The 3rd of June, 1944

Beach obstacles, Normandy
(Source)

Grenadier¹ Horst Mellanthin staggered into the old barn they had been using as a barracks since his unit had moved up to the Normandy coast. He was exhausted, having spent the bulk of the last three days working on the obstacles on the beach in front of their Widerstandsnest². Each day he managed to grab a few hours of sleep before heading to his machine gun post where he would spend four hours in the wee hours of the night. Then an hour or two of sleep, then do it all over again.

He was starting to get to know the men in his unit, at least the ones he saw every day. His sergeant was a tough old bastard (probably no more than 25, but to a 17-year old, that seems ancient) from Heinsberg, not that far from where he grew up. His name was Wolfgang Krause, he'd been in the Army since the age of 18, having enlisted in 1937. He had seen action in Poland, France, and then North Africa. He had been badly wounded there and had spent a long time, nearly two years, in hospital and rehabilitation. They had sent him to Normandy as the Army considered him too frail to serve in a front line infantry unit.

The machine gunner was Heinrich Dietrich, a city boy from Leipzig who had earned his assignment to this static division by virtue of having lost two fingers in Russia to frostbite, then having part of his foot shot away fighting partisans in Yugoslavia. Feldwebel³ Krause said that Dietrich made the perfect machine gunner, he couldn't walk worth a damn, therefore the odds of him running away were slim to none.

Dietrich's assistant gunner was actually a Pole. His name was Obergrenadier Jan Kołodziej, he had been swept up by the draft in Poland, the Wehrmacht was starting to not be overly picky about who they put in the Army. He seemed like a good guy to Horst, though Horst was a bit miffed that he was outranked by a Pole. He was a very hard worker but kept to himself. Probably because his German was heavily accented. Horst had seen him in the local village and he seemed very popular with the ladies.

None of the Germans realized that Kołodziej had attended university and spoke three languages other than Polish. Hus German was actually quite good, he just didn't want his fellow soldiers to know that. As a child he had been raised to hate two groups of people, the Germans and the Russians. As his mother told him, "At least you're still alive Jan!" Besides which, his French was good enough to get him in the good graces of most of the French in the area, when with them, he made no secret of his disdain for the Germans. It was also great for talking with the ladies!

Live fire training before D-Day

Private Jack Wilson and his good buddy PFC Bill Brandt were sitting in their squad's communal tent, sipping coffee and generally playing the "old soldier." They had no details to perform that afternoon and the Sarge had told them to just take it easy.

"Stay in the tent, if I need you for anything, I'll send someone. The rumor mill says we're moving out and soon. I'll believe it when I see it!"

As they sipped their coffee, a loud explosion went off over towards the supply tent. Wondering what the Hell was going on, they dumped their coffee and headed over that way.

When they arrived, the supply tent was shredded, there were at least three guys on the ground, not moving. A couple of others sat nearby, their uniforms shredded and bloody, with a dazed look on their faces.

"What the Hell happened here?" Bill asked a nearby corporal.

"Some rookie was issuing grenades, the pin on one caught on the edge of a crate, so he yanked it. The two guys who are still alive? They heard the spoon release and they ran for it. The others either didn't notice or didn't know what that noise was."

They'd both seen casualties before from training accidents, but damn, with the big day just days or hours away? Damn, killed in training. At that point the Sarge came up and told them to grab their gear. They were marching down to the pier, "right damn now! Move it!"

Marching to the embarkation point
(Source)

"This ain't how I wanted to spend the weekend, Bill. Stuck on a damn boat!"

"It's a ship Jack, the squids call 'em ships. Do you think this is it? Or is it another damned drill?"

"I dunno Bill, the officers all look kind of somber and grim. I think this is it. But dammit, spending the weekend on a boat, er, ship or whatever the Navy calls them. It ain't right."

Jack and Bill and the rest of their unit boarded the ships that would take them to the invasion beaches. Had to be France they all figured, though one guy had a hundred bucks on landing in Holland. "Closer to the Kraut homeland!" he would exclaim.

The weather had been nice all week, Jack noticed dark clouds building up to the west. To him he thought they were in for some rain. He also noticed the water outside the harbor was looking awfully rough. He double checked his pockets, making sure the seasickness bags were still there.

They were.




¹ I had this wrong the other day, the Germans stopped calling infantry privates Schütze in 1942. Thereafter they were called "Grenadier." Still the lowest rank in the infantry.
² Widerstandsnest - Literally "resistance nest," one of the many defensive posts set up by the Germans along the Normandy coast, and elsewhere.
³ Feldwebel - Sergeant, technically this was the lowest grade at which an NCO could wear a sword knot on parade on his sergeant's sword.