Across a War-Tossed Sea (13 page)

Now I am ready for another adventure! Ron and I are planning one, actually. Freddy told us about a secret
…
OH! I suppose I should not say. I shall just close the way the
Lone Ranger
show does
—
‘Tune in next week for another exciting episode!'


Your loving son,


Wesley Bishop


“W
hoa, mules.” Charles hauled back on the reins. Belle and Jake stopped, swishing their tails against flies that instantly landed on them. Charles pulled off his straw hat to mop his forehead with a handkerchief. “How can it be this blasted hot already on June sixth?” he mumbled, rubbing his eye against a gnat that had flown in. He knew another summer scorcher and drought could ruin the Ratcliffs. Charles frowned, thinking of the extra burden he'd put on them financially.

He glanced over at Mr. Ratcliff and six German POWs struggling to dig up the stumps of trees they'd cut down the day before so Charles could then plow up the earth for tobacco seed. He couldn't believe Mr. Ratcliff had to pay the army $3.50 a day in wages for each of them. Charles fumed, knowing the POWs pocketed eighty cents of that fee themselves to use in their camp canteen, buying beer or milk and cigarettes. He seriously doubted Allied airmen being held in Nazi stalags were afforded such niceties.

Irrationally, Charles glared at the lone U.S. soldier guarding the detail. He was sitting in the shade, cradling his rifle and reading a newspaper. How can the Yanks be this lax? Don't they know what Nazis are capable of?

But they don't, do they? Charles reminded himself irritably, bitterness rising up inside of him. Their homes and schools hadn't been destroyed. Wait until more of their sons and friends and fathers and brothers and cousins die in battle. Then they might.

Charles rammed his hat back on his head and flapped his hand against the cloud of gnats swarming him. A POW straightened up to do the same thing, and Charles noted with a perverse sense of satisfaction that the prisoner's blue cotton shirt—where
PW
was stenciled in big white letters—was sticking to his back. The man was drenched in sweat. All the Germans were. The Tidewater humidity was a brutal adjustment for anyone not born in the area.

Of course, several of the POWs had served in North Africa, part of Rommel's elite panzer divisions, and should be used to heat by now, Charles thought. He easily identified them by their rough manner, their discipline. They were tall, muscular, blond, haughty—perfect Aryan specimens. They probably had the telltale “SS” tattoo under their armpits, marking them as true believers, devotees of Hitler's racist beliefs. The tattoo that told Nazi medics to attend to them first when faced with a lot of German casualties.

The other two POWs were younger, slight of build, more wary, quiet. One had a pretty choirboy face and looked like he didn't even shave yet. He couldn't have been that much older than Bobby, speculated Charles. His name was Günter. He spoke excellent English in proper British accent and with old-world politeness when he translated Mr. Ratcliff's instructions to his fellow prisoners.

When Mr. Ratcliff had asked how he spoke English so well, Günter explained with noticeable pride that his father had been a philosophy professor and a great lover of English literature. Then he lowered his voice a bit as if his father could overhear him. “But I prefer your American writers. Like the poet Walt Whitman. Oh, and Fitzgerald. His
Great Gatsby
is magnificent. As well, I love Scott Joplin's ragtime music. Do you have piano? I will play you some!” He'd been very disappointed when Mr. Ratcliff said they did not.

“How in the world did you end up in the Nazi army, son?” Mr. Ratcliff asked, clearly pitying a rather poetic boy going to war.

“I was to start divinity school when I was drafted as a
Flakhelfer
.” Günter glanced at Charles as he spoke. His voice grew careful. “All teens were drafted thus. I manned searchlights. Later antiaircraft guns. But I surrendered in January when
der Führer
's Bernhardt Line collapsed in Italy. When the Allied army came inland from Anzio.”

“Deserteur,”
one of the burly Germans had hissed, overhearing Günter use the English word “surrender.”

Günter's fair face had paled even more.
“Nein! Ich bin es
nicht!”
He turned to Mr. Ratcliff. “We were in a forward group. The troops behind us retreated. We were left all alone. We had no choice.”

All Charles could think of was that manning ack-ack guns for Hitler meant Günter had served in the ground units of the Luftwaffe—the Nazi air force that had rained death on London. Günter would have trained those cannon on the RAF, maybe on some of Charles's older English chums now flying bombing raids. He might have even been the gunner to bring down Henry, Patsy's missing-in-action beau. It had taken all the self-control Charles had not to attack the boy as Mr. Ratcliff and the German youth chatted.

Remembering the conversation, Charles felt hatred and anger well up in his throat like vomit. He swallowed hard and turned back to his job of plowing. The faster and harder he worked, the fewer hours Mr. Ratcliff would need these cursed POWs, he reasoned with himself.

“Walk on,” he shouted, snapping the reins. The mules pulled forward. Charles focused his energy on guiding the plow, relishing how the blade sliced up the ground.

Honk-honk! Honk-honk!

All of a sudden, Bobby drove the truck pell-mell into the field, beeping and swerving, nearly hitting three POWs as they pried up a stump. They jumped back, shovels in hand, cursing,
“Arschloch!” “Dummkopf!”

“What in Sam Hill are you doing, Robert?” his father bellowed. Then he realized all his sons were crammed in the truck along with Wesley, Ed, and Freddy. They'd been working together on the other side of the farm threshing the wheat fields. “What's wrong?” he asked worriedly. “Is someone hurt?”

Bobby was grinning wildly. “It's happening! Listen!” He threw open the truck door and cranked up the radio.

Crackling and popping, the voice of a radio announcer crowed: “Yes, this is it—D-day, sure to be one of the most important in the history of mankind!”

“Sweet Lord a' mercy,” Mr. Ratcliff murmured, dropping his pickax.

In an instant, the truck became a magnet, as its radio announced the advent of the day the world had been awaiting, dreading. Charles knew he'd never forget the sight of Americans, Brits, and Germans alike drawing close to listen, hushed, to what was known of the all-out invasion that would either end Hitler's murderous reign or cement it.

As the radio blared the momentous news about legions of Allied planes, ships, and troops clogging the channel off France, of shelling and bombing, of small landing craft spewing out thousands of soldiers onto the barbed-wire beaches, Wesley climbed out of the flatbed to stand by Charles. They nodded at one another.
Finally.
The invasion had to mean that after four terrible years, Hitler would turn his merciless attention away from Britain to defend his occupation of France, the back door to Germany.

“Yes, the invasion is on!” the announcer fairly shouted, as if to reassure Wesley and Charles it was true. “We first learned of the invasion from scattered reports on German radio. Now General Eisenhower has confirmed that our Allied assault on Nazi entrenchments, the bombardment of what Hitler calls his Fortress Europe, is under way.”

Hearing the name Hitler, the POWs inched closer to Günter. One elbowed him roughly. In whispers, Günter began translating the radio's report. As he did, the Germans' faces darkened with scowls.

“Here is what we do know,” said the announcer. “Thousands of American and British boys have landed at beaches along a seventy-five mile section of the Normandy coast, from the port of LeHavre, at the mouth of the Seine River, to Cherbourg.”

Wesley and Charles—sons of the geography teacher—both gasped. “That's nuts!” said Charles. “That coastline is full of cliffs. The Jerries are sure to have fortified those hills. They'll have such an advantage. They can shoot down on our boys with machine guns as they try to get out of the boats. And the channel is so wide and rough there. Why didn't they go the short distance to the easy beaches of Calais?”

“I bet because that's what Hitler expected, Chuck,” Bobby answered quietly. His grin was gone. He looked at Mr. Ratcliff. “Do you suppose Cousin Frank and Cousin Ethan are there?”

His father nodded. “They're in the Twenty-Ninth Infantry Division along with a lot of Virginia boys. There's been plenty of talk at church about their being in the D-day forces.” Mr. Ratcliff turned to Ed. “Isn't your youngest a cook on a battleship somewhere in the Atlantic, Ed?”

“Yes,” Ed answered. “We haven't heard from him for a while now. Alma's been worried sick he'd be in this fight.”

“Doesn't Mr. Johns have a son in the army too?” Wesley whispered to Charles.

“Yes, he is in a unit of Indians—the Forty-Fifth Division, I think.”

“Shhhhh
.” Ron shushed them.

“It is difficult to know how the battle goes,” the announcer explained, “as the fighting is desperate and continues under a barrage of shelling from our bombers flying overhead and from our battleships offshore. But news reporters with the troops tell us that our brave boys are withstanding the German counterfire and that the Nazi strongholds are crumbling.”

At this, Günter stopped translating abruptly. He glanced nervously at the other POWs.

The broadcast continued: “The Germans, of course, are claiming that victory will be theirs, that they have captured many American prisoners. But they also admit glider attacks inland and that as many as four divisions of airborne soldiers may have parachuted into France well beyond Normandy fortifications.”

Charles thought he saw the smallest of smiles on Günter's face. What did his expression mean? Charles wondered. Was it smug disbelief? Did he think the American radio announcer was making it up? He clenched his hands and rammed them into his overalls' bib pocket to keep them off the young German's throat.

Over the radio came the sound of rustling paper, as the announcer was handed new script. His voice quickened with excitement as he read: “From the BBC, Prime Minister Churchill is sharing new, specific information.”

At the mention of Churchill, Wesley and Charles stood a bit straighter. The burlier POWs looked like they might spit on the ground.

“According to Churchill, the Allied invasion forces bristle with more than four thousand fighting ships.” The announcer couldn't help exclaiming, “Four thousand! That's miles of ships! Plus eleven thousand airplanes. That's an Armageddon-strong invasion force.”

Günter paused once again. His face turned pink, then very white.

Go ahead, kraut, Charles thought. Translate that!

Haltingly, Günter explained to his countrymen the number of Allied ships and airplanes attacking the Normandy beaches.
“Viertausend Schiffe. Elftausend Flugzeuge.”

The largest of them shoved Günter.
“Lügner!”
he yelled.
“Der
Führer würde das nicht zulassen!”

“Nein,”
Günter cried.
“Ich lüge nicht!”

“Hey, blockheads!” The U.S. guard finally stood up and shouldered his gun. “Knock it off! Shut up and listen.”

There was no need for Günter to translate that.

From the car radio, the voice quoted American soldiers, telling how black and silent the night was as their ships raced across the channel, how it all changed instantly to a world of manmade lightning and thunder that blinded and deafened and killed. “One boy, carrying dynamite, set his jaw as his barge surged toward a beach writhing with soldiers and lit up by explosions, and said, ‘They can't stop us!'”

In conclusion, the announcer recounted how Americans had been able to mount the D-day invasion within two and a half years. How the U.S. military had grown from a mere seventeen battleships in 1941, half of those temporarily lost at Pearl Harbor, to more than nine hundred warships. From twelve thousand air force planes to one hundred seventy-five thousand. From an army of three hundred thousand to a fighting force of ten million men and women. All that, he said, from a peace-loving population geared to manufacturing baby buggies and tractors.

Then the radio broadcast shifted to prayers for the safety of Americans fighting in the D-day battle. As the minister began, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” Günter lowered his head and clasped his hands dutifully. He didn't notice his fellow POWs glare at him for praying along with Americans. But Charles did.

The hulking POW kicked Günter's ankle and hissed,
“Hör
auf zu beten!”

With a little gasp of pain, Günter unclasped his hands and lifted his head.

Charles looked to see if the American guard had seen the exchange. The guard just laughed. “Radio got your goat, Mac?” He jeered at the bullying POW.

“Was?”
the German asked angrily, tightening his grip on the shovel he still held.

“Vhat? Vhat?” The guard mocked the POW as he pulled the bolt of his rifle back and then down, making it clear he would readily shoot the prisoner if he caused trouble.

“Listen!” Bobby interrupted sharply. He lowered the radio's volume and cocked his head. From all directions—from Richmond, Petersburg, Williamsburg—came the faint but distinct sound of church bells ringing, calling.

Everyone froze.

“That's enough for today, boys,” said Mr. Ratcliff quietly. “The bells are calling us. I'm sure preachers across the county have thrown open their doors. We have boys to pray for. Let's go to church.”

That evening, President Roosevelt addressed the nation over the radio, his voice somber. Already, thousands of American casualties lay along the Normandy beaches. It was only the beginning. He didn't brag about U.S. might, or promise quick or easy victory. Instead, he asked Americans to brace themselves. He reminded Charles of Churchill in the dark days of the Blitz.

“In this poignant hour,” said FDR, “I ask you to join with me in prayer. Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor…to set free a suffering humanity.…Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts.…Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong.…Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest.…They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill.…For us at home…give us strength…in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make.…And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come.…”