The Land Beneath Us

by Sarah Sundin

  Leah gaped at the dead phone.

  Mama Paxton laid a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, mija. I’m so sorry.”

  “But they’re my sisters. My family. My family.” Something burned in her belly, and she thumped the phone into the receiver.

  She usually took hold of anger and molded it into the safe shape of sadness, but now she let it pulse hot in her veins.

  Mrs. Scholz had no right. Callie and Polly were Leah’s family by birth, by blood.

  How dare this woman tell Leah she didn’t belong with her own family?

  Leah couldn’t accept that. She wouldn’t.

  If she wanted to belong, she had to join.

  40

  POINTE DU HOC

  For the second time that night, the gunfire stopped as abruptly as it had started.

  Straining to see in the dark, Clay pointed his rifle through the top of the hedgerow. He hadn’t seen a single enemy soldier or fired a shot since sunset. Both night counterattacks had come far to Clay’s right in the orchard, rather than in the wheat field he faced.

  He sank lower in the foxhole he shared with Ruby. How many more times would the Germans attack? How much longer could the Rangers hold out?

  Close to midnight, Colonel Rudder had ordered the detachment to hold the position by the highway while the main force held the point by Rudder’s headquarters. A lot of distance and a whole lot of Germans separated them.

  South of the highway, eighty-five Rangers formed an L-shaped defensive line, with the angle of the L pointing southwest. Clay guarded the middle of the lower leg near the command post.

  What a ragtag group—members of the three companies that had climbed the cliffs, plus twenty-three men from the 5th Ranger Battalion, the lone contingent to arrive from Omaha Beach. Boy, were they welcome.

  “Lieutenant!” Footsteps thumped up the dirt lane, and a man jumped into the command post foxhole. “The Krauts took the angle, then retreated. No word from D Company. I think they’re wiped out.”

  Clay puffed out a breath, and Ruby shook his head. Things weren’t going well.

  The commanders talked in voices low enough to conceal their words, but not their anxiety.

  Everything about the night felt sideways. Clay wasn’t supposed to be here. Since he hadn’t died on D-day, when would he? The war in Europe could last weeks, months, even years. When would he see that pillbox from his dreams? Would he ever?

  What if he . . . survived? What then? He hadn’t even considered having a future since the recurring dream had begun.

  Something strange and energizing filled his chest. Hope. It was hope. Hope of reconciliation and love and family.

  For the past few months, he’d occasionally desired a future. Now, on the far side of D-day, that longing had grown into hope. And hope was even more dangerous than desire.

  Clay groaned and checked his rifle ammo. BAR ammunition was scarce, and few grenades remained. Some of the men were using German guns and grenades.

  Thanks to Frank Lyons, Clay still had two American grenades. He’d given Lyons’s BAR and ammo to a Ranger who’d lost his rifle.

  Clay rested against the cold dirt wall of his foxhole and peeked through the hedgerow. Peeking back at him from behind thin clouds, an almost-full moon cast silvery light on the long narrow wheat field, bound by hedgerows.

  His eyelids dragged low, and he shook himself. He’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and in that time he’d eaten two pancakes aboard the Ben-my-Chree and part of a chocolate D ration bar.

  Clay pulled out the D ration and gnawed off a bite. Bitterness warped his mouth, but it’d keep him awake. The Army had designed the bars to taste bad so soldiers would save them for emergencies. It certainly worked.

  Ruby’s head slumped forward. Clay extended his elbow to nudge him, then retracted it. Let the man sleep while he could.

  Shuffling in the dirt behind him. Sergeant Markowitz from another section squatted by Clay’s foxhole. “Lieutenant Taylor says if the Krauts attack again, retreat to the point. And no wild firing. Save your ammo.”

  Clay sighed. “Yes, Sarge.” He didn’t want to retreat, but if they’d lost D Company, they’d lost their right flank. The Germans could infiltrate behind them and cut them off.

  Markowitz proceeded down the lane to Brady and Holman’s foxhole.

  “All I know is I’m not surrendering,” Ruby muttered. “They’re not taking me alive.”

  “Yeah. I understand.” If the Germans murdered their Jewish neighbors, how would they treat Jewish soldiers fighting for the enemy?

  No matter what, Clay would protect Ruby. Maybe Clay was meant to die in the hedgerows. Maybe it wasn’t the location of his death that mattered, but the fact of his death.

  Whistles sounded in the field to the south, and the wheat rustled.

  Clay sprang up and shoved his rifle through the brush.

  “Klaus!”

  “Friedrich!”

  “Hans!”

  Why were the Germans shouting roll call? Locating each other? Trying to scare the Rangers?

  Clay licked his dry lips and opened his eyes wide to the darkness.

  Gunfire broke out in front of him, yellow muzzle flashes, bright tracer fire.

  He fired at a muzzle flash, another, another.

  Machine-gun fire shredded the hedgerow above him, and he ducked. Branches and leaves pelted his helmet and back.

  Up to his feet, another few shots. His ammunition clip pinged out, and Clay rammed another into place.

  An explosion behind him shook the ground—a mortar shell in the open field behind his hedgerow.

  “Lieutenant!” A Ranger thundered down the lane toward the command post. “The Germans have broken through. We couldn’t hold ’em. There’s guys getting killed everywhere.”

  “To the highway!” Taylor yelled.

  “Get going, Ruby. I’ll tell the others.” Clay scrambled out of the foxhole and to Holman and Brady’s position. “To the highway! Taylor’s orders.”

  Holman cussed out the orders. “I can hold ’em.”

  Gunfire rang out to the northwest, behind the lines of the next platoon, the steady burps of a German machine pistol. Was that gun in Nazi or Ranger hands?

  “Don’t be a fool. Get moving.” Hunched over, Clay darted back the way he’d come. Good. Ruby had left.

  Next to the command post ran a north-to-south lane. To the south, flashes and stuttering gunfire filled the lane. The men in the outpost had to be putting up a fighting retreat.

  Clay pointed his rifle that way. But in the darkness he didn’t dare add his own bullets, in case he hit a Ranger.

  Instead, he ran north, following other hunched-over Americans, keeping his feet high to avoid roots and rocks and branches.

  A scream from close to his former position. “I surrender! Kamerad! Don’t shoot!”

  Clay stumbled and caught himself on the hedgerow. That was Bob Holman. Why hadn’t he obeyed the order?

  He ran up the lane, pausing to check the fields through gaps in the hedgerows. The gunfire sounded farther and farther away.

  Finally his boots thudded on blacktop.

  To his left Rangers gathered on the highway, calling off names and companies. Clay called out his.

  “Back to the point,” cried a lieutenant Clay didn’t recognize in the dark. “We’ll split up, take different paths.”

  Made sense. That way all of them wouldn’t get captured or killed, and maybe some would make it through.

  “Hey, Pax.” Ruby sidled up to him. “Where’s Holman? Brady?”

  “I heard Holman surrender. Don’t know about Brady. Told them to get out.”

  Ruby grunted. “Holman never could listen to no one.”

  “Glad you listened.” Clay’s throat suddenly constricted. He and Ruby were the only ones left from their squad. Although he refused to give up on Gene. Not yet.

  “Let’s go!” That was Lieutenant Taylor.

  Clay and Ruby followed. About a dozen men
jogged up the exit road in twos and threes, back the way they’d come in the morning.

  Clay kept his rifle ready and his ears tuned. But he only heard Ranger footfalls and his own huffing breath. For some reason, the Germans hadn’t pursued them.

  He didn’t take any chances. He checked behind walls, inside trenches, and around shattered tree trunks.

  The Rangers turned off the exit road and headed toward the cliff they’d climbed. Clay and Ruby leapfrogged between craters, but only distant gunfire sounded, deep and booming.

  At the edge of the cliff, Taylor slipped down into a crater and Clay and Ruby followed.

  Headquarters, with a dozen or so Rangers, including Colonel Rudder, thank goodness.

  Taylor reported the situation to Rudder, the officers’ voices low and grim.

  “Clay? Ruby?”

  He spun around at the familiar voice. “G. M.!”

  His buddy sat leaning back against the crater wall, his lower right leg swathed in white.

  Clay grabbed his outstretched hand and shook it hard. “What happened?”

  “Sniper shot me through the calf.” Gene gestured to the dark shape of a bunker close by. “Doc Block patched me up and sent me back out to fight. That’s the aid station.”

  The old longing pulled Clay toward the bunker. Maybe the physician could use some help. But if he’d sent Gene out to fight, he’d surely send Clay skedaddling.

  “I’ve been guarding HQ.” Gene chuckled. “You should’ve seen Lieutenant Eikner. The radios have been giving us trouble, but remember how the lieutenant brought that old signal lamp from the last war? He used it to call in fire from the Satterlee. The destroyer took out those machine guns to the east. When the Satterlee ran out of ammo, the Thompson took over.”

  “Wow.”

  “Paxton, Ruby.” Taylor set a hand on Clay’s shoulder. “We’re setting up a perimeter. Let’s go.”

  “Me too.” Gene pushed up onto his good leg. “I can hobble just fine.”

  Arguments filled Clay’s mouth, but he swallowed them. In the same position, Clay would have done the same thing.

  “Come on, buddy.” Clay drew Gene’s arm up over his shoulder so he could support him. “Let’s find a nice spot to watch the sunrise.”

  His breath caught. He would indeed watch another sunrise.

  CHICAGO

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1944

  Leah pushed Juanita’s baby carriage across the street and two houses down from her sisters’ address. Helen dozed under her pink blanket.

  Leah had told Mama and Juanita that she planned to visit the University of Chicago and then city hall so she could obtain her birth certificate. That was true.

  But first, Callie and Polly. This morning she’d watch to see which direction the girls went to school, then in the afternoon she’d return and introduce herself. If she did so now, the girls would be late to school and would have a hard time concentrating in class.

  Something inside her writhed. Was she wrong to defy their adoptive mother’s wishes? Mama and Juanita were saddened by Mrs. Scholz’s decision but said it was her right.

  Leah disagreed. The girls belonged to her as surely as Helen did.

  Certainly Clay would agree. Hadn’t he urged her to visit Chicago so she would be reunited with them?

  Clay . . .

  The news in the papers and on the radio was vague—the landings had been successful but costly. How costly? Had they cost her the man she loved?

  Leah pulled out the clipping of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s prayer from yesterday’s afternoon newspaper. With her own thoughts scrambled by worry and anger and distress, it helped to focus on the printed prayer.

  The president’s words spoke to her soul: “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.”

  Leah glanced to the Scholz residence, still and quiet, then back to the clipping: “Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.”

  Her throat tightened, and she added a prayer that Clay would do the Lord’s will. She read on: “And for us at home—fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas—whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them—help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.”

  A breeze ruffled Helen’s blanket, and Leah tucked it into place. Whatever she faced in the coming days, she had to find the good and lean on the Lord.

  A door opened—the Scholz home.

  Leah tightened her grip on the baby carriage.

  Two dark-haired girls trotted down the steps, crossed the street, and headed in Leah’s direction, books in arms.

  “Callie!” A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway, waving a paper. “Your essay!”

  The taller of the girls gasped, whirled around, and ran across the street. “Oh, Mother! You’re divine! Simply divine.” Callie kissed her on the cheek.

  She laughed. “And you’re full of baloney. Off you go. I love you.”

  Leah’s feet rooted in place. Something about her sister’s voice sounded familiar, like this city, the church, and the postcard of the library. Was that her mother’s voice?

  Callie ran across the street to her twin. “I can’t believe I forgot it.”

  “I know,” Polly said. “You worked so hard on it.”

  The sisters she’d once known and loved approached. They didn’t look like Leah, but they shared her curls, her coloring, and her build. What else did they share?

  “I can’t wait to read it out loud.” Callie grinned at her paper. “I quote a particularly romantic Shakespearean sonnet, and I plan to look straight into Bobby Horton’s dreamy eyes as I recite it.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would. Watch me.”

  Her sister loved poetry too, and Leah couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe at all.

  Callie flung up one arm dramatically. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: Oh, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark.’”

  Polly giggled. “That wonderful bard. Poor Bobby doesn’t stand a chance.”

  The girls came closer, taller than Leah by several inches, nourished by better food and attention than Leah had received. Thank goodness they’d found a loving home.

  The girls spotted her.

  “Good morning, ma’am.” Callie pressed a hand to her chest. “Lovely morning for a sonnet, is it not?”

  That gratitude raised a smile. “It is.”

  Polly shook her head at Leah as they passed on the sidewalk. “Pardon my sister, ma’am. She’s loopy.”

  Her eyes—it was like looking in a mirror.

  Callie grabbed Polly’s arm and hugged it. “But I’m your loop-de-loop.”

  “You are.” Polly laughed.

  And the two little muses walked away. Away from Leah.

  Certainty crushed her chest, her breath, her hope, her dreams.

  They were complete apart from her, happy and healthy and together.

  Leah had to let them go.

  41

  POINTE DU HOC

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 1944

  Clay opened his eyes. Or was he still dreaming?

  Pale morning light filled the giant bowl of the crater. Clay rested with his head about two feet below the rim on the southern side. The dirt, the pebbles, the tuft of burnt grass—everything was just like in his recurring dream.

  Clay swallowed hard, his mouth dry. He took his canteen off his belt and took a swig, just like in his dream. Only this time he tasted the metallic water and felt it drop into the emptiness of his stomach.

  This was no dream. This was his dream coming to life.
<
br />   Dizziness swept through him, but he shook it away. Lord, give me strength.

  Gene dozed beside him. So much for staying awake while Clay slept. On the far side of the crater Ruby watched over the northern rim, and Taylor stirred awake at Ruby’s feet.

  Clay inched higher. Light gray powder dusted the edge of the crater. He found a notch in the rim and peered through.

  A pillbox stood about one hundred feet away, where Clay knew it would be, one of the giant reinforced concrete casemates the Germans had been building to house the 155-mm guns. The guns had never been installed.

  Murmuring voices came from that direction—and not in English.

  Clay sank back into the pit. Help me do this, Lord.

  He nudged Gene awake, then crawled to Lieutenant Taylor. “Sir, there’s a casemate over yonder. Germans inside.”

  Taylor rubbed bleary eyes. Had anyone—other than Gene—gotten any good sleep? “It was clear last night. Of course, the Krauts have tunnels and trenches connecting everything.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Taylor crawled over and looked over the top for a minute, then slipped back inside. “Ruby, go get the fellows in the crater next door.” He tilted his head toward the saddle of ground where two craters intersected.

  “We’ve got to take it,” Clay said. That casemate had a line of fire to Rudder’s headquarters and to the observation post on the tip of the point, still occupied by Germans. The Rangers would be trapped at headquarters and wouldn’t be able to take the observation post, and Clay’s detachment would be cut off from HQ.

  Worse, the Germans could use that position to cover a counterattack against the weakened American force. Only about ninety Rangers still bore arms, some of them wounded like Gene.

  Taylor squatted and drew in the dirt—a C shape for the casemate and circles for the two craters, like an elongated version of a child’s drawing of a face.

  Half a dozen Rangers crawled over the saddle into Clay’s crater.

  “Here’s the deal.” Taylor drew a line like a cigarette in the face’s mouth. “They have at least one machine gun in there, small arms too, I’m sure. I don’t know how many men—at least two. We can’t make a frontal assault. We’d get slaughtered.”