We were like gods once... [Smitty's introduction to hell on earth]
Back to the present, France, late June 1944, 9:58 am
Moose shakes his head to clear the strange ponderings away, and catches back up on the conversation in the truck as they bump and trundle along.
"Dang, man, Itellyouwhat, man, that damn bunker thang lit up like a ding-ding ol cherry bomb, man, jest hisss-Boom!", Hank, gesturing wildly with his hands, finished to the laughter of Smitty and a few other GI’s as their truck roared along.
The radio began hissing static and garbled communication and Hank set to tuning it in properly.
“So dere, Smitty, how’d you do on the beach before I caught up with ya, eh? Not too many guys made it in dere from your wave, dontcha know?” asked Moose as much to keep someone else from forcing him to relive his day there as to give Smitty a chance to talk about his.
“Yeah. It was a big SNAFU, like everybody, I suspect. Don’t know what happened at first. I was comin’ outta the boats, and trying to wade ashore, when a big 88 shell or mortar or somethin’ hit near me. Lifted me plumb up in the air and dropped me out cold for a while”, started Smitty.
“Probably a good thing, too, Moose, ‘cause when I woke up there was dead fellers all around me, cut to ribbons by those damn MG42’s up in the bunkers, and they were walkin’ those mortars up-and-down the beach…”, Smitty’s voice trails off as he loses himself in his thoughts.
……
The NormandyCoast. June 6, 1944, just weeks earlier.
Omaha beach.
Phfft-Phfft-Phfft, something was making noise and tossing sand into Smitty’s face, and damn was it annoying; can’t they see he’s trying to get some rest here? Saltwater was stinging his nose and eyes.
Saltwater? Smitty snapped opened his eyes, sputtering saltwater, to a scene of near-biblical hellishness.
Men were crawling everywhere, screaming, clawing through the sand. Many were lying still. They were missing legs, arms, heads. Larry, who came off the boat next to him, lay just a few feet away. Wide-eyed and making gurgling, mewling sounds through the blood pouring out of his mouth, he weakly tries to pack sand into a gaping wound in his ribs. He meets Smitty’s eyes, breathes a bubbling, keening sigh, and lays still.
Smitty glances over his shoulder, and realizes his legs are pinned under the guy who came off the boat right behind him. Several other GI’s were screaming at him from behind the meager cover of a hedgehog; as a beach defense made of three or four steel rails cut in two meter lengths and welded together at their centers, it made poor cover, but better than none. They were motioning to him to come, get cover, and every few seconds a hail of bullets would strike the area, PINGing on the hedgehog and causing them to scramble over each other trying to get deeper behind it.
He could see their Higgins boat, stalled and starting to smoke, trying to get back into deeper water out from under the withering fire from the heights. Several men were attempting to scramble back over the sides, hoping to escape this chapter of Dante’s inferno; most were viciously cut down by fire from the Tobruks and trenches up the beach.
Phfft-Phfft-Phfft. More spraying sand, from machine gun fire, Smitty realized as the winking of muzzle flash blinked from all over the hill, and their staccato canvas-ripping sound filled his ears. THUMP-swooossshhh a mortar round striking nearby in the water line sprays sand and water all over him.
“Well hell boys, I aint one to out-stay my welcome”, Smitty mutters to himself and starts moving. Where, he isn’t sure yet, but he sure as hell isn’t staying here.
When he reaches back to push the guy off his legs, the poor man’s torso flops free of his waist and legs, stringing organs and bodily effluence over Smitty’s legs. “Oh dear God hurrkkkKKK”, Smitty reflexively vomits into the surf.
Jerking his legs free, Smitty hazards a glance at the boys motioning from behind the hedgehog; his rifle lay several yards ahead of him on the beach, and he could see pockets of men trying to move from cover to cover up the beach, but that road led to a sure death. He is frozen for a moment, indecision racking him.
That decision is taken away from him in a screaming whistle and detonation and spray of red gore-and-sand-laden rain.
Smitty, trembling hands wiping the sticky wetness from his face, looks back and sees the Higgins burning, and only a surf-swirling red hole where the guys and the hedgehog were.
“Damn. Didn’t care for another ride on them boats anyway”, he says through clenched teeth as he scrambles, running crouched over, and snatches up his 1903 Springfield, sand kicking up in his steps behind him as some happy Jerry homes in on his movement.
He moves behind a wrecked Sherman, tears the rubber off of his barrel, starts checking his rifle and getting the scope cover off. The Krauts persist in their efforts to perforate Smitty at every turn as he tries to get his rifle set up, mumbling the whole time.
“ ‘Join the Army’, they sez.”. PING-PANG.
“ ‘See the world’, they sez.”, PING-PING-KaPHWING.
“ ‘Think of how proud yer girDAMMIT WILL YOU JACKASSES STOP SHOOTING AT ME ONE MINUTE!!!”, Smitty yells, flinching, hot fragments of tank and bullets flying all around him as he scrambles to get his rifle ready.
He has to drop flat and fast-crawl as several machine gunners lay deadly sprays of lead all over the burning tank, and then mortars start walking in like a visit from unwanted relatives. WHUMP… WHUMP… WHUMP…
“Say Jerry, I’m startin’ to take this a bit personal now…”, Smitty muses sardonically through clenched teeth as he slithers into a small depression. There is a guy already there, kneeling and firing up the beach. As he turns to Smitty as if to say something, a shell hits on the opposite side of the hole and he looks at Smitty for a moment, confused, unable to talk with half his face missing. He topples almost comically and the unquenchable french sands drink yet another life.
Smitty tries to move to more cover, but the machine-gun fire intensifies and he flinches back cursing; the mortar shells seem to be aimed straight at him now. He tries again, and more MG fire erupts into the sand around him and a round creases his thigh; another mortar hits nearby and knocks his helmet off of his head and peppers his side with small burning fragments. He tries to crouch deeper into the sand, but they just keep firing, and firing, and firing, and dropping those teeth-rattling mortars all around him.
“Damn damn DAAAAMN. WHATTHEHELLDIDIEVERDOTOYOU!”, he screams as he crouches in the shallow crater, mortar shells THUMPing, men screaming and crying, machine guns RRIIIIIPPing, bullets Phfft-Phfft-Phffting, more sand and red rain spraying all around him. He instinctively curls into a ball under the unabated rain of deadly metal.
His throat is burning, raw, and after a while he realizes it’s because he’s screaming.
He knows then, in his heart, that he is about to die. Why not? Everyone else seems to be doing it; what makes him so special? Smitty goes perfectly still; his eyes stare sightless at the grey sky, and the sounds of battle fade from his ears.
He starts remembering his hunting days, the days where he was one of the best in the tri-county. How the deer never saw him, how he would stalk them and be so quiet that they never heard the shot that took 'em. And how he seemed to never miss, how he put it to them as merciful as he could. He didn’t hunt because he loved it or even enjoyed killing; he did it because they needed the game, and he was damn good at it.
Oh, how he wished he were back home, 15 years old, snaking peacefully through the quiet woods; moving from tree-to-tree, unseen, unheard, like the wind, until he came to the perfect place to set up for the shot.
Smitty opens his eyes, and nearly stumbles out of his crouching walk.
Walk?
He is further up the beach, close to the draws leading up to the bunkers and trenches and their deadly fire. He looks around incredulously. He has walked almost 100 feet without being shot at. Or even noticed.
He walks by three G.I.'s, two officers and a radioman, who are taking fire from the trenches above. They don’t notice him, even when he waves a hand at one looking at him. He wonders if he's dreaming, or dead already, when a FWING and a sharp pain hit him; a piece of shrapnel has torn superficially across his left arm, and torn through his confusion.
He looks forward, and concentrating on moving like he did when hunting back home, he carefully but with incredible swiftness picks his way up the beach face and obstacles as men behind him come under heavy and direct fire; soon he comes up to a trench with several Germans in it. Three are manning a machine gun; four have their Kar98 rifles and potato masher grenades and all are firing to great effect on the men below. He is standing up only 20 feet from them and they don’t even see me, thinks Smitty.
With a grunt of effort, Smitty sprints up the last distance in a blur of terrain, leaps over the trench like a jackrabbit and drops a grenade in the midst of the Germans, rolling into the trench intersecting the one they are in. He comes up instinctively, and immediately after the BOOM of the grenade he fires…
CRACK! One,
CRACK! Two,
CRACK! Three Germans cease their flailing in the grenade’s aftermath. He notices the last one, with an almost bizarre look of confusion on his face totally out of place with the neat hole just to the left of his temple. He never saw it coming, thought Smitty with a grim, humorless smile.
He sits quietly, concentrating on remaining unseen. He moves forward in the trench, and notices that the dead Germans had quite a view of the main draw, and the main bunker over it, from where they were. He sees men trying to place their bangalores, sees ol’ Hank Johnson screaming at the next man in line to move into place with his so they can blow a clearing and advance up the hill as the Krauts lean forward on their MG’s to rain certain on them all. He can see Germans moving in the trenches, in the bunker slits, and sees one on a radio; probably calling in coordinates to drop those deadly mortars and artillery. Smitty settles into a depression in the front of the trench, unseen from above, takes a deep breath and steadies his shooting hand.
“Welcome to the 1st annual Normandy Turkey Shoot ya Kraut bastids”, he whispers as he lines up the officer on the radio in his sights.
One by one, as fast as he can reload and cycle the bolt on his Springfield, he fires 12 more shots, kills 12 more men. Six of them at over 100 feet, through the slit of a near-dark bunker. He sees Hank creeping up unchallenged towards the bunker front with a satchel charge, as the remaining inhabitants have wisely shied away from the slits.
Suddenly he hears voices, and sees that there are reinforcements, wheeling a 20mm cannon and carrying more MG’s, heading down the trail and trenches to his location.
He swings, reloads the Springfield, and keeps half-hoping they don’t see him, half not-caring if they do.
“Gobble gobble, boys, you’re just in time”
CRACK!