James Benn - The Rest Is Silence

“LST 289 was part of Operation Tiger, the invasion exercise that began this morning,” Harding said. “German E-boats hit the convoy in the night, as it was steaming through Lyme Bay. The 289 was torpedoed. They got off easy. Two other LSTs were sunk.” He threw the pencil he was holding onto the stack of papers in front of him.

“Fully loaded?” I asked. Harding nodded.

“How many men?” Kaz asked, looking at the list of names in front of Harding.

“Hundreds,” he said. “Too many. Only a few from this ship. They managed to get the Higgins boats into the water and used them to push her into port. Smart move, probably saved most of the men on board. There’s probably a thousand soldiers and sailors on each LST. Some have been picked up, but not all.”

“You mean there are still men floating in the Channel?” I asked.

“The attack was at zero two hundred this morning,” Harding said. “The temperature in the Channel waters is forty-four degrees. Unless they’re on a raft, no one’s alive in the water.”

“Colonel, this is terrible, but I still don’t know what we can do to help.”

“They found him, Colonel,” Mettler said, his head popping in from the companionway.

“Come with me,” Harding told us, grabbing a clipboard and following Mettler. We descended farther into the bowels of the ship, boots echoing off steep metal steps, our way lit by jury-rigged lights on electric cables. The companionway ended in a sheer drop where the explosion had blasted clean through the steel and left a gaping hole. Below us was a tangle of wires, twisted girders, and smashed vehicles. Arc welders were glowing points of blinding light in the cavernous opening, and we all instinctively shielded our eyes as we took a ladder down into the hold, where the air smelled of gasoline. If there was a body down here, it was dead ten different ways.

Sky appeared above us through a jagged section of bulkhead, caved in by the force of the torpedo blast. Crewmen leaned in to their pry bars, muscling aside a slab of shorn metal as seawater sloshed against our ankles. Beneath the slab was a pool of oil and blood, the form of a body barely discernible in the gloom. Two bodies, I realized, trapped by the explosion and the section of steel bulkhead that had crushed them.

“You sure?” Harding asked.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Mettler said, pointing at an arm pinned under the corpse of a seaman, his dungarees soaked with blood. “He cut his hand, and I recognize the bandage.” There was a wide, dirty bandage at the base of a thumb, which was the best bet for identifying the body. He was dressed in army fatigues with an uninflated life belt clinched around his waist. I could see he was wearing a pack, but his cracked skull distracted me from any further investigation. Suffice it to say, a combat helmet is no protection against an exploding steel wall falling on top of you.

Harding handed me the clipboard and reached down into the mess of blood, bone, brain and oil to break one of the dog tags from the stainless-steel chain. Standing up, he wiped it on his pants, leaving a smear of black and red.

“Captain Andrew Pritchett,” he read. “One down, nine to go.”

“Nine what, Colonel?” Kaz asked.

He didn’t answer. He stared down at the two dead men, their blood mingling with the oil and salt water. One ordinary seaman and one army captain important enough to have a SHAEF colonel confirm his terrible death. But they were equal partners in this endeavor now, neither one less important than the other, neither likely to be mourned more or less for their rank or standing. Death boils all things down to their essence. Not for the living, but certainly for those who lie on the ground or beneath the sea, indifferent to the struggles they have left behind.

We left the ruined, smoking LST behind as we followed Harding in his staff car a few miles up the coast. We were heading to the Paignton rail station, where he promised secrets would be revealed. All we knew was that a German E-boat had put a torpedo in LST 289 and killed a baker’s dozen of soldiers and sailors onboard, one of whom was important enough to make Harding fish around in a bloody soup to snag his dog tag.

“Why attach so much importance to identifying a dead man?” Kaz said as he drove. “And only one of several, at that.”

“There have to be more out in the Channel,” I said. We’d picked up comments from the crew about seeing other ships torpedoed by E-boats. The E stood for enemy, which was the Allied designation for the fast attack craft. Bigger, faster, and more heavily armed than our PT boats, they could be deadly in the close waters of the Channel. Not could be-had been, only a few hours ago. “I wonder what he meant by ‘nine to go’?”

“We may be close to finding out,” Kaz said. “Look ahead.” A line of MPs waved Harding through a checkpoint a few hundred yards short of the railway station, with us on his tail. He pulled up near two armor-plated coaches guarded by more MPs, and we fell in beside him.

“Bayonet,” I said, recognizing General Eisenhower’s mobile headquarters, the special train he’d christened himself. It was outfitted with sleeping quarters for staff and an office for the general with full telephone and radio gear. Well protected, it was the perfect place to spill top-secret info.

Plush, too, I was reminded as we entered the stateroom. Thick curtains draped the windows, and the wood paneling was lit by the glow of lamps. At the far end was a single desk, where Uncle Ike sat dictating to Kay Summersby, his chauffeur, secretary, and close companion. How close? “None of your business, pal,” is how I usually answered that one. The fact that I had to reply to that question fairly often was hard to take. After all, my mom’s family is related through Aunt Mamie, so technically I was closer to her than Uncle Ike. But he and I had been through a lot over here since the early days in 1942, and I’m a loyal nephew, so let’s drop the subject.

“William, how are you?” Uncle Ike asked as he stood to greet us and Kay departed. “I heard you were injured in that mess at Slapton Sands.”

“A few scratches, that’s all, General,” I said. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of weeks, and they must have been rough ones. He looked pale, and the bags under his eyes were heavier and darker than ever. The invasion had to be weighing heavy on his shoulders, and I didn’t want to add to his already fearsome burden. “I’m fine. Ready for whatever you need.”

“That’s good to hear, William,” he said. “You know how much I’ve come to depend on you. It’s so good to have family close by, family I can count on.”

“Always, Uncle Ike,” I said in a low voice. I didn’t like people hearing me call him that. When I first showed up in England, the scuttlebutt went that I was a politically connected relative looking for a plush assignment. Truth be told, it wasn’t too inaccurate, and I got the cold shoulder from a bunch of people, including Sam Harding. A lot of water had gone under London Bridge since then, but I was still sensitive enough to whisper.

“You writing your mother regularly?” Uncle Ike asked. I told him I was and promised to give her his best in the next letter. Then he asked Kaz how he was, lighting up one of his ever-present Lucky Strikes. Kay returned with a tray of coffee and set it on a table between a long couch and a line of armchairs in the narrow carriage.

“How’ve you been, Billy?” she said, giving me a wink. “Have you seen Diana lately?”

“No,” I said. “She’s off doing some training.”

“Too bad,” Kay said, with a glance at the general, who was whispering with Harding. “Like they say, the course of true love never did run smooth.”