounded, makes a play on him. Morphine shot. Bleeding halted. On their bellies they drag him to the bank of shingle. Hope the stretcher-bearers are able to reach him. If he’s lucky, he’ll be loaded on to one of the landing craft as they return with the wounded. No shortage of a human load.

  ‘You need a dressing on your face!’ Herv bawls above the terrible din.

  ‘It’s nothing! I’ll see to it later!’

  Nate and Herv crawl backwards like insects a few yards ou
t of the safety zone to the next casualty. A soldier is choking up blood from an appalling abdominal wound. Ribs stick out of him like claws. A blast shakes the ground. Shakes their nerves. Bullets zoom close to their heads like vicious, venomous bees seeking victims. The blast makes the casualty’s heart stop, every effort isn’t enough to restart it.

  ‘Next customer,’ says Herv. They don’t have to go far. Men are being hurtled down all around them. The nearest man has been shot through the heart. Go on to the next one. They get no idea what it used to be – white-hot metal has found a soft target and annihilated it. Crawl. Both stay alive to gain a bit of beach. Next. Tiny rivulets of blood seeping from helmet to chin. Eyes gone. Brain gone. Move on.

  Cries for help. Cries for mercy. Swearing. The few surviving officers urging men up the beach. ‘Where the hell are we? This isn’t right!’ Seems the landing had been some way off mark. Purgatory. The enemy up above the shingle got the upper hand. For now. If they get this wave of men, or the next, they won’t get the third.

  ‘Herv! I’ve got to leave. I have to tend the demo crews.’ Nate must see to his first duty.

  For several seconds there’s nothing between them and a hail of bullets but the mercy of the Almighty. Herv cries. Swears. Holds up his hand. It’s reduced to ribbons. Nate wraps a dressing round it. ‘Get back to cover! Or make for the shore! Good luck!’

  He leaves Herv. Run, grunt, dodge, run, grunt, falls flat on his face. A hand there, just a hand with a wedding ring on it – a family destroyed. Is this all real? Or the worst nightmare?

  ‘Help me! Help me!’ There’s a private alive under a heap of bodies.

  ‘Where are you hit?’

  ‘Don’t know. Can’t feel anything. Got a smoke?’

  ‘No.’ Feel over his limbs. Bullets hitting the dead. Splat, splat, splat, soft entries. Explosion nearby. Sand is hurled up feet in the air. Shuts eyes and throws himself over the casualty. Waits. Clears a little. There’s a soldier to the right dragging back a wounded comrade. Not allowed. Against orders. Must run on. But understandable if it’s your best buddy. Both fall silently, like a mime act. Never to get up again.

  ‘Get me out of here,’ the private pleads.

  Nate pushes away the horrible tangle of limp, chewed-up flesh until the private is free. There’s blood all over him. ‘Where’s the pain?’

  The private thinks. ‘Don’t think there is any. Thanks, Corp.’ He takes a deep breath, grins, snatches up a jobless rifle and a garland of bullets, then runs on, leaping over the confetti of carnage.

  Nate belly-crawls to a man just dropped. Ministers to the gushing throat wound. Casualty doesn’t make it. Looks up. Sees the private throw himself against the shingle bank. Safe for now.

  ‘Medic! Medic!’ He threads his way again through the fallen, avoiding craters. Comes to another blasted demolition crew member, minus a kneecap, horrifically disfigured. ‘Thank God!’ Choking sounds. Voice rattles. ‘I can’t stand the pain…’

  Morphine shot. Apply dressing where the soldier’s nose once was. Heavy blast! Cloud of smoke and sand. Use this as cover to haul the casualty up to the shingle bank. Lays him in the long, long line of wounded. Wireless operator is shouting above the din, ‘First wave ineffective. Cannot hold beach. Say again…’

  ‘Keep still!’ It’s Brad. Good. They can make a pair.

  ‘It’s good to see you. Doc make it?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ Brad’s aiming a dressing towards Nate’s face.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Hold this. Half your cheek’s hanging off. It’ll need stitches.’

  Nate swears, suddenly aware of the torturous, stinging, burning pain. ‘Not too hideous, is it?’

  ‘Mmm, reckon your Lottie will still love ya.’ Brad winds a bandage round his face to keep the dressing in place. ‘You going to be OK?’

  ‘Made it so far.’

  The next wave of boats were being launched and following in their wake. Reinforcements might make a better impact. Nate’s only concern was to reach those who needed his help.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lottie wiped sweat off her brow, then knuckled away the tears forming against her will. She supposed it was like this for most women in the early days. Better get on – she didn’t want any comments to be made. The more sympathetic and understanding they were, the harder she found it to take.

  The rest of the workforce were hard at it, particularly Jill, so different now to the nervy, eager-to-please mouse of just over a year ago, heaving stooks together like a hardened labourer. Tom was cutting grass in the next field, visible on the rise. When he brought the tractor round and was facing them, Jill waved to him. The pair of them were in thick together, but maddeningly there were no signs of them progressing on to anything really close. They seemed content to stay just as friends, which was a pity. They were just right for each other, had so much in common. Why couldn’t they see it? They kept each other’s spirits up and were interested in all that the other did. They made each other laugh. They seemed to understand each other completely, anticipating what the other would do or say. There was no competition between them. They looked perfect together. They had no right not to fall in love. Everyone at the farm and Tremore had come to feel the same. It was an unspoken awareness, but no one even as much as hinted this to the couple in the superstitious fear that something so right and lovely, a dream that could become a perfect reality, would be shattered.

  Someone was coming through the field gate. Uncle Tristan. Lottie tore off to him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, my love. Don’t worry. There’s no bad news. I’ve come to help with the haymaking.’

  ‘Thank God!’ She let her relief out in a rush of breath. She smiled, swept up her head in her usual proud way, but promptly crumpled into a weeping mess.

  Tristan took her into a fatherly embrace. He had witnessed her trying to keep herself under control during the past few days but never reduced to a jibbering weakness. ‘Oh, Lottie, it’s getting to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘If only I could hear something. Jonny’s managed to pass on messages to you when he gets back off ops, but I haven’t a clue about what’s happened to Nate. People are beginning to get telegrams, Uncle Tris. I’m so afraid for him.’

  ‘All the beaches were successfully taken and the troops are steadily pushing inland. I can’t promise you that Nate will be all right but I’m sure he’ll be keeping his head down. He’ll be thinking about you every minute, Lottie.’

  ‘I know.’ She produced her hanky and used it briskly. ‘He’ll be counting on me to be strong. To get on with things and make him proud.’

  ‘You’re allowed to be human.’ Tristan smiled.

  The scene of emotion and comfort brought the others in the field running to them, and also Tom, having stopped the tractor and leapt over the hedge. He brought up the rear, then placed an elbow in comfortable intimacy on Jill’s shoulder. Tristan explained. Lottie was cross to have embarrassed herself. ‘It was nothing. Nothing worth holding up all the work for.’

  ‘I’m about to go home and feed Paul,’ Emilia said. ‘Why don’t you come with me, Lottie? I’ll get Tilda to—’

  ‘No, Mum, I’m fine,’ Lottie stressed, impatient and edgy. ‘It’s hard for me right now but I was just being silly.’

  ‘We’re only trying to help,’ Tom muttered.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lottie bit back. Then she blushed and gave a reticent smile. ‘Actually, I’m afraid you might have to put up with me coming over all silly an awful lot. I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, darling, I’ve had my suspicions about it for some time. It’s wonderful news,’ Emilia said, kissing her. ‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

  ‘I was so afraid it would be a false hope.’

  ‘Lottie! Congratulations!’ Jill gave her a bear hug. Then she returned to Tom and threw her arms round his waist. ‘Isn’t it brilliant?’

  While holding on to her, he leaned forward and kissed Lottie
’s cheek. ‘Well done, sis. You’d better take over on the tractor rather than lugging heavy weights about.’

  ‘Thanks, I will, but don’t you dare treat me like I’m made of china.’

  Emilia laughed. ‘Uh, as if you’ve ever listened to anyone’s advice.’

  ‘You’re both much of a muchness,’ Tristan said. ‘Congratulations, Lottie.’

  ‘My first great-grandchild. Good on you, maid.’ Edwin saw this as an occasion to light up his pipe. He glanced at Tom and Jill and muttered under his breath, ‘Time others got settled down too.’

  ‘I think I will slip back with you for a few minutes, Mum,’ Lottie said. ‘I’d like to tell Pappa and Tilda the good news myself.’

  During the midday break, Tom dragged Jill up off the ground before she’d got her last mouthful of hevva cake down. ‘Come for a walk.’

  Taking water with them, sharing a cigarette, they ambled alongside the curving hedgerow. Jill tugged at protruding stalks of wild parsley and vetches. A blackbird vented a chattering alarm, ‘chak-chak’, at their approach. When out of sight, they flopped down on a green patch away from the rough stalks, she leaning her back against his solid, muscle-bound arm. ‘It’ll be nice for Paul and Simon to have a little playmate, at least until Lottie and Nate set up somewhere on their own. Do you think they’ll go far?’

  ‘Lottie likes to think she’s a trailblazer but she’s a homebody. Can’t see her going very far away.’

  ‘Are you excited about becoming an uncle?’

  ‘Of course. Hope it won’t be a little brat like Lottie was though. I was quite patient with her but she used to drive Will up the wall, always whining to join in with our games. She’d do anything to get attention. Broke up one of his matchstick models once. He’d complain to Mum. Lottie would scream the house down. Mum usually took Lottie’s side. She spoiled her. I suppose now she’s pregnant, Lottie’s going to be a right teasy little cow.’