It was the greatest fleet ever assembled for a military landing in human history. On the longest day, 6939 vessels set out for the Normandy coast, seeking to end the war and bring the Third Reich to its knees.
The landing crafts were mostly manned by US Navy and British Royal Navy personnel. Their darkest hour was cursed by the weather; a gale blew over the ships and the angry sea raged against the boats. The cold spray of the waves whipped at the soldiers’ faces. Those poor souls huddled in the fog and prayed, wishing only for their cavalry charge to be over, and to set foot on dry land. They might die in the attempt, but they could wait no longer. The waiting was the worst torture. Their imaginations spiralled. On these foreign shores a terrible enemy awaited them, but honour kept their backs stiff. Their families were thinking of them, and God watched over them, and the army commanded them. They thought of their wives and children, and all their loved ones. They thought of their families who might soon receive letters, and whose knees would give way at the news. They could already see their names engraved on monuments to the dead, erected in some neat public square back home. One name among thousands, lost in an archive. Their names would be the only trace of their passage through this hell.
The crossing took longer than expected, and it was harder going. The French coast was close as the crow flew, but the storm kept them at bay. Time had become unreal, hanging still around them. The soldiers smiled grimly at one another. They were all condemned men. The tall fair-haired man would die, and so would the beardless teen beside him. The ginger with the curled moustache, shaking as he smoked a cigarette...would someone miss him? A strange bond was formed between the soldiers, one no outsider could understand. None could feel what they felt, there and then. None could imagine what turned their stomach in knots. They were brothers in arms, united in hopelessness.
In this darkest hour, the sky was leaden with clouds. In this darkest hour, the choppy seas pushed back the boats as they tried to mount over its waves. On this longest day, a hundred and fifty thousand men prayed together. Thunder rolled overhead. None of them would ever forget this day. And yet the soldiers’ true ordeal had not yet begun. The land was drawing closer, and detonations rang out. Bullets whizzed around their heads. Hoarse, urgent shouts were heard. War was only a few feet away. The first bombs were dropped, and their thunder mingled with the storm. Plumes of red shot up into the sky. The first men had died.
Finally, the soldiers set foot on the beach. They had to advance, and keep driving forward. The seconds dragged out into endless time, and every step was another chance to remain alive. The machine guns thudded, the soldiers fell one after another at each other’s feet. The sea washed red with blood. Yet they had to keep pushing, stepping over their comrades’ bodies until the next volley came. The soldiers threw themselves to the ground and crawled over the beach. They elbowed their way past corpses and heard bullets zinging off their helmets. Forward, ever forward; every inch was an odyssey.
Alan Alfredo Geday