Chapter Seventeen

JUNE 6, 1944

The call came at 0530. Joe trooped into the mess hall with every man from his barracks fifteen minutes later. They were served up a gigantic breakfast of sausage, eggs, toast —a breakfast each one wolfed down, or pretended to.

The weather was foul. Invasion had already been delayed because of it, but word came down that they’d go that day, come hell or high water. If not, there was no telling when it might take place.

Every man was weighed down with packed gear, fastened to his body —medical supplies for the first aid station, two medic bags, personal gear, weapon, gas mask. Joe tossed his mask aside, figuring he’d never be able to wear or see through it while rescuing men from bullets and explosive shells. Some men already looked like they’d stagger down the pier; how they’d manage if they needed to wade through water was anybody’s guess.

They got off on time, but the waves and rain and fog spit and swelled the boats until they stopped offshore by ten miles or more. Breakfast didn’t seem like such a good idea then. It was worse the moment men climbed down into Higgins boats. Waves tossed the small craft, despite sailors doing their best to keep them tight against the ships, holding the rope ladders steady as men climbed down and jumped into the boat.

Joe had never been much of a seagoing fellow, one of the reasons he’d joined the Army and not the Navy. Now he remembered every reason he’d not wanted to spend his service on the waves.

The minute the Higgins boat pulled from the ship, the ocean took over like it was demon possessed, throwing the front up in the air and slamming it down against the swells. Whitecaps formed in the wake of the boat’s forward thrust. It was impossible to see what lay ahead. Men were crowded into the boat so close they could only stand, but that didn’t keep breakfast from being shared among them —again and again. Every man, including Joe, puked while the wind whipped vomit across uniforms, whether his own or from the man beside.

Halfway back in the boat, Joe couldn’t see the shore, but as they neared, he saw the balloons in the air —the ones with explosives and long wires tethered to the shore, meant to deter German planes from strafing soldiers storming the beach. He knew that Marshall was out there somewhere with his men of the 320th. Keep him safe, Lord. This praying thing, Joe realized, was getting to be a habit, a lifeline. However short that life might be.

The Higgins boat jerked sideways, and every man fell against the next one, nearly crushing the two on the far side. The sailor must have seen another mine planted by the Germans. The engineers were supposed to have gone in first, cleared the way. But as they passed dead body after dead body in the water, some hung up on barbed wire revealed when the tide went out, Joe knew they’d likely never accomplished their mission. That meant the water was an unknown enemy, an uncharted maze of mines ready to explode the minute their ramp went down. Getting to shore suddenly seemed a much bigger challenge than Germans raining machine-gun fire down on them.

The plan had been to land within a few feet of shore, but between land mines and sandbars that wasn’t going to happen. The first two rows of men disappeared down the ramp and into the water. The rest surged after, every man doing his best to keep his rifle above water.

Medical kits were secured at the waist. The minute Joe stepped off the ramp, he knew that everything in both kits was soaked. He’d not expected that —wet bandages, wet supplies, everything down to the skin soaked in salt water.

Still, there was no time to think about that. Who to help first? Men screamed as bullets and fragments of shells found their mark. Marshall would have called it a turkey shoot.

Joe rolled over the first man he came to in the surf. Dead. He crawled, half swam toward the next. The guy was breathing, but half his arm was torn off. Joe pulled a tourniquet from his pack and tightened it around the man’s upper arm, just above the elbow, and helped him to shore. Together they ran, stumbling to the closest rock. No point in dodging bullets. They beat down like hailstones.

“Stay low. We’ll get you more help.” And back Joe went.

Joe trusted the first medics off the Higgins to set up the first aid station if they could. His job was to pull men from the water, keep them from drowning.

He pulled man after man to the shore, at least those that breathed. There was no way to think about what he was doing, to answer the pleas in the soldiers’ eyes. It was always the same question —Will I live?

Joe couldn’t say, but what he said, nearly every time, was, “You’re gonna be okay.” It was what every soldier needed to hear, what every medic needed to say, whether he believed it or not. He had to remain detached enough to do his job, to help the next guy, and there were hundreds. Some of the wounds were clean. Those guys, the walking wounded, would be all right. Some were explosions to the chest or stomach, to the head or eye. Those were a different story, one Joe dared not think about. Do your job, give them the immediate help they need, get them to the next station where they’ll get more help, then back to work, on to the next man.

Minutes or hours passed. Joe didn’t know. He just kept running from man to man until something tore through his left shirtsleeve, ripping flesh. Keep going. It’s not that bad. You’ll live. Next man. A moment later something bigger, uglier, hit his foot, then a stab to his gut, knocking him off his feet. Joe landed in the crush of pebbles that made up Omaha Beach, nothing like the soft sand of the Jersey Shore back home.

He tried to get to his feet, but the mangled one wouldn’t support him. The ripped arm kept him from army-crawling forward. The best he could do was push forward with his one good foot, pull with his one good arm, all the while machine gun fire exploded pebbles around him into fragments.

Mercifully, somebody —must have been one of the other medics —grabbed Joe beneath the arms and pulled him roughly up the beach to the back of a concrete slab. “Where you hit?”

“Left arm, left foot. Maybe . . . more.” Exhausted, Joe fought to keep awake. How much pain can you suffer and still stay conscious? It was a crazy question, one that didn’t matter, and Joe knew it. He didn’t know if he’d been hit elsewhere. He couldn’t tell anymore. He couldn’t tell anything.