The Steel Wave

by Jeff Shaara

  The man’s speech had too much volume, stabbed the silence.

  Adams grabbed his shoulder. “Shut up,” he whispered. “Krauts everywhere! You hear those machine guns? Come on. There’s a bunch of us over this way, a hundred yards or so. I’m Sergeant Adams. My lieutenant is in command there. More or less.”

  “You lost?”

  “We’re all lost. Any of your buddies around here?”

  “Don’t know. Nobody answered my cricket.”

  Adams didn’t respond, thought of Gavin. Yeah, I’m sure you loved this cricket idea.

  “Let’s go. Until you find your captain, you’re with us.”

  He began to move, crawling back toward the others, realized this part of the embankment was nearly the height of a man. To one side the field was open and flat, the embankment a stout wall of cover. He stood, kept himself low, and continued to move, Burkett silent behind him. Good. At least the One-oh-one teaches you how to be quiet. Adams stepped slowly, the ground soft, thick grass, and Burkett suddenly grabbed his arm. Adams froze, the man’s fingers digging into him, a soft whisper, close to his ear.

  “There! In the field!”

  Adams turned slowly, Burkett crouching behind him, and lowered himself as well, the Thompson coming up. He saw movement, blind shadows, sounds of footsteps in the grass.

  Burkett said in his ear, “Should I use the cricket?”

  Adams put a hand on the man’s chest, a silent no, stared at the dark motion, the shapes coming closer, no more than thirty yards away. He wrapped his fingers around the trigger of the Thompson, the shapes still moving, silent, more soft steps, closer still. Burkett raised his rifle, and Adams yelled in his brain, No, not yet! He wanted to grab Burkett’s arm, but he kept his grip on the Thompson, pointed it at the closest shadow, easing it up to his shoulder, aiming. The shapes began to take form now, closing the space between them, the shadows larger, heavy steps, ten yards, closer, and now a single loud echoing sound, shattering the dark.

  “Moooooooo!”

  Adams jumped, fought the need to laugh, the other shapes now clear in the darkness, gathering closer, a small herd. He felt his hands shaking. Burkett was down now, sitting, breathing hard.

  “I almost peed myself,” Burkett said.

  Adams grabbed the man’s shoulder, fought to keep the whisper, ignored the man’s embarrassment, said, “Let’s go.”

  They were up and moving again, the embankment dropping away into the thick brush, the direction Adams had come. He slowed, listened, Burkett mimicking his movements, and the word drifted toward them in a whisper.

  “Flash.”

  Adams didn’t hesitate. “Thunder.”

  He saw them now, in a low line, more than he expected. One man crawled toward him, Pullman, and Adams said, “He’s from the One-oh-one. Only one I found.”

  “A few others from the One-oh-one are here. Came in from that way. Looks like we’re scattered all to hell.” Pullman put a hand on his shoulder, leaned close. “You were right about staying put, Sergeant. As soon as it’s light enough to see, we might have enough people do something. Sergeant Davies is over there, a few of his platoon. He thinks there’s a bunch more of us past that far tree line. Krauts too.”

  Adams knew Davies well, another veteran of Sicily. Good.

  Behind him, a low whisper. “Hey, Sarge, you capture us some steak?”

  Adams was in no mood for Marley, ignored him, could see that Pullman was shivering, and Adams felt it himself. Have to take off these boots, he thought. He looked toward the men closest to him.

  “I need a pair of socks. You spare any?”

  One man rolled forward, silent, working the small cloth bag, held out a dark hand. Adams couldn’t see the man’s face, no sounds.

  “Thanks.”

  He sat, untied the wet boots, heard a low voice at the far end of the line.

  “Flash!”

  “Thunder.”

  Three more men emerged from the brush, low whispers, chattering excitement. Thank God. More of us. Pullman’s right. By dawn, we can get something done. Be damned nice if we could find someone with a BAR, or a heavy machine gun. Or a radio.

  He stripped away the waterlogged socks, hooked them on his belt, slid the dry socks onto his grateful feet. The boots were miserably wet; nothing he could do about that. He pulled hard on the soaked leather, the boots sliding on reluctantly, and laced them up quickly. Around him, the men were spreading out, digging in, more strength, shielded by the brush to one side, an open field of fire in front of them. Adams thought of the water, someone’s amazingly stupid mistake. Don’t we have observers? They take pictures, for God’s sake. How many did we lose? No, can’t think about that. There’s a flock of us all over these damned fields, and with a little daylight we can raise some hell. He stared out into darkness: nothing to see, the sounds of a truck in the distance, the rumble of artillery. Now the rumbles grew louder, low steady punches, and he stared that way, searching for flashes of light, but saw nothing; too far away. The sounds continued to grow, like a distant storm.

  Pullman moved close to him, pointed. “Northeast. You think…you think it might be—”

  Adams already knew. He had heard this before, on Sicily, incoming fire from guns far larger than anything the army took to the field. The heaviest shells came from the big ships, the massive naval artillery that would batter the enemy positions along the beaches. He glanced skyward, could see more of the thick gray above him, the first hint of precious daylight. My God, he thought. That’s coming from the beach. That’s how it happens. The bombers start it, and then the battleships, and when it’s light enough to see the men will follow.

  He stared out toward the open ground, toward hidden tree lines, where the clusters of German machine guns were rolling into place, men who had been scrambled out of their outposts to meet this assault from the paratroopers, an assault that had not yet truly begun. He felt nervous, anxious, his hands holding tightly to the Thompson. Come on, dammit. Just a little more daylight. We need to find more of us, somebody in charge. He moved up to one knee, glanced at the men along the hedgerow, his own men, his lieutenant, the others, movement in the darkness, the soft work of the shovels. Some were stopping now, staring out as he was, the distant sound growing louder still, the rumble rolling all through him, low punches in his gut.

  I wish I could see that, he thought, see it up close, right there, on the sand. Who’s going to stand up to that? Come on, boys. Come on, boys! He raised the Thompson slowly and held it high over his head, one man’s silent salute to so many others, those men who still had to cross the beach.

  * * *

  PART THREE

  * * *

  The spirits have been poured. It’s time to take a drink.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  * * *

  18. THORNE

  * * *

  By June 1944, the Twenty-ninth Infantry Division had been in southwestern England for more than eighteen months, longer than any other combat division in the American army. Their training had been both brutal and fun, depending of course on the weather and what they were ordered to do. Through the rugged countryside, they had practiced every kind of infantry operation: storming rocky beaches, launching full-scale assaults on unsuspecting farms, surprising farmers who stayed at their plows, cheering the troops as they flowed past. More than once, the troops had slipped quietly through gullies and streambeds, surprising hikers or young lovers who had thought the isolated countryside would offer a bit of privacy. For most of their training, they had no idea what they were being called upon to do; not even the officers were completely aware until a few days before the operation would begin. But long before that, they had won a hard-fought victory of another kind, capturing the affections of a large percentage of the English civilians. Beyond the rugged beaches and mock battlefields, many of the young soldiers embarked on a different sort of operation. It took place in the dance halls and pubs of so many villages and towns, where the girls looked with
smiling eagerness toward these Americans. The soldiers learned quickly that the enemy here was formidable and often as threatening as the Germans: the mothers who stood guard over the virtue of their daughters, vigilance that was often hopeless. Frequently, seduced by the uninhibited charms and deep pockets of the brash GIs, many of the mothers succumbed as well. But no matter their relentless assaults on the virtue of the Englishwomen, the soldiers had found a graciousness in the hospitality of most civilians, who seemed to recognize that these Americans brought something desperately necessary to this fight, that the loud voices and rude, boisterous habits of the GIs did not diminish the urgency of the job they had to do, a job the British could not accomplish by themselves.

  Throughout the infantry’s training, the high brass had come to the fields, Montgomery and Bradley and Eisenhower, with speeches and pep talks. The men were always grateful for the attention, if not for the speeches themselves. No matter what kind of encouragement the generals brought, it was a sign to the GIs that they were not forgotten, that the months of training had some meaning, that eventually they would be called upon to do something big.

  The 29th was called the Blue and Gray Division, their shoulder patches a simple yin-yang design of the two subtle colors, a reflection of the geography of their makeup. Most were from the eastern seaboard, Virginia and Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York. The division did not come into existence until World War One, but the individual infantry regiments had an extraordinary history of their own. All four, the 115th, 116th, 175th, and 176th, could trace their origins to colonial times, and even before. One in particular, the 116th, had been assembled from men who spent their youth in and around famous battlefields of another war, descendants of many who marched through fights that ripped across Virginia in the 1860s. Those men had been raised with the glorious stories of the famous men that their grandparents stood beside and even worshiped. The 116th Regiment had evolved directly from the old 2nd Virginia, a Confederate unit whose extraordinary reputation had come under the leadership of a man whose legacy was a part of every Virginian, who had earned much of his legendary reputation in the Shenandoah Valley. It was natural that the 116th would name themselves after this most vivid hero of their homeland. They began to call themselves the Stonewall Brigade.

  The 116th had filed aboard ship nearly a week before, a lumbering transport named the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson. Before the men could even settle into the crowded bunk rooms, the ship had steamed away from port, and despite assurances from their officers, some of the men believed the great assault had already begun. But the ship only took them as far as a sheltered anchorage, a rendezvous point in peaceful waters off the Isle of Wight. For the first time, the men could see more of the great fleet, transports, larger landing craft, and the destroyers that gave them protection from any probing by German U-boats. Here the days crept by snail-like, and in the cramped and crowded confines of the ship, the men fought the boredom and anxiety of what was still to come. The tedium of their days was broken by the only kinds of recreation they could muster, card playing and crap games mostly, which the officers obliged by looking the other way. There was no privacy, no place for any man to sit alone with his thoughts. Even the men who made use of the time to send letters home wrote in crowded quarters, alongside men who would not stay silent, who deflected the sentiment in their own letters by teasing the others about the proper way to say I might not see you again. The letters wouldn’t actually be mailed, not yet, security keeping everything on board ship, and even if the letters were to go out at all, they would pass first through the censors, those hated bureaucrats armed with scissors and thick black pens, who would remove any mention of place or time or conditions. But the men wrote anyway, the words on paper their only outlet for the fear they could not dare reveal to their buddies around them.

  On the night of June 4, the routine of the sailors changed. The ship’s crew scampered through the crowded decks with a contagious urgency that spread to the soldiers. The clatter of the anchor chain and the deep rumble of the engines jolted them, nervous voices rising, then squeezed away by waves of fear, so many grasping the hands of friends and companions, brutally aware that every rumor, every fantasy, every nightmare was about to be replaced by reality. As the ship moved out into open water, the violence of the wind and rain drove even the curious belowdecks, huddled in the smells of their crowded bunk rooms, the anxiousness giving way to seasickness. When the anchor chain released again, they were ecstatic to find they had returned to port, and their relief fueled energetic rumors that the operation had been called off; quite likely the Germans had surrendered to the threat alone. But that had passed quickly. Sanity was restored by the officers in orders relayed to the men that there was only a postponement. All day on June 5, the soldiers no longer cursed their boredom, the sickest men enjoyed a full day of recovery, the sailors sympathetic, the medics passing out more seasickness pills, eagerly accepted by men who had learned something unexpected about the sea and themselves. The brief journey was not their first ocean voyage, of course. The Twenty-ninth Division had come across the Atlantic on the enormous Queen Mary, a city at sea. Some had suffered then as well, but that was more than eighteen months ago, and the talk and anticipation then had been more about enemy submarines and what they would find in England. It was, after all, an adventure, the fear not yet real, so much attention on training and readiness, mock battles and easy talk. Now, with the clock ticking in every bunk room, all talk of a quick end to the war was set aside. These men now understood that the time had finally come to fight the enemy.

  After a twenty-four-hour reprieve, the ship began to move again, churning past the darkened coast of southern England. This time, when they reached the final rendezvous point in the English Channel, the men could see that the small fleet that had given them such pride was no fleet at all. It was just one small part of a vast armada, thousands of ships that spread out beyond the horizon, protected by swarms of fighter planes and barrage balloons. As darkness came, the Thomas Jefferson surged seaward once more, the anxious misery of the rolling seas equaled by the tight anxiety in every man that this time the mission was a go. D-Day had arrived.

  Tommy Thorne was one of a twelve-man rifle squad of Company A, 116th Regiment, most of the squad from his part of Virginia, their homes spread out in the green farm country around Fredericksburg. He was old for twenty-two, had married right out of high school, a common custom around his home. His wife, Ann, had given birth a year later, a fragile little girl they had named Ella. The baby was not yet a year old when he signed up, and now, more than a year later, he could only know her through his wife’s achingly detailed letters. But with the letters came photographs, so Thorne had fastened the most recent photo in a place that was protected, the safest place he could find: inside his helmet liner.

  When the call came to volunteer, Thorne did not have to be prodded. He had convinced himself that hesitation might mean the draft, and he might not have any choice about where he served. The recruiting sergeant had been a gruff, likable man who filled the young men with fiery stories of glorious adventure, how they would punish the Japanese for their obscene violence against Pearl Harbor. The attention was on the Pacific, the recruiting office papered with colorful posters about bloodying the cartoonish Japs. But the recruiter’s enthusiasm for a quick victory was dampened by what Thorne had seen in the newspapers: horrifying reports of disaster, odd names like Corregidor and Bataan. He was assigned to the Twenty-ninth Division at Camp Blanding, near Jacksonville, Florida, and welcomed the rumors that very soon the division would go west, boarding the great transport ships that would carry them across the Pacific. The men soon learned what the senior officers already knew, and as the division continued to grow and find its identity, the truth of their assignment was passed down to the men who would carry the rifles. Long before anyone knew the specifics of Operation Overlord, the 29th was on its way to England.

  ENGLISH CHANNEL

  JUNE 6, 1944, 4 A.
M.

  As the ship rumbled and tossed through the windy darkness, Thorne had wanted to go topside, to escape the smells of seasickness but, more, to try to see the amazing variety of ships. He had never seen a battleship, but the lieutenant had told them that the great juggernauts would be there, providing thunderous cover for them, very likely obliterating enemy positions onshore, if there was an enemy to be found. When the naval barrage began, the Allied bombers would already have made their runs, thousands of tons of high explosives dropped along all five landing beaches, blasting the enemy fortifications and the artillery emplacements anchored behind them. Thorne had felt his lieutenant’s confidence, shared by most of the men, nervous hope that the landings might be completely unopposed, that it would be an engineers’ battle, their only task to clear away the debris so the infantry could have a clear path inland.

  At 2:30 A.M., the regimental commander, Colonel Canham, had come through, carrying the word to any men who might be sleeping that the time had come to strap on their gear. Thorne had grabbed a nap propped up in a corner, a poker game unfolding right in front of him, his attempts to sleep a waste of time. But some had slept, those men who had that luxurious ability to nod off anywhere, and when the colonel gave the orders, they had emerged from cubbyholes and peered up from bunks where other men talked in low voices. At 3 A.M., food had been served, passed out by the sailors, a breakfast of franks and beans and doughnuts. The advice came from the officers: No matter how miserable your gut might be, no matter how scared you were, you had better eat. Talk of food always seemed to grab the attention of the troops far more than the usual briefings. Thorne had taken his lieutenant’s advice seriously and thought of his words now.

  “This is all you’re going to have for the next couple of days, at least. I’d eat as much of this chow as you can hold.”