Killing Time

“Go, go boys, keep your heads down!” Streams of bullets hiss past my head; striking the vessel behind, they ring out a grim knell. The weight of my rucksack pushes me forward as I stumble off the ramp. Boots splash in the foam, soft wet sand underfoot. Follow the guy in front. Stay low. Push on. I charge into the nightmare.

Our landing craft beached in the Easy Red sector around 7 a.m., after the first two waves. Red, yeah, the surf runs with blood. But easy? That it ain’t. Above, the whine of shells from the battleships; ahead, the constant trill of machine guns from the enemy bunkers. I hear the screams of my comrades, but I can do nothing for them. Just crouch down and run. My squad is picking its way forward, over dead men, abandoned equipment, barbedwire. We must find shelter from this relentless fusillade or die.

Soldiers fall on all sides to the brutal MG barrage. The sharp, sweet odour of gun smoke mixes with the exhaust fumes of a Sherman tank growling up the shore to my left. My mouth is dry and there’s a rushing in my ears. I’m eighteen, but will I see nineteen at the end of the month? Don’t put money on it. Carried along by a strange euphoria, I push those thoughts away.

We are about halfway up the beach when something tugs at my calf. I glance down. Blood spreads across the olive drab battledress. There is no pain, so I chase after my unit. Then it hits me; a spasm shoots up my leg and I collapse, planting my face in the damp sand. I taste a mouthful of gritty salt.

“Danny, we gotta move. We can’t hang around!” Jim hauls me to my feet and I half-walk, half-stagger to keep up with him. Where am I? I see everything through a greenish mist. 

Spitting out the grit, I yell, “Hey, wait up. I’ll miss the boat!”

“What are you talking about? We’ve just gotten off the damn boat.” He drags me into the shelter of a wooden beach obstacle.

The noise fades into the background. I’m filled with a sense that I should be somewhere. “I have to catch the ferry to Dublin.”

“Ferry? We’ll not be back in Columbus anytime soon.” Jim pulls me down behind the timber baulk. “And anyway, there’s a bridge over the Scioto river.” He regards me like I’ve gone crazy. Have I? What am I thinking? Bullets smack into our barricade, yanking me into reality. Pain surges; I shake, gulping for air.

He checks my leg. “OK, that’s nasty. We gotta get you to a medic.”

A red cross flutters over by the dunes. With him supporting me, we do our three-legged race towards it, stumbling over the cratered and uneven ground. 

A voice shouts, “Leave him.” He ignores the order and hauls me to safety.

Here, they’ve set up a field medical station in an empty bunker. From the ridge above, a constant hailstorm of bullets falls, the concrete ringing with the impacts. Inside, all is dank and gloomy. Moving like a zombie, his eyes glazed, the corpsman draws a breath and snips the fabric around my leg.

“It’s just a flesh wound.” A chunk of muscle is hanging off. My head swims and I grasp for the devotional medal on my dog tags.

“No shrapnel in there, you’ll be fine.” He swabs it, makes a quick stitch and slaps on a dressing. He then gives me a jab and moves on to the next in line. I try to stand. 

“Hey, you wanna maybe sit down until that morphine kicks in?”

I turn around to Jim, but he’s gone. My stomach tightens; I’d left my bike up behind the dunes. The Germans will surely steal it.

🪖

Night had fallen while I slept. The camp under the trees lay silent; nothing moved. No more the constant sound of gunfire, of raucous aircraft engines. I nodded back off.

When I awoke again, I found myself in a spacious room. Stars were visible through tall windows and an eerie green light bathed the space. As I blinked away sleep, a luminous sign came into focus, hanging above me. Sortie. Exit? Where am I? I pressed the dressing on my leg and winced. This can’t be a dream. A banner on the wall read: OMAHA 6 JUIN 1944. Today. Perhaps I’m dead and this is where you get stored in the afterlife?

Reality flooded back. Across from me was the diorama I’d seen earlier: GIs in a temporary camp under some trees. It looked so realistic; no wonder I had dreamt about it.

I had been riding into Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, near the end of my trip. The hedges and buildings evoked a spirit of home. In the warm air, the smell of whitethorn blossom along the narrow lanes transported me back to the west of Ireland. At a junction, a red sign announced the Museee Mémorial d’Omaha Beach. D-Day had always fascinated me, and with time to kill, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Following the directions, I freewheeled down towards the sea, savouring the breeze. A break would be welcome before travelling up the coast to board the Cherbourg ferry homewards.

Earlier in the trip, I’d come off the bike and injured my calf. Drowsy from the pills the local clinic had given me, I rested on a couch in the museum. I guess I’d dozed off, as I woke to find myself locked inside. Might as well rest until morning, so I closed my eyes again and slept.

🪖

The sky above me is still dark, but the sounds of battle returns. My leg throbs. We are in a makeshift camp, in woodland at a field’s edge, with sleeping forms huddled on the ground all about. A pot is boiling on a Colman stove. I cannot shake that image: the unreal green haze, the strange, echoing space. A feeling that I should be somewhere, that I was late. The aroma of coffee drags me into the present.

A medic comes past and checks my dressing. “Your leg’ll be ok, just keep your weight off of it, for a couple of days.”

“Sure, I had nothing planned other than this Normandy beach vacation.” I take the billycan of soup he offers. With food in my stomach, I soon fall back asleep.

🪖

Bright sunshine now flooded the hall; all was peaceful. The window revealed blue skies above a carpark, where an old Sherman tank was on display.

The museum was filling up; a small girl stared at me. “Pourquoi l’homme dodo?” I sat up and tried to smile.

In my family, great-aunt Maureen is a legend. As a young woman, she had worked at the Post Office in Blacksod Bay. We’d spent many summers playing and swimming off the beach there. In the lead-up up to D-Day in 1944, Maureen sent hourly weather bulletins to Allied headquarters. Eisenhower delayed the Normandy landings based on her reports. Now here I was at another beach, dire history binding them together.

I felt relief to have escaped that hell—it had been so real—but a lingering sense of guilt gnawed at me. What became of Jim? I ought to have been there with my comrades.

In my head, I am crying.

© 2024 R.O. Phillips