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"got minerals?"
-YourRoleModel


Leaders: 02 (cont.)
View or Add Comments (# of comments thus far: 13)
Author:SupeRc0pKr
IP:cache-dhXXXX
Date: 04/03/03 11:04
Game Type: Starcraft
Labels:Great Writing(1), Long(1), Text Only(1), Series(1)
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Report Rating: 9.0, # of Ratings: 1, Max: 9, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for SupeRc0pKr: 8.2353

Leaders: 02 (cont.)



[Relief Force]
[Nightfall]


Relief Force

      1st Battalion commander's "office" was in an open lobby in a former lodging house. He'd laid down an operational map on a counter, where he had the positions of the 116th RCT and elements of the enemy marked with red and blue pins. The commander had shaken Wayne's hand once he had entered, and then let him stand at-ease while he and his S2 intelligence officer briefed Wayne on the situation.
      "Lieutenant, I know you've got an under-strength company right now, and I know that you've taken a beating since D-Day morning, but we've got little to no immediate reserves. Second and Third Battalions are to clear remaining resistance on the bluffs past the beach, and we've got to fight westward to relieve the Rangers on Pointe-du-Hoc. I've already sent First Battalion down the Grandcamp road, but they're at half-strength, two hundred twenty-five men. Second Ranger Battalion's with them, the three companies that didn't go ashore at the pointe, along with a tank company of Seven-Forty-Third Tank Battalion."
      "I understand, sir."
      "Good. Resistance has been pretty dis-organized, nothing larger than a company. They've been hitting, though, a lot and with plenty of drive."
      The S2 spoke then. "They're Three-Fifty-Second troops, Lieutenant, veterans from Russia."
      1st Battalion commander continued: "While First Battalion's been fighting towards Pointe-du-Hoc, they've started to put some pressure on the coastal road. I need you to reinforce our boys there. They're almost within the vicinity of Saint-Pierre-du-Mont, and I'll be sending you via another tank company of the Seven-Forty-Third."
      "All right, sir."
      "Good. Good. Any questions? Then you're dismissed."
      Wayne saluted and about-faced.
      "Oh, and Lieutenant," the Major stopped him as he was heading out the door. "You be careful. I've lost a lot of officers and I don't need any more heroics."
      Wayne was not used to dealing with the battalion commander. He was a gray man in his forties, with a perpetually stern expression. Nobody questioned 1st Battalion commander - he was a typical Major, no-nonsense and by-the-book. Orders, regulations, and nothing else. His last remark sounded oddly forced, and more annoyed than concerned, as though his officers were hard-to-maintain pieces of equipment.
      Wayne left the battalion CP with a sense of hopelessness. He'd have to take A Company into combat again. He hoped that the company's presence would be all it would take to pressure the Germans, as the replacements were very obviously in-experienced troops. Wayne didn't want to put the men into action just yet. Combat had been much more intense, much more chaotic than what the officer corps had taught him, and he'd like some time to ease the company in, rather than thrusting them straight into a hot-zone. They were men, not fighting machines.
      At the aid station, Truttman was lying asleep on his cot. His bandages were stained with a splotch of dried blood. His wound must have bled a little over-night. Wayne wondered if he should wake the corporal or let him rest.
      "Is he one of yours?" Wayne turned to see a lieutenant with a red cross band on his arm standing nearby.
      "Yeah. He was supposed to be staying just for the night, but now I'm getting the feeling I should let him get some sleep."
      The lieutenant examined Truttman's bandages. "I don't know, he looks pretty banged-up. How'd he get hit?"
      "Sniper got him."
      "A bullet wound?"
      "Yeah."
      "Then you should let him heal-up," the lieutenant scoffed. "Even if it didn't damage anything vital, a hole's been drilled into his body. That's a lot of shock, a lot of torn-up tissue."
      Wayne realized he hadn't thought of that before.
      "He's a man, after all," the medical officer continued. "Not a machine."
      Wayne met the lieutenant's gaze after a pause. "Right. You're right."
      He left the aid station then, slightly disturbed. He'd almost sent Truttman from his sickbed back into the line, totally ignorant to the reality of it all. Truttman had been hit by a bullet. He'd been wounded. He was a casualty. It wasn't a matter of cleaning up his wound, slapping on a few bandages, and letting him rest a night - there was some real healing to do. Wayne didn't know what he was thinking before.
      Maybe he needed to be eased into the war as much as the replacements did.


      A Company moved out a few hours after the relief force had left, at 1000 hours. They rode along the coastal road rather lazily, and Burkeley remarked that the troops seemed to think that their job was over now that they were on the Continent.
      "The final objective is not complete," Burkeley snapped. "Germany is still in the fight. We haven't even completed our D-Day objectives. Why the hell are you men acting as though the war's over?"
      Williams was at the point again, riding the lead tank, and beside him, Sergeant Brown lectured his squad's replacements on the rudiments of standard operating procedure. He had to shout in order to be heard over the roar of the tank engine, and the replacements bobbed their heads in reply to Brown's points, their helmets swaying over their eyes as they did so. Wayne had been told that there were small bands of Germans on the Grandcamp road, but A Company was to ignore any enemy contact until they had reached the main relief force at St. Pierre-du-Mont.
      "Those B Company boys that came in earlier said they ran into four groups of Germans," Staff Sergeant Dunn raised his voice. "Passed every one of them. Think we'll run into the same?"
      Wayne scanned the road ahead of the lead tank. "Maybe. They might have pulled back once the boys drove past them."
      A Company managed to squeeze six men onto each of the eight 743rd Tank Battalion vehicles driving them in, and the rest rode in on half-tracks. The men liked this; the tanks, Shermans, were bulky, tall beasts, very loud, and they gave the replacements a sense of strength. The coastal road was free of the blinding hedgerows now, and the men found themselves driving roaring through an open field, clear to about two hundred meters, where a short hedgeline marked off orchards lined up side-by-side.
      "Seventy-five millimeter guns!" Brown remarked, a smile on his lips. "These things can penetrate whatever the krauts can throw at us!"
      If Burkeley had been within earshot, he would have protested - when he'd fought in North Africa, the "krauts" had proven that they were capable of producing quite powerful tanks, in particular the Tiger. The Sherman's 75mm shells proved useless against the Tiger's heavy armor, in some places 110mm thick, at conventional ranges.
      Wayne suddenly saw the lead tank halt, black smoke puffing from its exhaust, and Brown's squad dis-mount rather rapidly, shouting; then Wayne saw the red tracers flicking off the Sherman, and Wayne dis-mounted, too, to rush up to the front, where Brown and the others had taken cover on the ditches in either side of the road. Burkeley was close by a moment later, and together they took position up behind the lead Sherman.
      "Fire from the hedgeline!" Brown shouted, "MG-forty-two!"
      "Cover, cover!" Dunn ordered, and the remaining infantry leapt from their escorting tanks.
      The fire was coming rapidly, and soon, a mortar was bracketing the road. Wayne guessed that this was one of the isolated bands of Germans that battalion CP had warned him about. It was inaccurate, so maybe it really was better to ignore it and move on.
      "Everyone get ready to move on ahead!" Wayne ordered. "We'll get covering fire from these tanks, and clear the way ahead. They'll come up once we're out of range."
      Burkeley hopped up onto the lead Sherman and relayed the order. Shortly after, the tank company was unleashing a heavy barrage of .50 Browning fire all along the hedgeline, coating the branches and leaves with anti-personnel shot. 75mm guns thumped in dis-jointed sequence, deafening the A Company men in the ditches with their metallic crumps and causing them to cover their heads from the rushing noise. The brush and trees two hundred meters out swayed away as HE rounds ripped apart, explosions flashing randomly back and forth along the hedgeline.
      "Move up!" Wayne shouted, even though he couldn't hear his own voice. "Let's go!" He waved his arm.
      Sergeant Brown leapt from his ditch and sprinted forward, taking one of the replacements with him. The rest of the squad went ahead after a hesitant pause, and together they dashed under the stream of tracers coming from the German machine gun.
      Burkeley found a few replacements with second platoon huddling in the ditches, un-moving. He castigated the men, and told them to join their comrades ahead. The machine gun fire abated for a moment, and in the relative absence of the whine of incoming rounds, Wayne heard the platoon leader roaring.
      "You men get moving! You men get moving right fucking now, or in just a second you'll have to worry more about what I'll do to you more than you will that machine gun! Do you men hear me? Get off your crying asses!"
      "I'm not going!" one of the replacements shrieked. "I'm not going, Sergeant, it's too loud! It's too loud!" He was covering his ears, face twisted in an expression of an animal that has been brutalized beyond recognition.
      "You listen here, you son-of-a-bitch, we are not stopping the war for you to take a goddamn reality-check! Get off the ground! Get off the ground!" Burkeley was jerking the horrified replacement to his feet. "Now go! Move!" He shoved him forward, out of the ditch.
      The private staggered forward uneasily, arms waving wildly, and he broke into a desperate run down the road. Burkeley dragged the others with him, cursing vehemently at the machine gun which had started blinking in the hedge.
      Once the entirety of the company had crossed the open field, Wayne quick-stepped to the hedge that the crying soldier was lying against, breathing hard and glaring in the white sunlight. The replacement held his head on his hands, his helmet lying upside-down next to him, and Wayne heard him muttering, "I shouldn't be here, God, what am I doing here." Sergeant Brown had a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder, and his squad spoke softly to him, "It's okay, Smith, it's all right."
      "No, it's not all right," Burkeley spat abruptly. "You pull another stunt like that, when the Germans are really shooting at us, and you'll have a dozen dead men lying around you, soldier." Burkeley glared murderously. "Don't fail like that again. You hear me? You get your shit together. You get your shit together or you're going to get men killed."
      A Company continued down the coastal road without further incident. The other resisting Germans must have fallen back from the coast, with the combined 116th RCT and 2nd Ranger Battalion relief force penetrating behind their lines. Burkeley had taken the point, and he squinted intently at the road before him, eyes scanning the countless orchards and fields that the column drove through. Burkeley took note of the second platoon replacements behind him - they jerked at every sound they heard above the tanks, and raised their weapons at every alien object they thought they perceived in the tall grass and heavy growth.
      "Cut that out," Sergeant Brown said, annoyed. "What're you pointing at?"
      Before long, A Company could hear sporadic small arms fire ahead, through the cover of the hedgerows which had rose up around them again. Wayne ordered the men to dis-mount, and the column continued on ahead on-foot, marching in double-file down the coastal road and with eyes forward. Ahead of them, the church tower of St. Pierre-du-Mont released echoes of short gunshots - 116th RCT troops clearing out the town of the last few remaining snipers.
      West of St. Pierre-du-Mont , A Company of 2nd Ranger Battalion had taken the point and was heading out of St. Pierre-du-Mont, which they'd seized before noon. Behind them, a tank company of the 743rd Tank Battalion motored idly, prepared to race ahead to the front of the column or wheel about to deal with threats to the rear. The commanders were riding with open hatches, and they watched the Rangers ahead of them moving cautiously into an open field, where a small farmhouse, a hamlet, guarded the town exit.
      The Ranger company was heavily worn down due to the past day of fighting. Several of the tank commanders mentally noted that they might not make it to the pointe before the entire relief force had been wasted away. The infantry were weary and exhausted. The fatigue was also psychological for the inexperienced 116th RCT troops, who had seen D-Day as the end of combat in Europe rather than the beginning. Their new orders seemed pointless to them; they'd landed and invaded, what more was there to do?
      Wayne's thoughts were drifting to this pattern when the thump of artillery boomed somewhere in the distance to the west. A Company turned to the direction of the field, where cries of "Incoming!" could be heard past the foreign-looking buildings of St. Pierre-du-Mont.
      The Rangers scattered off the road, leaping into the parts of the ditches that were deep enough on either side of the road. Medium howitzer shells, 105mm rounds, dropped down into the field, straddling the road with billowing clouds of smoke and fire. All sound, those of the wounded and those of the leaders, went silent in the screaming of falling steel and earth-shattering crumps of high-explosive incendiary.
      "Everybody get down!" sergeants were ordering. "Get to cover!"
      None of the men heard them; they were huddling in the grass, in the earth, knees and arms in fresh mud, faces pressed to the ground, as though in reverent prayer. Down came one shell in the ditch beside the road; up went three Rangers, limbs hanging limply from their bodies, skin and hair charred, bodies shattered by concussion and splinters of shrapnel that clawed through flesh and lodged in muscle tissue. They didn't scream when they bounced against the earth, smoking and ragged, though no one would have been able to tell - four other shells had landed nearby, and another body had been hurled skyward.
      For a while, the tanks attempted to continue driving forward. However, the Sherman at the front of the column halted, and the radio net was suddenly filled with a surge of deafening hiss - the tank must have been damaged, its radio system destroyed.
      "Back up!" the company commander shouted into his mic. "Back it up! Pull out!"
      And the Shermans reversed away, gradually creeping back to the cover of the hedgerows near the town, leaving A Company of the 2nd Rangers alone in the field.
      "Where the hell's the armor going?" one Ranger expressed in dismay.
      "Goddamned if I know."
      "Fucking bastards are leaving us out here!"
      In the short silence between salvos, some of the Rangers, those that had not been too badly deafened, could hear a familiar chatter, and then an equally familiar buzz. Machine gun fire, from ahead.
      "Sal, Mendez, on me!" one sergeant huffed breathlessly, and scrambled to his feet. "Let's go!"
      Though only two men were called, five others rose. "Tyson, covering fire!" one of the others called. "Hit that machine gun!"
      "Where the fuck's it at?" Tyson called back, ducking now as automatic fire ripped past him, shooting into the grass.
      Another salvo came down, but the three Rangers ahead continued their charge, momentarily enveloped by three shells bursting around them. Their eyes stung from the sweat falling from their faces and the burning fumes of exploding metal, and dirt and debris pelted them in barrages. Their helmets slipped down over their eyes as they pulled their heads away. They stumbled, as another shell detonated in the field, shaking the ground and throwing one of the Rangers behind them ahead, sent him tumbling directly onto his head, but it didn't matter, because a carpet of shrapnel had ripped through his spine.
      They saw the machine gun, then, its muzzle blinking from a hedgerow a hundred meters away, past the hamlet, and the sergeant pitched back, blood arcing away from him, three separate crimson rivers from his heart. His squadmates stomped past his body, and one suddenly found himself on his back, looking up at the sky, the breath knocked out of his lungs. In fact, the air had been punched out of his lungs, and as he tried to gasp, the Ranger felt blood welling up his chest. He closed his eyes, and screamed in the blaring shell fire.
      The third saw the tracers flickering around him, and felt two rounds cut through him, one through his shoulder and the other through his upper chest. He stumbled, fell, rose again, clutching his wounds, tried to push forward, and then was hit again, felt blood leaking through his assault jacket and smearing against his body. The Ranger dropped a second time, and did not rise again.
      The others heard the machine gun now, heard the MG-42 pummeling the last of the breath from the Ranger's lungs, and then felt the silence of their comrades, alive and dying and dead. Down came the shells; black became the earth, and the machine gun swept over the Rangers in the field again.


      The Rangers walked back into town carrying themselves and their dead and wounded. The field behind them was burning, and a few pyres rose silently skyward. Their faces were blank, and they shuffled past the tank company without even sparing them a glance.
      "You guys okay?" one of the replacements in Wayne's company offered, and Burkeley shot him a withering glare.
      The Rangers didn't answer. They didn't say a word.
      The column re-grouped back in St. Pierre-du-Mont. 1st Battalion would take the point now, and Wayne's men would be marching in line just behind B Company. The tanks would drive ahead of the infantry, to force a way through the machine gun on the other side of the field.
      "Ten yards, ten yards," Wayne heard an officer repeating. "Take it all in ten yards. Sprint ten yards, take cover, then sprint another - you'll be across before you know it."
      The replacements looked tense. Wayne spotted the man who had cried in the ambush before St. Pierre-du-Mont. He was fixated on the Rangers, who now stood near the church building, backs turned against it, cigarettes burning in their mouths. Their faces were blackened from the explosive powder of the shells, and from the mud and dirt they'd had to lie in for cover.
      "Don't rush it all at once," the officer was saying, "Just ten yards. Ease your way through."
      "Ease your way through," Wayne repeated to himself. "Ease your way through." He looked past St. Pierre-du-Mont, at the columns of black still rising into the sky from the field.
      "First Battalion, let's go."
      "Bravo Company, at the point."
      "Charlie Company, move out!"
      "A Company," Wayne called. "Weapons at-the-ready. Move out."
      The battalion headed out, the tank company motoring ahead of them, and they neared the field again, moving past the last few buildings of St. Pierre-du-Mont. They filed through the street, the Shermans rumbling out onto the field, and then the leading infantry were out in the open as well, stalking slowly towards the hamlet. The farmhouse was silent; the hedgerows beyond did not flash with gunfire. Wayne saw the point infantry hunched over behind the armor, following the tank company close behind to protect themselves from machine gun attack.
      The hedgerows that wrapped around St. Pierre-du-Mont pulled away from the road then, and Wayne found himself on open ground, the grass, where it remained, was knee-high, but the field was mostly pock-marked by black shell craters.
      "Keep your eyes open," Brown told his squad.
      "Jesus." The replacements were staring at the charred earth, and the gore that littered it. Blood was evident in many places, mostly along the road, where the barrage had first hit. Arms, shorn off at the elbows, and legs, shattered at the knee, lay scattered throughout the field, bone fragments and muscle tissue poking out grotesquely in splinters and coils, creating an open slaughterhouse.
      A trail of blood burned a line in the earth, leading to a pool at the bottom of a crater, smeared across the banks, where a wounded Ranger had huddled, crying for a medic, then a God.
      The bodies - the corpses - had already been removed by the surviving Rangers, but they all knew where the dead had fallen. There, in the blood-spattered ditch that wasn't quite deep enough. There, where a broken helmet remained on the road, chin straps tattered.
      The chatter of a distant MG-42 from ahead broke through the silence of the graveyard images, and Wayne heard shouting from ahead.
      "Jerry's ahead," a soldier noted, and the point troops behind the tanks spread out rapidly, taking up position alongside the road, where a BAR gunner had already started firing past the hamlet, into the hedgerow. The Shermans pulled forward, gaining speed, their .50 Brownings hosing everything ahead of them. They were shooting blind, they didn't know where the Germans were. The infantry weren't much more than a thirty meters from the hamlet; a sergeant took his men forward, stumbling forward in the face of machine gun fire, and together they reached the small wooden structure.
      "First platoon, swing around the building!" Wayne ordered. "Second platoon and third platoon, deploy alongside the forward infantry!"
      A Company broke rank and scattered forward, Staff Sergeant Dunn and his squad leading the movement forward. Rifle fire cracked from the town exit, along with movement through the hedgerows there. The Germans had rushed up reinforcements.
      B Company had established a loose skirmish line across the road, and they were firing into the hedgerows guarding the town exit. Ahead of them, driving straight down the paved road, the Shermans were pushing straight through to the otherside of the field. Their 75mm guns belched, roared, flashed brilliantly, and the trees and branches nearby were subjected to heavy high-explosive fire, tattering their leaves and dropping severed limbs to the grass. The Germans were shouting, but the machine gun fire did not abate.
      "Covering fire!" Dunn shouted, "Automatic weapons provide covering fire! Everyone else keep your heads up, find out where that shooting's coming from!"
      A replacement from second platoon sprinted forward to join his comrades in a ditch. Brown waved him forward while a .30 Browning stuttered nearby. There was a short whine of incoming fire, and the replacement jerked away, onto his back, his exit wounds popping off a mist of blood. He hit the ground and kicked violently for a moment, before lying still while other second platoon troops dashed past.
      "The armor's seized the town exit!" a lieutenant was shouting at Wayne, "We've got to maneuver towards it and secure it!"
      Wayne could see more rifles shooting from the hedgerows on either side of the town exit, and the Shermans pulling into reverse to keep a safe distance from the Germans there. They were shooting into brush, causing the branches to flutter rapidly, but the tanks were blind. They couldn't see the infantry. A potato masher detonated just ahead of one Sherman, and Wayne wondered if the tanks would hold.
      "I say we rush it!" the lieutenant shouted again. "If we rush it, we can-"
      "No," Wayne called back, over a sudden burst of rifle fire. "No, we're not rushing it! We hold here for now, until C Company's deployed!"
      Wayne's first platoon broke around to the right of the hamlet, twenty-eight soldiers sprinting ahead at high-port, with the Shermans just a hundred meters in front of them. They stomped across the battered ground, jumping and sliding into shell holes periodically to take cover. The MG-42, however, was occupied with the skirmish line near the hamlet; but, as first platoon pushed ahead, a second machine gun, this one an MG-34, fired from the platoon's right, near the corner of the field. Rounds hit the men in wet thuds of twos and threes, and they crumpled, one after the other, as the machine gun swept over them, hitting atleast five of the platoon in one pass.
      "Down!" the platoon leader shouted; Wayne didn't even know the officer's name. They dove to the grass, and into the shell holes from the previous bombardment, all the while hit by the MG-34 and the rifles ahead of them.
      "Jesus Christ," a replacement was moaning, "Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ-"
      "Incoming!"
      The 105mm rounds screamed down a moment later, crashing just in front of the hamlet, and Wayne saw bodies hurled up, rifles flying from their hands, helmets twirling away wildly. The artillery had started again.
      "Take cover! Get into cover!" a sergeant was yelling - it was Burkeley. "Everybody get down, get down!"
      Another salvo dropped in, barraging the coastal road with whistling shrapnel, all of it buzzing overhead, slapping into the earth and lacing through those A and B Company troops running to cover. Their screams were drowned out as a second salvo dropped onto the road, followed by another, and another, and Wayne realized that the entire road was being blown apart, shelled by medium howitzers from different directions. A burst of flame, almost immediately swallowed up by a blast of smoke, and the replacements in second platoon were almost completely wiped out. They'd gathered close together, around one ditch, seven of them, and they were now wounded or KIA, trying to stop the blood from pouring out of their bellies and limbs.
      "I'm hit!" one shouted over and over again. "I'm hit! I'm hit!"
      First platoon turned back to the hamlet and started crawling, the MG-34 pelting them as they did so. A shell burst to their left; the platoon leader was killed instantly, disintegrated in the 105mm's wake. A few of the men saw his helmet arc overhead to fall onto the road, where glassy bits of skull and brain tissue bucketed out onto the pavement.
      A tank commander in one of the Shermans was reporting the situation to the company commander. "Sir, infantry's being held back."
      There was a momentary silence on the radio as the tank crews lent an ear to the rumbling thunder of artillery fire, and then the company commander spoke: "Hold your positions. We're not going back this time."
      Not more than thirty meters away, a young 916th Regiment soldier had popped out of the hedgerow in the town exit, with a short, thin tube resting on his shoulder. The Shermans were almost oblivious - the forward crew hadn't even sighted the German until the tube had flashed, and then they were smashed against the wall of the turret, the panzerfaust round having set the vehicle ablaze.
      "Shit, Harry's brewing up!" on the radio net.
      "Are they bailing out?"
      "I don't see them!"
      A moment later, two men crawled from under the tank - black swirls spiralling from the commander's cupola - their clothing burning, and they rolled on the road, desperately trying to put themselves out. The crews behind them could see their mouths contort in agonized expressions, but in the enclosed compartment of the Shermans, with artillery blasting behind them, no screams broke through the rumbling silence.
      C Company found themselves abreast of their 1st Battalion comrades on the road, hiding down in the same damp ditches and whistling grass. The artillery barrage had suddenly intensified, spreading out across the entirety of the field and blanketing the paved road in a jagged, frothing line of dark debris and broken earth.
      First platoon hugged the ground as best as they could, with HE dropping around them and whining tracers pinning them down. Behind them, the hamlet had collapsed, its windows shattered, bits and pieces of some picturesque painting tattered and strewn about the debris like so much confetti. As a few C Company troops, particularly the BAR teams and machine gunners, began to bring their fire down to bear on what German positions had been sighted, the incoming fire slackened, then faded away, though the artillery barrage continued to pour down without pause.
      "Jerry's pulling back!"
      Wayne scanned the town exit for a moment, noting the Shermans halted just before it, one of their number burning, and then nodded to the B Company lieutenant. "Okay! All clear!"
      B Company went ahead first, sprinting forward in ten-yard spurts as they'd been told. They shuffled forward on automatic, hunched over low as they covered the run as swiftly as they could. Still, a few of the 105mm rounds caught men in the open, and they were shoved to the ground, legs folding like paper, where they lie bleeding in a harsh summer sunlight that was suddenly too bright.
      The artillery was reaching the town exit as well, now, falling through the hedgerows that lined either side of the coastal road, and plummeting directly onto the Shermans holding there.
      "Tuppman's bailing out!"
      "Jesus Christ, where's this arty coming from?" the company commander cursed.
      "Infantry's coming up!"
      "It's about goddamn time."
      "Jerry's across the road, light 'em up!"
      Before the Shermans could swivel their turrets about, one of the tanks, Tuppman's, blossomed into fire, its battered turret shooting upwards and away off the chassis. Its ammunition store had already been set off, and 75mm rounds burst in the air and from within the tank, tearing out great chunks from the tank's flanks. B Company infantry closed with the tank column, sprinting the last thirty meters to the town exit and then diving to the hedgerows breathlessly, completely terrified. Some men remained out in the field, screaming horribly, not due to wounds or injury but due to fear and shock.
      Wayne readied himself to join the B Company men that had made the run, but Burkeley stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
      "Don't go," he said, Wayne reading his lips because of the intense cacophony shattering the field to its bowels.
      "Why?" Wayne shouted back.
      Burkeley didn't answer, and he didn't need to.
      A Company lie still in their cover, simply cowering from the howitzer rounds that smothered the coastal road and tore a few unfortunate souls to stringy, scarlet shreds.


Nightfall
      The drive to Pointe-du-Hoc had been halted just a kilometer short. 1st Battalion and 2nd Ranger had pulled back to St. Pierre-du-Mont, to recover from the day's efforts and pull in more replacements that had landed at Omaha. Their objective, relieving the other companies of 2nd Ranger at the pointe, had been delayed two days so far. They wondered how much longer Colonel Rudder and his men would hold out, and they wondered if they would be able to reach them at all at this rate.
      At the pointe, Wescott and a few others had heard the fighting on the coastal road, and they congratulated themselves on a job well done - soon, their relief would march to their lines, and the battalion would be re-united.
      And then they could get started with the rest of the invasion.
      Almost every Ranger on the cliff had been wounded; Wescott had been lucky, but then he wondered if he could really call it "luck." He saw into the night of Normandy for what seemed like the hundredth time. The invasion had just progressed to D+1, and he felt as though he'd been fighting for a rather long while.
      Privately, away from his unit, Wescott might have remarked "the battalion's not going to make it." But at that moment, huddled, cramped, in a shallow access trench, he told the Rangers alongside him "doing great, gentlemen." They weren't doing great. They had men - boys - with multiple bullet wounds out on the line, waiting for another German night-attack.
      Then this was the stuff of textbooks. A unit with well over 75% casualties, continuing to resist an overwhelming enemy force. Even if they died, Wescott mused, the Rangers on the cliff would all be remembered as heroes. Textbooks were just words, though; they wouldn't tell about what the heroes saw today.
      They wouldn't tell what Wayne and A Company had seen, either. The barrage just outside of St. Pierre-du-Mont had halted two attempts to seize the town exit. The fire support had been extremely heavy and accurate. Of the 225 men available for duty with 1st Battalion, thirty or forty had been lost within a few hours' action. They nursed their wounded, now, sitting next to the scorched and dented Shermans around the town square.
      Wayne watched a few of the company medics working meticulously, sterilizing and dressing wounds, telling the casualties how to deal with their wounds. "Stay off that leg. Don't move around too much, that arm'll start bleeding again. You'll need to rest for a few days, that's a nasty headwound." Wayne listend to the replies of the wounded soldiers.
      "Sure thing, Doc."
      And when they weren't looking, a few of the wounded, mostly the Rangers, would stand up and walk out of the aid station, to join their comrades with the company.
      "They don't have to have orders to be sent out to die," one aidman muttered. "They do it to themselves. Christ."
      Burkeley was lying next to Wayne on the steps of a church. He had been silent for most of the evening. The barrage that the company had faced earlier that day hadn't been particularly shocking for Burkeley. He'd seen much worse in North Africa and Sicily. Maybe it was the realization that no matter where he went, he saw men shredded to ribbons by screaming metal.
      "Maybe we're the ones that need rescuing," Burkeley said at length.
      Wayne didn't answer. They shouldn't have even needed to be rescued - nobody should have to see this.
      There was no easing his way through this. Here it was, and here he was in the thick of it.

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