Kent skidded down the rope, his back and shoulders scratching across hard stone, ripping his uniform and flesh. His hands were burning, bleeding. The rope was turning red. But he knew what he had to do. He tightened his grip. The pain was scorching but worthwhile. He’d stopped his fall. Now his shoulders were sore, they’d been close to being pulled from their sockets from the sudden stop. He tried to ignore them. He couldn’t.
He turned and started up the rope, surprised that he hadn’t actually fallen that far, it had felt like an eternity. With each pull on the rope his hands touched the fires of hell and his shoulders felt like the muscles were ready to twang and snap. He blocked it out the best he could again. As a distraction he hummed the national anthem.
A thunderous crack. Kent looked back to the Channel. The USS Saterlee was close to the shoreline and was opening up on the Germans atop the cliff. The large guns boomed an echo of encouragement as smoke billowed out from them, clouding the sky even more.
Kent reached the top of the cliff. He pulled up onto the verge with the use of the razor wire, cutting his hands yet again. He looked over the edge and back down to the beach and waved the men to follow him up. Jordan was the first on the rope.
Kent looked at the grapnel and saw fuse wire sticking out from it. “I’ll be. No wonder that German ran away. Quick thinking, Jordan, make them think it’s a weapon. There’s hope for you yet.” He couldn't help but let out a little laugh.
Kent quickly removed his jacket, all the time keeping low. He looked at the tattered back then ripped a few strips of material off. He wrapped his hands and tied off the strands. He brought his Thompson from around his back, removed the empty magazine and clipped a new one in. He lay what remained of his jacket over the razor wire, used it to crawl over the top free from snags, and ran only a few feet before he jumped down into a German trench.
A Nazi. A Hitler youth knife right at Kent’s throat.
Kent struck the Nazi in the face with the wooden butt of his Thompson. The Nazi’s helmet left his head and blood trickled from a cheek as he stumbled back. Kent didn’t waste any time. He fired a short burst into his enemy’s chest. The German fell to the ground, dead.
Kent knelt next to the body and pried the knife from his hand. He fastened it to his webbing then looked down the left passage of the trench. It ran a short ways before it became a T. He turned to face the opposite direction. The trench curved to the left. He started off that way, keeping hunkered down, his knees bent and his head ducked low, so no troops up top could see him.
He had just started to take the bend when a German soldier jumped over the trench. Before he had time to vanish from Kent’s sight and take aim at the Rangers, Kent shot him in the back. He fell from view but another enemy soldier came into view.
He was at the point from where the first had jumped over the trench. He had his Gewehr aimed at Kent. A bullet struck the German in the face, shot by an unknown ally. It was instantly mangled. He fell into the trench. Kent stepped over the body and was soon at the end of the curve. There was a turn to the right. Kent took it.
He was at the rear of the bunker that had the fixed MG, the same gun that had mowed down the men in his LCA. The concrete entrance only showed more concrete inside, a wall that was only a step or two from the opening. Kent moved in low profile to the side of the entrance. German voices screamed inside.
Kent removed a grenade from his webbing and pulled the pin. He stepped into the bunker to be face to face with the wall he’d seen while outside. In the wall was a small slit opening. Through it, Kent could see the back of the guy manning the MG and a guy feeding the belt. Two other soldiers were also firing through the front slit at the beach. To the right and left of the wall Kent was at were two other entrances, which led to the main section of the round bunker and the MG.
Kent threw the grenade at the left entrance. He ducked low as it bounced off the curved wall and rolled into the main room. The blast was quick to follow, as was debris. It flew into the section Kent was in, from the openings to his right and left. Smoke and dust was everywhere, hanging, no wind to displace it.
Kent stood and placed the barrel of his Thompson through the slit in the wall he’d used as cover. He spread his fire left to right. He couldn’t see if he’d hit anything or if anyone was still alive. The smoke and dust had surrounded the main room in a mask of uncertainty.
Kent took the right entrance and entered the main section of the smoke-filled bunker. He waved some of the grey away and saw the MG, still at the slit, a severed hand holding it.
Kent took a few more steps, waving more smoke aside as he did. A Nazi was on his belly, a hand missing, crawling, and leaving a trail of smeared blood behind him. Kent stepped on the man’s back, the wounded enemy shouted out a Germanic curse.
Kent grabbed the guy by the scruff of the neck and flipped him onto his back. His eyes were wide, his face speckled with red. He held up his remaining hand and said in broken English, “Please. Don’t kill me.”
“Did you fire at the landing craft? Did you kill my fucking Rangers?” Kent said, pointing his Thompson at him, jabbing it forward, little stabs at smoke, demanding an answer.
“I … I was just doing orders … following orders.”
“I’m sure you were. Right now though, I’m not.” Kent narrowed his eyes and locked them in a stare with the German’s.
“I don’t understand.”
Kent dropped his Thompson and let it hang. He removed the Hitler Youth knife. “Do you know what this is, Adolf?” He knelt down next to the German.
“Yes … My name is not Adolf though.”
“I don’t give a damn what your name is!” shouted Kent. “That’s just what I’m calling you, be thankful it’s not Nazi swine.”
“I am. Thank you.”
“You look fucking pathetic. The German war machine at its finest. On its back, covered in blood and with pants full of shit.” Kent snorted and spat at the man.
He didn’t even wipe it away. “Please, I surrender.”
“I know you do,” Kent said with a smile.
“Then please, you must not hurt me.” He looked close to tears.
“I already told you, I’m not following orders.”
“What does this mean?”
“Do you know what poetic justice is?”
“I … I … no. I’m sorry I do not understand this term’s meaning.”
“Let me show you.” Kent ran the blade of the Hitler Youth knife over the neck of the Nazi. Blood was quick to pool around his gurgling throat. “Poetic justice is the son of an American father and Jewish mother cutting the throat of a Nazi swine with a Hitler youth knife. The full stop of that sentence is this.”
Kent cut the Star of David into the forehead of the dead German.
Once he’d wiped the blood from the knife on his trousers, he placed it back in his webbing. He left the bunker and entered the trench, to follow the curve again. The sound of war was all around, deafening him. He was surrounded on all sides by encyclopedic sounds of murder.
He left the curve then entered the straight where he’d jumped down into the trenches. Three Germans stood looking over the top, their weapons aimed at the cliff Kent had scaled. They were taking heavy fire; dirt was popping up all around them, which meant they were shooting at Rangers as they tried to scramble over the razor wire.
Kent dropped the one closest to him. The bullets cut a line up the man’s side and he fell to reveal the next one along. He was turning his MP40 at Kent. Kent fired again, the bullets from his Thompson struck the MP40 and the gun sparked from the Nazi’s hands, them now bleeding.
Kent fired another burst and finished the bloodied man before he took aim at the last German as he spun his Karabiner rifle at him. Click. Kent shook his weapon. The Thompson had run dry. He turned and dove. The shot from the Nazi struck the wall he’d just been hunkered down at, dirt landed on Kent’s back. He heard the Nazi eject the empty casing and click a new bullet in.
Kent crawled a short distance at full speed, grasping at dirt with his deformed hands, before he sprung to his feet and into a run. He ducked low quickly as bullets started to rain down on him from where his head had popped up above the trench walls. He dove at the start of the curve and landed on his stomach again. He grabbed one of the walls and pulled fully around the bend and hopefully out of the sights of the German who was in the trench. A bullet struck near his feet as he pulled them into his body.
Kent was back on his knees and loading in a new magazine when he heard the Nazi reloading. He had just clipped the magazine in and was chambering a round when the German appeared from around the curve.
The Nazi fell to the floor of the trench, a bullet hole in his back. A soldier rounded the bend in low profile. Kent raised his gun. It was a Ranger. He lowered his gun. The Ranger was Jordan. The private dropped down to the dirt next to Kent.
“I’m glad to see you,” Jordan said.
“Likewise.”
“You take out the MG?”
“Yeah, we need to find the artillery positions now.”
“Do you have any idea where they are?”
“We need to work our way to the T in this trench. Once there, if we poke our heads up, we should be able to see one. We’ll use the craters from the Naval bombardment as cover. We’ll see if we can pick up any Rangers on the way.”
“Sounds like a plan, Sarge.”
Kent dusted himself down and they set off through the trenches, Kent in the lead. They kept their heads low as mud and dirt dropped down on them from the firefights above. A bazooka round whooshed overhead, a tail of smoke behind it. They felt the impact as it thumped somewhere behind them as they reached the T.
They both dropped onto their butts, their backs on the trench wall. Kent pointed at Jordan then the ground. Jordan nodded and Kent stood. He peeked his head over the wall and then quickly ducked back down. “There’s a mortar pit, surrounded by sandbags. They’re bringing the mortar to bear on the beach we landed at.”
“You see the bunker with the artillery?”
“Yeah, it’s on the other side of the pit. If we try to get around it in the trenches we might be too late. We could easily get lost in these fucking things.” Kent itched his chin.
“I don’t have any grenades. You?”
“I have one, only one, so we better make it count.”
“What’s your thinking?”
Kent popped his head up over the trench again. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”
“Do what?”
Kent dropped back into the trench. “There’s a halftrack, it’s not far from here. One of the tracks has been blown off, but it looks to have some Jerry Cans on it. If I can get one, hopefully a full one, I’ll throw it in the mortar pit, then when the grenade hits, bye-bye krauts. Trouble is, I’ll be in the open and the men at the mortar will see me.”
“How close is it to the krauts?” Concern was in his eyes.
“Close enough for me to throw it at them, but almost close enough for them to shake my hand afterwards. So, too close. It’s also in the direction they’re looking beyond to aim their mortars.”
“New plan?”
“If we wait here for reinforcements, or most likely a lost Ranger or two, we could be too late. We need to act now.”
“Rather you than me.” Jordan shook his head.
“You’re not out of the water yourself.”
“Meaning?” His eyes wide.
“You have got to give me covering fire, you’re part distraction and part pitcher.”
“The first I don’t like the sound of and the second I’m confused by.”
“I’ll leave you my Thompson and then you’ll have two weapons to rain down a world of shit on them.”
“What about you?”
“I have this.” Kent drew the knife.
“So you’re bringing a knife to a gun fight?”
“Didn’t you say you play for a baseball team?”
“Yeah. We’re terrible though.”
“Don’t fucking tell me that.”
“Why?” Jordan raised his eyebrows.
“I’m leaving you my grenade. When the Jerry Can hits, throw the grenade, make sure it’s a strike.”
“You do know I don’t pitch, don’t you?”
“I didn’t. And I wish I didn’t now.” Kent handed the Thompson to Jordan. He removed some spare magazines from his webbing then the grenade. Jordan swallowed as he took them. Kent examined the knife and breathed out a long breath. “Make sure you keep your head low until I’m in position. I don’t want you dead before you can help me.”
“That was a cheerful way of putting it. How will I know when you’re in position?”
“All the men in the mortar pit will be shooting at me.”
“How can I know that if I’m to keep low?”
“You have ears.”
“Yeah, but they’re being assaulted by a … what’s the word … war. I won’t be able to tell what sound is what.”
“Okay, peek over every so often. Don’t get seen too early though.”
“Trust me, I will make sure I don’t.”
“I’m counting on you, Private.”
“I won’t let you down, sir.”
“I’m going to use the right side of this T. Then I’ll crawl up to the halftrack, hopefully they won’t see me until I throw the can.”