Miraculously, only a few men were dead. Johnny rushed out to help the wounded. He carried back one soldier that had his feet blown off, dropped him against the wall, and went back out for another. I glanced apathetically over at the footless soldier, my psyche already so shocked I felt no pangs of pity. Johnny scooped up the last casualty that looked like he might have a chance of making it.
Zoop-zoop-zoop!
“Run! Drop him and run!” The sound of my voice got shot down by a fresh set of missiles arcing over the beach. Johnny lumbered along a little more hurriedly, as though he heard the incoming threat, but he refused to drop his wounded comrade.
Boom-boom-boom! The mortars fell.
I got up on one knee and half stood to look, swaying as I hunched over against the wall. Through the geyser of sand I saw him struggle to rise. He grabbed a hold of the injured soldier’s uniform and continued to press on to safety. I sprinted down to him as best I could, heeding neither the Germans’ deadly enfilade fire nor my own injury. I grasped the limp soldier by an arm, and we dragged him to the relative safety of the sea wall, dropping him like a sack of oats before collapsing together on either side of him.
“Medic!” Johnny panted. “Medic!” His arms and uniform were smeared with blood. A haggard-looking medic wearily trotted over.
“Where are you hit?” he asked Johnny over the incessant din.
“I’m fine,” he gasped. “It’s him. It’s his blood,” he pointed to the fellow we’d just dragged off the beach. The medic turned his attention to the man writhing between us.
“You sure you’re OK?” I asked him, certain there was no way he could have had mortars go off almost on top of him and still emerge unscathed.
“Just got the wind knocked out of me,” he assured me. “I’ll live to die another day,” he added lightly.
As I lay uselessly on the beach, I took stock of my surroundings. Men in every stage of death, dying, and barely living littered the beach like spent rifle shells. Men I knew. Young men. Men that had lived a quarter or third of the life they should have. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t simply lie there inertly on the beach, waiting to thumb a ride back to a pretty nurse and clean sheets. What if you live another fifty years, Robert? I asked myself. Would I ever lose the feeling that I had failed my friends and comrades if I took the easy route home? I didn’t want to know. If I left now, I was of little more worth than the lifeless corpses surrounding me. I had come too far. I would be the ultimate waste.
“Medic!” I barked at the medic, who had finished patching up the fellow we’d rescued.
“Yes?”
“Rebandage my leg, good and tight,” I ordered. He looked slightly puzzled, but knelt and began removing the blood-soaked bandage. He re-dressed the wound robotically with shaky hands, stopping in between to take a long swig from a flask.
“Is that better?” he asked as he finished.
“Will it hold for a day or two?” I asked.
“Should,” his nod came across as noncommittal.
“Good,” I said. “Now help me up.” I willed myself to stand with his help. He watched me uncertainly.
“Get out of here. There’s men dying out there,” I told him. I broke down my M1, blew the sand out of it, and fired a test shot in the general direction of a German pillbox. I was in business.
“Alright, Johnny, let’s go kill some Krauts!” I shouted.
“I’m right behind you,” he leapt to his feet. It was time to be men.
Up the hill I could see a dozen or so men led by Lt. Callahan using bangalore torpedoes to blow holes in the ringlets of concertina wire that guarded the bluff with their sharp little fish teeth.
Kaboom! A destroyer out in the channel took out a battery of German Nebelwerfers with its cannon, making the ground and air shudder.
“Johnson, Hankins, De Luca, Green, let’s get the hell off this beach!” I ordered the four men nearest me. They left the comforting shelter of the seawall and followed Johnny and me as we sought to round up other petrified, unaffiliated dogies that had the necessary life and limbs to fight their way off the beach.
“Move your ass,” Johnny shouted at a couple of terrified youngsters who were reluctant to leave their huddle.
“He’s injured,” one of them, a slight, blond-headed kid named Rudd explained timidly, motioning to the gash on his buddy’s forehead. The agonizing pain I felt in every step caused me to fly into a rage.
“That’s a goddamn mosquito bite!” I snapped. “There are men on this beach whose mothers wouldn’t recognize their assholes from their elbows. Now tie a rag around his head and get up the hill before I blow both your fucking heads off!” The way they eyed me, it appeared they were determining whether it was safer to deal with me on the beach or the Germans up the bluff. To make the decision easier for them, I drew my .45 Colt and screamed, “You have five seconds to get moving or your ass is done!” What my words lacked in poetry they made up for in punch. The two kids sprang to their feet and followed. It was a good time to leave. German mortar fire was beginning to take its toll on the troops who found cover against the seawall.
“Follow me!” I yelled to a few more stragglers, as I hobbled across the shingle and up the bluff. I followed what looked to be a faint trail, on which I hoped to avoid any mines. My injured leg was beginning to become very stiff. We reached a large crater that a shell had blasted out of the rock, and took refuge in it.
“You rest your leg a little,” Johnny told me, noticing the agonized look on my face. I peered around the rocky outcropping that helped shield us, and saw a gun emplacement above us. It was doing its level best to make sure our men stayed on the beach.
“We’ve got to take out those guns at one o’clock,” I instructed, my voice hoarse from yelling.
Private First Class Dick Johnson shouldered his Browning Automatic Rifle and unleashed a stream of hot lead at an unspecified target.
“Stop!” I pushed down on the barrel of his rifle.
“What the hell are you shooting at, Private?” I snapped.
“I’ll be damned if I know,” he admitted sheepishly. “I’m just shooting in the direction of the enemy, Staff Sergeant.”
“We need to hold off on the shooting, and get a grenade into that pillbox up there. They don’t know we’re here.” I readied myself and reached for a grenade.
“You stay here,” Johnny ordered, a grenade already in his hand. Before I could protest, he was up, over, and gone, dashing madly up the incline toward the emplacement, ducking from dip, to rock, using every fold and crease in the terrain to his advantage. I held my breath as he got close, pulled the pin, tossed it through the embrasure, and hit the dirt. Boom!
“Hell, yeah!” we whooped.
“Let’s go!” I yelled, as several Nazis spilled out with their hands up. Johnny was in no mood for taking prisoners. He downed them all with one rapid-fire burst.
“Fix bayonets!” I shouted as we charged up the hill. Hardly even noticing my wounded leg now, I sprinted up toward the still-smoking emplacement. Johnny’s show of courage had heartened our spirits, and his success was intoxicating.
“Nice work!” I slapped him on the back. He acknowledged me with a grim nod.
“Hold your fire,” I told the men. My M1 ready, I tip-toed toward the entrance of the pillbox, as though somehow I might be heard. Two more unarmed Germans stumbled out. I was wound so tight, it was all I could do to hold off the trigger.
“Get down, get down, get down!” I screamed at them, jabbing in a downward motion with my bayonet. They fell to their knees, fingers interlaced behind their heads.
“Menkel!” I called for one of the men who’d followed me up.
“Yes, Staff Sergeant?”
“You speak German, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ask these bastards where the mines are,” I ordered. Menkel proceeded to interrogate the men. They both refused to volunteer any information.
“Where are the goddam
n mines, shit head?” I knocked one of the soldier’s helmets off with the tip of my bayonet. He gave me a disdainful look, and replied with a taunting smirk.
“He says you’ll know when you step on them, sir,” Menkel interpreted. My blood boiled.
“Tell him if he doesn’t show me where the mines are, I’ll run this through his fucking throat!” I raged, my bayonet wavering in front of his face. Menkel’s delivery of my message was met without any indication of fear by the German. There was a vapid look in his eyes. It was the look of a man who had teetered at the brink of death a thousand times. He would not fight it. He would meet death with a cold indifference. He spat defiantly at my feet.
As angry as I still was, I wished I could reach out and snatch back my words. I felt like a parent who, in a hot-headed moment, has handed down the harshest possible sentence to an errant child. And like that parent, upon a moment of reflection, I too, was consumed with regret for my promise. I wished I’d told him he’d get sent to his room with no supper if he didn’t tell me where the mines were. Oh, if I’d only said he’d be grounded for a week! But there was no time for regrets. No time for hesitation. My men looked to me for leadership. Any indication of weakness, indecision, or lack of follow-through would erode their confidence in me. And so I followed through.
I remember only parts of the rest of D-Day. Fractured memories like shards of shrapnel forever embedded in my psyche. Most of the things I remember, I wish I could exchange for the pieces of life I’ve forgotten. I remember the tip of my bayonet planted at the base of his neck, just above the top button of his uniform. I remember the feel of the blade sliding smoothly. The first bright red jet of blood against the white of his neck. I remember how my thrust slowed just slightly as my bayonet ground through his spine and split his vertebrae, and then how easily it slid up to the hilt. How I struggled to pull it back out. I remember seeing his last exhalation bubble up through the ragged hole in his throat. His lungs gasping frantically for oxygen. The way his eyes rolled back in his head when he breathed in only his own blood. Fumbling for my .45, putting a bullet in his forehead, and putting me out of my misery. I remember the mixture of awe and revulsion in the eyes of my comrades. I remember feeling like I’d just been run through myself.
We did make it to the top of the hill. Waves of boats continued to drop off more men, each boat facing less resistance than the one before it, until the German opposition was muted.
We expected a counterattack within the next day, so I got the men to take turns going back down to the beach in pairs to scrounge for supplies, ammunition, and weapons to bolster our dwindling reserves. I took Johnny with me when I went.
As we carefully picked our way down the bluff, I could smell the faint stench of death. The sky and water were gray, as though mourning the day’s bloodshed with us. The tide carried in bodies and boats—and bits of both—on foamy crests, tinged pink with blood. It seemed we’d made the Channel ill with our bloody invasion. The sea spewed the bodies of my comrades onto the shore with the fishes as though purging itself with violent retching. Bodies bobbed in the surf. Fresh, limp bodies, bloated bodies turned deep purple, and bodies that were nothing more than bones wrapped in stringy heaps of mangled flesh. Flames from a burning wreck licked the somber sky as we picked through the remains of men to find useful items.
“What a waste!” Johnny murmured, kneeling beside the charred body of a man I wasn’t even sure if I knew. His uniform had been burned right off of him. Johnny shook his head and looked down the crimson beach as though calculating the years of life that had seeped into the sand. He got up, and we continued walking.
“What a waste,” he repeated, looking down at a young man, maybe 18 years old if given the benefit of the doubt. He looked serene and unblemished, as though he could have been lying in a coffin at a funeral parlor.
“Wonder what killed him?” I mused. Johnny knelt again and pushed the thin body over on its side. Blood trickled out of a small hole in the back of his head.
“One little piece of shrapnel!” he said angrily. “One little piece the size of your goddamn fingernail, and it’s over!” He stood up.
“How the hell are we supposed to make it out of here alive, Mattox? What are the odds? How many hundreds more battles are ahead? We don’t have a chance. Not a Popsicle’s chance in fuckin’ hell!” Anger, fear, and despair colored his words. I fought those same monsters. But I wasn’t allowed to show it.
“Johnny,” I said, almost sternly. “It’s not your job to think about what’s ahead, behind the next bush, or around the next bend. It’s your job to do what you’re told. You do what’s right here,” I told him, placing my open palm in front of my nose. “You kill the German in front of you. You follow the orders given you, and let God worry about whether you have a chance or not.” I softened my voice. I knew some food and sleep would go a long way in improving his outlook.
“And as for this boy,” I continued, “this boy did what he was told to do, and he was successful.”
“Successful?” Johnny repeated doubtfully. I bent over stiffly and pulled a bandolier of bullets and some hand grenades off the young man’s body.
“He got these to the beach, didn’t he?” I tossed Johnny the bandolier. “Now go avenge his blood.”
Table of Contents
EIGHT
A GODDAMN ANIMAL
We established a perimeter of defense and dug foxholes in the shale before nightfall. Exhaustion overcame us all, so we determined the shallow foxholes we’d dug to be adequate for the night. I collapsed into a slit trench around midnight. The unceasing throbbing in my leg was surpassed only by the ache I felt in the core of my soul. I waited for sleep to visit, but the faces of the men I’d killed and seen killed that day lingered about me and frightened it away. Frankie De Luca could be heard crying over in a different foxhole. No one told him to shut up. Some of us just wished we could cry, too.
When sleep finally came, it hit me over the head with a lead pipe. I slept like a dead man.
When the morning roused us with a half-hearted attempt at sunshine, it brought with it a renewed sense of life. We had been visitors to hell, and, at least for the time being, were alive to tell about it. And nothing made me more aware of my aliveness than the pain in my leg as I attempted to stand up. My leg had stiffened into a hickory post overnight. I felt like screaming, but instead, cursed through clenched teeth.
My tortured exclamation caused Jedidiah Hankins and Dick Johnson, who were cautiously stretching as they stood in their foxhole, to turn and stare at me.
“Would you help me up instead of standing there like a couple of rubbernecking geese?” I snapped. They sheepishly hurried over. I wrapped my arms around their necks, and they brought me to my feet.
“Son-of-a-fucking-bitch!” I screamed. The pain shot up and down my leg like hot needles as I tried to put weight on it. I clung to their necks.
“You’re chokin’ me, man!” Jedidiah’s words barely squeezed through his strangulated throat.
“Sit me down!” I gasped, almost passing out with pain. They carefully backed me up so I could sit on the brim of the foxhole. I lay back, legs hanging in the foxhole, upper body resting on level ground.
“Aaargh!” I writhed in pain.
“For Chrissakes, some of us are trying to sleep over here!” A groggy Corporal Reid lobbed a verbal grenade over the edge of his foxhole. I hurled it right back.
“Shut your fucking puke hole, Charlie! Shouldn’t you already be up and hurling projectile vomit at Jerry for a change?” I made light of his relentless vomiting the previous day. He grinned and yawned as several of the fellows enjoyed a chuckle at his expense. I managed to laugh too, despite my pain, and attempted to collect enough willpower to try standing again.
“Would this be of any help, Staff Sergeant?” It was Private Rudd, holding a crooked stick he’d found in a nearby copse of trees.
“Private, you are a goddamn genius!” I struggled to my feet and tested my new wal
king stick.
“Corporal,” I ordered Charlie, “see to it that this man is rewarded. I want you to give him a three-day pass, a Medal of Honor, and an all-inclusive date with Betty Grable,” I joked.
“Yes, sir!” Charlie saluted mockingly. The perplexed look on Rudd’s face fell away as we shared a round of laughter. I felt my pain ease slightly with each chuckle.
“Let’s get moving.” I slapped him on the shoulder and followed my own order.
~~~
“Stay down!” I whispered as Frankie De Luca raised his head slightly. We were pinned down by machinegun fire near Vierville, in the one of the hedgerows that diced the Normandy countryside into one acre plots.
“I need to see!” his lips quivered with fear.
“Stay down, Frankie!” I spat through my teeth. All around us bullets whined through leaves, smacked through tree trunks, and burrowed into the ridge of rich topsoil that had accumulated in the hedgerows over hundreds of years.
Frankie lay on the ground, tears streaming down his face. “No! No! No!” he cried, as though someone were beating him. At first I thought he’d been hit.
“Where are you?” he moaned loudly. “Where are you, you goddamn Nazi sonsabitches?” He was hysterical. His porcelain mind had cracked on D-Day, and now on D-Day +3, the incoming fire had shaken it to shards. Johnny, who lay on his belly on the other side of Frankie, made a move to quiet the frazzled private, but Frankie leapt up before Johnny could attempt to pacify him. He exploded through the scant yards of brush that separated us from the open field.
Love is a Wounded Soldier Page 17