January Dawn (17 page)

“Look,” Alex said, as the morning sun vaporized the fog. I followed his eyes to where he was looking. It was another body. This one was hunched over behind a tree. There was another one behind that one. And another. And another.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Carrigan said, after retching her breakfast all over her shoes.

Lt. Elroy appeared from the bushes. He stood over the dead soldier and kicked him with his boot. His radio operator, a nerdy looking kid named Michaels, stuck close to his heels. Elroy snatched the phone off the receiver on the kid’s back.

“Echo Actual this is Echo Two Six. We have enemy contact in sector two one. Platoon size unit, seven enemy KIA. Waiting for further orders, how copy?” He said, and waited for a response. “Roger, wilco. Echo Two Six out.”

Elroy clicked on his microphone. His voice chirped in my ear. “All units. Form a skirmish line, five yard spacing. Keep moving forward. We aint done until these bastards are swimming in the Atlantic.”

Elroy flicked his head for us to follow. I got in line with Alex and Elroy on both sides of me. As long as we had a veteran soldier like Elroy leading us, I knew we’d be okay.

Our company stopped at the edge of the tree line at the base of a T-intersection. We spotted the enemy retreating to the other side of the roadway. There was intermittent gunfire and explosions down the line a couple hundred yards on both sides of us. The rest of the Division was making contact.

“They’re running with their tails between their legs,” Alex said.

“Can that shit! That was a reconnaissance patrol we stumbled on. You can expect them to come back with more firepower next time. All squads move forward,” Elroy said.

When we made it to the other side of the parkway, Elroy ordered us to hold. He was receiving new orders from Command. A minute later, we were told to proceed onward with caution, large enemy units in the vicinity, beware of enemy counterattacks. Reinforcement from a tank company from the Sixteenth Armored Division was on its way up the parkway.

We pushed forward in the woods flanking the road. Two hundred yards later, we came to the edge of the clearing behind a small residential neighborhood. Alex and I took cover behind a blue trailer home that had sheets of chicken wire blocking the crawlspace. The windows were boarded with plywood. The grass overgrown.

I didn’t realize how thirsty I was, until I sat down on one knee to rest for a minute. As I swished around a mouthful of water to moisten my mouth, I saw Shannon making his way over to us.

“Alex, Colton. Hey,” he said, falling heavy against the base of the trailer home. He looked shocked and pallid like the rest of us.

“You alright?” Alex asked.

“I killed one of them.” Shannon’s eyes were glazed as he poured water on his neck. Alex and I looked at each other. Neither of us knew what to say. I supposed we’d know what that felt like soon enough.

We moved across the street to the next set of homes and jumped the chain linked fence into the backyard of a house with a screened-in porch. All of Echo Company moved forward as one flowing mass of gray uniforms.

We took cover behind the house. I peered around the corner. Nothing there.

Just then, the squad to our left opened fired on our house. I could hear their shots puncturing the house and breaking glass and shattering furniture inside.

“They’re inside that house Second Squad. Watch yourselves,” said the voice of Hutchens, a soldier from First Squad. Hayes, Carrigan and Shannon kicked in the backdoor and moved in to clear the house. Alex and I slinked along the side yard, ducking underneath the windows. More shots from inside. I heard the front door of the house fling open. Two soldiers wearing Yankee green darted across the lawn.

Before I could shoot, they were gunned down by a dozen other rifles. The bullets tore into them, ripping their clothes and tearing at their flesh. As both of them lay lifeless in the street, the rifle fire continued. Their bodies became target practice for a number of nervous, enraged soldiers wanting to get their jitters out.

My comrades howled wildly and continued their mutilation of the corpses. I could hear the loud
thwack
of every bullet striking the bodies of those unfortunate souls. The sound was nauseating.
Such senseless anger.

“Cut that shit out and get moving,” Lt. Elroy said.

“Let’s move, Colt,” Alex said.

Halfway across the street, the very earth opened up. Huge clouds of smoke and chunks of earth rained down on me in an oppressive downpour. The massive explosions and accompanying flashes of light rattled my vision and threw me off balance. Gut-punching concussive waves ripped the air from my lungs as I ran. We were being bombarded with artillery.

Before I could make it to the other side, an extraordinarily intense noise deafened me and the world flashed yellow and red. My already wobbly legs gave out as I was thrown to the ground in a violent jerk. I was overwhelmed with a soreness all across my body. Bits of dirt and asphalt sprinkled my face as I opened my eyes to the bright and cloudless sky.
The day was too beautiful for such destruction.

More explosions rocked the neighborhood up and down the street. Lying there unable to get myself up to move to cover, I thought once again, this time more emphatically,
this is when I die
.

Just when I thought it was all over, the barrage stopped, retreating as quickly as it appeared. A soldier came running to my side and pulled at my vest, shaking my senses back into me.

“Tennpenny, get up. We got to move. Let’s go,” Gammon Junior said, dragging me to my feet. He held me upright by the collar of my shirt as we ran for the cover of the house.

The ringing in my ears whined painfully. We collapsed to the ground on a pile of bodies. I was lying on Alex’s legs when he turned and asked me if I was alright. I was unsure, but I nodded anyway.

Before we could regain our composure from the debilitating mortar barrage we were fired upon by Yankees from the row of houses on the next street over. Muzzle flashes erupted from all the windows and doorways. Cars were flipped on their sides to provide walls of cover. Smoke screens were laid out to decrease line of sight.

Echo spread out and rebutted with a salvo of lead. The rumble of rifle fire grew to a mountainous crescendo.
Update for Command. Large enemy forces found,
I thought sarcastically.

No matter how hard we pushed, the enemy wouldn’t budge from their position. The back and forth volleying continued for over an hour.

Lt. Elroy stormed out into the middle of the street, whitenuckling the grip on his rifle. The friendly tanks had yet to make an appearance and he wasn’t happy about it. With them we could clear the houses out in no time.

“Damn it to hell. Where are those tanks? Michaels get Echo Actual on the line.” As the radioman scrambled to reach the company commander on the radio we heard a low, mechanical grumbling coming from down the block. It squeaked and moaned and growled different than anything I had ever heard before. If it was scary for me, the sound of our tanks would surely frighten the Yankees away.

“Sir, we have inbound,” someone said.

“Friendly?”

He was answered with the guttural boom of an explosion that disemboweled the second story of a house that Third Platoon was occupying down the street.
Definitely not friendly
.

“Contact right,” Alex said. Our attention turned back to the infantry across the way. They had left the cover of their houses and were driving on us.

I followed Alex’s tracers. There were two dozen targets moving forward through the side yard of the house to our two o’clock. I flipped on full auto and let loose. This wasn’t like the firing range at Fort Benning. These were actual flesh and blood targets, moving back and forth and diving for cover.

I couldn’t see them, but as I ducked low to reload I could feel the ground rumble as the tanks lurched closer.

“Contact left,” Shannon said, also reloading.

They were closing in all around us. First Platoon was calling for assistance four houses down on our left and Third Platoon wasn’t faring well in front of the advancing tanks.
There’s no way one company can hold off this attack.

“Third is falling back, look!” Shannon said. The Yankee tanks had forced Third Platoon to retreat. I could see men running across the street back the way we came. Some were dragging the wounded behind them.

As the flurry of men fled, a Yankee tank bulled its way through the garage of the house that Third Platoon was just occupying. The gargantuan machine came to a stop on top of a minivan parked in the driveway, crushing it almost flat under its sheer weight.

“Echo Company, fall back.” We only needed to hear it once.

The tank’s turret rotated toward us and fired. The shell whistled over our heads and erupted in a fiery blast forty yards away.

I ran fast. We all did. Infantry couldn’t stand up to armor like that.

The Yankees stayed on our heels firing into our backs as we ran, retracing our steps back to the T-intersection. The Yankee tanks raced down the road parallel with us, firing their guns into our ranks. We needed to get across the intersection back into the woods where the tanks couldn’t follow us, but to get there we had to cross the wide open road.
That’s suicide. We’ll be gunned down.

There, the ditch. Alex saw it as soon as I did. “Take the ditch, it leads to the other side,” he said.

We ran for the ditch running parallel with the road. A group of soldiers running ahead of us disintegrated within a swirl of earth, smoke and fire. The tank’s cannon had scored a direct hit. We ran through the bloody mist that lingered after the explosion and rolled into the soggy trench.

There was a drainage tunnel that led to the other side. It was just wide enough to fit in, even with all our gear. We scratched our way through the sticky muck to the other side and joined the rest of the platoon as we fell back the way we came earlier that morning.

The Yankees were right on our tail. Bullets ripped through the air in chase of us. Our squads took turns leap frogging in retreat. One squad would hold and provide suppressing fire as the other two squads caught up. Once passed, the next squad would provide cover fire as the first one fell back.

We stopped at the point of original contact and set up defensive positions in line with the rest of the Ninth Division. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to experience such fanatical resistance. Our sister companies had also run into stiff opposition.

The Yankees probed our lines all day trying to find a weak spot, but they gave up around nightfall and fell back to spot just beyond our sight, giving us a reprieve from the day’s action.

I knelt down on my knees, took my helmet off and tried to breathe. The adrenaline I’d been running on all day was wearing off and the full impact of the days emotions were finally hitting me.
What a day
.

At the start, I was downright terrified. I thought I’d get hit in the first five minutes of battle. There was so much gunfire being exchanged back and forth it’s a wonder how there weren’t many casualties. First and Third Platoon lost more than a few men, but Second stayed fairly intact. Nobody I knew was hurt, which was a relief.

The wretched vileness that had been brewing inside me all day finally came up. I vomited painfully. Alex came to my side and put his arm around my shoulders. I could tell that he was battling the same torrent of emotions that I was.

“You did well today,” he said.

“One day down,” I said, wiping my chin.

“And many more to come.”

We stacked our rifles up against a fallen tree and sat down to rest.

“Alex, I’ve never been more terrified in my life.”

“Me too,” he said, holding out his quivering hand. “My hands haven’t stopped shaking."

“It’s funny,” said Junior, who was sitting a few yards away, eating an MRE.

“What is?”

“Combat.” He didn’t sound like he was trying to be funny. “I remember being petrified all day, but in some weird way I felt kind of, I don’t know, excited.”

There was some truth to what he said. I felt that excitement also. I felt that degree of exhilaration as I ran through the woods chasing the enemy, my heart pounding with every step I took. When I pulled the trigger on my rifle and felt the sheer force of every bullet I fired, I felt powerful. I had the power of life and death in my hands and it felt awesome.
Would I still feel that way if I had actually hit somebody?

Regardless of whatever twisted thrill we got out of it, it was only day one and I already learned that war was ludicrous. Senseless. Idiotic. Moronic. Wasteful. Whatever you want to call it. I didn’t like it one bit.

I had escaped one personal hell only to be thrown into another.

What a life
.

The Ninth Infantry Division saw forty days of continuous heavy and deadly fighting. Echo Company was on the frontline every single day. From first contact, we battled the Yankees for every street and every neighborhood. They were paying a hefty price for every inch of ground they took, yet so were we. Our casualties were enormous and we had nothing to show for it. The enemy was pushing us back half a mile every day, somedays more.

The days blended together in a web of morose memories I’ve since tried to forget. I’ve witnessed the power of war firsthand. It is a wretched thing.

The sharp talons of death never ceased their blind groping of the ranks of the men, both Yankee and Confederate. The physical and mental mutilation wrought upon the men was what troubled me the most. It was senseless and a gross waste of life. I wanted it all to stop. I didn’t know how much longer I could take it.

Every day was the same. At dawn, we’d watch as the morning birds darted away when the Yankees began shelling us with artillery and airstrikes. We’d cower as low as we could get as the earth around us was torn and disfigured in mountainous splashes of explosive pressure. Dirt, wood, metal and human flesh rained down upon us. We could only wait helplessly for the shelling to stop. When it finally did, we immediately rose up and prepared to fight off the waves of infantry and armored vehicles that would follow.

It went on like this all day. We’d counterattack, but it hardly made a difference, they’d push us back even further after we expended ourselves.

On some days, the frontlines would fluctuate so fast and so far that we were running nonstop just to keep from being surrounded.

Nighttime was the only reprieve we had. After a long day of fighting, we’d dig in, take stock of our supplies and count off for roll call to see who was missing or dead. Every time the Lieutenant called out a name and nobody answered was like a dagger stabbing each one of us in the heart. It meant another brother in arms lost to the list of dead or dying.

Our desire to throw the enemy back into the sea quickly dissipated after a few hard fought weeks on the line. The enemy was strong and lacked nothing. They had supplies, ammunition, armored vehicles, air superiority, and an iron will, but most importantly they had a cemented beachhead, which they fought doggedly for.

However worse our situation seemed, word on the line spread that the defensive operation against the southern invasion fared even worse. An entire Confederate infantry division had been decimated in vicious suburban fighting and the enemy was already on the southern outskirts of Savannah. This news didn’t go over well with the men. A lot of them had families in the city. None of us wanted to believe it.

Echo Company was entrenched alongside the rest of the Ninth at the junction of I95 and Highway 17, south of Hardeeville, a few miles north of the Georgia border. We were paired up with a battalion of tanks from the Sixteenth Armored Division. The same bastards that were supposed to show up on day one when we first made contact with the enemy but never did.

As long as we held the junction the enemy would have no viable roads to effectively maneuver their armor and vehicles south. We were the only ones in their way. Once they could throw us aside, the complete encirclement of Savannah would commence. We couldn’t let that happen.

In some of the worst fighting we saw to date, we held our ground for nearly a week in this position when, bizarrely, Command ordered a tactical retreat. Half the division stayed to hold the junction and stage a delaying action against the enemy, while the other half, including us, moved southbound on I95 to clear the way toward our next objective.

We walked in two lines in the right two lanes of the highway, grumbling all the way. A seemingly endless array of vehicles and military machinery wheeled past us in the left lane, choking us with exhaust fumes.

The enemy controlled the skies during the day. The Yankees had a tendency to swoop down on us unexpectedly and blow our vehicles to smithereens. So, they made the infantry walk.
As if we weren’t already tired
.

“I don’t understand why we had to retreat. We had a legitimate defensive position. It doesn’t seem smart to me,” Beauregard said.

“The Army doesn’t want you to understand. You’re a pawn, Walter,” Hayes said.

“What did you call me?”

“He’s right,” Junior said. “Command’s back in Savannah, sitting comfortable in their warm beds, smoking cigars with pretty little red heads under their arms. And every so often they have to get up, put their fluffy slippers on and issue some bullshit order for us to follow out here in the sticks. Half the time they don’t even look at a map. They just say move here and move there.”

Junior proved to be a useful addition to Second Squad. Nobody trusted him at first, but after he saved me from certain obliteration from that artillery barrage, we decided that maybe we’d give him a second chance. I, for one, was glad he was with us.

“You’re father’s one of them,” said Shannon.

“And I know he likes red heads,” Junior said to an applause of chuckles.

“I like the General. He’s a great leader. He wouldn’t pull us off the line for nothing.”

When Shannon recorded his first kill, something inside of him changed. He seemed to mature into a man overnight. He was no longer the sixteen-year-old naïve teenager from Basic. The guys still ribbed on him because of his youth, but it was in good nature.

“If he’s such a great leader, why doesn’t he come out here with a rifle and join us?” Junior asked.

“He’d probably bag more bad guys than Colton,” Beauregard said.

“Anyone could bag more kills than Colton,” said Sergeant Redman, walking at the front of the squad, “Just put’em on the line for an hour.”

Alex got promoted to Squad Leader a few days back after a piece of shrapnel severed Sergeant Garcia’s arm. I was the first one on the scene when it happened. I tried to wrap the stump and stop the bleeding, but Garcia was writhing too much for me to bandage him. Junior came when I yelled for help. While waiting for the medic, he held him down and I held pressure on the wound.

“Yeah, what happened to you Colton? Are you having performance issues? You were the crack shot of the company in Basic, what’s up with you?” Hayes asked.

I smiled and shook my head, because I knew they were right. My marksmanship had disappeared. I couldn’t hit anything I was aiming at. Even after recalibrating my rifle my woes continued. I had lost my touch.

Hayes put his arm around my shoulders and smiled his goofy smile at me. “Come on, you can talk to your good buddy Hayes. Do you have anxiety? No? Are you having trouble getting your rifle up? Or are you having difficulty with the discharge?”

I gave him a good shove as everyone laughed on.

“Colton couldn’t hit water even if he fell out of a boat,” Alex said.

“A Yankee could run straight at you and bop you on the nose before you even come close to hitting him,” said Hayes.

“Would you like to test that theory?” I asked, cocking my rifle.

“Yet still, somehow he’s never been wounded,” Shannon said.

That was true also. Alex and I both miraculously evaded serious injury. The others weren’t as lucky.

Carrigan got hit in the shoulder with a piece of shrapnel. She spent a day at the aid station and came right back.

Beauregard got nicked in the neck. It was nothing too serious, but it did require a few butterfly stitches. Shannon suffered a concussion when an artillery burst sent him headfirst into a tree.

Hayes and Junior both got pinned with splinters from an artillery barrage. I picked one splinter out of Junior’s back that was the size of a kitchen knife. As for me, besides scratches and bruises, I avoided injury.

“You are one lucky duck, Colton,” Hayes said.

The tiresome line of ragged infantry marched solemnly on as we brooded over this most recent retreat. For the first time in a long while, we held an advantage over the enemy. And just like that it was taken away.
How much farther can we go on like this?

Somewhere up the line, a few soldiers broke out in song, singing “Bonnie Blue Flag.” The few among us who could hold a tune joined in singing the opening verse.

We are a band of brothers

And native to the soil,

Fighting for the property

We gained by honest toil;

And when our rights were threatened,

The cry rose near and far—

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!

On cue, every soldier busted out with the chorus.

Hurrah! Hurrah!

For Southern rights hurrah!

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.

The melody spread down the ranks like a wave for as far as I could hear. The combined harmony of several thousand men singing the beloved lyrics to this age old army favorite gave proof that our will was not broken despite our recent adversities.

Still, there was an element of sadness among the men. Some sang with tears in their eyes. Others mumbled their words, incapable of such emotion anymore. Every last one of us sang none the less. The deep chorus of tired voices sang together as one.

Then here’s to our Confederacy,

Strong are we and brave;

Like patriots of old we’ll fight

Our heritage to save.

And rather than submit to shame,

To die we would prefer;

So cheer for the Bonnie Blue Flag

That bears a single star.

Yes, we were still in this fight.

Moments after the song faded and the ranks fell silent once more, someone up the road spotted two black dots in the sky heading in our direction. Our Air Force didn’t fly during the day. It had to be Yankee. News of the impending attackers spread to all the officers and NCOs. They scrambled to get their units into cover.

“Enemy helos, cover! Go, go, go!”

We all sprinted into the tree line and dived for cover behind anything we could find. Moments later, two enemy attack helicopters flew over us in formation heading back the way we came. They held their fire. The loud thumping of their propellers vibrated my entire body and rekindled the flame of hatred I had for those things.

We hated those Yankee pilots more than anything. They were a special breed of ruthless murderers. We’d seen those bastards rocket an entire supply convoy en route to deliver us ammunition and water. When the truck drivers ditched the vehicles to run for cover, the Yankee pilots gunned them down with their machine guns.

During the second week of battle, we watched from our foxholes as a dogfight erupted overhead. A squadron of Confederate Apache helicopters engaged the Yankees in an all-out aerial brawl in broad daylight.

Our Air Force quickly got the upper-hand, knocking several enemy birds out of the sky, but soon lost it, when the U.S. sent in fighter jets. Like birds of prey, they swooped in for the kill. Our Apaches didn’t stand a chance. They were all shot from the sky in a matter of minutes.

Except for one very lucky--or very skilled--pilot, who evaded everything they shot at him.

I remember that day clearly, because everyone on the ground was up out of their holes cheering for him. Finally, a Yankee helo took him down with a well-placed rocket, but not before our pilot let loose a volley from his own arsenal. We stood up in our foxholes and shook our fists at the air as we watched our bird disappear over the tops of the trees in a fiery summersault. A plume of black smoke signaled his fate.

The Yankee helo, missing its rear rotor and belching black smoke, sunk into a tailspin and crash landed among our lines. Men rushed from their foxholes, foaming at the mouth and cursing up a storm. When I got there, someone had pulled the lone surviving pilot from the wreckage and was delivering him a beating with his own flight helmet. The young pilot looked scared to death.

A crowd gathered, and like an angry mob, they crowed for his death, beating him and striking him with their fists and rifles. Talk about entering the lion’s den. The pilot took the heavy blows as best as you could expect for a man in his position. Just when I thought the man would suffer a prolonged death of beatings and torture at the hands of the mob of blood lusting rebels, a Lieutenant from a neighboring company stepped forward and shot him twice in the chest. We went back to our holes unsatisfied and angry.

Once the Apaches were well enough away, someone sounded the all clear. I grunted with pain and weakness as I lifted myself off the ground. I let my rifle hang low to my side. My shoulder sling keeping it easily accessible.

A trove of tired infantrymen reappeared from the woods like a horde of sleep walkers.

“Hold,” came the order down the line. We relayed it backwards and cursed under our breath.
What now?

Elroy summoned all the platoon sergeants and squad leaders. Elroy was promoted to Captain and placed in charge of Echo Company two weeks before, when our acting Company Commander was blown in half by a tank shell. I liked having Elroy as my Lieutenant, but I liked him even more as my Captain.