Children of the Promise

by Dean Hughes

“You sound like you don’t believe it.”

  “Well . . . let’s just say that nothing is quite like I expected. I hear about all the brave young men going off to win the war. It sounds pretty glorious. But I look around, and all I see is a bunch of guys like me, willing to go but hoping, more than anything, that we can come back alive. Marines are about as gung-ho as anybody, but everyone is getting serious now that we’re heading into the real thing.”

  “I see the glories of war every day, Gene. Kids, all torn up and burned and mutilated.”

  Gene nodded.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”

  “No. That’s all right. I know exactly what you’re saying. Sometimes it just seems like President Roosevelt ought to sit down with Tojo, or whoever is in charge over there, and say, ‘Come on. This is stupid. Let’s call it off and go home.’”

  “I know. But we do have to win, Gene. And you guys are heroes. Every one of you.”

  Gene didn’t respond to that. He stood up and picked a hibiscus from a nearby bush, and he handed it to Bobbi. “Here, I brought you a present, all the way from Hawaii.” She took it and tucked it behind her ear. Gene grinned, and when he did, he looked very young, that same little boy Bobbi had baby-sat when she was twelve and he was six. “What I’m looking forward to,” he said, “is the day when Wally and Alex and you and I all get home, and we can all be together with Mom and Dad and the girls. I’d give anything in the world if we could be home for Christmas.”

  Gene had tears in his eyes, and that was more than Bobbi could handle. He sat down again, and she rested her head against his shoulder. “If not this year, maybe next,” she said. And then they sat for a long time that way, saying nothing, Bobbi crying and Gene trying not to.

  Before Gene left, Bobbi held hands with him and said a prayer, asking that he might be kept safe. And when he was gone, she took the hibiscus blossom back with her into the hospital. That night she pressed it in her Bible, and then she got down on her knees and pleaded with the Lord one more time that Gene’s wish might be granted, that they could all be together again, if not this year or the next then someday.

  ***

  On D day, plus four, the 506th Regiment got its order to march toward Carentan. The regiment was to swing around to the southwest of the town, while the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment attacked from the north, and the 501st Airborne from the northeast. Alex’s regiment moved out that evening, and just like the old days back at Toccoa, the men marched all night.

  Alex was relieved that he was no longer in command of E Company. Lieutenant Summers, his platoon leader, had arrived at the assembly point on the afternoon of D day, and he had become the temporary company commander. Captain Morehead was still missing. On June 7, the company, by then at about half its strength, had battled through some counterattacks—but the action was nothing of the sort Alex had dealt with that first morning. After that, Summers had received orders to guard the regimental headquarters. For three days the men of Company E had had the chance to rest and recover.

  But those days had not been good for Alex. Duncan’s main activity had been to search out wine cellars and bring back all the alcohol he could carry. Most of the men in Alex’s squad—along with the other men in the company—were drinking way too much. Alex was sickened, too, by the rampant souvenir hunting. The troops went about the countryside searching for dead Germans, and they collected Lügers, binoculars, watches, knives, insignias. Jim Gourley, who had now caught up with the company, even cut the finger off a corpse to get a ring. And then he bragged about it. Alex knew that these kids were using alcohol and big talk to avoid the fear and disgust they were actually feeling, but that didn’t change how he felt about the way they were acting. He chewed them out, tried to keep them level-headed, but time and again the wine would show up again.

  A few of the men from the company had been killed or wounded, and some were missing, but most had finally made it to the assembly point. No one knew anything about Tom McCoy or Dale Huff. Alex feared the worst for them, but Lester Cox was the only man from his squad that he knew to be dead.

  One relief was that in spite of all the difficulties the airborne units had experienced, most of the initial missions had been completed. The causeways had been secured, and the infantry units that had landed on Utah Beach had moved in. The men on Omaha Beach, however, had faced a nightmare. Word was getting through to the paratroopers that a terrible slaughter had happened there. All the same, enough men had gotten ashore to establish a beachhead and push inland a little. The job for the airborne now was to help the units from Utah and Omaha link up so that a secure perimeter could be established. After that, a breakout could be attempted. No one was saying anything now about the airborne troops getting out in three days. The 101st and the 82nd were apparently in to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.

  The Germans were proving very hard to move. They kept their tanks and troops lurking behind the hedgerows. Every time the Allies fought their way past one hedge, and took heavy losses in the process, the Germans fell back to the next. There was no way for the ground troops to get rolling across the countryside. The Allies needed desperately to get control of the roads and crucial intersections. Carentan was a town where some of the main roads and a railroad converged, and so it was a key site. The 101st got the assignment to take and hold it.

  So now the days of ease were over. “Easy” Company was going back into battle with its regiment, and Alex thought that was just as well. After the exhausting night march, the troops were in place to attack Carentan on the morning of June 11, but the Germans had placed a platoon at a T-intersection on a country road leading into the town. E company got the order to make a direct assault on the position. F Company would attack from the left flank, and D Company would be held in reserve. The regiment had the numbers over the Germans, but the Germans were dug in and much better armed. The Germans had an MG42, a high-powered machine gun, in place and ready. They would surely be firing mortars, too. The attack was going to be tough.

  Alex was leading Summers’ platoon for now. In the dark, they had sneaked along the road and hid in a dry ditch on the left side. The second platoon was on the right, and the third was waiting in reserve. Alex would move out first and take his men straight up the road suddenly and quickly, to catch the Germans unready. Alex’s goal was to get to the machine-gun position and overrun it, if he could. If he couldn’t get there, he at least had to draw the attention of the Germans while the flanking company moved in.

  At exactly 0600, Summers got up and said, “Move out!”

  Alex yelled, “Let’s go,” jumped up, and bolted down the road. But the Germans were only fifty meters away, and they were waiting. The moment Alex stood up, the big machine gun began to fire. Six men, all from Alex’s squad, had gotten up with Alex, but the fire stopped the rest. Alex charged ahead with tracer bullets flying all around him, but then he glanced back and realized that only a few of his men were with him. He ducked down on the side of the road, fired a few more rounds, and then screamed, “Come on, men!”

  But the rattle of gunfire was tremendous, and no one was getting up. Alex was in no-man’s land. Someone was down on his face, in the road, and the other men who had started the charge with him had jumped back into the ditch. Alex was kneeling, still shouting to his men, but nothing was happening.

  And then Summers ran down the middle of the road. “Come on. Let’s go!” he was shouting. He ran to the spot where Alex’s men were still in the ditch. Alex looked back to see bullets making puffs of dust as they snapped into the road around Summers. Alex jumped to his feet again, and he shouted, “Move out! Move out! Let’s go.”

  Bullets were filling the air, and Alex was sure that at any second he was going to catch one. He ran back toward his men. And then Summers, soft-spoken Summers, bellowed, “Get out of that ditch. Come on!” He swore at a man and kicked him on the backside.

  One man jumped up, then two, and then they were all moving—almost thirty of them.
Summers took off in front of them. A couple of men went down, and Alex ran past them. He was catching up with Summers when a mortar exploded in front of him and he realized he was falling. For a moment he thought he had tripped. He hit the road hard, on his chest, but as he tried to clamber to his feet and go again, pain shot through his leg, and he dropped. He struggled to his feet once again, made it up this time, and hobbled forward, but the men of his platoon had run ahead of him and were moving quickly away.

  Alex saw another mortar explode on the side of the road, and dirt and dust flew. At the same time, he heard an explosion up ahead, and then two more. Second Platoon had moved in, apparently, and they had gotten some grenades in on top of the emplacement. Suddenly the blasting of the machine gun stopped. Small-arms fire continued for a minute or so, and then everything was silent.

  It was all over in just a few minutes, but Alex was lying on the road, and the pain was taking him away from any focus on the action. He looked down to see that a lot of blood was pumping from his thigh. He wondered whether he could bandage it and keep going.

  A medic got to him in a couple of minutes. He tore Alex’s pants open and filled the wound with sulfa powder. Then he got a compress on it. Alex got enough of a glimpse to see that he didn’t just have a hole in his leg. His thigh muscle was torn wide open.

  “I believe you earned yourself a ticket out of this mess,” the medic said. “A lot of guys would trade you right now.”

  Alex didn’t want to get out this easily, not when his squad had to go on fighting. And yet another side of him was saying, “It’s over for me.” And he did feel relief in that.

  Lieutenant Summers walked back after a few minutes. “Come on, Thomas,” he said, “that’s just a scratch. You’re not going to leave us, are you?” He was grinning.

  “You’re a maniac,” Alex said. “Why didn’t you get hit?”

  “You’ve got me. I should be dead right now.”

  Alex felt the shame. “I’m sorry about my men,” he said.

  “Hey, they’re really my men. And you got up and led them. I can’t believe we ever doubted you. You’re the best man I’ve got, and I can tell you, I hate to see you go.”

  “Maybe I can stay,” Alex said. “If—”

  “No,” the medic said. “You’ll get patched up somewhere and then come back. But I suspect they’ll ship you to England for now.”

  “That’s right,” Summers said. “But I’ll do what I can to get you back to our unit.”

  “I’m going to give you a shot of morphine,” the medic said. “The pain will go away, and you might go to sleep. Just let us worry about everything now. You’re going to be okay.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said. “But I don’t think I need all that. I can probably walk.”

  The medic only laughed. And then he gave Alex the shot.

  “Was anyone killed?” Alex asked.

  “Rizzardi went down next to you, out there on the road. He’s alive, but he’s in bad shape. A couple of guys from First Platoon are dead. And quite a few are wounded.”

  Alex was already feeling the effects of the morphine, but he felt this new stab—Rizzardi—deep in his chest. And then he saw Duncan’s big moon of a face, looking down at him.

  “They got Alberto,” Duncan said, and he cursed. “He’s hit really bad.” But he didn’t look angry, didn’t look like the hulk of a man he was. He looked lost, his eyes full of panic, like a kid in a crowd trying desperately to spot his big brother.

  ***

  Four days later, on June 15, Gene climbed off the side of his ship and onto an LVT—Landing Vehicle, Tracked. Ten minutes later, he was seasick. He never quite got to the point of vomiting, but he came close a couple of times, and strangely, what kept coming back to him was the thought of a trip to Yellowstone Park he had made with his family when he was little—maybe seven or eight years old. He had gotten carsick, and he had had to stop along the side of the road to vomit. His mom had held him and cupped the palm of her hand over his forehead. He had felt better after that, and Dad had told him to sit in the front seat, where he sat between his parents the rest of the way. And once inside the park, Dad had offered a reward of a nickel to the first person in the car to see a bear.

  Gene had been the one to spot the first bear—a mother with two cubs, begging for food along the road. Dad had paid off with that nickel, and Gene had been thrilled. Years later his family had admitted that everyone had seen the bear before he had—but they had kept still so he could win his nickel.

  Flashes of that trip kept coming back to him as he held on to the pitching, rolling landing craft. Those had been depression years, and times had been fairly hard for the family, but Dad had made sure they all took a vacation as often as possible. A little vision of the cabin where they had stayed, near Old Faithful, passed through Gene’s mind, with the whole family crowded into that one little log room.

  The craft took a huge lurch as it struck a wave on an angle and got thrown sideways. At almost the same moment, an artillery shell hit very close, and water exploded over the top of the craft. The island was still well off. Gene wanted more than anything to reach the beach so he could do something—not just sit there and wait.

  The island was Saipan, in the Marianas. Gene had never heard of it until the day before, but the word was that it was part of the Japanese empire and was held by more than thirty thousand troops. It was an important strategic site—with a port and an airfield—and the Japanese were not going to give it up easily.

  Gene was going in with the second wave—which wasn’t supposed to be so bad—but the sound of the artillery was constant, the thuds coming in surges but never really ceasing. Great plumes of water kept shooting into the air as the artillery shells struck, and Gene had seen one landing craft, right alongside his own, take a hit and go down. He had seen men in the water, but only in glimpses, and he had no idea how many of them might have died.

  The craft kept pounding up and down and then slipping and vaulting this way and that. Gene was fighting just to stay in his seat. Ahead of him, on the beach, when he got a quick look, he could see damaged landing vehicles at the shoreline. Tracer bullets were flashing across the beach, and Gene could see men down, maybe dug in, maybe dead.

  It was obvious that things weren’t going well, that the invasion was in trouble. Gene held on as an artillery shell crashed just in front of them. He was thrown back and then forward as the craft slammed into the water and seemed to lose power. But then it rose with a wave, and the tracks caught water again and drove the boat ahead.

  The waves finally smoothed in shallower waters, and the speed of the craft picked up, but now Gene could see better what was ahead of him, and the shore was absolutely riddled with the carcasses of exploded landing vehicles. He had wondered how anyone could be left alive on the island after three solid days of navy bombardment, but clearly the big guns on the island had survived, and so had plenty of Japanese soldiers to fire them.

  As the LVT neared the beach, Gene heard the whistle of another big shell. He ducked as it struck very close and a gush of water washed over him. The vehicle was amphibious, and the hope was that it would come out of the water on its tracks and carry the Marines straight into the jungle without anyone having to make an unprotected charge across the beach.

  The big craft did lumber out of the water, and Gene looked up to see that the driver had found himself a good open stretch of sand. He hunkered down and hoped for the best, but then he felt a terrific impact, and he saw the men at the front of the vehicle erupt out of their seats. The craft lurched forward a few more yards and then ground to a halt.

  “Go over the sides,” Sergeant Lucas shouted. “Get to the jungle as fast as you can.”

  Gene, with his rifle in one hand, sprang over the side of the vehicle, stumbled, and fell onto his knees in the sand. Then he jumped up and took off up the beach. He slammed into the back of one of his friends, a guy named Howard Slesser, who for some reason had stopped in his tracks. But Howar
d slipped down, dropped on his face, and Gene caught a glance of the red spot that had formed on the back of his uniform.

  Gene stepped around him and ran forward, but he heard the constant rattle of machine guns, saw the tracer bullets, thick as fireflies, everywhere. Other men were dropping into the sand, and Gene dove down too. He began scratching, almost wildly, trying to get into the sand. The machine-gun fire kept sweeping over him, and he kept clawing, but he heard his sergeant shout, “Don’t dig in. We gotta get off this beach. Let’s go.”

  Gene saw the squad leader leap up and run forward, saw other guys doing the same, so he came up out of the sand and ran hard. He felt a bullet hit his helmet, and then another one hit him in the shoulder, and he went down. He felt the terrific burn, but he still flailed at the sand and tried to get himself dug in. He told himself that he was all right, not seriously hit, but out of the corner of his eye, he could see the red of his own blood spreading down the front of his shoulder.

  The squad leader had disappeared. Maybe he was dead. But Gene could think of nothing but getting himself as deep into the sand as possible. No training, nothing he had learned or heard seemed to be coming back to him. He only knew he wanted to stay out of that machine-gun fire.

  But then he heard Sergeant Lucas again, well up ahead of him. “Boys, you gotta get off the beach. We’ve got to make the jungle. You’ll die out here. Come on. Get up and go.”

  Gene didn’t think of disobeying. He came up out of the sand again. At the same moment he felt a thump in the center of his chest, as though someone had hit him with a rock. And he felt a strange, sudden weakness. He was on his face before he knew it. He thought of trying to dig again, but he couldn’t move.

  “Corpsman,” he said. He had tried to yell, but not much more than a whisper had come out of him. And he didn’t really understand. A terrible pain had begun to swell in his chest, and yet he was still not sure it was a bullet that had hit him. All he had felt was that strange thump.

  Time went by. A lot of time. And his head was full of buzzing, his chest raging with pain. Then someone had him by the legs, was pulling him down the beach. Gene didn’t like the pain, the confusion, but he told himself this was good. Someone was going to save him, make the pain go away.