Comes the War

by Ed Ruggero

Lowell couldn’t help herself; she smiled.

  Then, a phrase she was pretty sure she had never heard anyone utter—but which sounded like something Eddie Harkins would say—Lowell whispered to Moore, “Take your best shot.”

  25

  28 April 1944

  0200 hours

  “Mind if I climb in?” Harkins asked a staff sergeant who sat in the front right seat of a jeep. It was one of the few vehicles on the deck of the LST—Landing Ship, Tank—that had its canvas cover in place.

  “Sure, Lieutenant. Be my guest.”

  Harkins pushed into the back, where the seat had been removed and replaced with two large wooden crates. By taking his life preserver from around his waist he managed to squeeze between the boxes and get his butt down on the cold steel floor of the jeep. It was cramped, but he escaped the spray that had been blowing off the channel since they left port three hours earlier. Harkins could just see, when the sliver of moon came out from behind the clouds, the dark shapes of other ships in the convoy.

  “What outfit are you guys with?” Harkins asked.

  “Five-five-seven Quartermaster,” the sergeant said without turning around. He had drawn his shoulders up almost to his ears, arms crossed, neck wrapped in a pair of field trousers he was using as a scarf. Harkins couldn’t see the man’s face, could not immediately place his accent.

  “You?” the man asked, turning partway around. From Harkins’ perch low in the back the sergeant looked like a pile of blankets.

  “I’m with SHAEF,” Harkins lied. He’d spent the last two days near Portsmouth waiting for the exercise to begin, and everyone who asked seemed satisfied with that answer. SHAEF was so big that it was like saying, “I’m in the army.”

  “Name’s Harkins.”

  “Jesus Cortizo.”

  Harkins heard it now. The accent of someone whose first language was Spanish. When Harkins was in California for training in ’42, he’d spent two of his precious weekend liberties flirting with a black-haired Mexican American barmaid named Louisa. She let him hold her hand one night. When he shipped out, he asked for her address so he could write, but he lost the slip of paper on the train back east.

  “What do you guys do?” Harkins asked. “On the beach, I mean.”

  “Ammo and rations. Track what’s coming in, what we need more of, what’s going out.”

  “Will you do all that for this exercise?” Harkins asked.

  They were headed for a stretch of the Devon coast that was similar, the planners thought, to what they would find on the still-secret invasion beaches. Operation Tiger was a giant dress rehearsal: scores of ships, thousands of men, hundreds of vehicles, and tons of supplies and equipment.

  “We’ll do most of it,” Cortizo said. “We’ll set up, but I don’t think they’ll push all the beans and bullets to us. Not for this practice run, anyway.”

  A wave slapped the side of the ship, spraying the deck, the steady wind from the south driving the water like birdshot. Harkins noticed that Cortizo’s legs were wrapped in a waterproof poncho.

  “I think it’s a bit warmer down below,” Harkins said. He tried pulling his shoulders higher, felt a rivulet of cold seawater tracing his spine. “Certainly drier.”

  “Nah, I was down there before.”

  “Did you see that poker game?” Harkins asked. “That was a big pile of cash.”

  When he’d first come on board, Harkins had been shunted below to the tank deck, just at the waterline. Because this ship carried mostly troops of the First Engineer Brigade, the heavy vehicles were not battle tanks but bulldozers and trucks loaded with stacks of steel matting that could be used to manufacture an instant airstrip. The cavernous space stretched nearly the entire length of the ship, which Harkins guessed was longer than a football field, and it was jammed with vehicles parked bumper to bumper, wheel hub to wheel hub. Seasick men lay about, draped over hoods and mechanics’ boxes and machine-gun mounts, heads down, vomit running across the deck. Harkins watched as gangs of sailors, the ship’s crew, hurried back and forth, checking the chained-down cargo. The navy men wore blue dungarees, wet weather jackets, and helmets stenciled USN. The sailors wore their life belts a little loose, low on their hips, like gunslingers in some movie Western. He did not see anyone showing the army guys how to wear the belts, so most of the soldiers kept them snug around the waist.

  A navy lieutenant told him the LSTs had flat bottoms so they could run up on the beach to discharge their loads through big doors in the bow, but the hull’s shape meant they rode poorly in even the smallest swells. Harkins felt the vessel’s rolls deep in his gut as soon as the ship left the harbor’s protection and hit the channel proper.

  “I was in that poker game,” Cortizo said. “I was up eleven hundred dollars.”

  Harkins figured the man’s use of the past tense meant he didn’t walk away with his winnings.

  “Should have cashed out then,” Cortizo said. “But there was this first sergeant, one of those goddamned know-it-all types, you know?”

  Harkins nodded, even though Cortizo was still facing the front of the jeep and couldn’t see him.

  “I just didn’t like the guy,” Cortizo said. “The way he looked at me. He made a crack about Mexicans.”

  Every one of the dozens of card games Harkins had been in during his twenty-eight months in the army had featured some sort of comment like that. He’d been called every possible combination of “mick,” “drunk,” and “Paddy,” often by other Irish Americans.

  “Anyway, this guy had about forty bucks left, and I figured I’d quit after I took that money from him.”

  The ship took a sickening heave, and Harkins jumped as somebody dropped something heavy that clanged on the deck.

  “So, did you get his forty bucks?” he asked.

  “No,” Cortizo said. “But that bastard got my eleven hundred.”

  The noncom laughed suddenly, kept chuckling as he lifted his helmet off, wiped his bald head with a sleeve. He turned around fully and Harkins could just see the bottom half of his face in the starlight. He was smiling.

  “Maybe he was right,” Cortizo laughed. “Maybe I am a dumb beaner!”

  He slapped his thigh, and for an instant Harkins thought that was what caused the explosion.

  The world went white and all sound disappeared. Harkins was thrown hard against the wooden crate to his left, while Cortizo shot across the driver’s seat and out onto the deck, legs in the air, head down.

  Harkins, moving in a silent world, scrambled to get out of the jeep, using both hands to hoist himself toward the front. His head felt like it had been spiked and there was a high whine as his hearing returned. The first sound he heard was a low groan, fear mixed with pain. It was coming from his own chest.

  Harkins pushed himself clear of the jeep and landed on Cortizo. He clambered to his knees, lifted Cortizo by one arm.

  “Can you move?” Harkins shouted.

  Cortizo’s face was orange and red, lit by a nearby fire. The ship was ablaze, flames leaping above the starboard rail, flames crawling out of the hatches in the deck. The truck to their right was already engulfed, its canvas top fluttering like burning laundry on a windy day. A giant wall of black smoke leaped from the flames; for the moment, the wind off the channel was pushing it off the deck.

  “Come on, we’ve gotta get off the ship!” Harkins screamed.

  “I can’t swim!” Cortizo said.

  “Inflate your life preserver,” Harkins said. He clawed at Cortizo’s jacket, pulled away the poncho he’d been huddled under.

  “I don’t know how,” Cortizo said. He wasn’t looking at the belt; his eyes were locked on Harkins.

  “Nobody showed you?”

  Cortizo shook his head. “They just handed them out.”

  They were crouched on the deck, the heat on their backs already tremendous. The jeep shielded them for the moment, but they had to move or they’d be roasted alive. Harkins grabbed Cortizo by the collar and yanked him to his f
eet. They had to get to the port rail, just a few feet away.

  Harkins took a step, then was knocked down by a man who stumbled into him. It was a sailor, his clothing on fire, his hair a torch. He didn’t make a sound, just raised his burning arms to heaven before falling to his knees, then onto his face.

  Harkins tugged Cortizo, pushed the sergeant up against the port-side safety line. He grabbed the tubes on Cortizo’s life preserver, pulling them free.

  “Push this down,” he yelled, showing the sergeant how to open the valve. “Blow into the tube. Fast.”

  As Cortizo started inflating his preserver, Harkins looked over the noncom’s shoulder at the spreading fire. It was hard to tell, but the ship seemed to be slowing and turning. The dense plume of smoke was no longer being pushed completely over the rail. If the wind shifted or the ship turned into it at a different angle, they’d be enveloped, probably blinded, certainly in danger of choking to death.

  Harkins looked at Cortizo, cheeks swollen as he tried to inflate the life belt. Harkins reached for his own.

  It wasn’t there.

  He’d removed it to squeeze into the jeep, which was now burning just a few feet away.

  “Shit!”

  Harkins looked left and right. Many of the vehicles on the main deck were on fire, and there was a blanket of flame spreading across the water on the starboard side.

  The fuel oil on the water is burning.

  He looked over the port rail, where the water was definitely farther away than it had been before; the vessel was listing to starboard. An explosion of some sort had set the tank deck on fire and probably blew a hole in the hull. The ship was dying.

  “I got it!” Cortizo shouted. He’d managed to inflate the life belt, though the top chamber was not as full as the bottom. Harkins thought there might be a leak, but he didn’t want to add to Cortizo’s panic.

  “We have to go over the side,” Harkins said.

  He could see Cortizo’s mouth move but could not hear him over the rush of the flames and the crash of vehicles tearing loose from their bindings and tumbling toward the starboard rail. A few feet away there was a tremendous burst of wind from one of the gratings as water filled the belowdecks and forced out the air.

  “What?”

  “It’s a big jump,” Cortizo said.

  “It’s only going to get higher,” Harkins screamed, just an inch from the man’s face. He pointed to his right, where the channel water was already moving across the deck, spilled oil showing blue and silver in the firelight. As he watched, the water found the open ventilation hatches in the deck and sluiced in. The cavernous tank deck would flood quickly. God help the men down there.

  “I’ll go first!” Harkins said.

  Cortizo, eyes wide with terror, nodded, crossed himself. Then everything went black as smoke from the fuel oil fire found them. Mercifully, the wind shifted a tiny bit, driving the smoke back, but not before Harkins had sucked in enough to bend him over in a coughing fit, his lungs rebelling, as if suddenly filled with broken glass. Cortizo had his hands over his face.

  Harkins forced himself upright, lifted one foot to the rail, and that’s when he saw the trapped men.

  He was facing aft, toward the superstructure. Near the base and on the starboard side there was a hatch, one of those small ship’s doors you had to duck to go through. It was open only a few inches, but in the firelight Harkins could see that there was a man, no, two men, maybe three, pushing against the door from the inside, trying to force it open. One man had stuck his leg through, the door pinching him.

  Harkins put his foot back on the deck. “You go first,” he said to Cortizo.

  The sergeant shook his head, mouth open. His face was bathed in sweat and soot where the smoke had curled around them.

  “You have to help me when we get to the water!”

  Harkins did not want to tell Cortizo that he was going alone.

  “You go first, then I can dive in beside you to help. Your life belt will keep you afloat.” To reinforce his point he tugged at the inflated belt, pulling it snug around Cortizo’s waist.

  The sergeant’s face was contorted with pain, with indecision. Another tendril of smoke snaked out from the cliff face of black behind them. A wind shift would kill them before they had a chance to drown.

  “Get over the fucking side!” Harkins shouted. “Or I’ll throw you over!”

  Cortizo pulled himself up onto the rail. The side of the ship was no longer vertical, but was on a steep angle toward the water. The smoke backed off a few yards, but the volcano sound of the fire was only getting louder.

  “You have to go!” Harkins screamed. Cortizo gave his head a violent shake, said something in Spanish. Maybe a prayer.

  Harkins looked back to where the men were trapped by the jammed hatch. They had not made any progress, and it looked like they were losing their footing as the angle of the list increased.

  Harkins turned back toward Cortizo, put his mouth up against the man’s ear. “Just paddle away from the ship any way you can,” he said. Then he pried Cortizo’s fingers from the rail and the man rolled down the side of the hull and into the black water.

  Harkins hugged the port rail as he moved aft toward the superstructure and the trapped men. There were safety handholds welded to the front of the tower, and he held on as he let himself slip down the tilting deck toward the starboard side and the rising water. The closer he got to the jammed hatch, the more heat he felt from the fire. The ship had to be listing thirty degrees or more. Harkins slipped on some spilled fuel and only kept from sliding down the deck by hanging on with one hand, before getting his feet under him again.

  He reached the corner of the superstructure and peered around. The jammed hatch was only a few feet away. The heat here was massive, like backing into a furnace.

  Harkins made it to the door, which was now facing the water as the ship leaned over. The man who’d stuck his leg through wasn’t visible. There had to be another hatch, a way out of the bridge area, maybe on the port side. He put his face close to the narrow opening. “Can you get to the other side?”

  “No!”

  A sailor pushed his face into the gap. He was just a kid, maybe eighteen. “You gotta help us!”

  Another face appeared below the first, a soldier bleeding from an ugly gash at his hairline.

  Harkins grabbed the edge of the door, which was hot to the touch, and pulled backward. When it didn’t budge, he used all of his weight, hoping that it wouldn’t give way so suddenly that he’d fall into the water behind him.

  Nothing.

  He did a quick look around the edge of the hatch. It looked like one or two of the dogs—the large wrench-like handles that held the hatch shut and kept it watertight—had been jammed by the explosion. If he could move them half an inch, he might free the men.

  “I’ll be right back,” Harkins yelled.

  “Don’t you leave us!” the young sailor screamed, hysterical with panic. “Don’t leave us!”

  Harkins didn’t turn back, as there was no time to argue. He moved up the deck, some part of his mind weirdly focused, trying to calculate the slant. An explosion below deck knocked him to his knees; the steel plates were griddle hot.

  On his first pass by the superstructure he’d seen a long-handled wrench secured in a binding at the base of the bridge. It was one of the tools the sailors used to tighten the chains locking cargo to the deck. He unhooked the clasp and pulled it free, nearly dropping the wrench into the water.

  He slid down the deck toward the trapped men, and when he reached the hatch and stood, he was in water up to his calves. It was possible the ship would settle—that is, sink more or less evenly—but it could also capsize. Flip over in a sickening instant, in which case Harkins would not escape.

  Harkins heard a man inside the hatch yell, “He’s back! He’s back!”

  He struggled to get his footing, braced himself on the lip of a locker, and started banging away at the bent dogs. Three hard
swings and the first handle snapped off. He shifted his weight to have a go at the second, but slipped and dropped the wrench.

  “Fuck!”

  “Come on, come on!” the men inside shouted.

  Harkins looked down, saw the wrench and some other detritus in a foot of water and oil that now covered the deck; the stench of the fuel stung his nose and lungs. If the fire reached the oil, he was a dead man. He reached for the wrench but did not look up to see how far away the flames were.

  He took a big swing at the last bent dog, which popped off and hit him on the side of his face. Harkins staggered, shook it off, moved out of the way. The men inside pushed and the hatch swung open, spilling them like tossed trash. At least one of them tumbled full body in the water.

  The young sailor and the GI with the head wound did not look at Harkins, but clawed their way up the slanting deck to the port rail.

  The next sailor out offered his hand to pull Harkins up, shouted, “Thanks!”

  Another man, a navy ensign, was still in the opening.

  “Come on!” Harkins yelled.

  “I need help,” the officer said.

  The ensign, one hand on either side of the hatch, leaned back so that Harkins could see inside the companionway. Another sailor lay on the deck, one leg braced on the bulkhead to keep him from sliding, the other leg gone at the knee and tied off with a crude tourniquet.

  It was the man who’d forced his leg through the hatch. Harkins looked down into the water again, toward where he’d found the wrench. The man’s leg was in the tangled mess of spilled equipment.

  Harkins climbed inside, and—though he would never remember how they did it—he and the ensign got the wounded sailor out onto the deck, up and over the port rail.

  The navy men had life belts, and Harkins found one floating in the water, already inflated. He held it as they paddled about a hundred yards, towing the wounded man, who was now unconscious. They stopped and, as Harkins struggled to wrap the life belt around himself, the ensign shouted, “Under your armpits!”

  “What?”

  “If you put it around your waist it’ll flip you over and you’ll drown!”