“Yes.”
“Good … That company came up with a solution; the Rangers could use 100-foot extension ladders that we could requisition from the London Fire Department. And we have and we will use them. That is in part because of us. Do you remember?”
“Yes!” Jordan screamed.
“But it wasn’t over for us yet. We had to endure more exhausting and dangerous training, dealing with cliff climbing, as well as night combat and logistic problem-solving sessions. Rudder even ordered live fire assault training drills, and we survived them … so I’m not going to ask you do you remember anymore, I’m going to ask you, are we screwed?”
“No! No, sir!” Jordan’s body stiffened and he stood more erect than he had since getting on the LCA.
“That’s the spirit, soldier.” Kent released him and patted him on the shoulder. “Now prepare yourself to put all your training to good use.”
Immense waves continued to slam into the LCA. Rangers held onto each other and the side of the boat for support. A few fell over. Kent and Jordan helped one up, each grabbing a shoulder. He thanked them with a nod.
Fire from the German positions began to rain down in a roar of deafening sound, mortar fire and machine guns targeting the boats. Some bullets struck the side of the LCA Kent and Jordan were in but it didn’t pierce the armor, it just sparked and pinged. 20mm fire from a cliff position close to the Pointe sunk one of the DUKWs, a Duck, a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck. It went up with a thunderclap and a mushroom of black smoke. Bent and warped metal flew and splashed down into the swell.
“The sons of bitches,” Jordan cursed as he watched the Duck sink.
The Rangers closed in on their objective, the nine surviving LCAs advancing on a 400-yard front on the eastern side of the Pointe, water splashing up all around them from missed mortars, bullets still pinging off them in a staccato beat. Kent could see and hear the thunderous blasts from the USS Texas as it shelled the fortifications on top of Pointe Du Hoc and could make out some of the impacts as they sent up puffs of sand and rubble. One of the clouds of sand was dyed red. The sign of a great hit, another few more dead Nazis.
German mortars and machine guns started to focus their fire on the LCA Kent and Jordan were in and the other lead boat to their right. Water popped from blasts and metal clanged, but they kept pushing forward. They were the first two LCAs to reach the beach. The front opened and the first row of five Rangers was cut to shreds. Their uniforms ripped and bloodied, their bodies slushy and wobbly, splash back from the gory wounds striking Kent and Jordan in the face.
Kent grabbed Jordan and shouted, “Over the side.”
Splash.
They were both under water, freezing and struggling to swim through a mass of men with the same idea. Jordan got ahead of Kent, his feet kicking bubbles in his face, making his vision even more eroded. Blood, dark dirty water, and bullets whizzed through the wet walls he was desperately trying to knock through.
A Ranger to the side of Jordan took a hit. The blood seeped through his uniform and clouded the water even more red. Kent pushed through it, the last of his strength and air going. He kicked off the dead man with his feet and raised his head from the sea.
He gasped and took a breath, getting just enough time to see the top of the cliff they had to climb and the German positions guarding it. He saw a bunker with an MG 42 sticking out, raining down heavy fire on his friends. Two other Nazis were standing on the edge of the cliff throwing down stick grenades. There was other enemy activity but he didn’t have time to take it all in before he was under the crimson sea again, the frantic sounds of the battle being drowned to silence when his ears filled up with a witch’s brew of salty water and fellow soldiers’ blood.
Kent’s feet hit sand; he pushed and was soon on his hands and knees in the drink, almost on the beach, having trouble getting to his feet, the weight of his soaked uniform intensifying the ache in his muscles. A Ranger was kneeling a few yards ahead, on the sand, taking aim with his Garand.
“Get off the fucking beach, get to the cliff!” Kent ordered, his voice having trouble making itself heard over the weapons fire cracking all around, water running out of his ears, more running down his face, into his eyes, stinging them.
His command was too late. The Ranger was eaten up by MG fire and his body twisted into a soggy red mess.
“Bastards,” Kent said as he stood and started to charge forward, kicking up sand behind him as he did, water flying from him, like a dog shaking off the soapsuds from an unwanted bath.
An explosion.
Kent was flung off his feet; a black crater left in the beach where his feet had just been. His helmet fell from his head when he crashed back down, his body imprinting the sand with its shape, his Thompson now not in his hands, his ears ringing, his vision speckled, his head woozy, his world spinning.
Kent felt the length of his legs. They were still there. He rolled to a fallen Ranger and used the body as cover, pulling it onto its side and hugging into it, while rounds pelted the wet shore around him. Blood splashed on his face from the body. He wiped it away. It was soon covered again, sand stuck to it now.
Kent got positioned on his stomach and scooted to look where he’d fallen when the grenade hit. He saw his Thompson, still with the waterproofing on. His helmet wasn’t far from it.
Beyond, the Channel and more LCAs landing on the beach.
As soon as the doors dropped open the first rows of Rangers were mowed down by MG fire. Those that didn’t jump over the sides, and had the luck to not get pelted by lead, had to disembark among swirling waters full of buoyant internal organs, blasted out of people from previous attempts by Rangers to make it to cover. The body count was mounting, fast.
Kent crawled to his weapon and pulled it to his chest. He reached out his hand to grab his helmet. A bullet struck the helmet and it skidded off into the waves. Kent stood and ran for the cliff, where a few Rangers were already using the prominence as cover from the MG in the bunker directly over them.
Kent jumped a dead body. His legs ached as they took the force of the landing. The weight of the saturated uniform and the instability of the soaked sand making the run even more difficult than it would have been with just German firepower blasting down at him. Sand whooshed upward and covered him. He wiped some from his face and kept his head down the rest of the way.
He came to a stop as his shoulder hit the hard cliff. “Get off the beach,” he shouted, not sure if the Rangers new to the fray would even hear him. “Get to the cliff. They have a fucking sniper. Get the ladders. Bring the damn rocket launchers to shoot the grapnels; we’re dead if we don’t take out that MG in the bunker and the damn mortars. We need to stop that artillery before they try for the ships.”
Jordan ran to a stop next to Kent. “What now?”
“Good question. I want you to go and find one of the rocket launchers. Fire up one of the grapnels for these men.” Kent gestured to the group around them.
“How do I do that?” Jordan removed his Garand from its waterproofing.
“You run back out on the beach and see if you can lay your hands on one. Check the landing craft.”
“Are you fucking crazy? I’m not going back out there.”
“Yes you are. You just received an order.”
“I hate those things.” Jordan took a deep breath and held his rifle tight to his body.
“Listen up!” Kent ordered the other men. “Private Jordan is making a run for a grapnel. Lets give him some covering fire. On my word step out from the face of the cliff and blast those Nazi bastards.” The men nodded. “Covering fire!”
Kent and the men took a few paces back and Jordan charged over the sand toward the incoming tide and the landing craft, jumping dead bodies and dodging hunkered down soldiers, bullets impacting all around him. Kent and the men unloaded all their rounds at the German positions before they placed their backs to the cliff and started to reload their weapons.
“He made it to the landing craft.” Kent informed the men. A few cheered. Kent chambered a round and took in his options, the best one being the DUKW that was rumbling up the beach.
The Duck stopped in front of them. “Give it some covering fire,” Kent ordered, as he moved to the vehicle, shots pinging off it. He raised one of the ladders they’d got from the London Fire Department and placed it so the top was leaning on the rocky surface of the cliff. It didn’t reach all the way to the verge.
“Shit!” Kent slammed his fist on the front of the Duck. The driver gave him a confused look. “The damn ladders aren’t big enough. The cliffs are higher than the ones we climbed in Cornwall. These cliffs have got to be at least 125 feet high. The ladders are only 100 feet.”
“What now?” the driver asked.
“Keep this thing steady. I’m going up … You, Private,” Kent pointed at one of the men taking cover, “when Jordan gets back, make sure he shoots that rope up for me. I’ll need it to make it the rest of the way up, then you all follow.”
“Yes sir.”
Kent slung his Thompson over his shoulder and stepped onto the first rung of the ladder. He made the mistake of looking up the length of it. It was skidding around on the rocks and chipping away rubble. He wiped some of the dust that had fallen down off his face then started up.
He didn’t miss a step. He kept focused even as the ladder swayed. Even as empty bullet casings from German weapons fell and bounced off the ladder. Even when he looked to his right to see a group of fifteen Rangers fall from the cliff as a Nazi up top cut their rope. Even as a stick grenade fell through his line of sight to the beach below.
But not as the grenade exploded and rocked the DUKW up onto two wheels.
The ladder Kent was only half way up left the cliff. He looked over his shoulder to see the beach rushing toward him. He shut his eyes and gripped until his knuckles were even whiter than they’d been when trying to ascend.
A jolt.
The ladder had stopped. Kent opened his eyes; he was still firmly on it but at an odd angle. He looked over his shoulder again and saw Jordan, and a few other men, holding the bottom of the ladder, keeping it upright. They started to push it back toward the cliff.
Kent first moved in sudden biting motions. Start. Stop. Start. Stop, until he was completely vertical, but still not on the rocks. Next he fell with the ladder as the men below gave one last push.
The ladder hit the cliff face and crushed Kent’s fingers in the process. He gritted his teeth and fought back the want to cry out. He was locked to the climbing apparatus. He tried to pull his fingers free as bullets started to rain down on him, peppering him with fragments of rock.
The sound of Rangers returning fire from below urged him on as he managed to free one hand, cutting it on the way out, lifting up flaps of skin on his knuckles. Shots struck the ladder close to his face and the sparks from the impacts infected his skin with an intense burning sensation.
He reached to his side and grabbed his slung Thompson. It was a difficult reach and even more of a struggle to bring it to bear on a Nazi that was stood leaning over the verge. Kent compressed the trigger and waved his fire right to left and up and down. He had no means of being accurate but he could swamp the enemy with lead.
A few of the shots found target after cutting up the scenery. The bullets ran in a semi-circle over the German and turned his grey uniform red as blood seeped through the fabric. The Nazi lurched forward and fell.
His body hurtled down toward Kent. He let go of the ladder with his free hand, dropping his Thompson so it hung again, and removed his feet from the rungs. He twisted so his back was on the cliff face and let the trapped hand, and the now awkward angle it was bent in, take his full weight.
The German clattered past, his body bouncing off the rocks and the ladder, his limbs twisted in strange patterns. The sand puffed up red when the body hit next to Jordan. The young private had to look away from the rounded body that was interlocked like a ball of dripping rubber bands.
Kent swung back onto the ladder and locked his boots in place as he freed his other hand with a painful tug. It was just as red and skin-peeled as his other, but this one ached at the wrist too. He twisted it a few times to see if he could alleviate the pain, it didn’t work. He started heading back up the ladder anyway.
It wasn’t long before Kent ran out of rungs. He was stuck. He couldn’t climb the rest of the way unaided. He looked down at the beach and saw Jordan fixing something to a grapnel. He couldn’t make out what. He did, however, make out the rope as it shot up into the sky, trailing smoke and fire.
Kent looked back up to see if the grapnel would catch. It did, on some razor wire. A German soldier that was standing close to it turned and jumped from view. Kent didn’t know why but he didn’t have time to contemplate it. He looked to the rope to his right. He reached for it. It was a good few feet away.
Kent got set. His left hand holding the last rung, his feet twisted and angled toward the rope, his knees bent. The rope swayed tantalizingly close, a gush of wind the cause. His fingers managed to touch it but it was soon away again. He took a deep breath then jumped.
His hand wrapped around the rope and his legs swung farther than his upper body. He was almost lying down in mid air when his legs dropped back down into gravity’s grasp. The rest of him tried to follow.