Join the new world

This is my entry into the UK Home Office creative writing competition.

---

The landing craft seemed to smack every single wave with monumental force, showering the huddled soldiers with spray and sending shockwaves rippling up their spines.

Corporal Sabo crouched on his knees, leaning on the men around him for support. His fingers quickly moved across his rosary, his mouth silently spewing the words of a prayer, asking for mercy on what would quite possibly be the day of his death. He asked for forgiveness for whatever sins he may have committed, and asked that the guiding hand of the Lord watch over him and the men around him, many of whom were doing the same to whatever deity they believed in.

The cold Atlantic spray had numbed him to the core and he shivered as he mouthed the words. The screaming officers were nothing but white noise to him now; their orders just meaningless drivvle. The only thing the men would be doing when they stormed the beach, would be looking for somewhere to hide, somewhere they may be able to survive.

As soon as the transporter beached they would be under heavy machinegun fire, mortar round would be crashing down around their ears and they would be facing desperate American soldiers fighting to the deaths for their homeland.

Axeell placed the plain wooden rosary back into his pocket, grabbed his rifle, and for the fifth time since he had first stepped off the warship and into that transport he checked the weapon over, flicking the safety catch on and off, releasing the magazine and pushing it firmly back into place.

“Ten seconds,” shouted the Captain. Axeell crossed himself just as the keel of the craft connected with the sand. The craft slewed to a rapid stop, throwing the men forward. The front end of the craft crashed down into the surf and the men disembarked, screaming at the top of their lungs as they did so.

A number of machineguns emplacements immediately opened fire high up the beach, sending thousands of bullets crashing into the British soldiers desperately trying to get out of the surf.

Axeell saw the man beside him take a bullet in the neck, the water around his knees turned red as blood poured from the gaping wound in a torrent. Axeell grabbed the man but it was no use, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and his body was racked with the last lingering breath the poor man would ever take.

Axeell left the body floating face down in the gentle swell of the Atlantic Ocean. Axeell rushed through the breakers, his legs felt like lead as the Ocean tried desperately to pull him backwards.

Close to a thousand transports had stalled at the same moment, spilling thousands of soldiers onto that beach, hundreds had died within the first few moments, many at the hands of bullets, but a few faced a longer, more drawn out death. With the vast quantity of people spilling out of those transports, it was inevitable that a few men would stumble and fall into the Ocean where they were trampled by the men behind them. They could not move and would eventually drown.



Mortar rounds began to drop from the skies, randomly striking the beach; they sent sand flying into the air, and every so often adding arms and legs into that explosion. Axeell watched as one mortar round blew a soldier, Private Laanemee he believed, into a hundred different pieces. A hand went arching off into the sky, the head following soon after, the mouth open in a scream of terror. A brief gleam of white showed Axeell where the spine had once been.

Axeell vomited briefly, adding the half-digested rice and chicken of his last meal into the swirling blood and guts that were already bobbing around in the surf.

A few stray bullets whistled past Axeell’s head, he could feel the breeze of their passage against the side of his face. He managed to stumble out of the surf at last, joining the rest of the men hunkering down behind the thick metal ‘hedgehog’ barricades the Americans had placed down to slow any mechanised units the Brits may have landed.



Bullets pinged off the metal, spearing off in random directions; every now and then one such ricochet was lucky and slammed into the body of a hiding British soldier. Medics were running through the fire from wounded soldier to wounded soldier, applying whatever sort of assistance they could. Most of the time they were unable to do anything and men died screaming for their mothers, the medics hands inside their bodies reaching for the bullet lodged inside.

The invasion had gained barely ten metres of the Maine coastline; the American soldiers were still a hundred metres further on, hunkered down in their concrete defences and able to fire at will at the men coming to invade their homes.
And then the ships opened fire.

The great hulking cannons on board the Destroyers and Corvettes sent missiles twice as long as a man flying through the air, their trajectory took them up hundreds of feet into the sky before they came crashing down amidst the American defences.

Axeell watched as one of the missiles, seemingly in slow motion, powered down through one of the large concrete defensive emplacements, crushing the men within before exploding in a great gout of flames. The emplacements to the left and right were engulfed in the explosion, Axeell felt as if he could hear the screams of the men within as the flames began to eat away at their flesh.

“Come on men, we have to get to those defences. On your feet ladies,” Captain Moody pulled Axeell up by his collar and pushed him on past the great metal defences. There was nothing but one hundred metres of sand in front of him now, at the end of which was a massive fire, a few shots still pinged out from somewhere ahead of him but they were rare now, most of the men had been burnt to a crisp within seconds of the missiles detonation.

Axeell ran forward, he didn’t care if he was alone or if thousands of men were joining him, he just wanted to get off the beach and the only way to do that was to reach the American’s defences.

Captain Moody ran behind his men, forcing them onwards, into the unknown. Many of the defensive points had been destroyed but they would no doubt have men somewhere out there in the woodlands that covered much of the Maine country.

Woodlands where any number of men could be hiding, ready to send little pieces of pointed metal spinning into the approaching British forces.

Even as that thought entered his mind Moody felt a sharp pain and a spreading sense of warmth across his chest. His feet stumbled and he collapsed to his knees, his rifle fell uselessly into the sand as another point of pain exploded in his chest and he looked down to see two giant wounds, the bullets had pierced the bullet proof jacket as if it wasn’t even there. He looked up with a puzzled look plastered across his face. The rest of his men had made it to the first defensive line, taking cover in the various trenches the Americans had dug.

The third bullet took the Captain high up in the forehead, crushing bone and mashing his brains until he collapsed back, his mind nothing but darkness.