by John Harris
‘It’s the light at Cap Barfleur,’ one of the naval officers said. ‘It’s one of the world’s tallest and most conspicuous lighthouses.’
‘Goddam funny to find it shining like that.’
‘Expect the German naval forces need it.’
‘I sure hope they’re not out and needing it tonight.’
Another reply came in. Once again they drew a blank. The new officer was a man of impeccable background, a well-known attorney whose face was familiar from newspaper photographs.
‘Three to go,’ Iremonger muttered. ‘Four, with the guy in the Seventeenth Rangers they’re not prepared to vouch for.’
The next report came in almost immediately. Once again the commanding officer was in no doubt about the genuineness of his officer.
‘Two to go.’
The big ship was now slipping past the buoys that marked the swept channel towards the French coast. Only the lonely wind in the rigging and the wash of water along the sides of the ship broke the silence. At 0335 a clanking bell called the crew to battle stations, complete with helmets and Mae Wests. The moon hung misted in the overcast sky, and the wind still lashed the Channel. According to the log it had slackened.
‘I wouldn’t have noticed,’ Pargeter observed.
‘The airborne divs must be already down and waiting for us,’ someone remarked. ‘Any time now.’
Pargeter frowned. ‘We’re not going to get our replies,’ he said.
‘Could be their radios have failed,’ Fitzsimmons pointed out. He took a look at the heaving sea. ‘Maybe, even, the damn ships sank.’
Pargeter looked at the lists Hardee had given them. ‘Third Cavalry Recce Squadron,’ he said. ‘On board SS Oluma. Ninth Mortar Unit. On board LST 123. Our man’s either with those or he’s this chap, Gavin, they can’t vouch for in the Rangers, on SS Mounts Bay.’
‘All in the O-Force convoy, bound for Omaha Beach,’ Iremonger said. ‘We’d better get ourselves put aboard one of ’em.’
They went to the command room where Fitzsimmons found the position of the three ships. ‘Mounts Bay’s nearest,’ he said. ‘Heading for Dog Red on the right of the attack. We shall be taking up positions soon, so we’d better get you moving. The cavalry recce squadron’s with the 18th Regiment on Easy Red. That’s right alongside Dog Red, so you’ll be able to just nip along. The mortars are on Fox Green, away on the left. I’ll fix the boat.’
As he vanished, they heard a faraway roar across the Channel and everybody looked up.
‘The heavies!’
Off the starboard bow an orange glare ignited the sky as more than thirteen hundred RAF bombers swarmed over the French coast from the Seine to Cherbourg. An enemy ack-ack battery ashore stabbed blindly into the night and a shower of sparks splintered the darkness as a bomber was hit. A ribbon of fire fell through the clouds from the swelling roar, and they could see the shape of the stricken bomber coming down. As it levelled off near the ship, banked round the stern and exploded into the Channel, a high-speed launch roared towards the spot.
Iremonger looked at Pargeter. He looked cold. His eyes were tired and there was a red tip to his nose, but he still seemed a whole lot calmer than Iremonger felt.
‘Think we’ll survive this one, Cuthbert?’ he asked.
Pargeter’s head turned. ‘It’s my earnest hope,’ he said.
Iremonger’s next words came without any conscious effort on his part, as though some need for friendship at that particular moment drove them to the surface. ‘When it’s all over,’ he said, ‘you should come over to the States and see me in New York. I’d give you a good time.’
For a moment he thought Pargeter was going to cold-shoulder the idea with one of his icy silences, then his face split in the wide smile whose sheer charm always shook Iremonger.
‘Why not, Linus?’ he said. ‘And why not you come and stay with my family in Dorset! I could promise you some good shooting.’
Iremonger’s simple heart warmed to him. ‘I guess we’ll get all the shooting we want on this trip,’ he said. He paused, overcome by a feeling of guilt. ‘When I first met you, Cuth, I thought you were a bastard.’
Pargeter grinned. ‘So did I you.’
‘But you’re not bad. You know that. You’re not bad.’
‘Neither are you, Linus, neither are you.’
Iremonger felt much better. It was something he’d needed to get off his chest for some time. Underneath his carapace of hardness, he was a sentimental man who enjoyed being liked. And the fact that he was liked by someone as aloof and prickly as Pargeter pleased him. He felt he’d made the grade and found a friend for life.
Fitzsimmons appeared in the increasing light. ‘We’ve signalled the picket boat away,’ he said. ‘Are you ready?’
Iremonger glanced at Pargeter and hitched at his equipment. ‘Ready as we’ll ever be,’ he said nervously. ‘Let’s go.’
Two
It was hard to do nothing but stand and wait.
The crossing had been rough, and many of the men had been seasick. It was cold on deck but stuffy below to the point of nausea, and a night sense of strangeness and insecurity came as danger was magnified by the darkness. Many of those who had been worrying about the landing were now longing for it, if only to be off the rolling, pitching ship that imprisoned them.
Huddled on the boat deck, the Fox could smell the fresh tang of the Channel. Over the lash of the sea he could hear the drone of hundreds of landing craft, the sea buffeting against their blunt bows as they headed southwards. Everyone had been expecting bombs, torpedoes, gunfire, mines, E-boats and destroyers, and there was a strange kind of wonder that so far none of them had materialised.
The men about him who were still capable of standing upright, were quiet as they made their arrangements, adjusting the chin straps of their helmets, checking their identification tags, making sure their lifejackets were secure and worked properly. A few of them were eating chocolate because there wasn’t much point in being killed on an empty stomach, but others went constantly to the heads to throw up what they’d eaten or to the dispensary for something to settle their insides. The seasickness was worse than the boredom and the fear. Several men had vomited into their helmets, and there had been a fight when a wretched soldier had thrown up into a comrade’s lap.
They were all surprisingly serious, but that was something the Fox had found was common to all armed forces before a big event. It had been the same before Warsaw. The jokes died away, but so also did the complaining, and everyone became studiously polite to each other, as though they felt they wouldn’t like to be remembered for ill manners if they were killed, or as if they were afraid of being rude to someone who might not see the next dawn.
All round in the darkness the phalanx of shipping bore down on the coast of Europe. They came in rank after rank, twenty miles across, ten lanes wide, five thousand ships of every description, from fast new attack transports through the whole gamut of rust-scarred cargo vessels, small ocean liners, Channel steamers and hospital ships, to weather-beaten tankers, coasters and fussing tugs. Among them were endless columns of shallow-draught landing ships, great wallowing vessels three hundred and fifty feet long, some of them carrying other smaller craft for the beaching. Ahead of them were the minesweepers, coastguard cutters, buoy layers and motor launches. The sky was full of barrage balloons, and the cloud ceiling, which seemed to be only just beyond the masthead, echoed with the roar of aircraft as squadrons of fighters weaved and turned. Surrounding the fantastic armada, with its armoury of guns, tanks and vehicles, were the warships; heavy cruisers, light cruisers – many of them with proud records – sloops, corvettes, gunboats, anti-submarine craft, torpedo boats; and everywhere, on every side, the destroyers.
Many of the soldiers were afraid. Some were introspective and talked of things that normally they kept to themselves, admitting their fears and their domestic worries with an unexpected candour. Almost every one of them had written a letter of some kind as he’d waited. A few
had books, and an officer nearby held up a Shakespeare he was reading.
‘Every time I try to move on,’ he said, ‘I keep going back to that speech of Henry V’s. “And gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here.”’
‘The way I feel,’ another voice replied, ‘I’d be goddam glad to be in England and a-bed.’
Below decks, chaplains were conducting services and talking to men who wished to be prepared in case they were killed. Most were tense, but a few were light-hearted enough to be indifferent. Many of them were green troops, despite being well-trained, and, for all his contempt for the British, the Fox knew that these American soldiers hadn’t the same feeling for the invasion as the islanders. They hadn’t been bombed and driven out of France. They hadn’t seen their homes destroyed and their families killed. And they were a long way from their own country and didn’t feel they were liberating themselves or anyone else either. They were largely unwarlike, and the poison of combat was not in their blood; but nevertheless no one wanted to go to sleep in case he missed something.
The night was thick, blustery and black. The heaving Channel was flecked with white and steel grey, while the clouds fled past in tormented, tattered shrouds in a cold sky. The west-north-west wind whipped spume into the faces of lookouts and soldiers alike. The men in the small craft were sick, weary and – like Jonah – wondering when they were to be spewed up on an alien shore, longing to get their feet on dry ground. Those on deck were lucky. They could see what was happening. Those below huddled in a stink of vomit, waiting in a misty limbo of time.
In the distance, tugs grappled with strange tows on a night that was never meant for towing. All round the Fox men huddled against the wind, their faces grey, their eyes dark under the pot-shaped helmets that gave them a strangely medieval appearance. They had been on deck now for fifty hours, and they stared dumbly backwards at the long line of ships unwinding behind them as though paid out from a colossal spool. Above the thunder of the aircraft overhead, they could hear the drenching sounds of the sea and the shuddering stresses of the plates.
No one was allowed to make a noise or shine a light, but no one wanted to, and they kept their voices down as if the Germans could already hear them. Last-minute orders came round, and a few more photographs for them to examine. The Fox thought how ironic it was that he should be about to assault defences that had probably been put up on his own recommendation.
Radio news flashes were passed on to them, and there were a few quickly suppressed cheers when they learned that the allies had entered Rome. There was so much courage around him, it was hard to imagine it all being dissipated, as it inevitably would be within a very short time. The Wehrmacht must certainly know by now, from radar alone, what to expect. His own efforts to inform them of the date and time and place of the invasion no longer had any significance. What mattered now was the information about the Bigot plans and the secret of the Ultra decoding system, which he carried on closely written sheets. He had spent a great deal of time carefully translating and setting out the facts so that even the stupidest lieutenant could grasp their importance at a glance and have the sense to direct him immediately to a superior officer.
The vital thing was for the papers to get through to the German high command. It would he preferable if he were alive to explain them but, failing that, he must get them to the Wehrmacht dead. And if he had to be dead, it must be where his body would be found by his own people. As a guarantee of its being not only found but searched, he had the silver oak leaves of a colonel ready to put on at the last moment if necessary. Finding a dead field officer in their lines, the Germans would be sure to go through his pockets. The search would produce the papers, and his job would be done.
The thought of dying didn’t worry him much. He preferred to live but he accepted that his duty, if necessary, was to die. He no longer had any idea whether his wife and child were alive. After the bombing of Hamburg, the British newspapers had been full of the firestorm, which had hit the city on several days of night and daytime bombing, and from the photographs that had appeared he had realised that the district where they lived had been right in the centre of it.
A bell clanged and orders came over the tannoy to assemble at loading stations. He patted his pocket where the papers were, and began to move through the shadowy figures around him to the side of the ship. The deck lights were out and only blue lamps were showing as they grouped near the LCAs hanging from the davits. As they began to be called by name and serial number to their boats, he moved up with the others.
The sky had lightened now until the Fox could recognise faces. Then the day came, murky, grey and majestic, showing up the allied fleet with a fearful grandeur, and he wondered why there had been no interference from the Kriegsmarine or the Luftwaffe.
The tannoy crackled again as a special message from the admiral in command was relayed. ‘It is our honour and privilege to take part in the greatest amphibious operation in history…’
The man next to the Fox swallowed, his eyes gleaming whitely under the rim of his helmet. ‘Did he say “honour” or “horror?”’ he grated.
Outlined against the sky the Fox could see the big battle-ships sprouting their forests of antennae and, behind them, low in the water and sluggish, the vast convoy of troop-filled transports and landing ships. The mass of vessels seethed with noise and activity, and engines throbbed and whined as patrol boats dashed backwards and forwards and winches whirred.
His name was called and he moved forward, climbing over the rail into the LCA. It was swaying slightly on the davits with the movement of the ship. The men around him, packed tightly against each other, were silent, their faces sombre in the dim light. The tension was enormous and a sergeant tried to break it.
‘Say something funny, someone,’ he said, but no one did and no one laughed.
The mist was thick but a man pointed and said, ‘That’s the land.’ Nobody believed him but, after a while, the consistent irregularity of the shape ahead proved that it certainly wasn’t a bank of cloud. The Fox stared fixedly at it, seeking the landmarks he’d seen on the aerial photographs. At last, almost as if he were forcing them to appear through the murk, he saw a line of houses just above a pale strip, which slowly took on the appearance of a stretch of sandy beach.
‘Good luck,’ someone said. ‘Lower away.’ The boat slipped down the side of the ship to the water, banging against the hull in the wind. Immediately, it began to pitch and he heard a man up forward groan with seasickness. There seemed to be small craft everywhere in the lurching sea, rising and falling in the waves. Several times they were blown against the side of the ship, with tremendous metallic crashes as steel clashed against steel, before they unhooked and began to move away.
‘Keep in line! Keep in line!’ A control officer with a loudhailer started to shout and the coxswain struggled to get into position, going round in a great ungainly circle to reach his place. On other transports, the boats had been lowered first and men were awkwardly climbing down scrambling nets into the spray. Over the racket of the sea and the roar of the engine the Fox could hear tannoys calling. ‘Get your men ashore! That is your primary object! And troops, when ashore, must get up the beach quickly!’
‘Remember Dunkirk,’ a British voice shouted from the ship.
‘Remember the Alamo!’
‘Get in there, Yanks! Give ’em hell!’
More and more boats were joining the craft endlessly churning round their mother ships. Already sodden, seasick and miserable, the men in them stared ahead, not seeing, their faces waxy and expressionless, wondering what awaited them at the end of their ordeal.
Three
Sixteen converted liners packed with men had anchored in two lines parallel to the beach, eleven miles offshore and beyond the range of the heavy guns believed to be on the Pointe du Hoc. To Iremonger the decision to anchor so far out seemed to be a mistake because the roadstead was wide open to the elements, and the nor
th-west wind had eighty miles of Channel in which to raise the waves that made it difficult for the small craft – and impossible for some – to make the long run to the shore.
The picket boat was already bobbing alongside Augusta as they moved to the port side. Looking down the swaying rope ladder, laden with carbine, pistol, pack and Mae West, Iremonger almost began to wish he’d done the same as Pargeter and settled for a simple revolver.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said out loud, as much to convince himself as anyone else. ‘Don’t worry.’
Pargeter’s head turned. ‘Who’s worrying?’ he asked.
Iremonger gulped. ‘Me, for one,’ he said.
As he backed away, he saw Pargeter was removing the papers Hardee had given them from the bulky file he carried. Stuffing them into an inside pocket, he threw the file overboard. He seemed quite unruffled.
‘I’ll he glad when this hoop-la’s over,’ Iremonger said, envious of his calm. ‘And so will you, because a goddam revolver isn’t going to be much use against a charging German.’ The comment was a bitter one because Iremonger was humble enough to concede that he was more afraid than Pargeter seemed to be. He needed something to bolster his ego and was trying to convince himself that Pargeter simply hadn’t the brains to appreciate danger.
Pargeter smiled, his face calm with knowledge. ‘It’s always been my experience,’ he said, ‘that there are usually a lot of unwanted weapons lying around in an affair of this sort, just waiting to be picked up. We’re not here to do any fighting but, if we have to, we shall find something to fight with all right.’
He patted the revolver holster and, gripping his walking stick, began to climb over the side, the air-raid warden’s helmet rakishly over one ear.
Iremonger saw him jump easily into the bobbing boat. Then, helped by Fitzsimmons, he cocked a leg over the rail himself and began to climb after him. Halfway down, a gust of wind coming round the ship’s fantail caught him and set him swaying so that he almost lost the carbine, but a moment later he was hanging on to the ladder above the heaving boat which one moment was brushing his feet and the next ten feet below him.
