Beyond, the Channel and more LCAs landing on the beach.
As soon as the doors dropped open the first rows of Rangers were mowed down by MG fire. Those that didn’t jump over the sides, and had the luck to not get pelted by lead, had to disembark among swirling waters full of buoyant internal organs, blasted out of people from previous attempts by Rangers to make it to cover. The body count was mounting, fast.
Kent crawled to his weapon and pulled it to his chest. He reached out his hand to grab his helmet. A bullet struck the helmet and it skidded off into the waves. Kent stood and ran for the cliff, where a few Rangers were already using the prominence as cover from the MG in the bunker directly over them.
Kent jumped a dead body. His legs ached as they took the force of the landing. The weight of the saturated uniform and the instability of the soaked sand making the run even more difficult than it would have been with just German firepower blasting down at him. Sand whooshed upward and covered him. He wiped some from his face and kept his head down the rest of the way.
He came to a stop as his shoulder hit the hard cliff. “Get off the beach,” he shouted, not sure if the Rangers new to the fray would even hear him. “Get to the cliff. They have a fucking sniper. Get the ladders. Bring the damn rocket launchers to shoot the grapnels; we’re dead if we don’t take out that MG in the bunker and the damn mortars. We need to stop that artillery before they try for the ships.”
Jordan ran to a stop next to Kent. “What now?”
“Good question. I want you to go and find one of the rocket launchers. Fire up one of the grapnels for these men.” Kent gestured to the group around them.
“How do I do that?” Jordan removed his Garand from its waterproofing.
“You run back out on the beach and see if you can lay your hands on one. Check the landing craft.”
“Are you fucking crazy? I’m not going back out there.”
“Yes you are. You just received an order.”
“I hate those things.” Jordan took a deep breath and held his rifle tight to his body.
“Listen up!” Kent ordered the other men. “Private Jordan is making a run for a grapnel. Lets give him some covering fire. On my word step out from the face of the cliff and blast those Nazi bastards.” The men nodded. “Covering fire!”
Kent and the men took a few paces back and Jordan charged over the sand toward the incoming tide and the landing craft, jumping dead bodies and dodging hunkered down soldiers, bullets impacting all around him. Kent and the men unloaded all their rounds at the German positions before they placed their backs to the cliff and started to reload their weapons.
“He made it to the landing craft.” Kent informed the men. A few cheered. Kent chambered a round and took in his options, the best one being the DUKW that was rumbling up the beach.
The Duck stopped in front of them. “Give it some covering fire,” Kent ordered, as he moved to the vehicle, shots pinging off it. He raised one of the ladders they’d got from the London Fire Department and placed it so the top was leaning on the rocky surface of the cliff. It didn’t reach all the way to the verge.
“Shit!” Kent slammed his fist on the front of the Duck. The driver gave him a confused look. “The damn ladders aren’t big enough. The cliffs are higher than the ones we climbed in Cornwall. These cliffs have got to be at least 125 feet high. The ladders are only 100 feet.”
“What now?” the driver asked.
“Keep this thing steady. I’m going up … You, Private,” Kent pointed at one of the men taking cover, “when Jordan gets back, make sure he shoots that rope up for me. I’ll need it to make it the rest of the way up, then you all follow.”
“Yes sir.”
Kent slung his Thompson over his shoulder and stepped onto the first rung of the ladder. He made the mistake of looking up the length of it. It was skidding around on the rocks and chipping away rubble. He wiped some of the dust that had fallen down off his face then started up.
He didn’t miss a step. He kept focused even as the ladder swayed. Even as empty bullet casings from German weapons fell and bounced off the ladder. Even when he looked to his right to see a group of fifteen Rangers fall from the cliff as a Nazi up top cut their rope. Even as a stick grenade fell through his line of sight to the beach below.
But not as the grenade exploded and rocked the DUKW up onto two wheels.
The ladder Kent was only half way up left the cliff. He looked over his shoulder to see the beach rushing toward him. He shut his eyes and gripped until his knuckles were even whiter than they’d been when trying to ascend.
A jolt.
The ladder had stopped. Kent opened his eyes; he was still firmly on it but at an odd angle. He looked over his shoulder again and saw Jordan, and a few other men, holding the bottom of the ladder, keeping it upright. They started to push it back toward the cliff.
Kent first moved in sudden biting motions. Start. Stop. Start. Stop, until he was completely vertical, but still not on the rocks. Next he fell with the ladder as the men below gave one last push.
The ladder hit the cliff face and crushed Kent’s fingers in the process. He gritted his teeth and fought back the want to cry out. He was locked to the climbing apparatus. He tried to pull his fingers free as bullets started to rain down on him, peppering him with fragments of rock.
The sound of Rangers returning fire from below urged him on as he managed to free one hand, cutting it on the way out, lifting up flaps of skin on his knuckles. Shots struck the ladder close to his face and the sparks from the impacts infected his skin with an intense burning sensation.
He reached to his side and grabbed his slung Thompson. It was a difficult reach and even more of a struggle to bring it to bear on a Nazi that was stood leaning over the verge. Kent compressed the trigger and waved his fire right to left and up and down. He had no means of being accurate but he could swamp the enemy with lead.
A few of the shots found target after cutting up the scenery. The bullets ran in a semi-circle over the German and turned his grey uniform red as blood seeped through the fabric. The Nazi lurched forward and fell.
His body hurtled down toward Kent. He let go of the ladder with his free hand, dropping his Thompson so it hung again, and removed his feet from the rungs. He twisted so his back was on the cliff face and let the trapped hand, and the now awkward angle it was bent in, take his full weight.
The German clattered past, his body bouncing off the rocks and the ladder, his limbs twisted in strange patterns. The sand puffed up red when the body hit next to Jordan. The young private had to look away from the rounded body that was interlocked like a ball of dripping rubber bands.
Kent swung back onto the ladder and locked his boots in place as he freed his other hand with a painful tug. It was just as red and skin-peeled as his other, but this one ached at the wrist too. He twisted it a few times to see if he could alleviate the pain, it didn’t work. He started heading back up the ladder anyway.
It wasn’t long before Kent ran out of rungs. He was stuck. He couldn’t climb the rest of the way unaided. He looked down at the beach and saw Jordan fixing something to a grapnel. He couldn’t make out what. He did, however, make out the rope as it shot up into the sky, trailing smoke and fire.
Kent looked back up to see if the grapnel would catch. It did, on some razor wire. A German soldier that was standing close to it turned and jumped from view. Kent didn’t know why but he didn’t have time to contemplate it. He looked to the rope to his right. He reached for it. It was a good few feet away.
Kent got set. His left hand holding the last rung, his feet twisted and angled toward the rope, his knees bent. The rope swayed tantalizingly close, a gush of wind the cause. His fingers managed to touch it but it was soon away again. He took a deep breath then jumped.
His hand wrapped around the rope and his legs swung farther than his upper body. He was almost lying down in mid air when his legs dropped back down into gravity’s grasp. The rest of him tried to
follow.
Kent skidded down the rope, his back and shoulders scratching across hard stone, ripping his uniform and flesh. His hands were burning, bleeding. The rope was turning red. But he knew what he had to do. He tightened his grip. The pain was scorching but worthwhile. He’d stopped his fall. Now his shoulders were sore, they’d been close to being pulled from their sockets from the sudden stop. He tried to ignore them. He couldn’t.
He turned and started up the rope, surprised that he hadn’t actually fallen that far, it had felt like an eternity. With each pull on the rope his hands touched the fires of hell and his shoulders felt like the muscles were ready to twang and snap. He blocked it out the best he could again. As a distraction he hummed the national anthem.
A thunderous crack. Kent looked back to the Channel. The USS Saterlee was close to the shoreline and was opening up on the Germans atop the cliff. The large guns boomed an echo of encouragement as smoke billowed out from them, clouding the sky even more.
Kent reached the top of the cliff. He pulled up onto the verge with the use of the razor wire, cutting his hands yet again. He looked over the edge and back down to the beach and waved the men to follow him up. Jordan was the first on the rope.
Kent looked at the grapnel and saw fuse wire sticking out from it. “I’ll be. No wonder that German ran away. Quick thinking, Jordan, make them think it’s a weapon. There’s hope for you yet.” He couldn't help but let out a little laugh.
Kent quickly removed his jacket, all the time keeping low. He looked at the tattered back then ripped a few strips of material off. He wrapped his hands and tied off the strands. He brought his Thompson from around his back, removed the empty magazine and clipped a new one in. He lay what remained of his jacket over the razor wire, used it to crawl over the top free from snags, and ran only a few feet before he jumped down into a German trench.
A Nazi. A Hitler youth knife right at Kent’s throat.
Kent struck the Nazi in the face with the wooden butt of his Thompson. The Nazi’s helmet left his head and blood trickled from a cheek as he stumbled back. Kent didn’t waste any time. He fired a short burst into his enemy’s chest. The German fell to the ground, dead.
Kent knelt next to the body and pried the knife from his hand. He fastened it to his webbing then looked down the left passage of the trench. It ran a short ways before it became a T. He turned to face the opposite direction. The trench curved to the left. He started off that way, keeping hunkered down, his knees bent and his head ducked low, so no troops up top could see him.
He had just started to take the bend when a German soldier jumped over the trench. Before he had time to vanish from Kent’s sight and take aim at the Rangers, Kent shot him in the back. He fell from view but another enemy soldier came into view.
He was at the point from where the first had jumped over the trench. He had his Gewehr aimed at Kent. A bullet struck the German in the face, shot by an unknown ally. It was instantly mangled. He fell into the trench. Kent stepped over the body and was soon at the end of the curve. There was a turn to the right. Kent took it.
He was at the rear of the bunker that had the fixed MG, the same gun that had mowed down the men in his LCA. The concrete entrance only showed more concrete inside, a wall that was only a step or two from the opening. Kent moved in low profile to the side of the entrance. German voices screamed inside.
Kent removed a grenade from his webbing and pulled the pin. He stepped into the bunker to be face to face with the wall he’d seen while outside. In the wall was a small slit opening. Through it, Kent could see the back of the guy manning the MG and a guy feeding the belt. Two other soldiers were also firing through the front slit at the beach. To the right and left of the wall Kent was at were two other entrances, which led to the main section of the round bunker and the MG.
Kent threw the grenade at the left entrance. He ducked low as it bounced off the curved wall and rolled into the main room. The blast was quick to follow, as was debris. It flew into the section Kent was in, from the openings to his right and left. Smoke and dust was everywhere, hanging, no wind to displace it.
Kent stood and placed the barrel of his Thompson through the slit in the wall he’d used as cover. He spread his fire left to right. He couldn’t see if he’d hit anything or if anyone was still alive. The smoke and dust had surrounded the main room in a mask of uncertainty.
Kent took the right entrance and entered the main section of the smoke-filled bunker. He waved some of the grey away and saw the MG, still at the slit, a severed hand holding it.
Kent took a few more steps, waving more smoke aside as he did. A Nazi was on his belly, a hand missing, crawling, and leaving a trail of smeared blood behind him. Kent stepped on the man’s back, the wounded enemy shouted out a Germanic curse.
Kent grabbed the guy by the scruff of the neck and flipped him onto his back. His eyes were wide, his face speckled with red. He held up his remaining hand and said in broken English, “Please. Don’t kill me.”
“Did you fire at the landing craft? Did you kill my fucking Rangers?” Kent said, pointing his Thompson at him, jabbing it forward, little stabs at smoke, demanding an answer.
“I … I was just doing orders … following orders.”
“I’m sure you were. Right now though, I’m not.” Kent narrowed his eyes and locked them in a stare with the German’s.
“I don’t understand.”
Kent dropped his Thompson and let it hang. He removed the Hitler Youth knife. “Do you know what this is, Adolf?” He knelt down next to the German.
“Yes … My name is not Adolf though.”
“I don’t give a damn what your name is!” shouted Kent. “That’s just what I’m calling you, be thankful it’s not Nazi swine.”
“I am. Thank you.”
“You look fucking pathetic. The German war machine at its finest. On its back, covered in blood and with pants full of shit.” Kent snorted and spat at the man.
He didn’t even wipe it away. “Please, I surrender.”
“I know you do,” Kent said with a smile.
“Then please, you must not hurt me.” He looked close to tears.
“I already told you, I’m not following orders.”
“What does this mean?”
“Do you know what poetic justice is?”
“I … I … no. I’m sorry I do not understand this term’s meaning.”
“Let me show you.” Kent ran the blade of the Hitler Youth knife over the neck of the Nazi. Blood was quick to pool around his gurgling throat. “Poetic justice is the son of an American father and Jewish mother cutting the throat of a Nazi swine with a Hitler youth knife. The full stop of that sentence is this.”
Kent cut the Star of David into the forehead of the dead German.
Once he’d wiped the blood from the knife on his trousers, he placed it back in his webbing. He left the bunker and entered the trench, to follow the curve again. The sound of war was all around, deafening him. He was surrounded on all sides by encyclopedic sounds of murder.
He left the curve then entered the straight where he’d jumped down into the trenches. Three Germans stood looking over the top, their weapons aimed at the cliff Kent had scaled. They were taking heavy fire; dirt was popping up all around them, which meant they were shooting at Rangers as they tried to scramble over the razor wire.
Kent dropped the one closest to him. The bullets cut a line up the man’s side and he fell to reveal the next one along. He was turning his MP40 at Kent. Kent fired again, the bullets from his Thompson struck the MP40 and the gun sparked from the Nazi’s hands, them now bleeding.
Kent fired another burst and finished the bloodied man before he took aim at the last German as he spun his Karabiner rifle at him. Click. Kent shook his weapon. The Thompson had run dry. He turned and dove. The shot from the Nazi struck the wall he’d just been hunkered down at, dirt landed on Kent’s back. He heard the Nazi eject the empty casing and click a new bullet in.
Kent crawled a short distance at full speed, grasping at dirt with his deformed hands, before he sprung to his feet and into a run. He ducked low quickly as bullets started to rain down on him from where his head had popped up above the trench walls. He dove at the start of the curve and landed on his stomach again. He grabbed one of the walls and pulled fully around the bend and hopefully out of the sights of the German who was in the trench. A bullet struck near his feet as he pulled them into his body.
Kent was back on his knees and loading in a new magazine when he heard the Nazi reloading. He had just clipped the magazine in and was chambering a round when the German appeared from around the curve.
The Nazi fell to the floor of the trench, a bullet hole in his back. A soldier rounded the bend in low profile. Kent raised his gun. It was a Ranger. He lowered his gun. The Ranger was Jordan. The private dropped down to the dirt next to Kent.
“I’m glad to see you,” Jordan said.
“Likewise.”
“You take out the MG?”
“Yeah, we need to find the artillery positions now.”
“Do you have any idea where they are?”
“We need to work our way to the T in this trench. Once there, if we poke our heads up, we should be able to see one. We’ll use the craters from the Naval bombardment as cover. We’ll see if we can pick up any Rangers on the way.”
“Sounds like a plan, Sarge.”
Kent dusted himself down and they set off through the trenches, Kent in the lead. They kept their heads low as mud and dirt dropped down on them from the firefights above. A bazooka round whooshed overhead, a tail of smoke behind it. They felt the impact as it thumped somewhere behind them as they reached the T.
They both dropped onto their butts, their backs on the trench wall. Kent pointed at Jordan then the ground. Jordan nodded and Kent stood. He peeked his head over the wall and then quickly ducked back down. “There’s a mortar pit, surrounded by sandbags. They’re bringing the mortar to bear on the beach we landed at.”
“You see the bunker with the artillery?”
ALIEN INVASION Page 2
