Dogs of War

JUNE 6, 1944, OFF THE COAST OF NORMANDY

The stink of 225 men in a battleship stung my nostrils. All were sweating, making the stench worse. The only thing that kept me from getting to the deck of the ship for fresh air was the royal flush in my hand. At the table were a few men from other platoons, but the one I was most worried about was my platoon sergeant. He was sitting looking at his cards and then up at the players every now and then as though he was planning some dastardly sweeping win.

It’d have to be one damned good hand.

The other men at the makeshift card table heard the call for final mass from Father Joe Lacy.

“Hold the game, will ‘ya?” one man asked.

“Oh, hell, come on!” the sergeant shouted. “I’ve actually got a good hand here!”

They paid no mind and went on to the Father. I never really considered myself a religious man, but I did follow the Word and kept to it as best as a backwoodsman can. The only issue I had was that I wasn’t Catholic. My folks on my Montana ranch raised me a Presbyterian, so I wasn’t too eager to head over to Mass. There were a couple other men at the table, as well.

“We’re still here. Let’s play through,” I said to him.

“You think you can beat me, Craven?” he asked with a cocked brow.

“Only one way to find out.” I heard the other two men chuckle, remembering Lomell was a boxer who had unwillingly got in a match with the company commander and won.

I took a pull from the cigarette I had smoldering in an ashtray at my elbow and blew out a cloud of blue-gray smoke.

“I heard the captain had seen some shit on the North African front,” Wade Corrigan commented idly. “Anyone heard where?”

I shook my head. “Nah, I try to keep my nose in my own business.”

“The captain wasn’t, but Lieutenant Nolan was,” Sergeant Lomell said. “Served in the Big Red One in North Africa, then Sicily. His draft period was up and decided to try to go for the rangers.”

“That explains a lot,” Corrigan commented.

We all had been training together for upwards of a year or longer. We went from a swamp in Tennessee to cliffs in England, all training for the big invasion of Europe we knew was coming. My cigarette was at the nub, so I rubbed it out amongst the others in the ashtray. A round of betting finished with the sergeant tossing another dollar in there. A royal flush is the highest hand you could get in a card game, so I knew I could toss in every last cent I had just to get the pot. It’d be nice to send back to my wife.

“Think it’s gonna be as hard as the brass says it is?” Connor Rowe asked. I knew Rowe as a private in another assault section of Dog Company and hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with him until this cruise.

“I think we tried to make training as close as possible to actual combat as we could. If you’ve survived this long, I think you’ve got a damned good chance of getting out of this alive,” Lomell said. He then laid down his cards to show a full house. “Now, let’s see what you other jokers have,” he said with a grin.

Corrigan threw down two pairs in disgust and Rowe had sheepishly set his pair out.

“You held on that long on a pair?” Corrigan asked.

“Kids got guts,” Lomell said before raking in the pot.

“Hold on there, Sergeant,” I said. “I haven’t shown.”

“Well, okay, then. Whaddya got?”

I couldn’t hold back the smile that nearly broke my face in two when I laid down the royal flush.

“You sonofabitch.”

“Learned poker in the hayloft when I was six, sir. I’m no stranger to luck.” I began taking the winnings in just as the PA came on with a call for us rangers to man our craft. It was just after four in the morning. This was the moment of truth, I thought as I got my gear strapped to my body. With everything we were to carry, our loads were around sixty pounds. If the boat we were on capsized, we’d sink like a rock. I overheard Lomell talk to a fellow ranger with a defective lifebelt. Lomell ordered him to throw it overboard after he gave the ranger a new one.

Apprehensively, I checked mine and found the prongs on my belt in good shape and headed topside.

In the early morning light, we could see…nothing. If we weren’t so tense with the activity of getting into the LCAs we might’ve been able to see more. Lieutenant Nolan, the short, wiry commander of 1st Platoon gathered us up and led us to the side of the ship where we were to crawl down the netting on the side of the ship to the bobbing boats. With sixty pounds of gear on us, it was a wonder we all didn’t fall off the damned thing! When there were a few feet left to go, I just took a breath and leapt for it.

“Shit, Craven, you’re crazy!” Hicks, a private in my section, commented.

“I wasn’t gonna risk falling by accident!” I shouted back to him.

When 1st Platoon had filled the LCA, we turned towards the objective. Seawater sprayed over us and some would even splash right in over us. I splashed around my ankles and the breakfast I had was about to voice its opinion. Packed like sardines, we rangers jostled around as the little craft was tossed around by the choppy waters of the English Channel. Corrigan looked over at me with a grin.

“Don’t lose your breakfast, Tom!” he shouted.

“Worry about yourself!” I shouted back.

The guns from the ships kept up a sheet of fire on the promontory, making us wonder how anyone could survive such a brutal onslaught of firepower. In the back of my mind, I knew the heavy firing was meant to provide us with enough craters to find shelter once we landed. Each shot fired was an instance where we ducked our heads. So close were the shots that we could feel the muzzle blasts. Our little boat felt like a child’s boat in a bathtub.

“Something ain’t right,” someone ahead of me commented. “That doesn’t look like Pointe du Hov.”

I attempted to look over the bobbing heads of my fellow rangers. Hours of studying our objective, pouring over sand tables and aerial photographs gave us a pretty good understanding of what our objective looked like and this wasn’t it.

“Hell, Rowe, I think you’re right!” a man I knew as Nixon called out. Nixon was also one of those men who left the poker game earlier for Mass.

“Hey, coxswain!” Nolan shouted to the British boat driver. “Is this our objective?”

“Yes, of course!” he shouted back.

“Are you sure?”

I never heard the reply because a wave nearly knocked us all down. My head was spinning. Our mission was to knock out six guns able to fire on both Omaha and Utah beaches, and secure a stretch of highway to keep German reinforcements from the beaches. We had our promontory to hit and another force of rangers were to assault another one, while a third force comprising two companies and some of a third from the 2nd Ranger Battalion and the 5th Ranger Battalion would be our reinforcements.

The promontory before us was not our objective but the second force’s. We were heading to the wrong landing! Our timetable was blown but we were determined to get back on course as soon as possible.

***

Seawater was filling the landing craft so much that we had to start bailing water out with our helmets. Some of the water had remnants of our breakfast, as many men had gotten seasick. I was not feeling one hundred percent, but my breakfast stayed. In the morning light, the Germans were able to see us from their positions and so opened fire on us with their machine guns. Bullets zinged over us and were pretty close to getting me. Others weren’t so lucky.

One of our men screamed as his body splashed in the water.

“Secure him, dammit!” Nolan shouted.

I wasn’t aware of anything outside of our boat, keeping my head down and focused on bailing water out of our boat for two reasons: one was the obvious one, to keep from drowning, and the second reason was to win the bet we all made: who would make it to the beach first? A splattering of machine guns and rifle shots from the Germans also did their part in making me focus on my little world in the landing craft. The Germans began firing artillery at us, causing huge sprays of water where the shells landed.

Water would come into the landing craft as soon as we’d thrown some out.

“They’re firing the rockets!” someone shouted out.

Indeed, some of our LCAs were firing hooks with hemp rope attached to it. The idea was that we would be able to climb up it. If all else fails, there were the ladders we borrowed from the London fire department. The coxswain behind me was cursing the guide for leading us to the wrong destination. We were late to our objective, giving the Germans enough time to man their guns.

“Thirty seconds!” the coxswain shouted.

Nolan looked behind a shoulder at us with that hard glare he had. “Get to the cliffs and get to the guns! Remember, once we secure the guns and roadblock, reinforcements will come!”

I took my M1 rifle and held it in front of me, ready to attack the enemy.

Moments before the ramp dropped, I uttered a quick prayer for protection over our platoon. Lieutenant Nolan was the first one out and he disappeared in a crater filled with water. The rest of us moved around it and moved towards the cliff face. The craters left by the guns meant to give us cover were filled with water, thus rendering them useless. Machine gun rounds passed by me like rain in a storm. The Germans were adding their potato masher grenades into the mix, making the dash a suicide run.

I practically ran into the cliff face once I made it there, and I found some others lined up. There was Lieutenant Nolan, soaking wet, with his forty-five drawn.

“Sir, have a nice swim?” I asked him.

“Fuck you, Craven!”

Wounded lay screaming and moaning, and if it wasn’t for the cacophony of battle, I may have heard them. I barely heard Nolan. I looked around, hoping to find an opportunity to get up the cliff and get to work. A sudden burst of pink erupted from a man’s arm and the man behind him crumpled with a round into the knee. The man with the arm wound grabbed the fallen ranger by the web gear and started dragging him to the cliff. I jumped in to grab the other side and we pulled him to the little safety the cliff face offered.

“Medic!” I shouted. “We need a medic!”

“Harris, gimme your rifle!” Nolan shouted.

The man with the round in the kneecap couldn’t resist, he was in so much damned pain.

“That gun has us zeroed in,” I said, mostly to myself.

Nolan slapped me on the helmet and said, “Craven, come with me!”

I ran just behind him, the ruddy mixture of blood and clay splashing with each step. We made it about twenty-five yards down the beach before stopping where Lieutenant Colonel Rudder was with his element.

“Sir, Captain Slater’s boat is missing! Probably capsized,” Nolan said to Rudder who looked back at him.

“Get the hell out of here and get up that rope!”

“Wilco!” Nolan replied.

I slung my M1 rifle and grabbed hold of one of the thick hemp ropes to start my ascension. I hadn’t known, but Germans had cut some of the ropes off their hooks and some men had been killed by enemy shooting down. The rope itself was slicker than snot and it took everything I had to stay on the rope. Nolan was just above me and a few others from the first platoon were below me. We cleared the top of the cliff and looked upon the moonscape that was the battlefield.

Months of studying maps and sand tables of Pointe du Hov were worthless with the unrecognizable landscape before us. Rangers were clearing the top and moving into combat. German fire found our position and we instantly ran for cover in low crouches. I peeked over a berm and saw some Germans moving towards us, their gray uniforms blending in with the hell around. My rifle was ready for action and I brought it up to my shoulder and lined my iron sights up, wavering with my heavy breathing.

Two deep breaths and hold a half-breath before squeezing the trigger. The heavy 30-06 round took a German in the middle of the chest and he crumpled. I fired two more shots, but was unsuccessful.

“Craven, we’re moving to take out the AA gun!” Nolan shouted.

“Wilco!”

The anti-aircraft gun had been turned onto us and was firing relentlessly. I had found a nice little spot where I was out of harm’s way but able to take shots at the crew. Nolan seemed to be mulling something around in his mind. I asked him what it was and he said we may need to flank the gun. It made sense to me and there was a communications trench near us. Nolan leapt into it and immediately took off down the trench. Just before I rolled into it, the gun found my nook and the area exploded with dirt.

“You fuckers!” I shouted.

“We need to get the hell out of here!” a man shouted.

Five men were there with me and I only recognized Hicks, Rowe, and Nixon. The others I couldn’t think of their names. “You two!” I pointed to the men I didn’t recognize. “What’re your names?”

“Hendricks!”

“Melton.”

“Hendricks, Melton, throw a grenade! When they detonate, we’re gonna all get into the trench and meet up with the LT!”

Nobody had a better idea, so the two took their grenades and chucked them at the gun emplacement. Chances of them actually nailing the damned thing were slim, but we needed to get out of that spot. The grenades detonated a few seconds apart and we got into the trench to skulk our way up, me leading them. We came upon a ranger stitched across by a machine gun. He was dead, staring up with lifeless eyes. I tried to not let it get to me and pushed on. We took a turn and ended up at a gun emplacement.

I took a grenade and stuck a thumb through the pin. “Hello inside! Any friendlies?”

Nixon had knelt down and taken aim with his rifle. I tossed a grenade into the open doorway and went in after it detonated. It was clear, save for a telephone pole where the 155mm gun should have been.

“What the hell?” Rowe questioned.

“Must’ve been a diversion,” I said. “To trick the recon planes.”

“Now what?” Melton asked.

“Germans didn’t move the road, did they?” I questioned him.

“No, I suppose not,” he replied.

“Let’s get to it, then.”

I took the men down the trench and then found where it emptied out near the ruins of a farmhouse. We moved out towards it when the snap of a bullet caught Nixon in the chest. He took two steps before falling on the ground. During training by the British commandos, there was a lieutenant colonel that taught us a move believed would throw off any sniper bullet. I was forced to implement it then: stutter-step then a long step, and a short step, followed by a sidestep. The dance ended among shrubs and I took cover there, shocked the jig actually worked. I looked behind me and found Hicks and Rowe lying alongside Nixon. I cursed.

“Melton, Hendricks, sound off!” I shouted.

“We’re here!” one of them responded. They came snaking up to me.

“I’m pissed now,” Melton growled. He was bleeding from the head.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah, kraut just grazed me.”

Mortars and artillery began to fall as the German resistance began to stiffen. The sniper was my main concern but I couldn’t place where he was. The cluster of farmhouses offered very little sniper homes, so I took a guess and decided on one of the top floor windows.

“Lay some cover fire on the top-floor windows!” I said to the two men. “I’m gonna try to clear the fucker.”

“You’re a crazy SOB, Craven.”

“We can’t lose anymore guys, dammit, and that sniper is picking off our guys!”

Melton shouldered his M1 rifle and Hendricks readied his Thompson submachine gun. I looked back at Melton who gave me a sharp nod. Like a bottle rocket, I took off in a run along an erratic trail set by myself. I felt the tug of a bullet at my leg, then my shoulder, but my legs carried me still. The front doorway of the farmhouse was filled by a German, who fell to two shots from my rifle. They weren’t aimed, but fired from the hip. At the distance we were, though, there was no possibility of either missing.

I ran past the German and into what resembled a living room. Two Germans were inside, seemingly moving to another fighting position. I fired from the hip once more and expended the clip, which flew out to my side. One German remained but I pulled out my Colt forty-five and fired three times, two shots hitting him in the body. As the German lay bleeding out on the throw-rug, I popped in a fresh stripper clip into the M1.

There were no other Germans, surprisingly, on the floors, but I knew the German sniper had to be somewhere. I made it to the top floor and began skulking along the hall, barely picking my feet up. My tongue ran along a dry bottom lip and my finger hovered outside the trigger guard. I could hear the German sniper firing off his shots, but couldn’t place him. There was a sitting area void of any furniture and a few doors open to empty rooms. Only one remained close.

I positioned myself in front of the door and laid a heavy foot into it. The door burst open and I leveled my rifle only to find a German had been by the door. He tackled me to the ground. My rifle was between us and both of us fought for control over it. I could smell the pungent sweat and blood from the man. There was also a familiar smell of thick dust about him. In an effort to break the clinch, I tried pushing my right knee into him to be able to slide out from underneath him or roll over to get on top. This German was a fighter, for he did not budge. I then remembered I had placed my fighting knife along the leg I had arched.

The sniper shouted something incoherent to the German I was fighting, and was not given a reply. My hand found the knife handle and grasped it. Since I had to take a hand off my rifle to grab the knife, the German had been able to pull the rifle away from me and created a distance of about a foot. It was enough distance for me to stick him with the knife in the belly. The man screamed in pain and cursed in German. I withdrew the blade and plunged it in once more.

M1 back in my hands, I put enough rounds into him to end his misery and turned on the sniper. He looked over a shoulder to check on his buddy just as I put a bullet over his left eye. I went to the window and waved in the direction of Hendricks and Melton. They appeared and began moving forward. I met them just outside and we turned to face a forty-yard distance of open land. There was a communications trench just at the end of it. I only hoped that hadn’t changed.

“We’ve got arty falling all over us!” Melton shouted to me.

“Well, let’s get the hell across and silence the guns!” I replied.

Other rangers were moving forward in small groups or as singular men. I took off in the same erratic pattern, so as to disrupt the aim of the machine gunner on the MG42s. As I ran, I kept firing from the hip towards the trench to keep the krauts heads down. We stumbled across the blacktop road that connected Vierville and Grandcamp. Several Germans lay dead by the concrete roadblocks. I looked over at a group of rangers and saw some familiar faces.

“Lomell! Corrigan!” I shouted.

First Sergeant Len Lomell and Wade Corrigan looked over at me. “Hell, man, I was wondering where you went!” Corrigan shouted. He situated his grip on his tommy gun to one hand and with the other embraced me. I gave him a one-arm hug as well.

“Glad to see you boys made it.”

“Did you see Nolan or Slater?” Lomell asked me.

“LT went to hunt down the AA gun and I think Slater’s boat may have capsized.” It wasn’t much of a report, but it was all we had at the moment.

“Sir, you’re in charge here, what do you want us to do?” Corrigan asked him.

I looked around at the men we had there and it couldn’t have been more than twenty. “Our mission is the roadblock,” I said. “We have to hold this position or everything we just faced will be for nothing.”

“Craven’s right. Set up the blocks and we’ll start sending out patrols.”

“What about the guns?” Melton asked.

“Len here took care of ‘em with Kuhn,” Corrigan said.

It was apparent every one of us had been injured. I was bleeding from small wounds I never knew I had, and there was a spot where a bullet had clipped me good enough to draw blood, but no great damage. Then there was Melton with the nasty gash on the side of his skull. Luckily, there was a medic there and he was able to slap a bandage on it. Sounds of battle were still all around us, a stark reminder that the invasion was not yet won. I felt weak and had only a D-bar from my ration kit to sustain me.

Corrigan sat down next to me and took his helmet off. He ran a hand through his coarse ruddy hair, and replaced the helmet. “Nasty business,” he commented.

“Yeah. Guess Sherman was right when he said war was hell.” I took a pack of Camel cigarettes from a pocket and chose one carefully, as though it mattered. Corrigan bummed one off me and I lit both with a match. The cigarette seemed to calm my nerves slightly. We had reached our objective but until the 116th Infantry made it off the beach and to us, we were up that proverbial creek without a paddle. More men began to filter in and we were reunited with Nolan and others. They were never able to get the AA gun knocked out, but we were given the order to hold our positions until relieved.

“No word on when that will be?” Lomell asked.

Nolan shook his head. “None. I got the order to hold from messengers sent by Rudder,” he said. Our company joined Easy Company to form a night position on a hedgerow in an L-formation. Nolan and a BAR-man were at the angle where the companies met, while Sergeant Lomell was at the center of Dog’s line. I was thrown in there and Corrigan was with me, as well as Hendricks and Melton. They were tough guys and I was pleased to be with them. I just wasn’t too pleased with being in a ditch.

I checked my watch and saw it was about nine in the morning. Corrigan took a long pull from his cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. “And now we wait,” he said ominously.