Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

  “We pulled them into this hedge,” Nunez said. “There’s some M-1s and a carbine. And a Thompson.”

  “Ammo for the Thompson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I want that. What about grenades?”

  “Plenty,” Lloyd said, his voice sounding stronger now. “There were some leg bags full of all kinds of stuff. We even found a bazooka.”

  “Okay. Good,” Alex said. “We’re well equipped. Let’s get what we can carry without weighing ourselves down too much. Are you guys anywhere close to where you’re supposed to be?”

  “We don’t know where we are,” Nunez said.

  “Okay. We know where we’re going—more or less. Let’s get what we need and then move out.”

  Alex walked to the cache of weapons and sorted through until he got what he wanted. When everyone else had had his chance, they came back to the road and Alex was about to get them going. But then he heard a sound in the distance. “Be quiet,” he whispered. “Is that a truck?”

  Everyone stopped and listened. The sound of airplanes was gone now, and the big truck engine was unmistakable. It was coming from the west. “That’s gotta be Germans. We don’t have any trucks in here yet. Who knows how to shoot that bazooka?”

  “I trained on one,” one of the men from the 82nd said.

  “Keep your voice down—but tell me your name again.”

  “Healy.”

  “Okay. Get set up with that bazooka right here. The rest of you, push yourselves into the hedgerows on both sides of the road. Healy, you wait until the truck is right on top of you, and then fire a shot directly into the engine. If it’s a troop truck, and men come flying out of the back, we have to get them as they jump off or we’ll be outnumbered.”

  “How do we know it’s just one truck?” Healy asked.

  “We don’t. But if we knock the first one out, we block the road.”

  Alex knew what Healy was saying. If more trucks were coming, Alex could be setting these men up to die. But in training he had heard the same thing over and over: “Don’t let any troops get to the causeways. If you can’t stop them, delay them for as long as possible.” And that truck was clearly moving toward them, the sound getting louder.

  “Get out of sight and don’t show yourselves until that bazooka fires,” Alex told the men as they moved toward their positions. Then he walked a few yards down the road, climbed the embankment, and worked himself, backward, into the trees and brush that formed the hedge. He got his Thompson loaded and ready to fire. He just hoped that Healy knew what he was doing with that bazooka.

  Sounds were obviously carrying well; the truck was not as close as Alex had thought. When it did come into sight, it was moving slowly with its headlights off. For a moment Alex wondered whether it could be a French milk truck or some such thing, but he could see the outline, the canvas cover on the back, and clearly it was a German troop truck.

  He waited. The truck kept grinding up the road, closer and closer. For at least a minute Alex held his breath and hoped that Healy wouldn’t shoot too soon, and then he began to wonder whether he would ever shoot—or whether something was wrong with the bazooka.

  Suddenly—boom!—the big shell came like a lightning flash and tore through the front of the truck. The hood flew up, and the truck lurched to a stop, but nothing blew up. Alex thought he saw the driver hunch forward, but he trained his eyes on the back of the truck, and suddenly a man leaped from the back. Alex saw the shape of the helmet, knew it was the target he had been trained to shoot at, and he pulled his trigger at the same time everyone else did. The German was thrown under the truck.

  But more were coming now, like a waterfall, and the roar of the fire was constant. Germans kept landing, shooting their weapons wildly, and going down immediately. At least a dozen dropped, and more were still coming, and then, suddenly, there were no more. Germans were strewn about at the back of the truck, some of them stacked on top of each other. For a time, the Americans kept pumping bullets into the heap.

  But the fire slowly stopped, and then all was stillness.

  “Nicht Schiessen!” someone shouted from the back of the truck. And then in English, “No shoot!”

  “Throw out your weapons,” Alex shouted in German. Two rifles came flying out, almost immediately. They crashed onto the pile of men, thudded onto the bodies, and then clattered onto the ground. Alex watched with curiosity, hardly able to imagine that all this was really happening. “Come out. Show your hands,” he yelled, still in German. Two men appeared at the back of the truck, their hands in the air. “It is good. Jump down,” Alex yelled at them.

  The men, each in turn, jumped to the side, on the ground, avoiding their fallen comrades. They continued to hold their hands in the air.

  “Cooper. Cox. A couple of you other men. Take them. Search them.”

  But all of the Americans seemed to rush into the road at the same time, and they hammered the Germans to the ground. “I got me a Lüger already,” one of them yelled.

  Alex came out of the hedge and climbed down to the road. “Someone look up front. Check on the driver. Be careful.”

  One of the men from the 82nd walked to the cab of the truck, threw the door open, and fired his M-1.

  “What are you doing?” Alex shouted.

  “Just making sure. I think he was still alive.”

  Alex was suddenly unnerved. He had been operating on automatic, but he needed to keep control of these men. They didn’t need to be shooting men who were already wounded and down.

  “What are we going to do with these Krauts?” one of the men asked. He stepped to Alex and lowered his voice. “We can’t take those guys along with us. We’d better shoot ’em. The general said, ‘No prisoners.’”

  “Listen to me.” Alex stopped. “Which one are you?”

  “Wilson.”

  “Okay, Wilson, until someone with higher rank comes along—I’m making the decisions. And I’m not shooting them.” Then, searching for a justification, he added, “I might be able to get information from them. I speak German.”

  “You sure do.” The words sounded like an accusation.

  “Everyone take a breather,” Alex said. “Let me talk to these men.”

  The two were sitting on the ground now, and three Americans were pointing guns at them. Alex walked over. “Did you get all their weapons—knives, everything?” he asked his men.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. You don’t need to point your rifles at them. Just stay alert.” Alex looked down at the Germans. He couldn’t see their faces very well, but they looked up toward him as though they were not terribly frightened. Maybe they were feeling some relief that they were still alive. One of them seemed young, maybe twenty or so, from what Alex could see, but the other was at least forty. “Where were you going?” Alex asked in German.

  The older man said, “They didn’t tell us. We were only told that parachute soldiers had landed in the area.”

  Alex realized immediately that he had nothing to learn from these men. “Are other trucks coming?” he thought to ask.

  “We don’t know.”

  “Where is your Kaserne? Where did you come from?”

  “Near Les Forges. We are foot soldiers. We know very little.”

  Alex looked at the younger man. He seemed a little more nervous than the older one. Alex felt a need to put him at ease. “Do what I say, and you can stay alive,” he said.

  And then he looked around. “All this noise could bring more Germans this way. We’d better move out. Colby, you take the point again, but let’s watch these prisoners. Wilson, Cooper, walk behind them. Keep a rifle on them.”

  Colby led out again, and the men walked for a long time without any incident. Alex guessed they had covered maybe three miles. By then the first light was appearing on the eastern horizon. Alex was still hoping he would meet a larger unit and an officer could take over. Eventually Lloyd came up alongside Alex. “I could sure use a little grub,” he said soft
ly. “I puked everything up last night before the drop.”

  Alex moved up along the line. He told the men to stay spread out a little but to stop and eat something, quickly. He took the Germans forward and had them sit down, and then he rummaged in his pack for some K rations. He opened up a can of meat. He had thought he was hungry, but the smell of the meat killed his appetite.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked the Germans.

  “Yes. Surely,” the older man said.

  Alex handed him the can of meat, and then he looked in his pack for another one, which he gave to the boy. “Thank you,” the soldier said. “You speak good German.”

  “I lived in Germany at one time,” Alex said, but he realized immediately that he shouldn’t get into that sort of conversation.

  “Where?”

  “Frankfurt. Heidelberg,” Alex said. “A number of places. Just eat your food. We’ll turn you over to be held when we get the chance.”

  “I’m from Mannheim, not far from Heidelberg,” the young man said. “I always hoped to attend the university in Heidelberg—but I ended up in the army instead.”

  Alex looked away, didn’t say anything else, but he wondered what the boy was up to. Maybe he wanted to be sure that all was well, that this American wouldn’t chat with him, like a friend, and then shoot him. Or maybe he wanted Alex to get careless and make a mistake. Either way, Alex was uneasy—not only with the young man but with himself.

  Alex ate a fruit bar and some chocolate from his K rations. He tried a dry biscuit but hated the taste and chucked it away. He was lifting his canteen to his mouth when bullets began to fly. He heard the pop, the pounding in the dirt over his head.

  Alex grabbed his Tommy gun and dove forward onto his face. “It’s coming from those trees, up the hill,” he whispered to his men. Then he scrambled across the road, where the bank on that side afforded some protection. He worked his way along the bank, closer to the shooter, got a grenade loose from his belt, pulled the pin, and then lofted it up the hillside, into the trees.

  Two other grenades hit in quick succession, and all his men began firing their weapons. Nothing was coming back, but Alex didn’t know whether a sniper was up there or a whole patrol. Maybe the grenades had taken them out.

  “Cox, come with me,” Alex called, but in that instant, as he turned, he caught a glimpse of movement across the road. He spun around in time to see that the young German prisoner was reaching for a rifle, which was lying on the ground next to an American, who was down on his face. Alex swung his machine gun around and fired a quick burst at the boy. Bullets caught him in the chest, and his body slumped, and then he jerked as several more rounds pumped into him.

  At the same time, Alex saw the older man begin to raise his arms. But someone else fired, and the man caught a bullet in the forehead. Blood flew, and the man fell back. Alex dropped down to one knee and watched for any movement, but both Germans lay still. “What’s going on up in those trees?” he said, still trying to keep his voice down.

  Cox had already scrambled up the bank. He called back, “They’re down. We got them.” But a second later he moaned, “Oh, no,” and then he cursed.

  “What?”

  “They’re Americans. And they’re both dead.”

  Alex felt a surge of nausea, but he took a long breath, and he made a choice. “All right. It’s over. They made a mistake. We had to return fire. But now we need to get out of here. What about this man over here? Is he dead?”

  Nunez was kneeling next to the boy who had been hit by the machine gun fire. The light had increased enough that Alex could see it was Lloyd who was down, and he was hit in the chest. As Alex walked closer, he could hear gurgling as Lloyd fought to breathe. Nunez was cursing, fighting through his pockets, trying to find something—maybe a bandage. But Lloyd took a last, sputtering pull of air and then stopped.

  Nunez swore, bitterly, and slammed his fist against his thigh.

  “That’s enough,” Alex said. “We’ve got to move before we all get shot up. Let’s go. This fire could draw a crowd.”

  “I can’t just leave him out here like this,” Nunez said.

  “We don’t have any choice. Come on.”

  Alex led out this time. But as he walked away, he looked at the German soldier he had killed. The boy was lying on his side, curled up, his head on his arm, like a child asleep. Alex was taking long, steady breaths and commanding himself not to think about what had just happened.

  Cox stepped up next to him. “That German kid made his own choice,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know,” was all Alex said. In the distance, he could hear that the navy and air force bombardment had begun—the softening up before the soldiers hit the beaches. A constant, thundering roar was rolling across the countryside. It sounded as though hell had broken wide open. And it felt that way in his chest, too.

  Chapter 28

  By 0700 Alex had finally made contact with his battalion—or at least some of his officers and a group of about one hundred men, many of them not actually members of the unit. Alex had kept moving toward his assembly point, and he and his makeshift squad had eventually found a group about the size of a platoon, made up mostly of men from D Company. The troops had continued together until they reached a crossroads, where the 2nd Battalion of the 506th was setting up a headquarters about three kilometers from Ste. Marie-du-Mont. “We’re sorting things out as best we can,” Captain Giles, from Headquarters Company, told Alex. “We’ve got a few other men here from your company, but I don’t know where Captain Morehead is, or any of the rest of your officers. Major Higginson has an order for E Company to handle, and I’m afraid that means you.”

  “What about Summers, our platoon leader? Where’s he?”

  “Thomas, you’re it. We’ve got men scattered all over this peninsula, and no one knows when they’ll get here. We’ve got four big jobs that absolutely have to be taken care of, and we don’t have enough men to make up a company, let alone a

  battalion. We’ll put together a squad for you and send in

  reinforcements as soon as we can. If an officer gets here, I’ll send him down to take over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Giles looked tired. His uniform was covered with dirt, and he had a deep scratch across his face. “There are four big guns a few hundred meters off that way,” he said. He pointed down a slope to the northeast. “They’re big, 105 millimeter cannon, and they’re zeroed in on Utah Beach. The Germans must have a forward observer, on a telephone, calling the shots, because the guns are raising havoc with the 4th Infantry that’s trying to get on shore.”

  “Are those the guns I can hear?”

  “Yes. Our intelligence maps don’t show the emplacements, so we must have missed them. We sent out scouts, and they tell us the guns are dug into a hedgerow and are connected by a network of trenches. The gun crews have a pretty good-sized force of men protecting them—maybe a platoon.”

  “How many men do I get?”

  “How many came in with you?”

  “Eight, counting me. But only two of us are from the 506th.”

  “That doesn’t matter. For right now, we’re keeping anyone who’s here. I’ve also got six other guys from E Company. They’re just up the road; I’ll send them down to you.”

  Alex took a breath. He nodded. And then he tried not to sound as though he were complaining when he said, “Fourteen of us against a platoon?”

  “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to do what you can. We’re spread out trying to guard against attacks from four directions. Everyone is crying for more men.”

  “All right. What about weapons? Can we get a couple of machine guns?”

  “Yes. We already talked about that. I’ll have those brought over. But as soon as your men get here, move out.”

  Alex saluted. The captain tossed off a quick salute and began to walk away, but then he turned back. “Thomas, we’ve got a lot of troops trying to get across that beach. If we can’t knock those guns
out right away, we at least have to disrupt their fire. It’s absolutely urgent.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alex tried to act calm, but he was having a hard time getting his breath. He told his men to rest for a few minutes—and to eat something again—but he decided to wait for the other men to arrive before he explained the order. He used the time to think how he could attack a much larger force, already dug in, but he felt like an actor who had just stepped on stage and forgotten his lines. Nothing was coming to him. His spirits took a huge leap, however, when he saw Duncan and Rizzardi walking down the road, with Campbell and Bentley behind them. Duncan was carrying a machine gun, and Rizzardi had bandoliers of ammunition thrown over his shoulders. Behind the men from his squad were two others, also packing a machine gun and ammo. They were from another platoon, but Alex knew them both: a private named Handley and a corporal named Petersen.

  “Hey, Deacon,” Duncan said as he approached, “they told us we have a little job to do.” He laughed.

  The men were dusty, and the paint on Duncan’s face was smeared, but none of them looked like they had seen any real action. Cox got up and greeted them. “Man, it’s good to see you guys,” he kept saying.

  Alex was too nervous to laugh or make small talk, but he felt good to have some men he knew he could depend on. “What happened to the rest of our squad?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” Duncan answered. “The four of us all landed in the same big field, but we never saw anyone else. It’s lucky we ran into Handley and Petersen. They figured out how to get over here. Me and Rizzardi had our own plan. We were going to grab a taxi and see if we could get to Paris.” He laughed again, in his enormous voice.

  “No one saw McCoy?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Curtis said. “And we spent some time looking for the other guys.”

  “McCoy got hit before he ever jumped,” Alex said. “His leg was bleeding pretty bad.”

  Rizzardi cursed. “Him and Huff always stick together. Maybe Huff took care of him.”

  “If they found each other.” Alex stepped back a little and pointed to the other men. “These guys are assigned to us for right now,” he said. “They’re from the 82nd. Did the captain tell you about the guns?”