Love is a Wounded Soldier (23 page)

“You think, Robert?” he asked. I nodded,
and he seemed pacified.

“Can you hold my hand?” he begged me
pitifully. I brushed the sand off of his leathery hand and stroked it, like you
would to soothe an ailing grandparent in a nursing home.

“Give me my beads,” he demanded weakly. I
found his rosary beads in his pocket and placed them in his hand. His lips
moved, but I heard no words.

“Mama, hold my hand,” he said faintly.

Rat tat tat tat whomp whomp!
I heard the machinegun fire approaching a split second before it
hit us. Someone was using a machinegun like a fire hose, and had started
spraying bullets from left to right. The hail of bullets traveled over us like
a wave. I hit the ground behind George and heard the thump of lead pulverizing
flesh. I wasn’t sure whether to flee or play dead. There was no further sound
of fire, so after a minute, I slowly turned my head to look at George. His eye
stared blankly at the sky. A dark stain on his motionless chest grew larger and
larger. They’d finished him off! I was incensed. Not caring now if the Jerries
saw me or not, I took one of George’s dog tags off, stood up, and yelled “I’m
coming for you now, you stupid Nazi fucks!” As I ran toward the cover of the
seawall, I pointed my M1 at the nearest German pillbox and held in the trigger.
It was jammed with sand.

I managed to reach the seawall alive, and
fell down beside other soldiers huddled beside it. Only then did I feel how
exhausted my body was.

“You should get that looked at,” someone
yelled.

I looked up. It was a fellow named Davis
from B Company. I looked down at what he was looking at. My left boot was torn
open, around my calf. I could feel the blood ooze down my ankle and fill my
boot. The adrenaline numbed the pain for a bit, but before long I was in
excruciating pain. I applied a tourniquet to my leg and resisted the urge to
call for a medic, since I knew they had clients that needed help more
desperately than I did. I gingerly lay down on my side and waited for help. I
noticed a pale, ghostly-looking hand lying on the beach a few feet from my
head. I tried to ignore it.

“Do you have a cigarette?” I yelled at
Davis. You had to yell everything to be heard over the noise of gunfire and
explosions. And when there was a lull, everyone was still half deaf from having
shells go off in their ears.

“Mine are all wet,” I explained, forgetting
I should have some dry ones in my K-rations.

The irony of it escaped me at the time; my
leg was punctured, shells were exploding all around, mines were blowing men to
bits, and the thing foremost in my mind was puffing back on a cigarette.

“Thanks,” I said as he passed me a Lucky
Strike and a lighter. After lighting it with shaky hands, I calmed down enough
to take stock of my surroundings. A dozen or so bodies lay along the seawall
near me. I could recognize some of them. There were many men from other
companies represented, both dead and alive. A good number of officers were
already KIA, so many men were confused as to what to do. Dozens of them had
some degree of injury. It seemed almost everyone fell into one of three
categories: dead, dying, or scared to death. Some cried for mama. Some cried
for Jesus. Some just cried.

“Let me take a look at that,” a medic said
as he approached me. He pulled off my boot. I bit back a yell.

“How does it look,” I asked, grimacing as
he wiped off my leg.

“It could be worse,” he said, examining my
leg. I supposed in light of what he’d already seen that day, my wound was
refreshingly minor.

“Well, the bone looks fine, but you do have
some pretty good muscle damage. Looks like this might be your ticket out of
this hellhole,” he concluded. My heart jumped. A million-dollar wound! I would
get shipped back to England. Heck, maybe even get out of the war altogether and
be home in months!

“You lucky son of a bitch!” a voice yelled
over the din. Johnny Snarr crawled toward me along the seawall with Jedidiah
Hankins and a hysterical Frankie De Luca in tow. I was glad to see he was
alright.

I managed a crooked little grin and bit
back a scream as the medic poured alcohol into my wound. A couple of mortars
went off not far from us and we hit the dirt. Sand and stones rained down all
around us.

“We’re going to die!” Frankie sobbed.
“We’re all going to die!”

“Would you just calm the fuck down?”
Jedidiah Hankins snapped at him. Johnny, Frankie, and I both stared at him like
we’d just heard a sheep let out a wolf howl. Under any other circumstances we
would have all rolled with laughter, but it wasn’t a day for laughter.

“I’m sorry,” the preacher said—sheepishly,
“but I’ve almost had it with Chicken Little here.”

“Have you seen any officers?” I asked,
reluctant to take charge of this motley crew of men that hugged the wall.

“I saw Lieutenant Callahan over that way,”
Jedidiah told me. I was relieved.

After my leg was taken care of, I sat up.
We watched a Higgins boat disgorge another load of men, right close to the edge
of the creeping waterline. The men scurried off like ants.

Zoop-zoop-zoop
. It was the peculiar sound of “Screaming Mimis”—seventy-five pound
rockets fired from German Nebelwerfers from fixed concrete positions. The
Germans mercilessly unloaded all six rockets at the crowd of men running across
the sand. All hell broke loose. Even as bits of shrapnel and pieces of arms and
legs were still being launched into the air, my attending medic was rushing
toward the catastrophe with heroic abandon. I watched as a fellow carrying a
flamethrower burst into flames. His tortured screams were ice to my spine. He
rolled over and over, but he couldn’t extinguish the flames. Finally, the fire
subdued him, and he went into shock.

Miraculously, only a few men were dead.
Johnny rushed out to help the wounded. He carried back one soldier that had his
feet blown off, dropped him against the wall, and went back out for another. I
glanced apathetically over at the footless soldier, my psyche already so
shocked I felt no pangs of pity. Johnny scooped up the last casualty that
looked like he might have a chance of making it.

Zoop-zoop-zoop!

“Run! Drop him and run!” The sound of my
voice got shot down by a fresh set of missiles arcing over the beach. Johnny
lumbered along a little more hurriedly, as though he heard the incoming threat,
but he refused to drop his wounded comrade.

Boom-boom-boom!
The mortars fell.

I got up on one knee and half stood to
look, swaying as I hunched over against the wall. Through the geyser of sand I
saw him struggle to rise. He grabbed a hold of the injured soldier’s uniform
and continued to press on to safety. I sprinted down to him as best I could,
heeding neither the Germans’ deadly enfilade fire nor my own injury. I grasped
the limp soldier by an arm, and we dragged him to the relative safety of the
sea wall, dropping him like a sack of oats before collapsing together on either
side of him.

“Medic!” Johnny panted. “Medic!” His arms
and uniform were smeared with blood. A haggard-looking medic wearily trotted
over.

“Where are you hit?” he asked Johnny over
the incessant din.

“I’m fine,” he gasped. “It’s him. It’s his
blood,” he pointed to the fellow we’d just dragged off the beach. The medic
turned his attention to the man writhing between us.

“You sure you’re OK?” I asked him, certain
there was no way he could have had mortars go off almost on top of him and
still emerge unscathed.

“Just got the wind knocked out of me,” he
assured me. “I’ll live to die another day,” he added lightly.

As I lay uselessly on the beach, I took
stock of my surroundings. Men in every stage of death, dying, and barely living
littered the beach like spent rifle shells. Men I knew. Young men. Men that had
lived a quarter or third of the life they should have. I couldn’t do it. I
couldn’t simply lie there inertly on the beach, waiting to thumb a ride back to
a pretty nurse and clean sheets. What if you live another fifty years, Robert?
I asked myself. Would I ever lose the feeling that I had failed my friends and
comrades if I took the easy route home? I didn’t want to know. If I left now, I
was of little more worth than the lifeless corpses surrounding me. I had come
too far. I would be the ultimate waste.

“Medic!” I barked at the medic, who had
finished patching up the fellow we’d rescued.

“Yes?”

“Rebandage my leg, good and tight,” I
ordered. He looked slightly puzzled, but knelt and began removing the
blood-soaked bandage. He re-dressed the wound robotically with shaky hands,
stopping in between to take a long swig from a flask.

“Is that better?” he asked as he finished.

“Will it hold for a day or two?” I asked.

“Should,” his nod came across as
noncommittal.

“Good,” I said. “Now help me up.” I willed
myself to stand with his help. He watched me uncertainly.

“Get out of here. There’s men dying out
there,” I told him. I broke down my M1, blew the sand out of it, and fired a
test shot in the general direction of a German pillbox. I was in business.

“Alright, Johnny, let’s go kill some
Krauts!” I shouted.

“I’m right behind you,” he leapt to his
feet. It was time to be men.

Up the hill I could see a dozen or so men
led by Lt. Callahan using bangalore torpedoes to blow holes in the ringlets of
concertina wire that guarded the bluff with their sharp little fish teeth.

Kaboom!
A
destroyer out in the channel took out a battery of German Nebelwerfers with its
cannon, making the ground and air shudder.

“Johnson, Hankins, De Luca, Green, let’s
get the hell off this beach!” I ordered the four men nearest me. They left the
comforting shelter of the seawall and followed Johnny and me as we sought to
round up other petrified, unaffiliated dogies that had the necessary life and
limbs to fight their way off the beach.

“Move your ass,” Johnny shouted at a couple
of terrified youngsters who were reluctant to leave their huddle.

“He’s injured,” one of them, a slight,
blond-headed kid named Rudd explained timidly, motioning to the gash on his
buddy’s forehead. The agonizing pain I felt in every step caused me to fly into
a rage.

“That’s a goddamn mosquito bite!” I
snapped. “There are men on this beach whose mothers wouldn’t recognize their
assholes from their elbows. Now tie a rag around his head and get up the hill
before I blow both your fucking heads off!” The way they eyed me, it appeared
they were determining whether it was safer to deal with me on the beach or the
Germans up the bluff. To make the decision easier for them, I drew my .45 Colt
and screamed, “You have five seconds to get moving or your ass is done!” What
my words lacked in poetry they made up for in punch. The two kids sprang to
their feet and followed. It was a good time to leave. German mortar fire was
beginning to take its toll on the troops who found cover against the seawall.

“Follow me!” I yelled to a few more
stragglers, as I hobbled across the shingle and up the bluff. I followed what
looked to be a faint trail, on which I hoped to avoid any mines. My injured leg
was beginning to become very stiff. We reached a large crater that a shell had
blasted out of the rock, and took refuge in it.

“You rest your leg a little,” Johnny told
me, noticing the agonized look on my face. I peered around the rocky
outcropping that helped shield us, and saw a gun emplacement above us. It was
doing its level best to make sure our men stayed on the beach.

“We’ve got to take out those guns at one
o’clock,” I instructed, my voice hoarse from yelling.

Private First Class Dick Johnson shouldered
his Browning Automatic Rifle and unleashed a stream of hot lead at an
unspecified target.

“Stop!” I pushed down on the barrel of his
rifle.

“What the hell are you shooting at,
Private?” I snapped.

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he admitted
sheepishly. “I’m just shooting in the direction of the enemy, Staff Sergeant.”

“We need to hold off on the shooting, and
get a grenade into that pillbox up there. They don’t know we’re here.” I
readied myself and reached for a grenade.

“You stay here,” Johnny ordered, a grenade
already in his hand. Before I could protest, he was up, over, and gone, dashing
madly up the incline toward the emplacement, ducking from dip, to rock, using
every fold and crease in the terrain to his advantage. I held my breath as he
got close, pulled the pin, tossed it through the embrasure, and hit the dirt.
Boom!

“Hell, yeah!” we whooped.

“Let’s go!” I yelled, as several Nazis
spilled out with their hands up. Johnny was in no mood for taking prisoners. He
downed them all with one rapid-fire burst.

“Fix bayonets!” I shouted as we charged up
the hill. Hardly even noticing my wounded leg now, I sprinted up toward the
still-smoking emplacement. Johnny’s show of courage had heartened our spirits,
and his success was intoxicating.