by David Healey
"Hey!" The lieutenant started to get up, but Cole pushed him back down.
"Better hold still, sir, or we're all going to wind up dead."
The Germans did get off a burst from the machine gun, but Cole shot them in quick succession. Then he was up and running toward the dunes. He got as far as the barbed wire before throwing himself flat. The lieutenant had wire cutters, and he snipped a path through the wire. More men were moving up and doing the same.
The big guns up in the dune bunkers could not angle down far enough to fire at the Americans who had made it this close to the German positions, but they were taking plenty of fire from the troops in the bunkers, who were targeting Americans with their Mauser rifles and even submachine guns. One by one, Cole picked them off. He bought the lieutenant and the other men enough time to move through the field of barbed wire.
Then the lieutenant threw a grenade through the slit of a concrete bunker. There was a flash and bang of high explosive, and then the enemy guns fell silent. The tide of battle had suddenly changed on Omaha Beach.
CHAPTER 2
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower lit another cigarette, sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, and studied the wall-size map in the operations center for what seemed like the millionth time.
The map portrayed the English Channel and the French coast at Normandy, with units and ships, even airplanes, indicated by cut-out shapes that were periodically moved about the map by smartly uniformed WACS. It might all have been mistaken for a classroom exercise if the mood in the room had not been so tense and somber.
Although he was surrounded by staff, Ike felt very much alone. Since the moment that he had given the order to proceed with the invasion, it was as if he inhabited a glass cocoon. A heavy, invisible load seemed to stoop his shoulders as he hunched over his cigarette. Ike could literally feel the weight of responsibility—it was as tangible to him as one of the heavy packs that his soldiers were carrying ashore in France. He knew it was the weight of thousands of lives that hung in the balance that June dawn, and perhaps the outcome of the war itself.
What bothered Ike was that after months of planning, and the tremendous effort of thousands upon thousands of men from his own staff down to the field officers and the soldiers themselves, nobody knew that Operation Overlord would succeed.
It was all an incredible gamble, though it was also a calculated risk. Ike was fascinated by the Civil War and often recalled the words of Confederate General Robert E. Lee: "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."
Though he was a brilliant strategist, Lee had ordered the tragic Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Ike couldn’t help wondering if he was now commanding a similar disaster.
There were probabilities and predictions, of course, but they were not particularly reassuring. Some estimates put casualties on D-Day itself as high as seventy percent for the airborne forces, meaning seven out of every ten men he had seen off yesterday afternoon were potentially going to their deaths. He sucked on the cigarette again.
As many as 12,000 Allied troops could be killed and wounded before the day was out. That would mean thousands of families devastated by the decisions he had made. It was enough to keep a man up at night, which could explain why Ike hadn't slept much, and looked it.
Ike and most of his staff had been living on coffee, cigarettes, hot dogs and the occasional drink—though he never poured more than two fingers of scotch. His mouth tasted like an ashtray the morning after a party, but he barely gave a thought to himself, exhausted though he was. He knew that even now, men were fighting and dying on the beaches. He tried to harden his heart to that fact, but the thought still wrenched at him. At this very moment, more men were being ferried across the channel, probably seasick and cold.
"Any word yet?" he asked.
"Reports say there is little resistance at Utah Beach, sir. However, the German defenses were stronger than expected at Omaha. We're having a hell of a time there."
"Casualty reports?"
The aide just shook his head. "No solid numbers yet, sir, but the machine guns on the heights are really chewing our boys up."
"God help them."
Ike was fully aware that he and his staff had planned the largest military invasion of all time. Like most generals, he was a student of military history, and the closest example he had found of a similar attempt had come in 1588, when the Spanish Armada had sailed to sack England. Ike was not comforted by the fact that the invasion had been disastrous due to storms and a spirited English defense. The Spanish had lost most of their ships and thousands of troops had drowned upon being shipwrecked on the craggy Irish coast.
But Ike was not King Philip sailing blindly into stormy seas with little more than a blessing of the fleet and a trust in God's Will being done. Operation Overlord had been meticulously planned. That planning had also taken place during the last year in utmost secrecy, for the Reich had spies everywhere. Great care had been taken to plant the seeds of misinformation and deceit about when and where the invasion would take place.
The Germans knew, of course, that an invasion was likely, and any schoolboy with a map could see that it would take place somewhere along the French coast where it fronted the English Channel. Using fake guns and troop trains, artificial radio traffic, and a campaign of false information, the Allies had worked hard to deceive the Germans that the landing would come farther north, at Pas de Calais.
Had the Germans taken the bait? Depending upon the answer to that question, the war in Europe could be won or lost by lunchtime.
General Rommel had been summoned by Hitler to reinforce the so-called Atlantic Wall as a defense against the Allies. Defending miles of coastline with a military that was increasingly being spread too thin was no easy task, but Rommel was highly capable. Ike had groaned at the aerial surveillance photos showing yet more defenses being built. It seemed that every day that passed, the Germans were able to strengthen their positions. The Allies’ best hope was to keep the Germans off balance. Would the Allied invasion come at Pas de Calais or Normandy?
All night, reports had been coming in, starting with the results of the aerial insertion behind German lines. Now, waves of men were storming the beaches themselves.
The weather had not been cooperative. A winter invasion was out of the question on the stormy English Channel. Late May or early June seemed to provide the best opportunity for a smooth crossing. But there had been cool, cloudy, rainy weather dogging them all through the English spring. It needed to be clear enough that airplanes could not only drop their men accurately in France, but also for the Army Air Corps to provide support. The cloud cover had still played havoc with the drop and some of the pilots had missed their targets, scattering the 101st and 82nd Airborne over more than twenty miles. Confused and fragmented, they were now trying to join up across the tangled hedgerow country that made up much of Normandy.
The invasion very nearly hadn't come off due to the uncooperative weather. The original date in May for the invasion had come and gone, a postponement prompted by the wet conditions. Another such delay had very nearly followed in June. When the forecasters had finally predicted a tiny window of opportunity for the following day, Ike had given the order to go ahead.
"OK, we'll go," were the simple words uttered by Ike that launched the Allied invasion of Europe early on the morning of June 6th.
All the men were in place, already loaded aboard cramped landing craft or prepared to board their planes for Normandy. To stand them down would have smacked of defeat and blunted the edge of their readiness. The ruse they had worked so hard at to convince the Germans that the landing would come elsewhere could fall apart at any time. In fact, the way Ike saw it, there was no more time nor any option but the present.
And so the order had been given. Now there was nothing to do but wait ... and pray. Ike smoked, watching the changing locations of the figures on the map, and tried to imagine what it must be l
ike to be on Omaha beach that morning. The soldier in him ached to be there; the husband and father in him nearly wept at the thought of the battle raging at that very moment.
CHAPTER 3
Kurt Von Stenger slept until just past midnight. He had gone to bed unusually early, thanks to half a bottle of burgundy and a delicious rabbit stew. But he always had been a light sleeper, a trait that had helped keep him alive through several years of war, and something woke him in the night.
He lay very still and simply listened. Airplanes. Many, many of them, droning high overhead. And yet he did not hear the sound of bombs, which was puzzling.
Unfortunately, he knew they would not be Luftwaffe planes. The Allies had more or less dominated the skies, though there were still a few Junkers and Messerschmitts to keep the Tommies and Americans on their toes. But that many planes could only mean one thing—the Allies were up to something big.
He eased out of bed—the rich, red wine had been a good sedative, though now he found that it had given him a mild headache—but did not turn on the light. No point in giving the Allies a target, not even so much as the pinprick of light his bedroom window would make. Let them grope their way over France in darkness.
Though the night was cool, Von Stenger did not bother to dress, but only tugged on a silk smoking jacket and slid his feet into slippers. His bedroom was on the second floor off an old Norman farmhouse. It had been home to generations of gentry, and had some fine touches, such as the balcony off the bedroom that was a pleasant place to take his morning coffee.
He went out and looked up at the sky. The breeze had a cold, damp edge and there was a great deal of cloud cover because few stars were visible, but there was just enough ambient light for him to see that the night sky was filled with parachutes, creating a Milky Way of silk. Dimly, he could see them floating down as plane after plane roared overheard, spilling its cargo.
Von Stenger was not particularly alarmed or surprised. There had been rumors for some time of an Allied invasion. It was really only a matter of where and when, because the Americans and English needed some toehold on the continent. Tonight, they had finally come to Normandy.
He lit a cigarette—no Allied pilot was going to notice the glow of a Sobranie from that high up—and watched the parachutes float down. There were far too many jumpers for this to be another one of the British SAS's nuisance raids. No, this must be the start of something big. Already, far, far in the distance, he began to hear submachine gun fire.
With the gold-tipped cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, Von Stenger padded back into his room and returned to the balcony with his Mosin-Nagant rifle. This was a Russian rifle that he had taken off a dead sniper in the frozen rubble of Stalingrad, where Von Stenger had earned the nickname Das Gespenst—The Ghost—for his ability to slip silently through the ruins of the city, putting bullets into enemy snipers.
It was a rather battered weapon, but it was as familiar to Von Stenger as his own reflection in the mirror. The rifle had served him well in Russia. He could tell a story about each of the nicks in the stock and scratches on the barrel, though none of them would have been particularly good bedtime stories. They were perhaps more suitable as nightmares or horror stories.
His service in Russia had won him the Knight’s Cross. While Von Stenger was not an ardent Nazi—he had little use for politics—he was very proud of the medal at his throat. His experience in Russia also earned him a stint teaching at the Wehrmacht’s sniper school, and the rank of captain. It was somewhat unusual for a sniper to be an officer—for the most part, snipers worked in teams or were expected to operate as jaeger—the German military tradition of lone hunters or scouts. A sniper had no need to order anyone around, and he generally did his duty without needing anyone to tell him how to go about it.
Von Stenger came from an old German family with friends in the right places, and they had seen to it that he now wore a Hauptmann’s insignia.
As one of the top snipers in the Wehrmacht, Von Stenger easily could have procured one of the newer, semi-automatic sniper rifles like the Walther K43. But this rifle had taken him far. It was now like part of him. He would not have traded it any more than he would have willingly parted with an arm or a leg.
There was an old chair on the balcony that Von Stenger sometimes sat in while he smoked. He pulled it closer, sat down, and rested the rifle on the railing. The parachutes were quite far, and it wasn't easy finding them with the telescope, which offered a very limited field of view. So Von Stenger picked out a parachute with his naked eyes, and then keeping his gaze on it, brought the telescopic sight up to his eye. The parachute was now visible in the telescopic sight.
He took aim at the figure dangling at the end of the parachute harness, moving the rifle down to keep pace with the parachute as it settled lower, and squeezed the trigger. The parachute was much too far away to determine if the bullet had hit home, but it had certainly come close enough to give the airborne soldier something to think about as the bullet zipped past.
He picked out another parachute, took aim, fired. The parachutes themselves were much easier targets, but where was the challenge in that? Besides, a bullet hole was not going to bring down a parachute. He noticed that they drifted to earth in about forty seconds, which was plenty of time to pick out a target—sometimes two or three—from the same plane.
In the distance, small arms fire increased in intensity. Von Stenger smiled. He was not the only one giving the parachutists a warm welcome to France.
In the house below him, he could hear movement as the gunshots near and far brought the farmhouse awake. There would be no more sleep for anyone in the house tonight. The old farmer who owned the place had long since been taken away by the SS on suspicion of helping the maquis—the French Resistance—but his wife and daughter still lived there. They kept Von Stenger and the other German officers billeted there well fed in the futile hope that it would help the farmer's case.
He called for coffee, lit another cigarette, then picked out another parachute. There did seem to be an endless supply. More planes moved overhead, emptying their cargo, the parachutists spilling out like down from a milkweed pod.
As one parachute after another bloomed in the sky, Von Stenger targeted them out and fired. Dawn was still some hours away, but it was shaping up to be a pleasant morning.
• • •
Corporal James Neville took off his steel helmet, placed it on the jump seat of the glider, and then sat back down.
"Neville, what the hell are you doing?" asked Dooley, who occupied the seat beside him. He had to shout the words to be heard over the roar of the twin 1,200 horsepower Pratt & Whitney engines powering the Douglas C-147 Skytrain bearing them aloft.
"Insurance," Neville explained. "When the Jerries start up with their flak guns, I don't want me arse shot off."
Dooley snorted, and shook his head. You could always count on Neville to do something, well, unusual. He was a bit gung ho, even for a paratrooper. "We're about to jump out of a glider at low altitude behind enemy lines—at night, mind you—and you're worried about a random piece of shrapnel biting you in the arse?"
"It’s best to be prepared for all contingencies," Neville said. He patted his front pocket. "I've even got a couple of rubbers in case my chute comes down in a brothel."
"In your dreams, Neville."
“A man can hope, can’t he?”
That was the last they spoke, because the light flashed giving them the two minute warning to the drop site. Neville's stomach did a little flip-flop in time to the blinking light. Some of the men had actually vomited with fear and anxiety. Neville didn't blame them. The way Dooley had described what they were about to do made it sound, well, like a suicide mission. But they had trained again and again for this night. In other words, they had done it all before.
Some men now bowed their heads in prayer, but he didn't go in for that sort of thing. To keep his mind occupied, Neville went over his mental checklist.
He had his rifle and ammunition, the standard-issue knife to cut his chute away once they landed, and rations.
He had added extensively to the basic equipment they had been issued. He also had a short, very sharp knife tucked into the top of each boot, a length of garrote wire wrapped around his canteen, a wristwatch with a dial that glowed in the dark, and an American .45 automatic because he loved the fact it had been nicknamed "the flying ashtray" due to its slow, fat bullets. You couldn’t hit a thing much more than twenty feet away, but if you did hit something with a lead ashtray moving at just under the speed of sound, you tended to knock it down.
He also had the rubbers he'd mentioned to Dooley, just in case any French girls showed special gratitude at being liberated. All things considered, he was about as prepared as any man could be to jump out of an aircraft into hostile territory.
Now the jump light stopped blinking and glowed with its steady, red light. The door to the glider slid open. If anyone's thoughts had been wandering, the sudden rush of cold night air brought them into sharp focus.
The men stood and silently attached the static lines that would automatically open their parachutes as they hurtled from the aircraft. Dooley was in line in front of him. They had all been through this so many times that there was barely any need for orders other than the jump master shouting, "Go, go, go!"
Then it was Neville's turn, and he tumbled out into the darkness. He positioned himself as he had been trained to withstand the sharp snap of the parachute deploying—it was a little like going off a diving board into a pool of nothing. They were jumping one after the other and he saw Dooley's chute blossom into a sudden puff of silk in the darkness. Then his own 'chute opened behind him with a sound like whuff and he was drifting with all the rest of the boys, the ground coming up fast.
