RGL e-Book Cover 2019©
RGL e-Book Cover 2019©
Fantastic Adventures, August 1943, with "Phantom Commando"
Jo Bruno was one of the first to pile off the invasion barge.
FOR fifteen minutes we crouched in the bottom of the flat bottomed landing barge. Half a hundred Commandos, ready to attack the French coast for the first time.
Howard leaned forward and touched my shoulder. I twisted around as though a Nazi had landed on my back. Howard waggled his finger at me and shook his head from side to side.
"Easy there," he whispered. "It ain't so bad. All kinds of action in a few minutes."
I looked back along the rows of silent men behind us. They all carried full packs, rifles ready, daggers in their belts. This was no game.
The top-kick stood near the front of the barge. He was staring through the pea-soup fog, toward the beach. I thought I could hear a couple of Jerries talking somewhere out front.
The dryness in my throat wasn't fear. Perspiration collected on my face and the palms of my hands. The top-kick turned and motioned for us to stand up. I looked at Fred Howard and he jerked his thumb toward Joe Bruno on the opposite side of the barge.
We both knew Bruno. Howard and I had watched the heavy-set, black-eyed Pole train during the past months. True, he was dumb, but Bruno had a savage devotion for his country. He had waited a long time for this chance to muss up the Nazis. Now his dark face wore a ferocious scowl. We often said of him that if he were killed he'd be too dumb to realize it. We were only kidding, of course.
The barge grated on the sand and stopped with a jolt. I caught my balance and went over the side into the shallow water. Joe Bruno cleared the opposite side at the same time and we went up the beath together.
I heard the top-kick urging the rest of the men to hurry.
"Righto—Over you go now."
We all had a perfect picture of the town in our minds. We'd studied maps and reconnaissance photos for a week. Bruno was ahead of me, bent double, rifle pointed ahead of him.
A shout went up about fifty yards down the beach. The Nazis had spotted us. Bruno must have seen something in the fog ahead of us. He whipped a grenade from his belt and jerked the pin out with his teeth. I saw him grin as he threw it into the tangle of barbed wire that stretched away in both directions. It hit and exploded and I heard a scream of pain as a gun-pit blew up with a roar. Machine guns started to clatter and hell blew wide open. I threw myself flat on my belly and wiggled forward. Not Bruno. He kept on running, breaking a trail through the wire with grenades. A hole opened up and my bunch went through it.
The men on our barge had orders to capture a large canning warehouse close to the water front. There were machine-gun nests on the water side. The warehouse was built up on logs so that the front was even with the street. There were two sentries at the entrance. Joe Bruno took care of them with his dagger. He did it silently and before we had a chance to help. Fred Howard and I went through the door and I saw a Nazi coming at me with his bayonet. I ducked and sliced under his chin with ten inches of steel. It ripped his face wide open.
The men were already beyond me before I could get my blade out of him. There must have been another Nazi in the corner, near the front of the warehouse. I saw two streaks of orange flame cut the darkness and felt my leg jerk from under me. I went down, swearing bloody murder. Joe Bruno turned around in time to see me get it. He sighted carefully and pulled the trigger. The Nazi that got me toppled over like a ten-pin.
I tried to stand up, saw that one machine gun was still in action and that they were turning it on Joe. I couldn't get up. The Nazi gun turned around and opened up on our men. Joe Bruno pitched his grenade carefully. It exploded and condensed hell blotted out the last Nazi gun. Bruno took a dozen slugs in the belly just before the grenade went off. He went down heavily.
I had managed to crawl to the door. There was a narrow ditch that led down under the warehouse. I dropped into the ditch. My leg hurt pretty bad. I saw the street, bathed in gunfire, suddenly whirl around and turn black.
WHEN I came around everything was quiet. The fog was still thick and I thought once I heard a whistle sound on the beach. I tried to check the time, but my watch-crystal was crushed and the hands stuck. I crawled painfully along the ditch and dropped to the sand under the warehouse. I knew the barges were gone and that they hadn't seen me in the ditch. My leg felt as though it was gone from the hip down. There was a curious numbness that did not hurt, but it made me curse at my own uselessness.
There was a pile of old fishing nets in one corner of the place. I dragged myself under them and hid as best I could. The raid must have been successful. I knew the canning warehouse was out of commission for a while. I could hear the Nazis rushing around up on the street. Now that our boys were gone, the Germans were brave as the devil. A lot of officers were shouting orders.
They searched the cannery above me, and then went away. I tried to bandage my knee, but gave it up as a bad job. If I held it out straight on the sand, it didn't hurt so much. I hoped they wouldn't decide to stick their bayonets into the pile of nets under which I had hidden.
After a while it was quieter and I fell asleep. It was daylight when I awakened and hotter than hell. The nets smelled of old fish and my knee had swollen up the size of a ham. I sat there all day, once in a while sneaking a look at the Germans who were cleaning up the beach. They had a lot of dead to carry away.
"I'm in an awful mess," I kept thinking. "They won't be back for a week. I can't move with this leg. Sooner or later I'll have to give up."
Every time I tried to move the leg, I had to grit my teeth and hold back a howl of pain.
Toward night I must have gone a little nutty. The fog rolled in from the Channel. It must have been close to nine. Nine had been the zero hour last night.
The town was silent. I guess they were plenty worried about another raid. I felt sick, and my fever went up like a balloon. The cool air helped some and I managed to get some comfort out of listening to our bomber squadrons roar over and away toward Berlin.
I slept perhaps for five minutes. When I awakened, a shadowy figure was running toward me from the beach. I heard a Nazi challenge him. Could it be another raid? The Nazi started firing and the soldier ducked under the end of the warehouse and came straight toward me.
I knew him now. He was close to the nets. It was Joe Bruno.
"Where you hide?" His voice was low.
BRUNO must have been left behind.
He knew I was here and had waited for darkness.
"Here," I threw the nets away from me and tried to stand up. He was on his knees, lifting me into his arms. Blood dripped from Bruno's shoulder.
"You hurt bad?" he asked in a hushed voice. "Hold tight to my neck."
Cursing my own weakness I held on and he started running toward the pier that jutted into the Channel at the end of the warehouse. A Nazi patrol came out of the darkness. There were three of them. They started firing at us. I guess I must have stared up at that Pole's face like an admiring school kid. I know that's the way I felt. He paid no attention to them. Just kept on running toward the water.
There was an old fishing dory tied to the pier. He put me in the bottom of it, slashed the rope with his dagger and shoved off. The wind swept us away from the end of the pier and into the Channel. The fog closed down tightly around us.
He leaned over me, a curious, questioning look in his eyes.
"The others," he asked. "Have they gone far?"
"Far?" I didn't understand. "They left last night. It's all over. You must have been asleep."
He grinned.
"I didn't sleep," he assured me. "I killed and killed. I must have fallen behind."
I was getting a little anxious. We might be picked up yet if we didn't get farther away from shore.
"Joe," I said. "We better start rowing."
"I—I don't understand." His broad face darkened. He seemed greatly puzzled. "The fight. It is not finished."
I remembered the bullets he had taken in the stomach. The man must be out of his head.
"Joe," I choked, "Joe, you crazy fool, the battle was last night. The raid is done, finished."
He wasn't listening.
"The raid is never over," he said quietly. "You stay here. They must be ahead of me. I have to catch up."
I grabbed his arm. I was sobbing like a kid.
"We gotta get back across the Channel," I said.
He jerked away from me and turned toward the French coast. I didn't try to stop him then. His back was ripped open with slugs and the bones and bloody flesh stuck out like a raw steak. He plopped into the water feet first and started to swim back. He held his rifle carefully above his head and disappeared into the fog.
I GUESS I fainted then. I remember the kindly face of the old Dover fisherman who picked me up in the shadows of the white cliffs.
"You are English?" he asked.
I nodded and the whiskered, wrinkled old face smiled at me. I could smell the salty, fishy odor of his oilskins.
"Thank your God, soldier," he said. "You're home in England."
They took me to a hospital at Southampton and in a week the leg was in pretty good shape. At least it was from the knee up. They had to take the rest of it off.
I kept thinking of Joe Bruno and wondering what happened to him. Saturday afternoon, Fred Howard came up to see me. He said it was hard to believe that I had got back alive and he felt pretty bad about the leg. I told him about how Joe Bruno saved me.
"And Joe was in worse shape than I am," I finished. "I don't think he ever got back to shore that night. He was all shot up and craay as a loon..." I stopped speaking when I saw the look in Fred Howard's eyes.
"Ain't you made a mistake?" said Fred. "You sure you wasn't out of your head? It musta been somebody else rescued you. I saw Bruno get it myself. Man, he never could have lived a minute after that wad of slugs hit him!"
I looked at him.
"No," I shook my head. "I didn't make a mistake. I saw how he was shot up too. I'd swear a man couldn't live that way—but you know how we used to kid about how dumb he was—wouldn't know he was dead... Well, I guess he was tough enough to almost make that the truth! He must have lived a whole day in that condition..."
There was a strange look in Fred Howard's eyes.
"A whole day —"
"What are you trying to get at," I said, a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Fred swallowed.
"Every night," he said, "at nine—zero hour that night, you remember—the Jerrys bust wide open with their beach- head defense. You'd think a thousand men had attacked them. Buildings have been blown up. Our planes report plenty of damage..."
"Look, Fred," I said suddenly, "don't go off on no crazy imaginings like that. Joe Bruno might have lived one day like he was—but not..." I stopped.
"No," said Fred Howard. "He couldn't. It must be the underground... got excited when we attacked, and are just keeping up the good work. Those Frenchmen have plenty of guts ..." He rose to his feet. "I gotta be going," he said, looking at his watch. Plenty work to do..."
I said goodbye and watched him go.
Underground? Yeah, that must be it. But funny how I keep remembering that crack we used to make about Joe Bruno...
Too dumb to know he's dead...
Nuts! I'm letting it get me too! it must be the underground. Sure! Because if you'd seen those bones sticking out of his back... you'd know.
Too dumb ...