by Alan David
Sergeant Rawlings appeared, and Eddie immediately felt at ease. Unable to make his orders heard, the sergeant pointed at his own equipped body and motioned to the discarded webbing of the men. They began to dress. Steaming dixies of cocoa and soggy sandwiches were handed round.
Smith was leaning against the bulkhead, groaning. His rifle lay forgotten underfoot. His equipment hung by a strap from one shoulder. Newman, ashen-faced, was pressing his forehead against the cool metal of the ship.
Conquering heroes, the sergeant thought pityingly. He went to Smith and helped him into his equipment, pushing his rifle into his hands. He dragged Newman to his feet. The landing craft were moving faster now, and men staggered and fell as the decks pitched and heaved.
Lieutenant Gates, standing on the bridge of the landing craft, was awed by the magnitude of the bombardment. The greying skies of dawn were rent and jagged by the flashes of the big guns. Thick, acrid smoke drifted across the great armada forging into the Normandy beaches. Noise was overpowering and incessant, and the flame and shock of the great broadsides from the battleships were fearsome experiences to the uninitiated. Overhead, invisible in the murk and smoky greyness, the fighter cover and heavy bombers circled tirelessly. The Second Front had started.
‘The first troops are ashore,’ shouted Sergeant Rawlings. ‘I have just come from up top. It’s magnificent.’
‘It’s bad enough down here and unable to see,’ replied his brother Arthur. ‘What must it be like ashore?’
‘That we’ll know in a very little while,’ said the sergeant. Noise and smoke were the two overpowering features of the landings. Destroyers gave covering fire to the infantry, while the battleships engaged the shore batteries. The first troops in encountered obstacles neck deep in water. The beaches were covered by intensive crossfire from massive pillboxes and other fortifications. Streams of bombers swarmed in, diving and attacking, smashing gun emplacements, defences, communications and any likely target that presented itself. The waves of assault troops began wading ashore.
Eddie was numbed by the noise as he splashed through the shallows from the landing craft behind his brother Arthur. He gazed wide-eyed to left and right as he ran forward across the foreshore, and his wide eyes recorded the overwhelming force and size of the invasion. As far as he could see there were landing barges and craft nosing into the beaches, and hundreds of men were pouring ashore. Tanks were lumbering about on the beach. Smoke drifted everywhere. Flashes glowed redly, winked and died. Shells and bombs screamed overhead without pause, and the very beaches shook under the impact and weight of high explosive.
Machine-guns were firing, punctuating the heavier barrage with deadly bursts of fire, and Eddie saw the water boiling about him under the threshing might of questing bullets. He followed his brother blindly up the beach, and behind them came the section, the platoon, the company, the battalion, and all the liberating forces poised on the sea for the great gamble that was to bring about the end of the Third Reich.
Enemy fire was tremendous and accurate, and they found themselves pinned down under its intensity. This sort of thing had occurred many times in training, but never on such a vast scale or with such deadly intent. Bullets wheeped and screamed into the sand. Eddie lay prone and buried his face in his arms. His mind was overwhelmed by the magnitude of battle. Fear was a living emotion inside his breast.
He looked up to find smoke hazing the ground, cutting down range and vision. Dead soldiers, all British, were lying haphazardly in great numbers, and he wondered that so many should die so soon after landing. It brought home to him that at any second he could be killed, that this was tonal and bloody war.
A section came running by, and sudden explosions erupted about them. They fell amid swirling sand and smoke. Eddie trembled and buried himself deeper into the sand.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up at his brother, then turned and touched Smith. The section was alerted, and they jumped up and ran forward.
Corporal Rawlings led them through barbed wire and masses of square concrete blocks. Damage was everywhere. It seemed that nothing was untouched. Men filled the sand dunes; the dead and the wounded and the scared men. Confusion seemed widespread to the private soldier, but the invasion plan was unfolding well.
The section crouched in a dip in the beach. They felt out of things. No one seemed to know what was going on. Sections of infantry belonging to another battalion were running forward into annihilation by machine-gun fire. The rest of the platoon were scattered about, waiting for the order to move forward.
Sergeant Rawlings came at a run into the dip. His forehead was beaded with sweat. His appearance was ruffled, but he was calm and efficient. He tapped each man as he passed and pointed to the section commander. When he reached the corporal he grasped his brother’s arm and put his mouth close to Arthur’s ear.
‘Follow me, Arthur, we’ve got some action coming up.’
He led the way forward at a run, and Three Section followed blindly, ducking and wincing at every fresh blast. Now they came under fire again, and they ran in fear. They went up over the dunes. Platoons were deployed here and there. Wounded were being moved back to the shore; bright blood gleamed on drab khaki, and motionless figures were blanketed upon stretchers.
They took shelter behind a low concrete wall. A pill-box on the right was shattered and ruined, and bodies lay about it to testify to the ferocity of the fighting that had taken place before moving on. The rest of the platoon was following, and watching them, and seeing the numerous spurts of sand about them, Eddie was appalled. That was machine-gun fire, and Three Section had run through it. Even as he watched, two men in One Section fell limply and another staggered in running forward, then doubled over and sprawled in the sand.
Sickened, Eddie looked along the length of his own section, and a pang shot through him. Georgie Fenn was half sitting, half lying against the wall. Smith was beside him, and so was Corporal Rawlings. Forgetting his fear Eddie slithered towards the group.
‘What’s the matter?’ he yelled, grabbing Smith’s arm. Then he drew back aghast. Georgie Fenn had tilted his head back against the wall. He was shouting something, but no one could understand. His eyes were wide and dazed. His left trousers leg had been torn open to above the knee. The cloth was tattered and blood-soaked. There was no foot on Fenn’s left leg, which ended below the knee. Blood was draining fast from the shambles of the wound. Eddie averted his eyes, sickened by the sight of inches of white bone protruding from the end of the bloody, mangled stump.
‘It was a bloody mine,’ Smith was shouting. ‘I must have jumped over it. My God, he’s done for.’
Sergeant Rawlings came down. He looked at Fenn, his close comrade for many years, then turned to the section, steeling himself. ‘What are you bunching for?’ he shouted. ‘Come on, follow me. There’s nothing you can do for Georgie. Leave him. At the double, and when you get into the open keep going as hard as you can, and don’t stop for anyone or anything.’
Machine-guns chattered at them again when they climbed over the wall. Now they were upon concrete; yards and yards of smooth white concrete that offered no cover, and the flying bullets were all the more fearsome now, unable to bury themselves as they did in sand. They ricocheted and turned in all directions, and men fell from the sections and left gaps in the ranks that continued to push on.
Eddie remembered little after that. All he could see in his mind was the shattered leg of Georgie Fenn. Not for glory, he thought. Dear God, not for glory!
The sergeant led them along a narrow track, and now they were out of sight of the sea and safe from the machine-guns firing from isolated bunkers still holding out along the shore. A heavy bombardment was still coming down, and the shells screamed overhead in a terrifying manner. Big bombers were flashing over, intent upon smashing every fortification.
Sergeant Rawlings stopped in a ditch, spoke to the corporal, then vanished into the smoke forward. The section crouched in cover, regaining their
breath, panting, mindless, just listening to the noise of battle. Eddie lay with his head resting against Arthur’s legs. He gripped his rifle and kept his eyes closed. Time passed unmeasured, and the battle continued with unabated fury.
Seven British tanks came trundling along the track, part of the formation that earlier had broken through the enemy ring of concrete round the beaches, and struck inland for important bridges. Dust swirled around the infantry huddled in the ditches. Lieutenant Gates and Sergeant Rawlings came back along the ditch. The platoon commander passed by to contact his headquarters and the sergeant motioned to Three Section to follow. He turned and went back the way he had come. The platoon followed as they had done on many a scheme.
Hedges raised their barriers upon every side. Now there was a greater volume of small-arms fire. The fields were being devastated by a creeping barrage. There was no blue sky overhead. A low ceiling of dirty smoke turned the day into twilight. They kept to the ditches, and came upon the seven tanks stopped on the track. The leading tank had been hit by enemy shell fire, and the second tank was attempting to push the fiercely burning hulk of his leader out of the way.
Suddenly the sergeant turned right and pushed through the hedge and climbed into the field. The sections followed, and they spread out and began to cross the open land. Presently they came under fire from the ruins of a village which they were approaching. The tanks began shelling the burning ruins, and the advancing British saw many small figures running hither and thither among the houses.
There was a sudden movement in the village, and one by one six squat, ominous vehicles loomed out of the smoke. Tanks; low, black painted monsters with immense guns protruding from rounded turrets. They came lumbering across the field, guns blaring, and almost immediately one of the British tanks erupted into an inferno of death for its crew.
The infantry dropped to the ground as machine-gun fire reached for them, and they watched the battle between the armoured monsters with horror in their eyes. A fighter-bomber zoomed out of nowhere, and the leading enemy tank vanished under a pall of flame-shot smoke. More aircraft appeared, and it seemed to the watching men that the many fountains of earth marking exploding bombs were nightmarish trees in a living forest. None of the Panzers emerged unscathed from that small killing ground.
Now the infantry advanced once more upon the village. They could see the enemy troops pulling out, under heavy shell fire from the attendant tanks and the supporting guns. They reached the burning shambles that had been a neat French village and passed through. The Germans began mortaring the area almost immediately, and they went to cover again.
‘Corporal,’ Newman cried suddenly, ‘who are they out there in front of us?’
All eyes searched the area Newman indicated. A scattered line of troops were coming foward from the next hedge.
‘They’re Jerries,’ snapped the corporal.
‘And there are a lot more behind them,’ shouted Eddie.
‘All right.’ Corporal Rawlings assumed control. ‘Range two hundred,’ he ordered loudly. ‘Ten rounds, open rapid . . . await my order.’
The enemy line advanced steadily, and each man held his rifle at the high port, their long glittering bayonets flickering in the sunlight that peered down here and there through breaks in the sky. Eddie licked his lips. He suddenly realised that he was holding his rifle in a death grip, and he slackened his hold and tried to relax. He selected one of the enemy soldiers and sighted upon him. Then enemy machine-gun fire swept the hedges and ground concealing the British, and streams of lead sputtered about them.
Shells came crashing down in the open fields, some exploding very close to the waiting British, and the Germans came on grimly. Corporal Rawlings peered at the advancing line. Panic seized him momentarily. They would be overrun. Then those long bayonets would go to work. The thought unnerved him. Then he took a grip on himself.
‘Fire!’ he yelled, and blazed away with his sten, cutting up the ground about the enemy.
But only half his section fired with him. The others were crouching, too scared to fire. Eddie was one of them. He lay with his eyes closed, hunching himself as close to the ground as possible, and so was Newman. But Smith was firing rapidly, grinning fiendishly when he saw some of the enemy falling.
A ragged volley smashed back from the wavering Germans. Eddie heard the increased small-arms fire. He heard bullets smashing the ground all about him, thudding solidly, seeking flesh in their blind flight. He could do nothing to break the deadly paralysis gripping him.
Then his fear that they would be overrun bettered his fear of the battle. He looked up and saw Smith beside him, grinning and firing. The sight reassured him, and he raised himself, grabbing his rifle. He peered cautiously, hardly daring to raise his head off the ground. A long line of Huns was still coming forward, running in a half-crouch and taking advantage of all the cover they could find. Eddie brought his rifle into the aim.
He centred upon a big German who came forward, cuddling a Schmeisser at his hip. He bit his nether lip as he took the first pressure. His sights were lined upon the enemy’s belt buckle, and sweat poured down his face as he willed himself to fire.
‘Now,’ he shouted, and squeezed the trigger. His target jerked and fell headlong, and then a transformation came over Eddie. He fired rapidly, and kept on firing, shifting his aim quickly, aligning his sights upon the crouching, running grey-clad figures, and knocking them down as fast as he could squeeze the trigger. A fierce joy seized him and his blood raced through his veins.
Sergeant Rawlings was watching little groups of the enemy advancing about one hundred yards behind their first extended line. They carried machine-guns or mortars, and fifty yards behind them came a second wave of infantry, intent upon getting into close quarters with the invading Allies.
Lieutenant Gates was using his walkie-talkie radio in his hastily-established headquarters. He reported the situation and gave map references with astonishing rapidity. In a matter of minutes the enemy infantry was being mortared, and eventually they were driven to ground.
British armour came crashing through the hedges, careering over the fields. They headed for the enemy, firing their heavy guns, and the infantry got up and followed them, fighting valiantly upon this, their first day in battle. They pushed the Germans back foot by bloody foot, securing their beach-heads and defending them while more and more troops hurried ashore from the transports, a veritable flood of men, machines and materials, swelling the ranks of the greatest Liberation Army in history.
Chapter Five
‘DIG in.’ Sergeant Rawlings passed along the line of his platoon. It was evening on the sixth of June, and the assault troops had pushed inland. Now there were hedgerows and fields and no sight of the sea at their backs. The landings were behind them. They had breached Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, and now they had to consolidate.
This rich black soil of France had known many invaders and wars, and even now was struggling to free itself from the boot of an oppressor. Perhaps this land had been made with the knowledge that men would have to dig trenches in every field and valley. Digging-in was easy. At the moment there was no indication of war on this small sector, and the sections entrenched without interference. They were still exalted by the greatness of this day, these simple soldiers who had thrown their strength against that of the beast of the world; who had proved that they were not wanting in courage and daring, as their forbears had proved so many times down through history.
Eddie was acting sentry while his comrades improved their defences. He lay watching the indistinctness of the next field, and the thunder of the day-long battle was yet exploding in his brain. There was a curious feathery sensation in his chest and stomach. He did not feel tired. Except for his whirling brain there was no awareness in his body. Emotion had dried inside him. He was only half aware of the sounds of digging as he watched his front.
Pictures flashed across the screen of his mind in continuous parade. There was Georgie Fenn. But alr
eady Georgie was becoming a stranger in his mind. Georgie was gone for good, but there was no sorrow. Georgie wasn’t dead. He had been posted to another station, and that was all. He hadn’t died back there on the beach, although his life had drained away into the thirsty sand from the terrible wound of his footless leg. Then there were the falling Germans killed by bullets from his own rifle; this very weapon he was gripping. Last night they had been alive, sitting in some cafe and laughing about the rumours of a Second Front. Now they were dead, the rumours reality. He thought of the many British dead choking the beaches. They had paid the price. Let that be their epitaph.
Darkness settled, an uneasy darkness that was worried by gun flashes; bombers roared ceaselessly overhead. Tiredness was a disease to be fought, for this battle was a new existence. But who could sleep while the enemy prepared their terrible counter-attack, presumed to sweep the Allies back into the sea in another Dunkirk? Who could say just how many Panzers and SS troops would come bursting towards the beaches in a mighty and desperate effort to smash the invasion? The Germans had been on this coast for four years, and must surely have prepared some fearsome counter-measures.
Some of the landing army slept, and some remained wearily awake. It had been a hard day and a bitter one. But morale was high. They had landed, and it looked as though they were here to stay.
A tremendous barrage brought everyone to his feet, grabbing weapons and standing to. The night was one gigantic firework display. Tracers wove fantastic patterns on the black backcloth of darkness. The smell of high explosives was everywhere, and enemy shells rocked the black world. The soldiers crouched and waited an eternity, wincing at every near miss, and wondering exactly what was happening, out there in the night.
So the long hours passed, and the grey dawn found them watching the fields. Food was eaten automatically. Now the shock of the first day was passing. Eddie sipped hot tea from his small mess tin, enjoying the hot brown liquid that tasted more of metal and Brasso than of tea.
