by Len Levinson
“But it’s an emergency!” Lieutenant Ferrara said. “The bombers are dropping their bombs behind our lines!”
“You think we don’t know that?” the exec replied. “We’re behind our lines too!”
The bombers came closer to Charlie Company, their eggs dropping lazily to the ground. The sound of explosions grew louder, and the ground shook more violently. Mahoney peeked up from his foxhole and saw the explosions in the fields behind the one Charlie Company was in.
As the bombers flew overhead, the bombs began to fall on Charlie Company. First there was one near the woods where Lieutenant Ferrara had set up his command post, then another near the hedgerow where the 3rd squad was encamped. A few more fell at different points in the company area, and then all hell broke loose.
Ten bombs fell at the same time on Charlie Company. Then twenty bombs. Then fifty. Entire squads of men were blown sky high. The sound was horrible and so loud that men’s eardrums burst. Panicked, Mahoney clawed at the ground and tried to get in deeper. Dirt fell on him from explosions, and the ground shook as though the world was coming to an end.
Twenty feet from Mahoney, Sergeant Plutarski was terrified. He’d dug himself a fox hole six feet deep just as the army manual taught, and he even had a grenade sump at the bottom, but he was terrified anyway. He felt sorry for the men who’d dug only shallow holes for themselves. They’d laughed at him for digging such a deep hole, but he bet they all wished they had a hole like his.
Plutarski adjusted his eyeglasses on his nose and looked up. The sky was black with bombers, and smoke drifted over his foxhole. They can’t hurt me unless they score a direct hit on my foxhole, he told himself, and the odds were against that. His ears rang from the explosions and he wondered when the bombing would end.
A bomb landed a few yards from Plutarski’s deep foxhole, and the shock wave caved in the walls of his little shelter. Six feet of dirt covered Plutarski like a man in his grave. Coughing and spitting, pushing against the oppressive weight, Plutarski tried to fight his way out. He dug at the dirt with his fingernails and squirmed as much as he could, but he could get no air to breathe, and his nose and throat became clogged with dirt. He screamed and cried, clawing the dirt wildly, but he needed air and there was none. His movements became less energetic and finally he suffocated in his perfect foxhole.
Mahoney pressed his cheek against the dirt, expecting a bomb to fall on him any moment. The bombing had gone on for several minutes now and still showed no signs of letting up. The sound of explosions was so loud that he thought he’d go mad. He prayed for the bombing to stop, but it didn’t. His recently returned religious feelings deserted him as the bombs continued to drop on Charlie Company.
In the schoolhouse in Ste-Marie-du-Mont, General Bradley looked at his maps and wondered how the bombing was going. He hoped it would do what it was intended to accomplish: blow holes in those hedgerows and make the terrain more suitable for a war of rapid movement.
A group of his staff officers were with him in the room, awaiting news from the front on the effectiveness of the bombing. The phone rang and Major John Gate answered it. He listened for a few moments, and his face twisted in shock.
“General Bradley, sir!” Major Gate said. “The bombs are falling on our own soldiers!”
“What!” Bradley moved to the phone in long strides. He picked the telephone out of Gate’s hand and said: “General Bradley here!”
“This is General Naughton,” said the excited voice on the other end. “The air force is bombing my division!”
“My God,” Bradley said, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “How bad is it?”
“Very bad. Can’t you call the bombing raid off?”
“I don’t know. Did all your units put out their red flags?”
“As far as I know they did. I didn’t have time to inspect the front lines myself.”
“I’ll call England and see what I can do.”
Cursing beneath his breath, General Bradley asked the operator to connect him with General Carl Saunders of the air force in England. He heard clicks in his ear as the connections across the English Channel were made, and then he spoke with one of Saunders’ clerks.
“This is General Bradley. I need to speak with General Saunders immediately—it’s an emergency!”
“Yes sir.”
There was another click, and General Saunders came on the wire. “What’s the problem, Brad?” he asked.
“Your planes are bombing my troops,” Bradley said as calmly as he could. “Is there any way you can stop them?”
“My planes are bombing your troops?” Saunders asked. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! Would I call if I weren’t sure?”
“I wonder what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened, but can you stop them?”
“Did your men put their red flags up?”
“I assume they did, but can you stop your planes?”
“I suppose I could try,” Saunders replied, “but what would be the point? They’re probably only bombing your forward lines, and then they’ll pass over the German lines. At least let them go on and bomb that carpet for you. If you stop them now, you will have bombed your own troops but you wouldn’t have bombed any Germans.”
“I see,” Bradley said, feeling hemmed in by the logic of Saunders’ argument. “Very well—you might as well continue, but when this mission is over I want a full investigation into the cause of this terrible error.”
“Of course,” Saunders replied, “but don’t be surprised if the mistake was caused by your soldiers.”
“My soldiers?” Bradley asked.
“Yes,” Saunders said. “My men know how to drop bombs, but I wonder if your men know how to identify a target for airplanes?”
“When this is over, I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Bradley declared. “In the meantime, I hope you kill some Germans.”
“I’m sure we will,” Saunders replied.
The tank commanders of the Lehr Division stood in their turrets and watched the airplanes bombing the American positions. At first they were mystified, because they thought it must be the Luftwaffe, but where had the Luftwaffe got all those planes? As far as the Lehr men knew, the Luftwaffe had been chased from the skies long ago.
Then the tank commanders saw the formations of planes come toward them, still dropping bombs. They could see the planes more clearly and recognized their silhouettes as Flying Fortresses and Liberators. Crawling down into their tanks and buttoning up the hatches, they realized that the Americans had bombed their own troops by mistake, but now they would bomb the Panzer Lehr, and that would not be a mistake.
The bombs fell and the ground shook. The Lehr soldiers in their tanks sat with pale faces under their black berets and hoped for the best. They spoke with each other from tank to tank, and tried to bolster each other’s courage, but they knew they were in for hard times. They sang no songs and shouted no battle cries. They were sitting ducks for the American bombers, and they knew it.
The planes swooped down and dropped bombs. The bombs that had fallen on the American troops had been only the beginning of a bombardment that now reached its full intensity on the Panzer Lehr Division. Some tanks were hit directly and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. Some bombs landed near tanks, and the explosions blew the tanks apart. The sound was deafening, and in the tanks the fear was compounded by the fact that no one could see what was going on.
The planes carpet-bombed the mile-wide path to Saint Lo. Squadron after squadron dropped bombs on predetermined areas and returned to England. Hedgerows were torn asunder, tanks were destroyed, and troops were blown into the air. The bombardment was so intense and severe that men lost their minds. They ran back and forth across fields or tried to dig into the ground with their fingernails. Bunkers that were supposed to be impregnable were blown to bits by the heavy bombs. Soldiers screamed and howled, trying to stuff their hands in their ears. The shock waves made their noses and ears bleed
. Tank commanders lost control of their men and tanks rolled at top speed in all directions, trying to escape the bombing. Some of the tanks crashed into each other, as bombs fell all around them. The tanks were ordered to pull back, but no matter where they pulled they found bombs waiting for them.
The bombing went on and on, and many of the Lehr Division’s most stalwart soldiers broke down and wept. Some abandoned their tanks and tried to run away, but storms of flying shrapnel ripped them to shreds. In some fields where the bombing was particularly heavy there were swamps of German blood.
And the bombing continued. The terrified and maddened soldiers of the Lehr Division thought they’d died and gone to hell, and that the bombing would continue throughout eternity.
There was no sound of the bombardment in La Roche-Guyon. Rommel stood at the window of his office and watched birds flying around the big leafy tree in his front yard. It was a beautiful sunny summer day and Rommel felt happy. He thought that his gloomy mood of the past few weeks had been caused by the rainy weather, but now he felt strong and confident again. Maybe the war wasn’t going so badly after all. Who knows—maybe Hitler was right and the new weapons would save them all?
The phone on his desk rang. Slowly he strolled to his desk and picked up the receiver. “Rommel,” he said.
“This is General Bayerlein!” screamed the commander of the Lehr Division. “We are under heavy bombardment!”
“How heavy?” asked Rommel.
“The heaviest I’ve ever seen in my life!”
“That heavy?”
“Yes.”
Rommel was impressed. “Perhaps you’d better pull back.”
Bayerlein’s voice was at the breaking point. “Pull back to where?”
“To safety, of course.”
“There is no safety!”
“There is no safety? Do you mean to tell me that the Americans are bombing all the way to Berlin?”
“They’re bombing all the way to Saint Lo. Do you want us to pull back to there?”
“Of course not,” Rommel said. “No, you must try to hold your position.”
“They’re destroying us!” Bayerlein was in a bunker dug deep into the ground, and he held his telephone up so Rommel could hear the bombing. “Can you hear it?”
“Yes, it sounds rather severe,” Rommel said, “but bear in mind that it can’t go on forever. The planes will leave at one point, and then you will continue with your fighting.”
“We won’t have much to continue with! We’ll need reinforcements!”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Rommel said.
After the conversation, Rommel arose from his desk and looked at his maps. He saw that he couldn’t transfer any more troops from Caen to the American front, because Caen still was under attack from Montgomery and his tough British troops. The only available troops were in the Fifteenth Army area, awaiting the landing of Army Group Patton.
Rommel glanced at his calendar, and it was July 14. He’d been expecting Army Group Patton to land for six weeks, and still Patton hadn’t come. Sometimes Rommel thought that Army Group Patton was a big hoax, and that the Allies couldn’t possibly have thirty seven divisions left in reserve, but Hitler still believed in Army Group Patton, and the Fifteenth Army stayed on the Channel Coast, sitting on its haunches waiting for something to happen.
Rommel shook his head. It all was a horrible mess. He knew that the war was lost. The German Army could keep fighting and dying, but there was no point to it. Rommel felt demoralized again. He looked out his window, and the beautiful summer day looked gruesome to him. German soldiers were dying on all fronts and bombs were raining upon fine old German cities.
“It’s time to stop this nonsense,” Rommel mumbled to himself, picking up his telephone. He told his clerk to connect him with Colonel von Hofacker in Berlin.
“This is Colonel von Hofacker,” said the voice that sounded so far away. “Good afternoon to you, Herr Field Marshal.”
“I’ve decided to join you,” Rommel said.
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Colonel von Hofacker said. “The situation we discussed will take place in a few days. You will be notified in advance of the exact time. With your name and prestige behind us, we cannot fail.”
“I hope not,” Rommel replied.
The planes were gone, and Mahoney crawled out of his foxhole to have a look. He was dazed and his ears still were ringing from the explosions. Standing up, he looked around him, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. Everything looked blurred, as if under water.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. Slowly the images cleared. Mahoney saw arms and legs and torsos lying everywhere. Soldiers screamed and moaned and cried. He saw the big mound of dirt covering the foxhole that Plutarski had dug, and Mahoney knew that the fat sergeant was down there at the bottom, his lungs filled with dirt.
The ground was pockmarked with shell holes. Men were wandering around holding their hands over their ears. One of them sat on the ground and looked in disbelief at the stump where his hand had been. A bloody head lay in a puddle of water. Mahoney wanted to collapse, but he knew he had to toughen his mind and carry on, for he was the first sergeant of the company and had responsibilities to discharge.
He knew that he should report to Lieutenant Ferrara immediately, but he thought he’d check his old buddy Cranepool first. Cranepool was in the second platoon and Mahoney remembered where his foxhole was. He’d smoked a cigar with Cranepool after chow last night.
Mahoney walked in the direction of the second platoon, and the ground looked as though butchers had been slaughtering cattle upon it. He saw arms, hands, and fingers. He saw heads split open and brains oozing out. The men who hadn’t been hurt came up out of their holes and looked at each other through eyes sunken deeply into their heads. They weren’t sure whether they were alive or dead.
Mahoney approached Cranepool’s foxhole and saw a body lying inside. The body didn’t move and Mahoney hoped Cranepool wasn’t dead.
He drew closer to the foxhole and saw that Cranepool was sitting down with his long legs sprawled in front of him and his back resting against the dirt wall. Cranepool’s steel pot was low over his eyes and Mahoney couldn’t see his face. He got into the foxhole with Cranepool and bent down.
Cranepool’s eyes were wide open and staring, as though he was in a state of shock. Mahoney pushed back Cranepool’s helmet so he could see Cranepool’s eyes.
“Are you okay?” Mahoney asked gently.
Cranepool didn’t move an eyelash. Mahoney felt Cranepool’s pulse, and it was normal. He snapped his fingers in front of Cranepool’s nose, and Cranepool didn’t react.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Mahoney asked.
Cranepool didn’t move.
“Are you shell-shocked, you fucking asshole?”
Cranepool didn’t say anything. Mahoney wanted to empty his canteen of water over Cranepool’s head, but was afraid of making Cranepool crazier than he was already. I’ll go look for Lieutenant Ferrara, Mahoney thought, and then I’ll come back to Cranepool.
Mahoney stood and walked toward the woods where Lieutenant Ferrara was. Through the smoke and morning mist he could see that the woods had been devastated by bombs. Mahoney got a sinking feeling in his stomach. Something told him that Lieutenant Ferrara had been killed.
He entered the woods and made his way around splintered trees to Ferrara’s foxhole. Finally he came to the place where the foxhole had been, but in its place was a huge shell crater. A big bomb must have landed near the foxhole or directly on top of it. Mahoney looked around and saw some streaks of blood on the trunks of the trees that were still standing. He realized that Charlie Company didn’t have a company commander or a company clerk anymore.
What a fucking mess, Mahoney thought. He walked out of the woods and saw two jeeps driving toward Charlie Company from the rear. Behind th
e jeeps were two long columns of men. Mahoney dragged himself toward them and saw Major Bowie sitting in the front one beside a bird colonel, whom Mahoney figured was Colonel Bayonet Donovan, the regimental commander.
Major Bowie raised his hand, and the jeeps stopped. Behind the jeeps, sergeants shouted orders and the two columns of men came to a halt. Major Bowie and Colonel Donovan jumped out of their jeep and approached Mahoney. Donovan was tall and rangy, with a bony face and thoughtful eyes.
Mahoney came to attention and saluted. Bowie and Donovan saluted back.
“Where’s your company commander?” Major Bowie asked Mahoney.
“Dead,” Mahoney replied.
“How about your exec?”
“He got killed a few days ago.”
“Who’s the ranking officer?”
“I have no idea. We’ve had a lot of casualties, sir.”
Major Bowie and Colonel Donovan looked around at the dead and wounded. They saw the men who were still alive wandering around like zombies.
“Looks like you took quite a beating here,” said Colonel Donovan.
“Yes sir.”
“Medics are on the way,” Donovan said. “Just sit tight here until they arrive.”
“Yes sir.”
“Carry on.”
Colonel Donovan and Major Bowie called their subordinate commanders forward and told them to deploy their men in skirmish lines and await the signal to attack. The fresh soldiers moved through Charlie Company and some of them became frightened by what they saw. Blood and corpses were everywhere, and the survivors looked as though they’d lost their minds.
Mahoney returned to Cranepool’s foxhole and saw Cranepool walking around as though in a trance. “Are you okay now Cranepool?” Mahoney asked.
“I think so,” Cranepool muttered.
“I’ll light a cigarette for you.”
Mahoney took out one of his cigarettes, lit it up, and placed it between Cranepool’s lips. Cranepool puffed it, and the smoke blew out of his nose.
“This is a terrible war,” Cranepool said, his face still pale.
“You’re just finding that out?” Mahoney asked.