Surviving World War 2

Surviving WW2

…sixty seven years after World War Two has passed; Jackson Wolf and his grandson sat in their New York living room. The boy looked at his grandfather and asked a question...“I usually don’t like talking about it, but I’ll share it with my grandson!”

“It was the 6th of June, in the year 1944 and my fellow soldiers and I were getting geared up on the deck of our battle cruiser to land on Omaha beach when suddenly the sound of artillery guns being fired exploded across the deck. Shells flew onto the beach, pounding the enemy bunkers in the hopes of making it easier for us to get up those beaches. Once we were ready to advance we had to pile off the side of the ship and down a thick roped net, onto the landing craft. A landing craft is a smaller boat that is meant to carry men safely onto the beach in groups of about fifty.”

“What happened then grandpa? What happened??”

“After about an hour an odd silence settled over the battleships. We knew that this must have meant that they were ordered to stop. We knew that this meant that the beach was most likely destroyed…

From this assumption we believed that the invasion on the beach would be as easy as one on a sandbox. Suddenly we heard the sound of heavy weaponry start up once again. I looked back but the sound wasn’t coming from our ships its coming from the beach!

This was a shock as it meant that they were firing back at us and that the beach hadn’t been totally destroyed.

“When we finally waded off the craft and landed on the beach we found a white sanded strand that would once have been considered beautiful, but was marred with the fear of death in our hearts. The barbed wire that lined the beachfront seemed to stare at us devilishly, inviting us to snag our uniforms.

Well before we landed on the beach, there were twenty six of us. But by the time I made it to the rest of my company and found cover there were five men left, and still fighting.

Some of the other craft hadn’t been so lucky; they had been hit by German artillery or by the German planes. There was minimal cover so we had to use the tank stoppers, giant metal structures designed to defend the bunkers against tank attacks, as cover. This wasn’t ideal as the German machine gunners were shooting thousands of rounds directly at us in hopes of reducing our diminishing numbers. They were either being shot by machine gunners or being blown limb from limb by mortar or artillery fire that was landing on the beach.

I was with my best friend private Jason Duke behind a tank stopper when he was struck by a machine gun round that burst his femoral artery. I could tell he was gone before I even called the medic…

I took note of which bunker the bullet had come from and swore my vengeance. After his death I was forced to run to the barbed wire were everyone else was positioned as the rest of my company moved. The Bangalore’s were sent up and the wire was blown.”

“Grandpa what’s a Bangalore?”

“Well boy, it’s an explosive device that’s used to take out barbed wire”

“Oh cool grandpa! Are they dangerous?”

“Very much so! We ran through the destroyed barbed wire and once through, I saw an entrance to the bunker from which the bullet that killed Jason came. I asked a sergeant if I could take it. he was confused as to my bravado but I assured him I was simply feeling brave.

“That’s my brave grandpa!!”

I hurriedly sprinted to the entrance with Private Evans and Corporal Johnson, not knowing what to expect. Surprisingly when we entered there was nothing at all… there was not a sound except the machine guns from up stairs.