A Day At Normandy

• Ethan Adia, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2017

A day at Normandy

War is dirty, lives and friends can be lost and the enemy doesn’t exactly play by your rules. So when the landing ramp came down boots pounded on sand, soldiers charged through gritted teeth at the enemy positions, bullets missing some by inches. The beach was strewn with casualties, men falling down every second. Then the German machine gun nests opened up spraying the beach with a continuous stream of fire. Only 300 metres separated us from the safety of the dunes, but those 300 metres were covered with everything from stakes to sea walls and 17,000 mines.
Then the heavens opened up making bomb craters flooded death traps for soldiers running the gauntlet to the enemy lines. For those who had made it to the shelter of the dunes a new challenge lay in due coarse. Despair spread across the ranks of troops like wildfire. They had dodged storms of enemy fire, avoided landmines and watched their brothers in arms die in front of them only to find a 5-metre sea cliff separating them from the German pillboxes.
Scaling the cliff only a few metres above the ground with only ropes to stop them from injury, the fall wouldn’t kill them but this was without the constant threat of being shot from above. Many men reached the top only to be cut down by machine gun fire, making the climb even more harrowing with their bodies strewn hanging from the ropes.
As I looked back at the beach, reinforcements had arrived, new landing crafts breaking through the surf, bullets pinging of their armored hulls. Others however weren’t that fortunate. A landing craft only a few feet away from its predecessor exploded into a fiery ball of bright orange flame, billowing outwards, men thrown several metres by the explosion dragged downwards by their heavy packs. The enemy struck with twice the viciousness as before slaughtering our boys as soon as the landing ramps opened.
However, our troops were relentless, for each man that went down trying to eliminate a German position double the amount took their place. The result was a bloodbath soldiers being shot from both sides left, right and center. The men looked expectantly out to sea, expecting their naval ships to open up with a barrage of fiery death. None came; instead the enemy’s field guns replied with a swift barrage like fire from hell.
The men were fighting a loosing battle their ranks rapidly thinning. Then the last man fell dead, the battlefield eerily quiet. Waves lapped upon dead bodies. These men were fathers, brothers and dear friends. Their eyes as immobile as their sprawled limbs. For the enemy it was a great victory, in human terms however it was a great defeat.