None But The Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II

by Anthony A. Goodman

“Fuckin’ A, man! What the hell are you doing?”

  McClintock dropped down in his seat again and said, “Sorry, pal. Didn’t see you there.”

  With no warning, the captian lit into McClintock, leaning down and grabbing him by his tie. He pushed his face into McClintock’s and said, “Listen, you little prick. Watch what the hell you’re doing, or I’ll shove your head so far up your ass—”

  In a blur, without moving from his chair, McClintock reached up and, grabbing the man by the hair, butted him in the nose with his own forehead. Blood spurted over McClintock’s hair as he swung the soldier’s head into the tabletop with a nauseating crunch.

  Everyone else pushed back out of the way as blood poured onto the wooden table. Although the man struggled, McClintock kept him pinned there as he reached for the Scotch bottle in front of him. He took the bottle by the neck and smashed it across the edge of the table, coming up with a jagged glass sword in his hand. As the man struggled, McClintock pressed the razor-like shards of the broken bottle against the man’s cheek just below his eye, threatening to blind him if he struggled any more.

  “Jesus, Ted,” Schneider shouted, “take it easy!”

  Ignoring Schneider, McClintock stayed calm and focused. The man stopped struggling and became perfectly still. A trickle of blood started from just below his left eyelid.

  Schneider sat frozen to his seat, his heart racing. He had never been so close to violence. As a surgeon, he saw the results of violence, but never the act itself. Sweat gathered in the groove of his back, sending a chill through his body and making him shiver with fear.

  “Ted…” Hamm said in a whisper. “Don’t do it.”

  Hamm leaned forward and placed a hand on McClintock’s arm, the one holding the man’s hair, careful not to disturb the delicate position of the broken bottle in the other hand.

  “Let him go, Ted. He got the message.”

  Without acknowledging Hamm, McClintock leaned close to the man’s left ear, and whispered something no one else could hear. The man’s eyes widened. He moved his head fractionally in assent to whatever McClintock had said to him. The man’s lips moved, and only Schneider saw him mouth the words, “Yes, sir.”

  McClintock slowly withdrew the bottle, the man’s blood already clotting along its jagged edge. The cheek was bleeding steadily and a bluish discoloration spread beneath the loose skin under the eye, blood diffusing into the delicate tissues. If nothing else, the captain was going to show up at assembly in the morning with a huge shiner and a jagged laceration.

  When McClintock let go of the man’s hair, the man stood slowly and backed away. McClintock followed the retreat with the jagged bottle; then, when the man was out of striking distance, he put the bottle down gently and pulled his chair back to the table. McClintock didn’t give the man another glance.

  As soon as the man was out of McClintock’s reach, he turned and fled the pub. All eyes watched in silence as the door slammed shut. Several other GIs silently followed their shamed partner out the door, humiliated that one of their own could be so easily defeated, and by a medical officer, no less. Then the entire room erupted in noisy jeering and cheering.

  Ignoring the tumult of congratulations McClintock caught Schneider’s eye. He read something there: a glint of admiration? Something…

  McClintock leaned across the table to Schneider. In a voice that only Schneider and Hamm could hear, he said, “Don’t ever even think about doing something like that, Steve.”

  “Why not?” Schneider said affecting a light bravado he didn’t really feel. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” McClintock said, “But, I was ready to cut out his eyes if I had to. You wouldn’t. I know it and so do you.”

  Schneider furrowed his brows, looking questioningly at McClintock.

  McClintock said, “This ain’t poker, Steve. There’s no bluffing.”

  Then he pushed away from the table and threw a ten-pound note down to cover the damages.

  McClintock walked alone to the door, steady as a rock. Hamm and Schneider followed. Schneider’s knees shook so badly he could barely walk. The three made their way to their jeep and, with a sober Hamm at the wheel, drove through the cold misty night back to barracks.

  Chapter Five

  6 June 1944, 0330 Hours

  LST 37-Baker, the English Channel

  Hamm crouched in the lee of the ship’s overhang, staying under the cover of the starboard gun platform. Icy water ran off the roof in a steady stream onto his helmet. He huddled as closely as he could against the steel wall, trying to keep the rain from running into his field jacket and down his neck. His shoulder muscles were already stiff and sore from the awkward position. In the darkness, he stared at his boots, which still showed the remains of his own fresh vomit.

  The LST—Landing Ship Tank—was the military’s name for naval boats designed for amphibious landings, capable of carrying huge numbers of troops, supplies, and vehicles and placing them directly on the beach.

  “I don’t know where it keeps coming from,” Hamm said, looking up at his medic, Gene Antonelli. “I haven’t eaten anything in hours. But it keeps coming up.”

  Antonelli looked at Hamm’s boots and shrugged. As he did, water found its way into his own field jacket, sending a shiver of cold through his already wet body.

  “I couldn’t tell ya, Doc,” Antonelli said. “You must’ve had a lot of chow down there to begin with. Still sick?”

  “No, not really. Actually, after I throw up, I feel pretty good for a while.”

  Antonelli retreated further into his field jacket, huddling against the bulkhead and ducking out of the rain. He was a solidly built guy, dark and muscular, though he seemed very young to Hamm. Most of the time they couldn’t keep Antonelli quiet; he showed a surprising enthusiasm for even the most awful tasks that fell to an army medic. But on the LST, even Antonelli had grown ominously quiet, as if aware of horrors none of the rest had yet considered.

  They had been at sea for twenty-four hours. Five days earlier the ship had weighed anchor on the south coast of England and pulled out into the English Channel. Then the weather had worsened, and the ship returned to anchor; then back to sea and back to anchor again. Back and forth for five awful days, waiting for the signal.

  But, the weather refused to quit. One rainsquall followed another. The seas grew calm for a few hours, cruelly tantalizing the officers and men, bringing hope that the worst weather was over. Then the wind would move in again and toss the whole fleet around like toys. Thousands of ships of every size and description dotted the horizon off the coast of England, just out of sight of Normandy. Twelve hundred huge fighting ships trained their guns on the French coast, jockeying in the rough seas to hold their positions. More than eight hundred U.S. and British transports carried more than one hundred and fifty thousand troops—almost all of them cold and seasick, all of them scared.

  Four thousand landing craft hovered next to the troop carriers, waiting their turn to shuttle the men and arms ashore under the waiting guns of the German Wehrmacht. Day and night, destroyers hurried back and forth around the fleet, like sheep dogs worrying away the wolves. The wolves were German U-boats waiting for targets. Waiting for these men.

  Back in England, twenty-five thousand more men and women waited for the weather to clear sufficiently, waiting for planes and gliders that would drop them into the darkness behind the German lines, just hours before the main assault would begin.

  General Eisenhower and his staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) agonized over the final decision. To go, or not to go? Timing was critical. The invasion force required the longest possible daylight hours for air cover, favorable tides to clear the underwater obstacles the Germans had placed in front of the beach, and a full moon to light up the targets for the bombers. As the men waited on board the ships, the generals deliberated, the hours sped by, and a deadline approached that might postpone the entire invasion. It could be as much as a mon
th before the conditions would be right again. In that time, the Germans might finally uncover the war’s greatest secret, discovering the location of the real place for the landing and further fortify their positions. It was just too risky to delay.

  In addition to all the power at sea, ten thousand warplanes waited to take flight and cover the attack. The biggest invasion in the history of humankind was about to begin. For those who survived, the most powerful and pervasive memory for the rest of their lives would be of vomit and fear.

  It was cold for June. Wherever the men were unprotected, the rain inevitably found its way in, making everyone all the more miserable.

  “Think it’ll be tonight?” Hamm asked into the darkness.

  “Beats the shit out of me, Doc,” Antonelli said without raising his head from the protection of his field jacket. His voice was muffled and low inside his collar. “I’m just the lowly medic. Nobody tells me a fuckin’ thing.”

  “Me, too,” Hamm said. “I’m just the surgeon. Nobody tells me anything either.”

  Hamm was nearly old enough to be Antonelli’s father, and as a major, he far outranked the young medic. Yet there on the LST, waiting in the miserable wet darkness and cold, a bond was forming that transcended rank and age. They might all easily die side by side in the coming hours. The bullets and the shrapnel would honor neither rank nor age.

  They sat in silence a while longer. In the calm between squalls, Hamm took off his helmet and looked again at the red crosses painted in white circles on the front and back. He had studied it a hundred times, each time wondering if the German gunners would respect his position as a front-line surgeon, a non-combatant, a man without a gun. Or would they take aim at the white circle and red crosshairs? Hamm looked at Antonelli and saw the same red crosses on the medic’s helmet.

  A damned fine target, he thought.

  When the downpour resumed, Hamm slouched down further, trying to shrink away from the rain, the vomit, and the fear. He thought about going below to try to warm up for a while, but his last trip below had been a bad mistake. It was stifling hot down there. All the toilets were full and overflowing. Soggy, feculent toilet paper hung draped from the steel toilet seats like bedraggled decorations from a drunken fraternity party. Even the fire pails were topped off with vomit. If he put down his helmet long enough, someone was bound to puke into it. The lack of any visible horizon or landmarks down there made it much worse below than topside. The endless groaning of his shipmates only made him feel worse. No, he thought, better to be cold and wet with a little fresh air in his face than to suffocate in the fumes from the excrement and the barf below. Hell of a way to go to war.

  Hamm’s thoughts were interrupted by a noise and some movement. There was a scuffling and a shifting in the darkness next to him. A big hulking figure pushed into the limited space beneath the overhang, edging Hamm nearer the downpour.

  “Hey! Give me a break, will you, pal?” he muttered.

  “Give me a break, my ass, Hamm.” McClintock bullied into the place between Antonelli and Hamm, crashing down with a loud exhalation of air.

  “Major Hamm, sir, to you,” he muttered.

  “Major Hamm, sir, my ass.”

  “Ah, Ted. Your mother would be proud.”

  Antonelli leaned over to McClintock and said, “Hey, Major McClintock. How ya doin’?”

  “Great, Gene. Just great! I love this shit. I really do.”

  Hamm shifted again, trying to claim some more space under the overhang, making everyone move a little to stay out of the rain. The wind increased suddenly, changing the direction of the downpour from vertical to horizontal. The water slammed into their faces, as well as into everyone else’s on deck.

  “Fuck,” said Antonelli.

  “Fuck,” said McClintock and Hamm.

  Another figure moved into the shelter of the overhang, now making it impossible for any of them to stay out of the rain. Dick Higgenson, their second medic, shoved his tall muscular mass into the small gap between Antonelli and McClintock. Hamm slid over without a word and stared into the night. Antonelli looked at Higgenson but said nothing.

  Higgenson was pure Middle America: He was a quiet guy, almost taciturn. Quite the opposite of Antonelli, the dark ebullient Italian. None of them really knew anything about Higgenson. He had been to college, but no one knew which one, how many years he finished, or what he studied. He was twenty-two. They all wondered why he had not gone to Officer Candidate School, why he wasn’t an officer? He was certainly bright enough.

  As soon as Higgenson was settled Hamm said, “Hey, Dick, how come you’re a medic? I mean, why didn’t you go to OCS?”

  Higgenson laughed. “OCS? I’m a CO, Doc: a Conscientious Objector. A Quaker. My draft board looked upon my religious beliefs with a dollop of cynicism. I do not support war. My beliefs forbid me to kill, but my draft board still had the power to assign me to a noncombatant position. And they did just that.”

  As a medic, the draft board knew, Higgenson would be at greater risk than the soldiers around him; at greater risk than their own sons who were now at war. Higgenson’s job would require him, like Antonelli and all the medics, to rush to the aid of the wounded under fire, to expose themselves to the same weapons that had found their targets in the wounded. It was unlikely that Higgenson or Antonelli would survive very long once the invasion began. The army had predicted a life expectancy for medics on the beach at about twenty minutes. If they made it off the beach, they might live a little longer.

  McClintock could only shake his head. “Fucking draft board….”

  Little by little, the men adjusted their positions on the cramped deck and shared the lee of the overhang as best they could. The rain and wind increased in intensity again.

  It struck Hamm as funny that, with the thousands of men on the ship, there was still that urge to stick around the guys he knew, to stay with his group. He instinctively glanced around, looking for Schneider, half expecting to see him huddling behind McClintock under the overhang. He realized how much he missed his friend, and feared for Steve’s safety.

  Just before the invasion, Steve had volunteered for other duty. When he’d heard about it, Hamm had said, “Didn’t anyone tell you never to volunteer? Jesus, Steve!”

  But it was too late to back out, and now Schneider was gone. Hamm hadn’t seen him for nearly two weeks before they embarked.

  “Ted, what do you think got into Steve?” Hamm asked. “Volunteering for a mission like that?”

  “Beats the shit out of me. Those guys are nuts going in ahead of the invasion. And those crates they’re flying in.”

  “Bad enough out here,” Hamm said. “But up there?”

  “You know,” McClintock said, “I don’t even know how these poor bastards are going to fight when they hit that beach. They’ve been puking their guts out for days. I know they’re not sleeping. They’re a bunch of wrecks.”

  “Yeah.” Hamm nodded. “I’d hate to think we’re depending on them for protection from the Jerries.”

  “For that matter,” McClintock went on, “they can’t count on us for much either. When’s the last time you slept, Hamm?”

  “About an hour ago. Couple of minutes. Then I had to barf again. Look at my boots.” All heads turned to look at Hamm’s boots, though they all could smell what was there.

  “Wouldn’t worry about that, Doc,” Antonelli said. “You’re gonna get them cleaned off in the sea in a few hours anyway.”

  “You could wipe them with these French bank notes they gave us,” McClintock said, holding up several soggy wrinkled French francs. “A lot of good they’ll be when we hit that beach.”

  “I’ll take yours, Major.” Antonelli grinned. Wisely, McClintock put the notes back in his jacket.

  Another soaking squall blew in. “When will they put us onto the Rhino ferries?” Antonelli asked.

  “I think the big LSTs are going to tow the ferries into sight of the beach,” Hamm said. “Then we’ll board the ferries.
I’d rather stay on the LST as long as possible. At least they’re maneuverable, and there’s some protection. We’re going to be sitting ducks out there on those Rhinos. I don’t think they can make more than three knots. How the hell can the Jerries miss them?”

  “Well, the trucks have red crosses all over them,” said Higgenson. “Must be thirty, forty trucks on board. And two Red Cross flags as well. They’re not supposed to shoot at those.”

  “Yeah, right! Count on it,” McClintock said.

  Hamm said, “I don’t know if we’re better off with these red crosses or not. I don’t trust the Krauts not to shoot us just for the hell of it. I’ve been hearing some awful stuff about what’s going on over there,” he said, nodding in the general direction of France.

  “It’s all bullshit,” said Antonelli.

  “I heard the docs and the medics in the Pacific are tearing the red crosses off their uniforms,” McClintock said, “because the Japs never signed the Geneva Convention. They’re shooting at the damned things.”

  “Well the Jerries did sign the Geneva Convention,” Hamm said, “but I still don’t trust them.”

  The squall intensified. None of the men moved. They just turtled their heads down into their collars and lowered their helmets against the storm. From where Hamm sat, the helmets of his little group looked like a small field of red crosses all lined up in a row, like a newly dug cemetery.

  Chapter Six

  6 June 1944, 0330 Hours

  A Horsa Glider Over Turqueville, France

  As Marsh and Schneider talked quietly together, Lieutenant Jim Sorenson, the senior commando officer, moved down the aisle. He was a big, dark-haired man, all business. The doctor in Schneider could see the remnants of a broken nose. It appeared to be an old injury either not fixed at all or fixed by a rather ordinary surgeon. Sorenson was regular army through and through. Schneider hardly knew him, but it made Schneider feel safer just to have him near.

  With his big pack, and his rifle, and his Colt .45 on his hip, Sorenson exuded this don’t-fuck-with-me air that made Schneider very glad he was on their side. Sorenson had a three-day growth of beard no matter when he shaved. He was rough and splintery, and all hard edges. Schneider noticed that Sorensen didn’t even hold on as he moved about in the turbulent flight. When Schneider thought of the pictures of the German officers he had seen, all dressed up in their new, tailored uniforms with long coats and high collars, he decided he would take Sorenson over them any time.