Invasion Read online

  “Yep, best little town in the world,” I said, extending my hand.

  “Kemprowski,” he said, shaking my hand. “Carl Kemprowski. My sister was runner-up in the Miss Virginia pageant a few years ago.”

  “Wedgewood. My friends call me Woody.”

  “You got one of those names you have to have a nickname to cover up,” he said. He looked at the pair of rolled socks I had thrown him. “Thanks, but I think I’ll find mine,” he said, tossing them back. “I was just kind of distracted packing all of this other gear. Man, they’ve got us carrying everything except the kitchen sink.”

  I told him if he didn’t find his I’d share mine, and he thanked me again.

  Afterward, Sergeant Burns pulled me aside and told me not to give anybody my socks.

  “You got to learn to take care of yourself,” he said. “If that guy’s careless, you need to let it be on him.”

  For some reason Burns seemed pissed, and I didn’t answer him.

  We had Navy chow — potatoes, peas, slices of beef, Jell-O, and ice cream. Not bad. We would have done better on shore eating Army chow, but it wasn’t bad.

  After supper, a chaplain — his name tag read SANTORA — came to our bunk area and said that he was going to hold a prayer service on deck in fifteen minutes.

  “It’ll be nondenominational,” he said. “So anybody who’s a believer can come.”

  I had gone to services in the morning at the Protestant chapel, but I went up on deck and found where Captain Santora was holding his service. There wasn’t much to it, just Santora asking God to protect us all.

  When I got back to my bunk, I saw Burns and Minkowitz still in the area. Minkowitz was reading, as usual, and Burns was sharpening his bayonet.

  “You actually think you’re going to stick somebody with that thing?” I asked.

  “If I run out of bullets, I’ll stick them with the bayonet,” Burns said. “If I lose the bayonet, I’ll fight them with my fists. If they cut my hands off, I’ll bite the fuckers!”

  “How was the prayer service?” Minkowitz asked.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Mark Twain once wrote an essay about war prayers,” Minkowitz said. “He said when you pray to God to save your life, you’re praying for him to kill your enemy. And your enemy is praying for God to kill you.”

  “That’s depressing,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Minkowitz said.

  “Hey, what do your friends call you?”

  “Mink,” he answered. He looked embarrassed.

  I lay on my bunk and wondered what the guys around me were thinking. Some were reading, others were talking quietly, some were writing letters. That’s the way the ship was, subdued. No one was making too much noise until six o’clock. Then a sergeant came in and announced the invasion was being postponed.

  “Bad weather,” he said. “Ike just sent a note to the Germans not to wait up for us.”

  “I bet we sit here for two days,” Minkowitz said. “And then we get off and go back to the staging area.”

  “One of the Army photographers said that he thought we weren’t going to have the invasion until Bastille Day, the fourteenth of July,” the sergeant who had told us of the postponement said. “That’s French Independence Day. That way it’ll look good in the history books.”

  That made a little sense, and I liked being part of an invasion to free Europe that began on a historic day. It was patriotic. I imagined my folks sitting around in the backyard, maybe having sandwiches or something, and hearing the news.

  I slept good, even though I woke up a few times. When you wake up in a ship, all you can see is the red light near the bottom of the stairs leading up to the compartments above. I could hear the water against the sides of the ship, and sometimes the ship seemed to groan, as if it was struggling to get somewhere.

  It was dark and cold when we got up in the morning, and I had the worst breakfast I had ever had. It was watery scrambled eggs, two dried-up little sausages, something that looked like grits with corn in it, toast, and coffee so thick the milk didn’t even make it lighter.

  An officer tried to get us to do calisthenics on deck, but everybody went about it halfheartedly. If we weren’t already in shape, we certainly wouldn’t get in shape doing toe touches on the transport.

  Most of the morning we just sat around. Some of the Navy guys had girly magazines, and we passed them around. Then they set up a screen and started showing newsreels of baseball games, and we watched them until after lunch (also terrible). A tech corporal named Davis tried to start a pool on when we would start off. He was explaining it when one of the Navy guys pointed out to sea.

  “They’re taking down the nets!” he yelled.

  “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “They’re taking down the nets they put out to stop submarines from entering the harbor,” he said. “That means we’re moving out.”

  The rail was soon lined with guys from the 29th looking out toward the English Channel. Some of the transports were already moving, and in the distance I could see two sleek destroyers, dark against the grayness of the day, slide across the horizon. We were on our way!

  Long day. Everybody is edgy. Everybody is a little sick in the stomach.

  I checked my watch. It was 4:17 P.M. on the fifth of June, 1944.

  The mood on the ship, which had ranged from boredom to irritation, grew quiet again. You could almost feel the men going deep into themselves. A captain came around telling us not to forget to take our seasick pills in case the water was choppy.

  “How soon do they work?” Petrocelli asked.

  The captain shrugged, then said something about thirty minutes. We all knew he was guessing.

  Some guys set up a crap game, rolling the dice on a blanket. Sergeant Duncan looked like he was winning some money.

  I imagined going to Paris with Duncan. I knew he would probably look for girls. If I was definitely engaged to Vernelle, it would have been wrong to fool around with a French girl, but I wasn’t really engaged to her yet. In fact, she hadn’t answered my letters, so I didn’t know what she thought of me.

  Supper was stupid, with peas, chicken, and cold French fries. Minkowitz wondered if that was how the Navy always ate.

  “I got a feeling that as soon as we head toward the beach, they’re going to break out the good stuff,” he said.

  “When they put you out to sea for six months, you forget what the good stuff is,” Sergeant Duncan said. “After a while, stale bread gets to tasting good.”

  Taking my boots off felt good, and so did stretching out on my bunk as I lay down. I saw Abbott and Davis get out of their clothes and look as if they had settled in for the night. Somebody was playing a portable radio, good swing music, and we listened to that for a while. Bedford came to mind again. It would be twelve thirty, and guys on the early shift at the laundry where I had worked summers would just be getting back from lunch. Maybe they would be thinking about us, wondering what we were doing and if we were okay.

  I started thinking about my mom. Eleven thirty and she would be home, cleaning and maybe listening to Our Gal Sunday on the radio. She wouldn’t be worried if she hadn’t heard anything. None of her letters mentioned the invasion, and I didn’t even know if she knew I was going to be a part of it. If she did, she might have just pushed it out of her mind, the way she did sometimes.

  “There’s no use in worrying yourself about milk that’s already spilled or whether somebody else’s pancakes are going to rise,” she would say.

  Even if she was worried sick about something, she wouldn’t let on as if she was.

  My brother, Ezra, would know about the invasion. He was smart, maybe smarter than me. I wanted to bring him something from France. A souvenir. Maybe I could pick up a few and give them to Ezzie, Dad, Uncle Joe, and maybe even something for Vernelle.

  If the 29th did all right, if we made the newspapers, I thought Dad would be proud of me. He was happy that I had come home to
join up. Some of the guys from his job had asked him, and he had told them he didn’t know if I was man enough to fight for my country or not. On the night before I left for England, he had taken me out on the back porch and poured a drink for himself and one for me. He didn’t say anything, just poured the two drinks, and we sat there drinking them for a while, and then he said, “Good night, son,” and went to bed.

  I didn’t know what it was supposed to mean, really. I guessed it was supposed to be some kind of man thing. He and Uncle Joe had fought in the First World War, and he had said it had been his obligation as a man.

  The Navy quarters, with guys stacked four high, was dark and stinky. We were too close together, and there wasn’t any air two stories below the deck. I wasn’t scared or anything, just anxious to get it on and over with.

  They got us up at a little past two in the morning. I tried to sense if the ship was still moving, and it felt as if it was. No one was talking. We got dressed, then went up for breakfast. Actually, we went up about five steps and into another compartment, and down five steps to get to the mess hall. Franks, beans, scrambled eggs, and toast.

  Two thirty we were told to shut up and listen to a message. It was from General Eisenhower. It was serious and short. He said he expected nothing less than victory, and something about God being on our side. At least that’s what I think he said; I was getting a little too nervous to think a lot.

  We were told to scrape our trays into the garbage and put them on the rack to be washed. Sergeant Duncan said the Navy could go have intercourse with itself and left his tray on the table. Most of the rest of us did, too.

  I got my gear, and Lord, it seemed heavier than when we were climbing up onto the deck the day before. We went up the narrow passageways — we couldn’t even go two at a time — and assembled in teams. Then Colonel Cawthon called out the boat numbers and we climbed into the landing craft.

  On some ships they had the landing craft come alongside and you climbed down the rope ladders into the smaller boat. On the Thomas Jefferson you loaded onto the boat on deck and then they hauled you over the side and lowered the boat into the water. It didn’t make any difference to me.

  The Thomas Jefferson was rocking from side to side from the choppiness of the water. It was cold, especially for June, and some of the men were already getting seasick.

  “Where’s Lady?” One of the men in the boat in front of us was looking for his dog. They found the dog and put her in the boat just before the crane started lifting it.

  The boats were lifted over the side and lowered into the sea. When our boat went off the deck, we were all holding on. The sky was beginning to lighten, and I felt good for a moment. It was only for a moment, though, because just then the ships started sending a barrage of heavy artillery onto the shore. We were over the rail, and men turned to see what they could of the beach.

  “How far is the beach?” Captain Arness asked.

  “Ten miles!” came the quick answer from the Navy guy in the small wheelhouse. There were two sailors at the open wheelhouse, one on the wheel and another on what looked like a .50 caliber machine gun. A third sailor was in the front of the craft.

  “Make sure your life preservers are free!” somebody yelled.

  We all had on rubber tubes wrapped around our waists in case the boat capsized. I checked mine, and it was slipping down under my canteen. I tried to pull it up, but it was stuck. No problem; I could swim good.

  The winch let our boat down and I thought that would be good, but the sea just started tossing it up and down.

  There were two big Navy ships, the Texas and the Arkansas. Their guns were sending streaks of flames across the breaking dawn toward the beaches. My throat went dry, and I realized I was holding my breath. I opened my mouth to breathe easier.

  There was no place to sit and not much to hold on to, so when the engine of the landing craft started, some of the men in front fell. The sailor driving the boat spun it around and away from the Thomas Jefferson and headed straight toward the beach, then turned and joined other boats that were going in a circle. We couldn’t see anything straight ahead because the ramps were too high, but when the boats turned we could see over the sides pretty good. All I wanted to see was the beach we were supposed to land on.

  Somebody behind me threw up, and nobody wanted to turn and look at him. It was too late now. We were in the water and committed. Somebody, I thought it was Petrocelli, started saying the Lord’s Prayer.

  Our Father, who art in heaven,

  Hallowed be thy name.

  Thy Kingdom come,

  Thy will be done

  On Earth, as it is in Heaven.

  Give us this day our daily bread,

  And forgive us our trespasses

  As we forgive those who trespass against us,

  And lead us not into temptation,

  But deliver us from evil.

  We were being tossed around on the water. The noises of the big naval guns rumbled across the overcast sky, and the roar of the LCVP’s engines filled me with a kind of dread. It was like a huge drumroll announcing that I was about to do something momentous. There were waves banging against the front of the ramp and water coming in over the sides. As we moved away from the Thomas Jefferson the tossing calmed down a bit, but it was still a rough ride. My field jacket was getting drenched, and I was getting colder by the minute.

  We headed to a clearing between the transports where there were three other boats beginning to form a circle. It was the same as it had been in practice, the boats circling until we were ready to make a charge for the beach. Then they would straighten out into a skirmish line and go hell-bent for leather until we hit land, or until the obstacles stopped us.

  I wasn’t really scared, just nervous. It had all gone well in practice, but I knew we hadn’t had any opposition off the coast of England, or when we had first tested the landings down at Virginia Beach.

  “When the ramp drops, get out quick, but go in low.” Duncan’s voice danced over the noise. “Don’t bunch!”

  I knew enough to keep my head down, and I knew better than to bunch up and make an easy target group for the Germans.

  “First team’s gone!”

  A Company was on its way. I thought of the guys in that group, good men. They always thought of themselves as the best in the battalion, and I knew they would try to prove it today.

  I checked the watch the Army had issued me. We had thirty minutes before we followed A Company. If everything went well, the boats that carried them in would be headed back out to the transports to pick up another team as we neared the beach.

  “Where are the friggin’ planes?” Lyman’s voice was nasal and whiny enough to cut through the noise.

  “Maybe they’re already …”

  I didn’t know if I just lost the rest of the sentence in the growing din of sound and wind, or if whoever had started it had just stopped talking. Somehow it wasn’t a time for talking.

  I went over my job. Get on the beach, find some cover, and lay down covering fire while the mortars and machine guns were setting up. Then get to the road that led to Vierville-sur-Mer, get myself up the road and onto the perimeter of the city. Then we’d check our squads, clean up any Kraut resistance that A Company had missed, and cordon off a supply space so the next waves could bring more supplies onto the beach.

  I caught myself breathing shallowly and tried to relax. The man next to me was hunching his shoulders, jerking them up really, and I was glad to see that somebody was as nervous as I was. Kroll, ahead to my right, turned back. He smiled, and I nodded. He was doing something to the end of his M1, and I saw it was a condom he was putting over the end to keep the water out. I had already put my rifle barrel down to keep the water out, and reminded myself to turn it up as we got near the beach.

  The Navy guy driving the boat was yelling into his radio. I was hoping he was on top of things and knew what to do. Then he signaled a fat Navy guy who was in the well with us. The fat guy,
who was wearing a Mae West, climbed up to the wheelhouse and snatched the cover off the fifty.

  I said a prayer. Oh, Jesus, let me do okay. Please.

  The boats, which had been circling, now began to form lines facing the beach we were going to attack. I looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe the thirty minutes between assault teams had passed so fast!

  We were forming a skirmish line, and it looked as if we were the third boat from the left. Was that right? I couldn’t remember if we were supposed to be the third or fourth. I did know that if we landed on target, the road would only be fifteen to twenty feet to my right. Two first downs and I would be all right. The LCVP started moving ahead, jerking the front end up as we started toward the section of Omaha Beach they had labeled Easy Red.

  It was supposed to take an hour to reach the beach, which meant that A Company and the boats to our right had thirty minutes before touching land. I was breathing shallow again, but this time I just went with it. I had a job to do, and I didn’t want to mess it up.

  The water was rough and the boat was bouncing over and through the waves. Men were falling forward and trying to catch themselves, and I knew some would be damn near too seasick to fight. My stomach was queasy, but I was more nervous than sick.

  Sixty minutes of trying to calm myself down, of trying to keep my breakfast down, of trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing once I hit the beach. Everybody was holding on to the sides of the boat. We’d have to form our team positions once the ramp dropped, and we didn’t want to be lying on the deck when it was time to get out.

  “The Germans are firing!” Davis had climbed up on the side of the boat. “There’s shit coming out toward us!”

  “Get your ass down from there, soldier!”

  Davis got down and tightened his chin strap. I tightened mine, and then loosened it, and then tightened it again. I started checking my gear. I couldn’t feel my hands too good because they were cold and wet. I opened them and closed them quickly a few times, as we used to do in Virginia in the wintertime. It didn’t help much, but I knew it didn’t matter. I could see, I could pull a trigger, I could run.