CHAPTER THREE NORMANDY, 6 JUNE 1944
CHAPTER
THREE
Roscoe felt like he was trapped in a nightmare as his boat approached Omaha beach.
Gunfire and explosives erupted from the shore mixed with shouts and screams. His stomach flipped in somersaults.
He’d already filled his puke bag. Now he threw up into his helmet and dumped it over the side of the ship.
The water wasn’t blue. Instead, the blood of the soldiers who didn’t make it onshore had tinged it red. Their heads bobbed in the sea, like a gruesome warning.
Crouching on the floor of a landing craft, he flinched each time a slug hit the tank they crowded behind.
The closer they got to the beach, the heavier the fire.
It was madness. There was no way Roscoe was coming out from behind that tank, except then the skipper ordered, ‘Get onshore,’ and the ramp fell with a bang.
The tank came alive and rolled down the ramp.
Everything in Roscoe told him to stay on the boat.
The beach was carnage and bullets and bombs.
He wet himself watching the tank roll down, then, gasping and wild-eyed, he followed it into the chest-high water, splashing toward the shore.
He lost his footing, dunked under the surface and scrambled to right himself again, the gray lifebelt around his waist helping to lift him up.
When he got to his feet, he saw Thompson bobbing in the water ahead of him, blood seeping into the sea.
‘Thompson!’ Roscoe reached for him.
‘Move! Move!’ someone shouted, and shoved him from behind. ‘Get onshore.’
He splashed onto the beach behind the tank as a landmine detonated further down the coast, shaking the earth.
Flinching, he dropped to the ground, hands over his head.
‘Come on,’ Wilson shouted, pulling at his arm.
Bullets sent the sand spitting beside him.
He wanted to curl into a ball, but he forced himself up and on.
Sand clung to his soggy clothes, which chafed his legs as he ran, staggering toward a sloping embankment of sea-smoothed stones about ten yards from the high-water line and angled just enough to act as a low wall.
Roscoe slotted in among the men already taking cover there, lying low and flat.
He looked back toward the shoreline and saw the tank’s turret in flames.
Five men had been inside. None climbed out.
And still the boats kept coming. A shell hit a landing-craft loaded with soldiers.
Men were blown into the air, arms and legs blasted off their bodies, before plunging into the sea.
On the beach, radios, gas masks, ration tins and rifles lay strewn between the bodies of the wounded and the dead.
Medics worked frantically, dragging the injured away from the shoreline, crouching in a ditch to bandage an arm or a leg.
Roscoe watched a medic get shot in the head and fall on top of the man he was trying to save.
His insides seized and he heaved the dry nothing that was left in his stomach.
‘Remember your training,’ his CO had said that morning. Already it seemed days ago.
A shell was lobbed over the shingle stone embankment where he crouched.
It blasted three men to Roscoe’s right, splattering him with blood and guts.
He jumped up and ran, first in one direction, and when a shell went off in front of him, he turned and ran the other way.
He didn’t know where he needed to be going or which direction made sense. All he could think to do was run.
A soldier stuck his head out of a foxhole and shouted, ‘Get in here.’ Without considering if he should or shouldn’t, he dove for the hole and rolled in.
Roscoe sat in that foxhole panting for who knew how long, catching his breath and coming back to himself. With trembling hands, he took stock. He had his helmet; he had his gun; he had his balloon still clipped to his belt. He’d lost his rations.
The man in the hole was part of the Big Red One, the 1st Infantry Division, identifiable by the large red number one on his arm.
He looked frazzled and scared but not panicked.
The 1st Infantry had fought in North Africa and Sicily.
Those fellows knew their way around a battlefield.
He’d said his name was Roger or maybe Rogers when Roscoe asked.
After that they sat in silence, crouched in the hole with the deafening noises of mortar and gunfire blasting above their heads.
When the shelling eased, Roger or Rogers turned to Roscoe and said, ‘You ready?’
‘Ready for what?’
‘To push through. We have to get off the beach.’
Roscoe shook his head. ‘I’m barrage balloon. I have to stay here. Get the balloons up.’ He tapped the folded balloon clipped to his belt.
Rogers nodded and checked his weapon as Roscoe poked his head out of the foxhole.
Five narrow ravines that weren’t much more than dirt tracks led from the beach over the bluffs to the roadways beyond.
On the one furthest east, Roscoe saw US trucks trundling up, which meant they’d secured the track.
That was where he needed to go to get his balloon up.
Down in the hole, Rogers was breathing hard, readying himself for his push over the bluffs.
‘Where’s your helmet?’ Roscoe asked, crouching next to him.
The man shook his head. ‘I’ll get one from … you know.’ His eyes darted up to the surface where dead GIs littered the beach.
Roscoe took off his helmet and handed it to Rogers.
He put it on and peered out of the hole, gun at the ready, body poised to leap out and run.
A ping to his helmet startled them both and made him drop back into the hole, panting, shock and terror in his eyes.
The helmet was nicked where a bullet had hit it and slid off.
Rogers looked up at Roscoe. ‘You just saved my life.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Roscoe said, ‘you saved mine.’
The soldier offered his hand and Roscoe took it, but found himself being pulled into a hug and clapped on the back.
When Rogers released him, the man readied his gun again and poised himself to climb out.
With a last look at Roscoe, he saluted. Not some half-assed joke of a salute, but a real one that carried the weight of two lives saved in the heat of a battle that smelled of gunpowder and diesel fuel, burning flesh and death.
‘Give ’em hell,’ Roscoe said, saluting him back, and Rogers charged out of the hole.
The din of the fighting made it hard to hear, but after a while Roscoe swore he could just make out a familiar voice shouting names: Gordon, Thompson, Cooper, Simmons, Monk. All men of the 320th. It was a roll-call coming from another foxhole.
‘Crane!’ He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘Roscoe Crane’s here!’
‘Crane, I hear you. It’s Reed. Lieutenant Colonel Reed. I’ve got Baker and Smith here too.’
Three men. The balloons needed teams of five or at least four, but maybe it could be done with three. Roscoe shouted over to Reed about the secured ravine the trucks were using to the east, but Reed had already seen it and just needed enough men together to make up a team.
‘We can do it with three,’ Roscoe shouted to the lieutenant colonel. He hoped it was true.
‘Then get over there, soldiers, and get those babies in the sky.’