0834h. 6th JUN. 1944. - Omaha Beach
D-Day, Omaha Beach. Jaxon and Foley shake hands, kill people, and are reassigned just a hair too late.
The landing craft bucked in the waves, white foam rising up in sharp walls each time it sank back into the water. It was cold, the sky was grey, and the only sound other than the ocean and the whimpering of some poor guy in the front was the loud sputtering of the ships engine.
Someone standing at the back was talking. The stream of orders hadn't stopped since land came in view, and not a single bit of it was useful information. Keep running. Don't stop. Listen to your commanders and you'll make it out alive. The grim truth was, half of the people on the boat were going to die and thats if the rest were lucky.
Alton Foley made one last check of his weapon, making sure the bag was still sealed, his ammo still protected from the moist air and the water beneath his feet. He took a look around him, taking stock of who he was with, who was in charge, and mentally made a note of the chain of command. If Carlson died, it was Munson, if Munson went down, Taylor. If Taylor went down.. He sighed. "Me."
Jaxon's fingertips slipped across the patch on his chest. "McDowell" it read. He gazed across the grey sea at the even darker grey shore. His ammo was good, his rifle was sound. All that was left was blocking out the drone of useless prattle and waiting...
His eyes flicked from face to face around him. Some scared. Some angry, some blank. A small smile spread across his lips at the grotesque comedy they all were.
The voice finally stopped giving orders. Foley sniffed loudly and adjusted his gear, counting his grenades. This was far too much to hump considering he'd be crossing a beach with little to no cover. Leave it to Higher to make such a stupid call.
Quietly, he leaned to the guy next to him and asked, "Got a cig? Shame to face the firing squad with out one last cig." A joke. A stupid joke, but a joke no less. The other soldier looked at Foley with fear in his eyes, his mouth half agape.
The kid couldn't have been more than 17. Lied on his application to get in. Probably from some bumfuck town in Georgia. His storey was the same as everyone else's, Foley decided, and so he didn't bother asking for it. He read the name. "Duffy." he said out loud.
Duffy swallowed hard and held his gun tight to his chest like a child with teddy bear, and turned back to the front of the boat with out any sort of verbal response.
"Does anyone here have a cigarette?" Foley shouted, and was quickly met with some superior officer telling him to shut his trap. He did so, not because of the request, but because of the loud grinding sound of their hull scraping the land beneath them. A few seconds later, the whole boat tilted backward and then lurched as it made contact with the beach. This was it. "May the Devil know I'm dead thirty minutes after I've gotten to heaven.." he said to nobody in particular.
Jax felt the sand beneath them grind and offer them up to the battle. The doors whined as the arms prepared to drop, releasing them onto the beach. The chatter of Machine gun fire filling the air. He sat, waiting, unspeaking.
Foley got ready to run. That was his plan for now. Run. Run until you can hide behind something. A good plan.
The door fell open and everyone began to pour out into the beach. This was it. This was the end, he told himself. If we live past this day, it'll be some kind of miracle. His mind raced, but his feet were faster. He didn't even bother to stop when the guy next to him took a hit. Two to the chest, and then one to the helmet, the loud CLANG! and the quick crumpling of the body clear signs that he was beyond help, anyway.
The Machine guns opened up, their landing craft depositing them right in front of a raised pill box. The bullets tore through the men like a hot knife through butter, the sand beneath them turning a sick red and dotted with OD green corpses. This was hell. It had to be. Foley reasoned that he had likely died on the way here, and now he was in hell.
Jaxon piled out with everyone else, the bullets chewing paths through sand and man alike. He tripped over a corpse that had previously been a comrade and shipmate on their little landing craft. The Gore shifted and slid beneath his feet as he tried to regain his footing. A sick feeling in his stomach made him roll to the side. The chatter inside the pill box opened up again, and the man Jax had fallen on shredded under a horizontal hail of lead. With a grunt and a heave he found his feet and continued his charge up the beach, weaving in and out as his gut told him too, slowly making headway.
Foley's mind finally caught up to him as the first explosion went off nearby, throwing black dirt into the sky and deafening him slightly on the left side. He was showered in gore and dirt alike and slowed down a little as his lungs began to burn from running. The machine gun was still going, pouring rounds into his fellow troopers. He looked from side to side to try to find any semblance of his command and saw none at all. Figures.
He tore open the plastic bag he was carrying and pulled his Thompson out, having forgotten it briefly in the chaos. He raised his head just in time to hear a round whiz by his ear, close enough that it burned his lobe slightly, and as he reached up to touch it, he was flung forward by an earth shaking explosion, his legs lifting off the ground, hands moving wide as if he might just learn to fly at that very moment.
Instead of achieving lift, he was hurled face first into an embankment, razor wire running along the top of it. He pulled his face out of the sand, adjusted his helmet and looked back, staring dumbly at the carnage, his ears not picking up any of the screams or the clatter of the MG, just a high pitched ringing. He blinked a few times and wondered if he had left his brain out on the beach someplace.
Jaxon's boots churned up the sand and rocks as he tried desperately to gain ground up the slope towards the enemy. He saw few men in front of him, and he daren't look back to see the situation behind him. Some 20 paces in front the ground erupted in soil and bodies, showering him in blood stained earth. His lungs pumping with his legs, determined to reach his objective.
He gripped his M1 in his hands, looking from side to side for anyone who had made it to the embankment. There were a few bodies far, far to his right, to his left there was a Coporal further up the earthen ramp. Jax smirked and headed that way, anyone made it this far could be given respect, even if they were a coporal. "Sir!" with the last few steps Jax threw himself up and onto the ground near the Coporal "Orders, Sir!"
Foley looked over at Jaxon, still stunned and then surveyed the men around him. Nobody huddled against the sand outranked him. Joyous day of all days. He looked back at Jaxon, reading his name badge. "Stick with me!" he said, and crawled along. "YOU!" he shouted to a soldier close by as another mortar landed a bit too close for comfort, sending the already familiar wave of man parts and dirt in all directions. "You! Stick a fu--" his words were interrupted by a spray of machine gun fire across the top of the ridge that caused everyone to duck. "GOD DAMNIT!!"
"YOU!" he shouted again, and finally, the young man he was trying to get a hold of turned around. "Give me that claymore on your back! And go get those three further down, tell them to come up here!" He shouted to him, reaching out for the explosive. As the soldier did as he was asked, Foley turned to Jaxon, prepping the claymore. "We're taking out that fucking pillbox." Foley said, jerking his thumb up and over. "Don't die."
Without confirming his orders, Jax pulled a pineapple grenade from his belt. Laying his rifle next to him on the embankment he recalled the pill box and pulled the ring and with a shrug, tossed the grenade over his head and into what he approxomated to be the opening in the front of the Bunker, before it ever landed he had his rifle back in his hands and was crawling up the embankment.
"Jesus, H!" Foley shouted, and tried to keep up with Jaxon, stuffing the long pipe bomb between his back and the ruck sack. He shimmied up the embankment until he came to the razor wire. "Cover me." he told Jaxon, and began to dig a hole beneath the wire. When he was satisfied, he jammed the long pipe into the dirt and tapped twice on Jaxon's helmet, pointing DOWN the slope.
Foley turned after hearing the grenade explode. He ducked slightly, made sure his helmet was on, and checked the pillbox. The ledge had crumbled slightly and there was a black scorch mark on the lip, but the gun was still firing.
Foley sprayed it with a few rounds, just for good measure, and rolled back down the slope where the soldiers were gathering. He grabbed jaxon's boot and gave a good hard tug to expedite the other man's descent and shouted, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"
Grinding his teeth in frustration that the grenade hadn't done its damn job, Jax started to pull his rifle to bear when two smacks to his head, a chatter of an automatic rifle and then a heavy tug at his leg conveied a general Get the fuck outta dodge sense of urgency and he found himself rolling down the hill close behind the Corporal. Rifle wrapped close to roll with him. He slid to a halt next to Corporal Foley and turned, flashing a grin at the Non-com.
Foley winked at Jaxon just as the explosive went off, sending a huge plume of dirt and debris into the air. The razor wire and the wooden struts that held it were flung forward, creating an opening for Foley, Jaxon, and the rest of the troops. "CHARGE THAT FUCKING MG!" Foley shouted, and led the way, clawing his way up the hill.
His hand instinctively went to his bandoleer and pulled one of the grenades from it's hook. As soon as Foley cleared the embankment, he bit down on the ring and pulled away, moving his thumb to release the safety. He began counting in his head as soon as he heard the 'pting!' of the grenade's lever, and then hurled it like a baseball. It pegged the top of a sandbag, rolled over and behind, then exploded. A German helmet flew up into the air like a party favor. Foley grinned at his achievement and turned to order his men up, but before he could even get a word out, he was hit in the leg, the burning sensation positively amazing.
"SON OF A CLAP RIDDEN WHORE!" Foley screamed, looking down at his calf which was now bleeding. The men promptly opened fire and charged past him, snapping off shots as they went.
Jaxon had clawed his way to the apex of the dirt mount only to fall to a prone position and start picking off visable targets, giving cover fire to the rest of them. He watched in almost awe as Foley became an almost unstoppable agent of war. When the clip from his M1 popped out the top of his rifle he slammed a new one home and continued to pick of any and all targets that presented themselves.
Jaxon rolled over the top of the rise and continued to roll down the other side, he popped up long enough to body check Foley, knocking him over, and down the slope towards the base of the bunker.
Letting his feet fall out from under him, Jax continued his speedy, if ungainly decent out of the line of fire, skidding to a halt just shy of Coporal Foley.
Foley Growled and righted himself in the dirt. He adjusted his helmet once again and looked up. They were now safely out of the range of the MG and the men were ambling up the hillside to the German trenches.
The Corporal nodded to Jaxon, thanking the other man silently, and then got to his feet. He looked down at his calf, took a few steps, and then began to move forward. While not at a run, his pace was admirable. "Them or us." He said, planting his 'bad' leg and pushing forward. "Thats all it is."
He slipped his hand in his pocket and dug his fingers into the holes of some brass knuckles, grasping them tight as he brought them out. He adjusted them on his hand so he could support his Thompson, and grinned. "Hope Fritz has a good dentist."
A smirk flashed across Jaxon's face unbidden. It was them or us. Good and Evil had no place in this. It was men, fighting men, at the bidding of more powerful men. All that mattered was that the "us" servived and the "Them" didn't. He followed behind Foley, rifle not quite raised to his shoulder, but ready and alert, watching for movement.
The two sauntered into unknown territory, ready to paint Fritz's wagon for him.
Coming Soon
