Allies

by Alan Gratz

  Private Bryan Murphy, the tank’s redheaded gun loader, leaned over the rail and smoked a cigarette, staying out of their squabbling. In two years of service, Bill had heard the man say maybe ten words.

  “War is good for business,” Davies said tartly.

  “But bad for them that fights in it,” Bill said. Through his binoculars, he saw one of the floating tanks flip and go under, sinking beneath the waves. “Wellington just went down to Davy Jones’s locker!” he called.

  Lieutenant Walter Lewis, Bill’s tank commander, leaped up on top of Achilles and took Bill’s binoculars. Lewis was career army. He wore a thin black mustache on his upper lip and smelled of tobacco from the pipe he kept almost permanently lit. He clenched his pipe in his teeth now as he cursed. “And there go Indefatigable and Mamma’s Boy!”

  Even without the binoculars, Bill could see the tanks disappearing one by one beneath the waves. None of them made it to shore. Bill anxiously scanned the waves, worried the crews had drowned. He thought he saw the heads of surviving tank crewmen popping up in the water, but it was hard to be sure.

  “Time to float the tanks!” one of the navy boys called down from the boat’s tiny bridge.

  “Oh no it isn’t!” Lieutenant Lewis said. He thrust the binoculars back in Bill’s hands and leaped from the top of the tank to the ladder up to the bridge. “Damn your eyes, man, can’t you see what happened to the rest of the tanks? You’ve got to take us all the way!”

  Bill couldn’t hear the argument on the bridge, but he could tell the navy boys were scared. And well they should be. Bill could see the smoking remains of landing craft that had been hit by the German 88s and mortars. This boat’s crew didn’t want to get any closer than they had to. But Bill could also see the explosions on the beach, heard the drum of the machine-gun fire across the waves. There were hundreds of Allied soldiers on the beach—thousands—and they were dying left and right.

  Bill thought of William the Conqueror and the invasion of England from France in 1066. That William had brought with him something like ten thousand men, three thousand of them on horses. Bill figured that he and his tank crew were like the British Army’s cavalry. Bill’s regiment—the Royal Dragoons—had even started as a mounted infantry unit in the 1920s before switching from horses to tanks for the Second World War. William the Conqueror couldn’t have won the Battle of Hastings without his cavalry, and the Allies weren’t going to win D-Day without their tanks. They needed the Royal Dragoons, but all the rest of them had sunk. The three tanks on this boat—his tank, Achilles, and the other two, Valiant and Coventry’s Revenge—were the only ones left in the whole sector.

  Lieutenant Lewis came back, packing tobacco into his pipe, and Bill knew that meant business.

  “First the damn fool wanted to let us off here to drown. Then he threatened to turn around and go back out to sea!” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Said we’ve drifted too far west. Might end up on the British beach at Gold, where we belong, or on the Yankee beach at Omaha, or somewhere in between. I told him we were going to land on some beach, by God, and that he was going to take us all the way in! Get Achilles fired up. We’re going in!”

  Bill climbed down into the American-made Sherman tank with the others. The space inside was tight for five people, but they each had room to do their jobs.

  Bill was the driver, with a seat right up front and a tiny periscope to see through. Beside Bill, Thomas worked the .30-caliber front machine gun. Lieutenant Lewis sat with his head out a hatch at the top, the tank’s real eyes and ears. Davies sat in the gunner’s seat in the turret, and Murphy, his loader, sat right behind him with a hundred tank rounds under his feet.

  They called their tank Achilles, after the Greek hero who’d been made invulnerable when his mother dipped him in the river Styx. They were hoping that invulnerability carried over to them too.

  Bill turned the ignition. Achilles belched exhaust and roared to life, and he felt that good deep-down rumble in his stomach that told him the tank was alive. In front of them and behind them, Coventry’s Revenge and Valiant revved their engines too.

  “Think we’ll make it to Bayeux?” Thomas asked Bill over the growl of the engine. “Get a look at the Bayeux Tapestry?”

  Just the thought of it made Bill’s skin prickle. The Bayeux Tapestry was a long, embroidered cloth sewn almost nine hundred years ago that told the whole story of William the Conqueror’s Norman invasion of England. Bill had a shelf full of books about it at home, complete with color pictures. Knowing how much he loved to pore over them, Bill’s wife, Maggie, had hand-embroidered his favorite scene—the part where William’s horse falls but William lifts his helmet to signal to his troops that he is still alive, a perfect reproduction down to the last stitch!—and presented it to him just before he left for the war. With luck, Bill’s path up and off the beach and into France would take him right through the city where the real tapestry was kept, and he would see the thing live and in person himself.

  “I’d dearly love to see it, I would,” said Bill. “So long as those lousy Krauts haven’t nicked it and scarpered off to Berlin with it. But the French town I’d really like to get to is Amiens.”

  “What does Amiens have to do with William the Conqueror?” Thomas asked.

  “Not a thing that I know of,” said Bill. “But it has everything to do with me dad, Jack the Conqueror.” Bill smiled, remembering. “He was a tank driver just like me, in the First World War. Fought in the Hundred Days Offensive, he did. And one day while they stopped for an oil change he carved ‘Jack Richards was here 1918’ on a stone. I’d surely like to find that stone and carve ‘Bill Richards was here 1944’ on it, just below me dad’s name.”

  Bill nodded to himself. For the rest of his crewmates, today was Operation Neptune—the Allied invasion of Normandy. But for Bill, today was the start of what he’d come to think of as “Operation Amiens”—his mission to survive until he could find the very stone his father carved his name into.

  “How touching,” Davies said from above. “And I suppose twenty-five years from now, your son will come back during the Third World War and add his name too.”

  “Haven’t got a son yet,” Bill said, “though me dear wife, Maggie, was expecting our first when I shipped out. Won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl for another three months. If it is a son, I expect he’ll follow in me footsteps, the way I’ve followed in me dad’s.”

  “If there’s another war,” Thomas said.

  “There’s always another war,” said Davies.

  “Look alive down there!” Lieutenant Lewis called down to them. “We’re almost onshore.”

  Bill rocked with Achilles as the boat hit the sand. Through his periscope, he could just see the coxswain, the navy boy whose job it was to drop the ramp in front. The coxswain yanked on the door release, and the ramp fell down. Almost immediately, the inside of the transport boat was riddled with bullets. The coxswain was hit and went down, and bullets pinged off Coventry’s Revenge.

  Bill cringed. We’re in the soup now for sure, all right, he thought.

  Coventry’s Revenge charged down the ramp, hitting the waves with a splash and storming up and to the right.

  “Full ahead!” Lewis yelled.

  Bill heaved both levers forward, and Achilles roared out into the battle.

  The boat deck shifted uneasily beneath them, and Bill fought to keep Achilles on target. He was watching the tank ahead of them storm its way up the beach when—shiiiii-BOOM!—a shell from a German 88-mm gun slammed into Coventry’s Revenge, and the tank exploded from the inside out.

  Bill jumped out of his seat, clanging his head against his hatch. Beside him, Thomas yelled out an obscenity.

  “Hard left! Hard left!” Lieutenant Lewis cried.

  That was the direction Bill had been headed. Coventry’s Revenge to the right, Achilles to the left, Valiant up the middle. That was the plan. But now the burning remains of Coventry’s Revenge were half in Bill’s way.

&
nbsp; Each stick controlled the direction of the tank treads on that side, and Bill turned by pushing one stick forward and pulling the other backward in reverse. He could turn Achilles on a shilling if he needed to. Bill yanked back on his left stick and pushed forward with his right and heard the metallic groan as Achilles sheared along the side of what was left of Coventry’s Revenge.

  “Full ahead now!” Lewis cried. “Turret a quarter right!”

  Bill drove Achilles up the beach. Thomas was awfully quiet and still beside him, and Bill saw with a quick glance that the color had drained from his friend’s face. Thomas hadn’t ever been in a real battle before, and what he was seeing and hearing clearly had him spooked.

  “It was me dad who got me interested in the Bayeux Tapestry in the first place,” Bill said.

  “Hunh?” Thomas said.

  “Me dad,” Bill said, trying to distract his co-driver from the horror going on outside the tank. “I never did take to me studies in school, but I loved them books me dad had about the invasion and the tapestry.”

  “It’s—it’s not really a tapestry, you know,” Thomas said. Some of the color had come back into his face, and he seemed to return to his senses. He put his eye to his gun sight and fired at a German emplacement on the cliffs. “Even though it’s called a tapestry, it’s more like embroidery. Ladies’ needlework.”

  Bill knew that, but it was good to get Thomas talking again, thinking about something else besides this battle.

  “Hell’s bells, it’s a slaughterhouse out there,” Davies said, ignoring the both of them as he swiveled the big gun. “And I think we are on the wrong beach, sir. Those look like Yank uniforms.”

  “Then we’ll help our American cousins get up and off the beach,” Lewis said.

  A mortar explosion struck right in front of the tank. It didn’t rattle Bill—he felt insulated inside the four armored walls of the tank, like he was untouchable. Invulnerable. But seeing Coventry’s Revenge go up like that right out of the gate had clearly fazed his co-driver. Poor Thomas jumped and ducked at every ping and boom.

  “What I like about the Bayeux Tapestry,” Bill said, hoping to calm his friend—and himself—“is that it’s got everything. Generals and knights. Horses and boats. Cities and castles. Priests and doctors.”

  Someone screamed outside, the unmistakable cry of someone dying in pain.

  “And—and things you wouldn’t expect in a war story too,” Thomas added, playing along with Bill. “Like ladies and dogs and cows. Halley’s Comet even shows up in it, though they call it a star.”

  “Will you two clodpoles shut up about the bloody Bayeux Tapestry already?” Davies demanded.

  “Valiant’s stuck!” Lieutenant Lewis reported. “She’s having to back into the water and come ashore again.”

  Two tanks down, one left. So it’s Achilles versus the world now, Bill thought.

  Bullets pinged off the tank, and mortars exploded nearby, but none of that fazed Bill. He knew they wouldn’t even ding Achilles’s armor. It was the big gun on the cliff they had to worry about.

  “I see it! The German 88!” Lewis yelled down. “It’s pointed at the beach and encased in a concrete bunker!”

  The long stretch of beach they were attacking ran east to west, with tall cliffs at each end hiding German gun emplacements. Most of the emplacements pointed toward the sea, to repel ships, but at least one—the one that had taken out Coventry’s Revenge—was aimed at the beach.

  “Range: seven hundred yards!” Lewis called.

  “Seventy-five millimeter!” Davies yelled to his loader.

  “Up!” Murphy yelled.

  “I’ve got it!” Davies said, sighting the German gun emplacement through his view scope.

  “Fire when ready, Davies!” Lewis yelled.

  Bill braced for the kick and crash of Achilles launching a 75-mm shell a quarter of mile away, but—THOOM!—something hit his tank first, lifting the Sherman off the ground and tossing everyone around inside like bowling pins.

  Thomas slammed into the wall and dropped to the floor. Davies fell out of his seat, and Murphy grunted as tank shells fell over and rattled around. Bill just managed to hang on to the control rods in front of him.

  “What the devil hit us?” Davies asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bill said, wrenching at the controls. “But I’ve lost steering on the left side!”

  The others collected themselves, and Lieutenant Lewis picked up his pipe and climbed back up through his hatch on top for a look. “There aren’t any guns in range to the east!” he yelled, as confused as the rest of them.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Bill flung open the hatch above his head and peeked over the side. There was a huge crater in the sand, half underneath Achilles, and inside the crater lay the snarled remains of the tank’s left tread.

  Bill slithered back inside as bullets whizzed by. “A mine!” he told the crew. There was no way they could have seen it buried there, and the soldiers running around outside weren’t heavy enough to set it off. Only a tank’s weight could have activated it. “We’ve thrown a tread!”

  Up top, Lewis cursed. “Did nobody remember Achilles was killed by an arrow in his heel?” he said bitterly.

  “That’s better than William the Conqueror,” said Bill. “When he died, he was too fat for his coffin, you know, and when they tried to squeeze him into it, his bowels burst. The stench of it drove everybody from the room.”

  Murphy was helping Thomas bandage his head, but they both paused to stare at Bill.

  “Turret still works, sir!” Davies said, readjusting his aim.

  Bill looked up hopefully with the rest of them.

  “Fire when you’ve got it!” Lieutenant Lewis yelled.

  A moment’s hesitation, and then: P-TOM. Bill felt the familiar kick as Achilles recoiled, rocking slightly over the hole under its left side. Bill was usually focused on driving, changing course after the shot had been fired, but now all he could do was sit and listen for the report.

  There was a muffled poom in the distance, and Lieutenant Lewis swore again.

  “Too low,” he said.

  “That’s as high as she’ll go,” Davies said. “We need more elevation.”

  Shhhh-THOOM. Bill flinched as something big exploded a few dozen yards away, showering Achilles with sand and rock.

  “The German 88. They’re shooting back at us,” Lieutenant Lewis said, cool as the River Mersey in February.

  Bill shivered, truly afraid for his life for the first time that day. That German gun had taken out Coventry’s Revenge in a single shot. As soon as it had Achilles in range, they were goners, and they all knew it. They were sitting ducks. But to abandon the tank with everything else going on outside was just as absurd. They had to take out that German 88 before it took them out.

  Davies smacked his turret controls. “I just can’t aim any higher! Not from here!”

  No, Bill thought. It can’t end like this. Not before I get to Amiens! There had to be a way to dig themselves out of this hole they’d gotten themselves in.

  That was it!

  “The sand—the crater!” Bill cried. “Sir! If we dig out from under the tank, the barrel will shift higher! Half the work’s already done for us!”

  “Richards, Owens-Cook, get out there and do it!” Lewis ordered.

  “Me?” Bill said. He hadn’t meant to volunteer.

  “Us?” said Thomas.

  “You’re the drivers, and the one thing the tank can’t do is drive anymore. That makes the both of you redundant,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Now hurry!”

  Bill muttered his first curse of the day and grabbed a shovel hanging on the wall of the tank. There was no way he and Thomas together could dig out enough sand to shift Achilles in time, even if they weren’t shot. Not without the rest of the tank crew to help. But if everyone else came with them, there’d be no one to aim and fire the gun if they did manage to shift the tank.

  We’re completely and utterly jasp
ered, thought Bill.

  Bullets pinged against the side of the tank as Bill crouched beneath the hatch, gathering his courage to go outside. Ever since he’d joined the army, he’d done what he could to follow in his father’s footsteps. Become a tank driver. Get shipped off to France. Fight Germans. Getting to Amiens to see that stone his father had carved his name into had become an obsession. No—an expectation. Bill had known he was going to see that stone sure as eggs in April. But now that dream was crumbling faster than King Harold’s defenses at the Battle of Hastings.

  Another mortar exploded nearby, and Bill shook off his woolgathering. What he wanted and what he got were never the same thing, not since the day he was born. He was here, and he had a job to do. If he didn’t get outside the tank this instant, he was going to die inside it the next.

  Bill gave Thomas a nod, let out a quick jet of breath, and climbed out the hatch.

  Outside, the world was bright and full of death. Bodies rolled in the surf. Men cried out for medics. Machine guns peppered the sand. Black smoke still poured from Coventry’s Revenge, choking the air, and Valiant was still struggling to come ashore.

  Bill slithered over the side of the tank as quick as he could and dove into the sand.

  He landed on a soldier instead.

  Two soldiers. Three. Hands grabbed him and helped right him, and Bill found himself staring at more than half a dozen American soldiers. They filled every inch of space behind the tank.