Time 06:30 hours

Date June 6,1944

Operation{Overlord}

        As I looked up into the sky a quiver of fear sunk into my bones. Normandy Beach was not anything like I had ever thought a beach to look like. There were concrete bunkers built into the cliff face with all sorts of barbed wire and sand bag walls covering the beach. I noticed many 10 foot wide craters from the American bombardment. This isn't right, I thought. We were around 100m from our landing, and no opposition had been sent our way. This situation was not exactly what I had expected when I had run away from home at age 17 to join the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. 

        A giant wave shook our boat, separating me from my thoughts and spraying our battalion with icy sea water that crept into my uniform. 

        “Hey Johnny,” Sargent Clark said. Sargent Clark was my best friend in the Marines and had been a giant help to me surviving this war. “What are you thinkin up there?” he said, pointing to my head. 

        “It seems quiet, much too quiet for an attack this big,” I replied. General Eisenhower had told us to be prepared for heavy opposition. 

        Our conversation was interrupted by our landing craft captain yelling, “50 yards to the beach.” 

        “All right,” Clark said, “you keep your head down and run like the devil for the first piece of cover you see.”    

        “25 yards to go!” 

        “Just make sure you don't stay in one place too long,” Clark shouted over the sound of the slapping waves and other soldiers yelling. 

        “Ten yards!” 

        A giant wave of fear swept over me; oh crap, this is really happening. 

        “5,4,3,2,1!” 

        The gate dropped, and all hell broke loose.

        A line of machine gun fire swept through our boat, cutting down the first row of soldiers like a fanged invisible beast tearing into its prey. I jumped off the side of the boat with blood pounding in my ears. The water was much deeper than I thought, and I was quickly swallowed into the depths. I couldn't find the way up, darkness swallowing me. 

        A firm hand grabbed my arm and pulled me to shore behind the remains of a boat that had hit a submerged mine. “Are you okay?'' said the soldier that had pulled me out. I could see a small trickle of blood coming from his nose. He must have had a rough experience getting off the craft like me.

         “Yes, I think so,'' I replied. 

        “Okay,” he said, “let's keep moving.” I kept my hand on the strap of my M1 Garand rifle. “The name’s James by the way.” He peeked his head out from behind the boat and was immediately shot at.  PING PING PING.  Three bullets hit right where his head had been a second before spraying little sparks against his helmet. “Wow, that was close,'' he said. 

        How are we going to get out of this, I wondered.

        “Hey kid, what's your name, by the way,” James asked. 

        “John, but most people call me Johnny,'' I replied. “Wow, look at that,” I said. We both looked up in the sky to see what seemed to be hundreds of toy soldiers dropping from parachutes.

         “It must be the 101st Airborne division, '' James yelled.

        BOOM! A mortar shell slammed close to us, disintegrating several soldiers with one blast. How could we be this unprepared? Only minutes before we had hundreds of ready soldiers prepared to attack. Suddenly, we had people getting gunned down by the dozens. 

        “All right,” James said, jarring me from my thoughts once more. “On three, we run for new cover,” he said. 

        “Fine with me,” I replied. 

        How could he be this calm? We were in the midst of a battle to drive the Germans out of France and James was barely flinching at the sound of guns going off and bombs exploding. 

        “Three, two, one.” Machine gun fire sprayed toward us as soon as we moved from our hiding place. 

        As I was sprinting for cover, I heard a voice behind me say, “MEDIC MEDIC.” Crap, I thought he was calling out for me; I was a medic. 

        “What are you doing?'' I could hear James exclaim. 

        “I gotta go get him,” I yelled even though it was too loud for him to hear me above the crashing sounds from the guns firing and mortars exploding. Right as I was about to reach him, a motor shell landed in the sand between us, sending me flying backwards almost ten feet from the blast.

        The next thing I knew I was laying on my back in a crevice that a mortar shell had made. “You still in there?” James asked, looking into my face. Thankfully, I still was, and every part of my body felt like I had just been hit by a truck. I had remembered feeling like this once before when I had fallen out of a tree I was trying to climb as a kid. I had broken my arm that day and had to get ten stitches. “I'll give you a minute to rest there, Grandma, and then we'll keep going,” James teased.

        I flinched as a mortar landed near us, making the ground tremble.“You missed us again, Fritz!'' James yelled. “Just a little bit higher next time.” 

        This guy is going to get me killed, I thought to myself. I sat up quickly, remembering the guy I had left behind. “I have to go back and get him.” 

        “You can't,” shouted James, grabbing me by the back of my camo uniform. “There's no one back there to go get anymore.  Okay, tell you what Johnny, you're going to take this explosive and put it right up there.” He was pointing to a barbed wire and sandbag wall about ten yards forward. “Light the fuse and run. Can you handle all of that?” he asked. 

        “Why me?” 

        “Because I don't want to do it,” he said. 

        Before I could argue, three other soldiers joined us. “How ya doin, Johnny?'' said a voice I recognized. It was Clark! Before I could respond, another mortar shell landed even closer than the last one, spraying us with sand. 

        “Can you hurry up?” James asked, “getting blown up isn't on my bucket list.” 

“Fine,” I said, “I'll do it.”

        “Alright, we’ll try and give you some cover fire. 3,2,1 RUN!” said Clark.

        A loud spray of machine gun fire swept the sand around me as I ran. I felt a sting come from my arm. I didn't stop to look at it. I heard an extra spray of bullets behind me mixed with other machine gun fire along other points on the beach. Bullets peppered the sand where I had been moments before. I dove for the cover of the wall. I could barely hear the sound of Clark, James and the other soldiers cheering me on. It took me a minute of rifling through my pockets for the explosive and my lighter. I took the explosive and stuffed it into a small crevice between the hard sand bags. Alright, I thought, remembering James' advice to light the fuse and run. 

        The fuse was much faster than I had anticipated. The flame consumed almost half of the fuse before I was able to stand up. I ran left along the wall, provoking another volley of bullets from the Germans mounted on the cliff. Behind me there was an intensely loud sound coupled with a shockwave that threw me onto my face. As I heard a loud chorus of yells behind me, I looked back to see dozens of American and British soldiers sprint up the beach to the wall. Some of them were shot down, but the majority of them somehow made it. 

        “Ya might want to look at your arm, Johnny,” James said.

         I looked down at my arm and saw that the shoulder of my uniform was covered in blood “S@#$!” I said.

        James pulled his knife out of his pocket, flinching at a spray of bullets near him. The knife cut smoothly through the shoulder of my shirt, exposing a small chunk of skin missing from my arm. “You got some luck there, Jonny, it didn't even hit the bone.” 

        “Unzip my medic kit and wrap up my arm and then we can keep moving,” I said.

        BOOM! A mortar shell landed very close by shaking the ground around and showering us in sand. “Could you hurry up and get those bandages on,” said one of the other soldiers. 

        “Found em,” James exclaimed happily after rummaging around in my bag for them. I quickly picked them up and wrapped five layers around my arm and had James tie it up. 

        We were ready to storm through the hole in the wall I had just made. 

        “Wait for them to stop shooting for a second to reload and then RUN!” Clark ordered over the sounds of battle. Only a few seconds after he said that, the loud chug chug from the guns mounted on the top of the cliff stopped. 

        “Run! GO GO GO!” Clark yelled. More American and British soldiers charged out from their cover to help us attack the cliff face. Almost 100 soldiers were sprinting at the cliff face where the Germans wouldn't be able to shoot at us. I followed right after James, sprinting faster than I had ever run in my life, managing to pass him. Multiple soldiers were hit and went down. I was almost there when I heard a cry from behind me. James had been hit in the leg. Without thinking, I ran back and threw him over my shoulder. His weight was immense, but I dug deep to save my friend. I was almost back to the cliff face with James when I felt a click under my foot. I had stepped on a landmine! 

        BOOM! There was a loud explosion, and everything went dark…

I saw a bright light in front of my eyes, and I could hear voices around me. Was I in heaven? “He's awake,” I heard someone say. “Johnny, you good?” I opened my eyes. It was James. I sat up quickly. 

        “Where are we and how long have I been out?” I asked James.

        “Almost two days, and since you asked, we're just off the coast of Normandy in an Allied field hospital. Nevermind that, I should be thanking you, buddy, you saved my life back there. And there's something I’ve got here for you.” He was indicating a small purple trinket in the shape of a human heart.

         “Wow, a purple heart medal!” I yelled “That just for my cut arm?” 

        Some of the light faded out of his eyes. “When the mine blew up, it hurt your leg pretty badly, and the doctors had to amputate. At least we can be twins now.” He pointed down to where his leg should have been. “That bullet did a lot of damage to my knee, so I wouldn't have been able to walk even if they didn't amputate.”

         “Sorry to hear that,” I replied. I was surprised to see how light hearted he could be about this considering what had happened to us. But nevertheless, his happiness cheered me up. 

        “Where's Clark,” I asked him. “He's out there helping bring in some more wounded from the battle. We pushed the Germans out of their trenches and fortifications. We are taking back the towns and those Nazis are on the run.”

         “That's good,” I said, and I fell right to sleep.

-Shane E.