Normandy Beach Benjamin's View

Normandy Benjamin's View

1944 Omaha Beach, Normandy, France

Lenny and me watched him die. He was bent over double running hell bent for leather like all of us until he hit the land mine. The Germans had opened up a blistering crossfire. Lenny and me rolled into the depression in the black, charred, smoking sand. We sat up with our knees to our chins trying like hell to make ourselves small deep in that damn crater. We were too amazed to speak, that we had survived up to that point. There were pieces of what was left of the Duke in there and when I saw him like that, I put my head between my knees and retched. I was remembering the Duke, I was suddenly sad that I had never found out his real name. We had all met on the transport ship huddled together on the top deck as it was too crowded below. He said he was from Canada. I had never met anybody from Canada before. He showed us all some Canadian money with the Queen of England on it. So we all started calling him 'The Duke'. We were all on that top deck full of anxiety and fear of the unknown. We couldn't show our fear in front of the veterans of other battles especially Italy. Most of them had fallen asleep or were conning cigarettes from the new guys like us, who they probably thought wouldn't survive the day.
Lenny and me were getting drenched by sand and sea water filling up the crater with pieces of The Duke floating on top. I felt like retching again. Lenny shouted over the noise of the bombs and German bullets whizzing overhead. "Well there goes the Duke, we gotta get out of here Benny or we'll be next!" I shook my head to dispel the cobwebs of terror and get back in the fight, adjusted my helmet and eased my head slightly over the edge. I saw the red and black sand which was strange because I had never seen this color sand before. I had been to Lake Michigan from my home in Indiana, in Michigan City, where some of the sand dunes were fifty feet high. The sand there was white. The dunes here were created from the bombs from ships and land mines laid by the Germans. There were GI's running past us and in front of us as fast as they could go like ants from a disturbed anthill. They were falling from German machine gun nests that had survived the bombing from offshore. Lenny whistled, and I felt a strong hand lift me from the relative safety of the hole and we ran like the Duke did, bent over double, I just looked ahead at Lenny. We found crater after crater. Our objective had been drilled into us onboard the ship, run as fast as you can until you met up with your unit. Your unit would find you, give you orders after that. It all sounded pretty easy until one was actually there in all the confusion. There was no order at all it was all chaos. On ship they had led us to believe that the Navy had softened up the Germans with cannons the night before. Apparently, the bombs hit very little as the Germans were firing from what seemed like all directions. My whole world compacted into a tiny space of running and running, trIpping on dead and dying GI's, couldn't stop to see who it was. Just running until we reached the end of that damn beach of black and red sand. Lenny and Benny. Actually Leonard and Benjamin, the Christian and the Jew. We would survive Normandy and the war. Some GI's kept in touch over the decades since the war. I didn't, I know I owed my life to Lenny but I only wanted my memories of that time. Was that selfish? Against all the teachings of decency, honor and religion? Probably. The brain is a terrible organ, it remembers the horrible memories in stunning Technicolor detail but forgets what one can have for breakfast that day. It's 1994, and I'm 50 years older, retired, married, a widower, kids and grandkids, feeding the birds in the park in Michigan City, near Lake Michigan, the white sand gleaming in the sun like old bleached bones. I haven't been to Temple in so long I have forgotten the rituals of my faith. But my brain always remembers in all it's terrible and beautiful detail, Lenny, the Duke and the red and black sand.