by James R Benn
“Kaz, would you contact Colonel Harding? We should let him know we’re here.”
“All right, Billy,” Kaz said, getting out of the jeep. Quick and I joined him, stretching our legs and watching as hundreds of GIs poured out of the LCVPs and sloshed their way to the beach. Some made for the gaps in the barbed wire while other men with wire cutters worked their way through it. The rest bunched up behind them, milling about, waiting.
“That’s not good,” I said. “Their noncoms should be pushing them forward, getting them off the beach.”
“Pity no one takes training exercises seriously,” Quick said. “Whenever we practiced getting out of a Lancaster while it was on the ground, we’d end up laughing at how silly it all was. Especially Freddie.” He smiled at the memory, and I had to admit he was right. Training was a game for most guys, even if what they were training for was anything but. I gave a sympathetic laugh and was about to ask who Freddie was when Kaz put on the headset and broadcast our call sign. I heard a faint screeching sound echoing out over the water and looked up, wondering if there were high-speed fighters overhead. But the sound wasn’t right. It took a split second to register.
The cruiser Hawkins was shelling the beach.
The screeching grew in intensity, drawing everyone’s attention, like a magician’s distraction, masking a deadly trick. I could see the wire cutters stop their work as the GIs making their way off the beach turned and stared, everyone wondering what was going on, wasting precious seconds in bewilderment.
“Get down!” I hollered, hands cupped around my mouth. They were too far away to notice or understand. I could hear Kaz telling whoever was at the other end of the radio to stop the shelling, that the beach was crowded with men.
The first shells overshot the strand, hitting the Slapton Ley beyond it, sending plumes of water skyward. I could see a few men digging in, scraping at the stony beach with their helmets, but most scurried around, confused and unsure which way to go and whether this was part of the exercise.
The whistling threat came again, earsplitting and terrifying.
This time they had the range. Seven shell bursts struck the beach, sending bodies flying and men rushing in all directions, some swimming for the Higgins boats, which had already backed off the shore and were heading into the Channel.
“Stop the shelling!” Kaz roared into the microphone. “You are killing men on the beach!”
“Is that Harding?” I asked. He shook his head no. Tom Quick ran toward the beach, calling to the men to come to him and the safety of the road leading off the beach. Safe for now, anyway. A group sprinted in his direction, others running for the ruined hotel and seeking cover there. Another round of shells shrieked in, hitting right at the waterline, killing those who had sought refuge there.
“No, you idiot!” Kaz screamed into the radio. “There are men on the beach!”
“What’s happening?” I hollered as Kaz handed off the microphone and earpiece.
“The ensign said the landings were delayed an hour. He insists the Higgins boats haven’t gone in yet.” Which made sense, given that we’d seen craft circling the larger ships on the horizon. The men now on the beach apparently hadn’t gotten word of the delay.
“Find Colonel Harding,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “This is Captain Boyle.”
“I sent a runner to find him,” a tinny voice said. “But there can’t be anyone there, the landing craft were ordered to wait an hour.”
“Well we’re here, goddamn it!” I yelled as another volley ripped the sky open. As the shells began their shrill incoming descent, I braced myself for them to hit. One struck the beach, another hit close to the hotel, and a third was screeching straight for us. I grabbed Kaz and threw him to the ground, covering his body, wishing I knew where Quick was.
I thought I would hear it, but I swear there was no sound at all, even when the jeep flew into the air, twisting and turning as metal and debris flew in every direction in silent slow motion. It finally came down on its side with a sudden, fearful loud crash of metal and earth, and then rolled, a black shadow of burning rubber and searing flame above me as I pressed my face into Kaz’s shoulder. Then, nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“BILLY,” I HEARD Kaz say in a choked voice that drifted into my dazed mind. I tried to open my eyes, but it was useless; heat and darkness pressed out all other sensations. “Get off of me, I can’t breathe.”
“I can’t move,” I said, feeling my face pressed into the wool of Kaz’s uniform jacket. There was pressure on my legs, and I became aware of a dull throb in my arm. I tried to rise, but a piece of metal was in the way, pinning my back to the ground.
It was the jeep. It had fallen on us, and judging by the working end of the gearshift a few inches from my eyeballs, it was upside down. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was on fire.
Burning rubber and blistering paint gave off an acrid spume of smoke that forced its way into my lungs and eyes. Kaz began to cough and hack, each spasm reverberating beneath me. I tried to call for help, but as I opened my mouth I drew in more of the smoke and felt the heat of the fire on the undercarriage, fanned by the wind and fed by the burst fuel line. It wouldn’t be long before the tank went and we roasted in a fireball of Uncle Sam’s Grade A gasoline.
“Heave!” A voice sounded from within a jumble of shouts and boots shuffling around the jeep. The side panel came off my back, and hands dragged me out as I kept a grip on Kaz and pulled him with me. “Clear!” Quick shouted as soon as Kaz was safe, and a dozen or so GIs let the jeep drop from their grip, scampering back from the flames licking out at them.
“Are you all right?” Quick asked, kneeling and looking into our eyes. For signs of shock, my mind dully registered.
“I think so,” Kaz answered, dusting himself off. “Now that I don’t have a jeep and Billy on top of me.”
“I’m fine,” I said, then noticed my torn pants and the red, oozing gashes on my legs. Plus my left arm was warm and sticky with blood. Maybe not quite so fine, I realized.
THE NEXT THING I knew, I was coming to in a field ambulance, my arm swathed in a bandage as a medic wrapped gauze around multiple wounds on my legs. Harding stood outside the open rear door, the medic telling him I’d be fine, nothing but superficial lacerations. I was about to say they didn’t feel superficial, but then I remembered the dead on the beach, and the others who must have been grievously wounded, so I kept my trap shut.
“What happened?” I asked, struggling to sit up on the stretcher.
“Constable Quick tells me a shell narrowly missing taking your heads off,” Harding said. “It flipped the jeep and tossed it on top of you. You were damned lucky it dropped the way it did. The seat well gave you space and protection.”
“Colonel,” I said, swinging my legs off the stretcher, “if I was really lucky I wouldn’t have been stuck under a burning jeep while our own side bombarded the beach.” Some people had the oddest way of looking at luck. “What I meant was, what went wrong with the shelling?”
“Misjudgment, error, incompetence,” Harding said, glancing around to be sure no one heard. “Some of the transports were slow in forming up, so the naval commander delayed H-Hour by sixty minutes. The Hawkins got word, but some of the transports didn’t. They launched on the original schedule.”
“Which put men on the beach right under the Hawkins’s shells,” I said.
“Yeah,” Harding said, nearly spitting out the word. “You can’t change plans once troops are underway. Someone always misses the message. Normally it’d just be confusion. But today it cost lives.”
“I’m beginning to think this beach is jinxed,” I said. “First the corpse, then this. Not to mention a flaming jeep.”
“Keep it under your hat, Boyle,” Harding said. “I’ve already talked to Lieutenant Kazimierz and the constable. They understand what happened here has to be kept on the QT.”
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, it was an
accident. Happens all the time in training.”
“Not in these numbers,” Harding said. “And there are other considerations you don’t need to know about. So get back to your swank billet and rest up. Right now I have to get these bodies moved out of here. Your resourceful constable has come up with transportation for you, so get back and take it easy.”
I didn’t argue. It wasn’t often that Harding told anyone to take a rest, and I began to worry that I was hurt worse than I thought. It sure felt that way as I eased myself out of the ambulance and looked around for Kaz and Tom Quick. They were in a jeep parked alongside of the ambulance, partially hidden. Tom helped me into the back seat as Kaz looked around like a furtive thief, which technically he was. He eased out onto the roadway, cutting in between two trucks. We followed as the deuce-and-a-half in front of us ground gears going uphill, the unsecured rear canvas cover flapping in the breeze. I caught a glimpse of limbs jutting out at odd angles from the darkness of the truck bed. A truck full of dead soldiers. As soon as we came to a side road, Kaz took it.
“You trade in ours for a newer model?” I said as Kaz floored it and headed inland, away from the concentration of men and vehicles, the quick and the dead.
“It was Tom who pinched it,” Kaz said. “How are you feeling?”
“Still a little stunned,” I said. “Since when do constables steal automobiles?”
“As it’s an American military vehicle,” Quick said, “I am participating in Lend-Lease, not stealing. Your Colonel Harding thought it was an ingenious rationale.”
“It helped that the major we borrowed it from was a fool,” Kaz said.
“How so?” I asked from my perch in the rear.
“He cursed the Royal Navy for the shelling. Called the captain of the Hawkins a British son of a bitch.”
“General Eisenhower doesn’t mind officers calling each other sons of bitches,” I explained to Tom. “But he hates it when they say someone is an American or a British son of a bitch. Ike is all about Allied unity.”
“Colonel Harding was too busy to discipline the major, but I knew he was furious with him. So he turned a blind eye to our enterprise,” Kaz said.
“Well, it worked out well for us,” Quick said. “Otherwise we’d still be waiting for a lift. It seems every other vehicle was pressed into service to deliver the wounded to hospital and the dead to wherever they’ll be buried.”
“How many?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Kaz said. “Harding did the count of dead and wounded himself and wouldn’t say. He threatened everyone within earshot with a court-martial if they spoke of the incident.”
“It’s not like Harding to worry about public relations,” I said.
“I think it is more than that,” Kaz said. “There’s a secret he’s not sharing with us.”
“Need to know,” I said, a shopworn phrase by now.
“And we do not need to know,” Kaz said. There was nothing much left to say. We left the deserted South Hams and drove through villages and past fields alive with people, animals, and crops; everyday scenes that seemed to mock the devastation we’d left behind. Bodies and burnt houses, only a few miles from these peaceful hamlets where life continued much as before on this fine spring day. I wanted all these people to understand the sacrifice their neighbors had made, to know about the American GIs suffering in hospitals, and the dead tossed in trucks for a secret burial. Maybe they bore their own burdens of loss, or maybe they were oblivious to the world carrying on around them. It didn’t matter. Deep down, I knew I simply didn’t want to carry this secret locked up inside me. But orders were orders, as went the insistent logic of the army.
“Tom, how’d you miss getting hit by those shells?” I asked. “I seem to recall you were pretty exposed.”
“I saw they were headed in our direction and ran,” he said. “The force of the blast bowled me over, but the shrapnel missed me, thank God. After all the German ack-ack we flew through, I’d hate to go for a Burton courtesy of His Majesty’s navy.”
“A Burton?” Kaz asked.
“Buy the farm, go for a Burton, it’s all the same. Die,” Tom explained. “Burton is an ale. So gone for a Burton and never come back, see?”
“Why not?” I said, watching Tom for any signs of the black dog, as Churchill called his deep depressions. “You’re all right, Tom? Just knocked down?”
“Look at this,” Tom said with a grin, sticking a finger in a rip on the shoulder of his uniform jacket. “Shrapnel missed nicking me by half an inch.” He was none the worse for wear. As bad as the shelling had been, it was new to him. It happened on the ground, not high in the night sky over Germany. That was my theory, anyway.
We dropped Tom off in North Cornworthy. He said his pal Constable Robert Carraher lived there and wouldn’t mind the company. He’d hitch a ride into Dartmouth with Carraher in the morning.
WHEN WE ARRIVED back at Ashcroft, Kaz helped me limp inside. We’d concocted a story about an accident with the jeep, and I was sure that no one would pay us much mind. With all the military vehicles tearing around southern England, accidents were pretty much commonplace.
“What happened to you?” Edgar said as soon as we set foot in the hallway.
“Captain Boyle,” Meredith said, following Edgar out of the library. “Are you badly hurt? Come, sit down.”
“A minor accident,” I said. “Our jeep came out worse than I did.”
“What can we do for you?” Meredith asked, the concern on her face not what I expected. Haughty indifference, perhaps, or a cutting remark about Americans driving on the wrong side of the road. But this was a kinder Meredith.
“Nothing, thank you,” I said. “I think I’ll go lie down.”
“Baron, you look hurt as well,” Edgar said.
“I am fine,” Kaz said. “A few minor bruises. Billy got the worst of it.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to eat?” Meredith said. “We’ve just finished our luncheon, and there’s plenty of food.”
“I’m hardly dressed for it,” I said, gesturing at my trousers where the medic had shredded them to get at my cuts and scrapes. But it dawned on me that I was hungry, and suddenly the appeal of hot food was undeniable.
“Perhaps a tray will be best for Billy,” Kaz said, reading my mind. Meredith hustled off to organize food, giving orders like she ran the place.
Twenty minutes later I was in bed, munching on a cheese sandwich served with a bowl of fish soup and a glass of stout. My legs were stiffening up, and my arm ached, but at least I was on the right side of the grass for another day.
“You okay?” I said to Kaz, who was seated at a small table by the window, downing the soup without a single slurp.
“Yes,” he said. “I am a little sore, but unhurt. Do you need anything, Billy?”
“Some shut-eye, that’s all,” I said.
“Thank you,” Kaz said, standing at the foot of the bed. “You saved my life.”
“It was my turn,” I said. “I think we’re even now.”
Kaz laughed, the joy of cheating death yet again vivid on his face. He left, and as I lay there I thought about getting up, but my eyelids grew heavy, and I fell asleep as odd visions of Sir Rupert in a truck filled with dead men danced through my head.
CHAPTER NINE
THE NEXT MORNING I awoke to a knock on the door. It was Alice Withers, the kitchen maid, with my uniform from yesterday, or most of it. She had bright eyes, full lips, straw-blonde hair, and looked to be twenty or even younger. A cheery girl.
“Sorry to wake you, Captain,” she said, “but the baron said you should be up, and I thought you’d want these things. I cleaned and stitched the shirt myself. The trousers were a lost cause, sorry to say.” She placed the pile of clothes on the bed as I sat up.
“No problem,” I said. The shirt looked like new, except for the tear, which had been expertly sewn up. “How’d you get the bloodstains out?”
“Cold water and spit,” she said,
giggling a bit. “Then you rub in salt and scrub with washsoap. It’s how Mrs. Dudley taught me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“The old ways are often the best,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was past time to get up. “Thanks, Alice.” She giggled again as she shut the door.
I washed and dressed, wincing as pain shot through my protesting legs. I sat back down on the edge of the bed, overcome by the realization that I really had been lucky yesterday. A thirteen-hundred pound vehicle had been tossed in the air by a 7.5-inch shell and then fallen smack on top of Kaz and me in about the only position guaranteed not to crush the two of us into a red meat pie. Luck. How much did I have left? Those guys on the beach hadn’t even met the enemy yet, and now some of them were six feet under before they’d fired a shot in anger.
I downplayed my injuries at breakfast, telling everyone I was fine even as I felt blood seeping through the thick bandage on my arm. I might need more of Alice’s spit tomorrow.
“Are you sure you’re well enough to travel, Captain?” Sir Rupert asked as he tucked in to his eggs.
“We’re only going to Dartmouth, to talk with an Inspector Grange,” I said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Edmund Grange, you mean? Of the Devon Constabulary? Decent man, he should be of help to you,” Sir Rupert declared. “I sit on a committee for the Dartmouth Royal Regatta; I met him last summer while we were preparing for the festivities. Big headache for the police, I expect, but everyone enjoys the fun. It’s all scaled back these days, thanks to the war, but it’s a morale boost for the locals even so.”
“Oh yes, the Mayor’s Ball is the highlight of the week,” Helen said, lighting up with enthusiasm for a brief moment. Then her face went blank, and she stared down at her plate. Maybe the notion of going to the ball with David this year didn’t sit well.
“Give Grange my best,” Sir Rupert said, a brief frown creasing his forehead as he watched Helen. “And I’m glad you’re not badly hurt, or worse.”
