I’m standing in a line of three men; two rows back in the platoon boat while the smell of fear and vomit are filling the air. The man to my right, a private, white knuckling his rifle, smoking a cigarette hoping it wouldn’t be his last, after the battle to come. I turn to the man on my left, also a private, he is mumbling himself the Prayer of The Lord, for on this awful day that he should lose his life, that he will be met at the Pearly White Gate by the Almighty himself. Above all of the noise of the waves pounding on the side of the boat and the men even though they are all silent. In the Sergeants voice as he spoke, you could hear his pain and terror of not knowing what is going to happen to them in the moments to come. “Ready your guns men, for on this very day, you may make the ultimate sacrifice, your life. If you think you’re dead, you are dead. So when we go out there, show them bastards how alive we really are! But most importantly, think of your families, your country, and above all, if you go down on this godforsaken day, you all, no matter your part, will be the heroes of forever!”
Shortly after the Sergeants speech, the gate to the platoon boat opened and all of the men, rushed forward into the fog of war. In the blindness of the fog the sound of a machine gun deafeningly rings out breaking the silence and the screams of the wounded and dead yelling in my ears. As I was running forward to get behind a pile of bodies for shelter I stopped. Once there, breathing uncontrollably from terror and exhaustion; I got to thinking on how much safer it was back in the boat and how the distant sounds of the bombs and machine guns in the distance was where we all wanted them to be and stay, not here, any place but here. It was all here in front of us now, the machine guns, the bombs, and even the blood stained sand.
Shots ringing out everywhere and the precise scatter of bullets hitting the blood stained water right next to me I notice that very gently, a tear rolls down my cheek. White knuckling my rife, gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes tight I rush my head above the pile of bodies to unload a round on some poor sap who happens to be in the way of my flying steel fury of certain death; I notice that there is no fighting, no bodies laying on the ground, the very bodies I was hiding behind, all gone. The smell of the salty sea air and the swiftly decaying blown off appendages floating everywhere still fresh in my nose as ever. Upon realizing this, the world starts to spin faster and faster as I try to figure out what is going on. As my eyes rolled back into my head and upon my blacking out, my last feeling was that of my face becoming acquainted with the warm beach sand that was no more stained red with blood.
“Robert…Robert what do you want with your potatoes?” said a lady waking my slumber. Abruptly I opened my eyes. The world is still spinning yet I’m not on the beach, instead sitting in a rocking chair covered in old photos. I looked down into my old, decrepit, left hand creaking and popping in the process to see the pictures of the men that had fought and died so valiantly by my side as we stormed the cold, fog filled beach that screamed suicide. “Nothing dear…” I said “nothing…” fading off into a dry remembering whisper with the one single tear running down my cheek.