Part 1
"The boat"
"Get the hell off the boat!" The coxswain cried, raising his forehead out over the top of his tiny driver's seat and looking down upon the men, "I've got five more loads fellas, and now get the fuck off my boat!" Another .88 detonated to the right, showering the squad with charred sand and body parts, mixed in with the grotesque bloody water. The relentless clapping of the MG-42 rounds hammering and tattooing the hull of the Higgins boat blocked out all other noise on the beach, save the screaming of the wounded and dying which squirmed up no man' land like beached fish. This was hell.
"1st squad, on me!" The sergeant bellowed out, raising his stained hands from the captain's mutilated carcass and snatching his plastic wrapped Thompson from the bloody puddle.
"Sergeant Larson, the beach masters been hit, sir, I think he's dead!" He rotated his head to face behind him, where, in the midst of the bullet riddled steel, there laid a lone soldier, who arms were weaved under the beach master's shoulders. His head was split open and fragments of his skull were scattered widely throughout the area.
"Leave him! He's' well gone!" Larson replied, watching as the private let loose the man's arms and took up his M-1. Turning back to the front, he peered out over the bullet riddled bodies and watched as the tracer rounds were spit by the thousands out the openings of pillboxes and trenches. They looked like colored rain was falling on them, but it sounded more of hail than the soft purr of rain. Among the bullets were the soldiers. They were trapped behind the hedghogs and timbers, half surrounded by the water and their dead friends. Larson thought to himself,
Once again the coxswain raised his head to bark out orders, but was silences before he could speak, when a round hit his helmet, spinning it around as he fell back into the channel, which was crimson forty meters out. Sheepishly, Larson began to crawl over the soft, but stiff bodies of his men, soaking his once greenish tan battle dress with the menacing color of the red puddles. There was no turning back. He would go foreword to the beach, where there as only two kinds of men, the dead and those which were going to die.
"The boat"
"Get the hell off the boat!" The coxswain cried, raising his forehead out over the top of his tiny driver's seat and looking down upon the men, "I've got five more loads fellas, and now get the fuck off my boat!" Another .88 detonated to the right, showering the squad with charred sand and body parts, mixed in with the grotesque bloody water. The relentless clapping of the MG-42 rounds hammering and tattooing the hull of the Higgins boat blocked out all other noise on the beach, save the screaming of the wounded and dying which squirmed up no man' land like beached fish. This was hell.
"1st squad, on me!" The sergeant bellowed out, raising his stained hands from the captain's mutilated carcass and snatching his plastic wrapped Thompson from the bloody puddle.
"Sergeant Larson, the beach masters been hit, sir, I think he's dead!" He rotated his head to face behind him, where, in the midst of the bullet riddled steel, there laid a lone soldier, who arms were weaved under the beach master's shoulders. His head was split open and fragments of his skull were scattered widely throughout the area.
"Leave him! He's' well gone!" Larson replied, watching as the private let loose the man's arms and took up his M-1. Turning back to the front, he peered out over the bullet riddled bodies and watched as the tracer rounds were spit by the thousands out the openings of pillboxes and trenches. They looked like colored rain was falling on them, but it sounded more of hail than the soft purr of rain. Among the bullets were the soldiers. They were trapped behind the hedghogs and timbers, half surrounded by the water and their dead friends. Larson thought to himself,
Once again the coxswain raised his head to bark out orders, but was silences before he could speak, when a round hit his helmet, spinning it around as he fell back into the channel, which was crimson forty meters out. Sheepishly, Larson began to crawl over the soft, but stiff bodies of his men, soaking his once greenish tan battle dress with the menacing color of the red puddles. There was no turning back. He would go foreword to the beach, where there as only two kinds of men, the dead and those which were going to die.