Harley’s helmet came off as he ran but he didn’t dare stop to retrieve it. He found another steel obstacle and jumped behind it. He hit the ground while the charge blew the first obstacle sky high along with dismembered body parts of the dead soldier. Harley crouched behind the steel obstacle as bullets continued to hammer the sand, the boats and the men.
It appeared the Stonewallers would never be able to accomplish their mission. There were five exits from the beach, called draws. They were the only egress from the seashore to the tableland above in the entire Normandy area. Some of these exits were simple dirt roads and some were merely footpaths. The only wide paved road was at Vierville. The Allies were well aware of this so they made the opening of the Vierville draw a D-Day priority. The only way to accomplish this was to defeat the defenses with a frontal assault. The DD tanks, that were supposed to provide some cover and firepower, never made it in. The naval and aerial bombardments missed their mark and were useless. The infantrymen were left defenseless and paid the price.
The Germans were equally aware of the high-value objectives and built an incredible series of fortified strong points to defend the exits and deny their use to the Allies. They called their strong points Widerstandnest; Resistance Nests. There were mortar pits inland with pre-sighted target areas on the beaches. The dreaded 88-millimeter and 75-millimeter artillery were sighted in hardened bunkers to shoot down the beach at an angle so as not to expose them to frontal fire. Numerous machine gun positions featuring the deadly MG-42 were sighted for plunging, grazing and enfilade fire. All five of the draws from Omaha Beach were similarly fortified but the Vierville exit was by far the most heavily defended. Able Company landed directly into the teeth of this formidable array of defensive weaponry and were being systematically slaughtered.
As Harley peered over the obstacle, which stuck out of the sand like a three-legged iron X, he watched the men of his company struggle to reach the tenuous shelter of the seawall to the left of the draw. It was flesh against steel as they scrambled forward or, like him, hunkered down in a precious protected spot on the beach. Some men played dead and others hid behind the dead. But Harley knew that was only a temporary respite as the tide would soon sweep in and cover everything on the beach to within a few meters of the seawall.
Smoke began to swirl across the beach from the burning wreckage of landing craft. Harley willed himself to move but his body wouldn’t respond. Bullets ricocheted off the obstacle with loud pings and clangs. Lying prone and fighting unsuccessfully within himself to get off the beach, he soiled himself and began to cry.
A wave washed in and temporarily covered his lower body in foamy seawater before it drained back out to sea. The relentless tide was coming in. Harley was still frozen and in an utterly hopeless state when he felt the presence of another soldier kneeling beside him. The soldier was holding a helmet in his hand.
“C’mon, Ranger,” the soldier said in a loud but calm voice. “We don’t want to die out here among strangers. Let’s get off this damn beach.” He dropped the helmet. It had camouflage netting and an orange diamond on the back. As the soldier moved away toward the right, Harley noticed he was an officer and he wore a similar helmet.
The officer ran low for about twenty yards, dropped down and looked back. Harley nodded to him and put on the helmet and strapped it tight. He decided if he were going to make a run for it, he would have to shed some of the overload he was carrying. Another wave washed up on him and receded. He ripped off his invasion vest and stripped down to a just a few bandoliers of .30-caliber ammo and his M-1. The rations he carried would not be necessary if he was dead and if he made it, he would certainly be able to find more gear than he had to throw away.
The Ranger officer motioned to him. Harley nodded again and got up to one knee. Still hugging the obstacle he willed himself to move but his body remained frozen in place. Another wave came up, higher and stronger this time and something bumped him from behind. He looked down to see the body of Wally Carter, face up with a bullet hole clear through his right eye. It was as if Wally was nudging him off the beach. He sprang up with a muffled scream and ran low, right past the officer. Harley zigzagged and headed for the bluff while falling repeatedly over the dead and dying. The bullets raked the sand around him with a zip-zip-zip sound. He kept his eyes closed and kept running. After what seemed like an eternity, he fell at the base of the escarpment totally out of breath but safe from enemy fire. The officer came in behind him and huddled next to him. He didn’t recognize Harley but then noticed the 29th Division patch on his other sleeve.
“What outfit are you with, soldier?” the lieutenant panted.
“Hundred and sixteenth Regiment, sir.” Harley took a few quick breaths. “Thanks for getting me off the beach, sir.” Harley was embarrassed but appreciated the encouragement. He was beginning to regain control of himself.
The lieutenant smiled. “I thought you were a Ranger.” He pointed to the Ranger tab on Harley’s other shoulder.
“Oh, that,” Harley smiled back. “Twenty-ninth Rangers.”
The lieutenant nodded knowingly. “We tried to get you guys but the brass wouldn’t let us.” He cuffed Harley lightly on his shoulder. “You’re where you belong now. Welcome back!”
There was no seawall here so the Rangers gathered at the base of the escarpment and hugged the cliffside, which looked to be about fifty feet high. There were more men straggling in every few minutes. They were out of the direct line of German fire, which focused on the landing craft coming ashore near the Vierville exit. The wounded were being dragged under the cover of the cliff whenever possible. Medics were working furiously on them. Harley could see there were only about thirty men left in this Ranger Company able to fight. At first he felt simple gratitude to be alive but now the anger began to swell up inside him.
“Lieutenant Moody!” a voice barked out at the officer who had helped Harley get off the beach.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Lieutenant, Plan A is no dice! We’ll never get through that draw. Take a few men and find another way up.”
The mission of Charlie Company, 2nd Rangers was to proceed through the Vierville draw, through the town of Vierville and head west to Pointe-et-Raz-de-la-Percee. After cleaning out any enemy emplacements, they were to proceed further west to link up with Colonel Rudder’s Ranger Force A on Pointe-du-Hoc and complete that mission if they failed to scale the cliffs. The entire plan depended upon the successful landing of the DD tanks, which were to support the opening of the draw. With the tanks at the bottom of the English Channel and Able Company all but wiped out, Charlie Company had to find another route to complete their mission.
“Yes, sir.”
With that, Lieutenant Moody took some men and worked his way westward, away from the draw, and searched for a place to climb the bluff. Harley went with them. After a few hundred yards they came across a crevice in the bluff and Moody began to free climb. Using his trench knife to carve out handholds and footholds, he reached the top of the bluff unseen. Once there, he attached a toggle rope to the base of a sturdy stake, which held a sign warning of mines. The remainder of Charlie Company made its way up the toggle rope. It was 0730 hours.
From the top of the bluff, Harley had a bird’s eye view of the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach. Subsequent waves had landed and the carnage continued. Along the seawall, dead, wounded and frightened soldiers of the 116th Infantry Regiment were stacked up like cordwood. No one was firing back at the enemy. The onrushing tide was collecting dead bodies from the sandy beach and floating them toward the seawall. The water was red with blood and the Germans kept firing their MG-42s until their barrels glowed red. His friends and neighbors in Able Company were being massacred with brutal efficiency just as their namesake, the Stonewall Brigade, might have been savaged in the Civil War. Harley shook his head in disbelief. The horrendous sight was fueling his rising anger.
Captain Ralph E. Goranson was the CO of Charlie Company, 2nd Rangers. Th
e temptation to strike out to the west and complete his mission was great. However, he could not ignore the bloodbath that was taking place right before his eyes. His small unit had managed to breach the defenses undetected and he was in a position to suppress the killing fire by taking out some enemy positions. He called Lieutenant Moody over and changed his mission.
“Lieutenant, change of plans.”
“Sir?” Moody queried.
“We’re going to stay here and take out as many of those damned machine guns as we can.”
“Yes, sir!” Moody acknowledged enthusiastically.
“Get some teams together to take out those Kraut positions. It’s payback time!”
An angry and superbly trained killing force was about to be unleashed. There was a stone farmhouse to their east overlooking the Vierville draw that was pouring murderous fire onto the beaches. That would be their first target.
Harley joined Moody and a sergeant named Julius Belcher as they worked their way closer to the stone building. There was an elaborate trench system around the farmhouse that concealed the Rangers’ movements. The Germans were too busy spitting out death to notice them approaching. Moody kicked in a door and tossed a white phosphorous grenade into the room. The MG-42 stopped firing and the Germans burst out of the door screaming from the burns. The Americans mercilessly gunned them down as they ran out. There would be no prisoners this day.
The Rangers didn’t have enough men to hold the farmhouse. They were also afraid the navy might decide to bombard it so they took the MG-42 and all the ammo they could carry and retreated back to their temporary CP. If the Germans reoccupied it, the Rangers would do it all over again. The three men then set out to destroy another firing position. They located what the Allies called a “Tobruk”, an open-top circular slit trench lined with concrete from which a machine-gun or mortar could be deployed. This particular one was firing mortar rounds onto the beach. The telltale thump of the rounds leaving the hollow tube gave the position away. The three soldiers crept up on it from behind. They lobbed fragmentation grenades into the open pit and it went up in a blazing sheet of flame. The Ranger force atop the bluff was just getting started.
Moody, Belcher and Harley returned to the CP and occupied a shallow shell hole overlooking Omaha Beach. Harley was astounded by the continuing butchery. No troops were advancing beyond the seawall; the beach was littered with bodies and clogged with the twisted wreckage of vehicles and sunken craft. Landing craft were no longer approaching the beach. The invasion at Omaha Beach had been halted!
Captain Goranson was scanning the beach with his binoculars. He spotted a single LCA well off course and headed for the shoreline directly under their cliff. He looked to Harley.
“Sergeant, that looks like some of your boys. Get them over here and up the rope before they run into a wall of lead. We could use the help!”
“Yes, sir.” Harley scrambled down the rope and ran out and signaled the LCA. The LCA pulled in closer to the bluff as the tide was rising and Stonewallers from Baker Company scrambled out of the craft. Harley directed them to the toggle rope. Twenty thankful soldiers made it up the bluff. The rest of the men on that LCA, as well as the rest of Baker Company, were slaughtered just as their Able Company brothers were earlier in the morning.
Harley climbed back up to the top of the bluff and returned to the shell hole. He was anxious to exact more revenge. Belcher was climbing out of the hole. Harley found Moody lying dead, a bullet through his forehead. In a day filled with indescribable emotions of fear, anger and regret, Sergeant Harley Tidrick found himself welling up at the death of the stranger who had helped him off the killing sands of Omaha Beach.
“Sniper,” answered Belcher to the unasked question.
Harley reached down and closed Lieutenant Moody’s eyes. “Are you ready to get some?”
“Let’s go.”
Having become aware of an American force on the bluffs, the Germans began to counterattack. Their communication trenches fed back beyond the beaches. The defenders were able to funnel in far more reinforcements than the Rangers could muster. Mixed squads of Rangers and Stonewallers clashed with Germans all morning as the Americans fought to eliminate the killing fire and the Germans sought to replace their losses.
Harley and Belcher worked their way inland. They were planning to interdict the communication trench that led to the stone farmhouse and intercept any reinforcements. The further inland they got, the more separated they became from the main force.
They stumbled upon a branch in the trench that seemed to lead nearly all the way back to Vierville. They took covered positions on each side of the north-south trench and waited patiently. Soon, a dozen German soldiers carrying boxes of ammo came down the trench. Harley tossed two grenades into the trench. After they exploded, he and Belcher finished off the squad with small arms fire. No one was left alive. Suddenly, the two soldiers came under fire. Another squad of Germans was coming their way. They split up, Belcher heading back north to the beach and Harley starting west. He soon had to turn south as German infantry slipped in behind him. They were in hot pursuit. He came upon a paved road. If he remembered his map study, this coastal road ran from Collevile through Vierville-sur-Mer to Grandcamps Les Bains. The road was only one-quarter mile from the beach. He decided to continue further south.
The noise from Omaha Beach faded as he moved inland. As soon as he lost his pursuers he would retrace his steps back to the beach. He crossed bordered fields in the shadows of the hedgerows that surrounded them and kept to the countryside, avoiding trails and lanes. The distinctive ripping sound of a German MG-42 broke the silence and he became aware of it before he could see it. He could either skirt the position or scope it out. The chugging 500 round per minute rat-tat-tat sound of a Browning M1919A6 .30-caliber air-cooled machine gun indicated Americans were returning fire. He decided to investigate.
Crawling through one hedgerow he came to an open orchard. The sound was further south still. He crossed the orchard quickly and peeked through another hedgerow. About a hundred yards away was a German MG-42 machine gun crew. They had their backs to him and were spitting 7.92-millimeter rounds at Americans. There was the gunner, a loader on his left feeding the belt into the twenty-five pound weapon and two riflemen guarding each flank. The flankers were about twenty yards to each side and carried the standard German Mauser bolt-action rifle. They were spotting for the MG-42.
Harley had one grenade and could not get all six Germans with it. They were too spread out. He had to devise a plan that would allow him to take out all of them without giving them a chance to return fire. But first he would have to get closer.
There were four rounds left in his clip and he ejected them. The metal clip popped out with an audible ping and he caught it in the air. He collected the rounds from the grass before inserting a fresh eight round clip. He hooked the grenade’s spoon into a high buttonhole on his battle blouse and slipped out of the hedgerow.
Harley crawled slowly and deliberately. The Germans were focused on their targets. He had to get close enough to use the grenade, perhaps thirty yards. No further if he was to make an accurate throw. But he needed an edge, something to keep some of them busy while he took out the others. If he threw the grenade at one target and fired at another, the third pair would get him. No matter which sequence he played out in his mind, the third pair would get a shot at him.
He continued to crawl. If they discovered him at this distance, they would get him for sure. He had to get closer. When he was about thirty yards behind his targets lying flat in the grass, it came to him. In order for his idea to work he had to be patient. The German machine gun continued to fire while the four riflemen held their fire. What was it he learned in Ranger school? The German infantry squad was built around the machine gun. The rest of the men were there to carry ammo and support and protect the machine gunner. They needed all of these ammo carriers since the superbly designed weapon could fire an astounding twelve hundred rounds per m
inute at a muzzle velocity of twenty four hundred eighty feet per second. It had a voracious appetite for ammo. But it had one weakness and Harley relied on that flaw to execute his plan. He slid his M-1 out in front of him and slipped the fragmentation grenade from his buttonhole. He pulled the pin and held the spoon tightly and waited.
Then it happened. The machine gunner yelled something in German to the four riflemen on his flanks. They began firing at the Americans. The assistant machine gunner came up on his knees with a large rag in his hand. He grabbed the barrel of the MG-42 and twisted if off. Harley was up in a flash and hurled the grenade at the pair on his right. Before it exploded, he put two shots into each flanker on the left. He ducked down as the grenade went off. When the smoke cleared, the assistant machine gunner was still holding the replacement barrel in his hands. Harley had caught them in a barrel change, a process the Germans were trained to execute in under seven seconds after 250 rounds were fired through the gun.
“Kamerad!” The loader yelled holding the barrel above his head. The gunner had a stunned look on his face but was helpless without a barrel in his MG-42. If Harley had not waited for that precise moment, the gunner would have turned the MG-42 on him and cut him in half.
Harley moved in and from the hip fired two shots in each chest. The empty clip hit the ground with a ping and Harley jammed another full clip into his M-1. All six of the Germans were dead. It didn’t make up for what he witnessed that morning but it was a start.
“American GI,” he yelled. “I got the bastards!”
The Americans approached cautiously, fearing German treachery. They came through a cut in the hedgerow. When the point man saw Harley, he waved his officer up to the front.
“Nice work, Sergeant,” the lieutenant said. He was a young, boyish looking lieutenant, but then again they all seemed so young. He was wearing a Ranger tab. “What outfit?”
The Last Jump: A Novel of World War II Page 43