CHAPTER 1
THE B17G BOMBER was almost universally referred to as the “Flying Fortress,” and for good reason. Painted olive drab on top to blend with the ground below, and with a sky blue belly for camouflage from enemies looking skyward, the bombers weighed more than thirty tons and bristled with .50 caliber machine guns. The designers at Boeing originally felt that each bomber would be able to defend itself against attacks by enemy fighters, and still deliver up to three tons of bombs far into Germany. She could speed over Europe at nearly three hundred miles an hour, had a range of nearly two thousand miles, and could fly at an altitude of more than thirty-five thousand feet. Everyone felt it was a helluva plane.
Like many well-laid plans, it didn’t work out that way. Despite all her weapons, the bomber was vulnerable to attacks by German fighters, in particular the swift and deadly Messerschmitt 109G, a sleek single-engine fighter that savaged the formations when the bombers were required to fly without escorts. Since American fighters had much shorter ranges than the bombers, Nazi fighters often waited until escorts ran short of fuel and had to depart. The drop tank on the American P51 fighter was supposed to stop that and, in large part it did. Range was extended and bombers were better protected.
But everything had gone wrong this otherwise bright and sunny day in mid June 1944. The small flight of eighteen bombers was supposed to meet up with the escorting fighters, but the P51’s never showed. Some snafu? Very likely, the angry bomber crews thought, but what the hell else was new. The flight’s commander, an ambitious major who wanted to make colonel before the war ended, determined to soldier on. The fighters would either meet him or they would not. It didn’t matter—he had a target to bomb and a promotion to earn. And, since the D-Day invasion at Normandy had been successful, it was thought that collapse of Nazi Germany was imminent, certainly by the end of 1944. Ergo, the major didn’t have time to waste. His career was at stake.
Their target was not a high priority one. It was a factory complex near the city of Landsberg, which was north and east of Berlin. There were fewer and fewer German interceptors in the air and the major felt that this small group of bombers was unlikely to attract attention. Even though their attack would take them well into the Third Reich, it was considered little more than a training run.
Several of the eighteen bomber crews were on their first combat flight, and that included the men of the Mother’s Milk. The name had been chosen while several of the crew had been drunk on English beer, and they compounded their mistake by hiring an artist of dubious talent who painted a farm girl on the fuselage. She wore a halter top, extremely short shorts that showed much of her cheeks, and a toothy smile. And she had grotesquely enormous boobs that other crews considered laughable, which pissed off the Milk’s rookie crew who were further teased by being called “Milkmen.” They accepted the nickname and used it among themselves.
Twenty-four-year-old First Lieutenant Paul Phips was her commander and he was scared to death as well as freezing his ass off. He was not a warrior. Small of stature and slight of build, he reminded people of a Midwestern grocery clerk, not a bomber pilot. The truth was not that far off. He’d been in his first year as a high school teacher in Iowa when the draft grabbed him, and he still had no idea how he’d passed flight school.
This run had been their initial exposure to possible combat and that had caused more than enough stress. The more experienced crews had teased them, calling them Virgins or Cherries, and saying they’d shit their pants the first time they were shot at, all of which didn’t help the crew’s fragile morale.
As always, they were cold, despite the fact that they were wearing multiple layers of clothing. The wind whipped through the bomber, and their heavy flight suits, even though they were plugged into the plane like electric blankets, didn’t do much. The fear and the cold sapped their resolve and the Milkmen wondered just why they had become bomber crewmen.
Before they dropped their bombs, disaster struck. They’d been jumped by a dozen or more of the allegedly nonexistent ME109’s that knifed down from above and shot down or damaged several bombers before anyone could even notice. So much for don’t worry about German planes, Phips and his crew thought as they maneuvered wildly to evade their swift enemy.
Their flight commander’s plane was one of the first destroyed, which rendered the remaining crews leaderless. As the fight became a mindless brawl, Phips had made a major mistake. He’d run. Instead of staying with the survivors and forming up defensively, Phips sent his plane lower in altitude and flown to the west in the hope that he could escape the attacking German sharks.
Instead, two of the MEs had stayed with him, chasing the bomber and dogging it. Phips swore that they were taunting him as he gradually gained control over the bomber and his fears.
“What the hell do we do now, Skipper?” asked his copilot, Second Lieutenant Bill Stover. The sarcastic tone of voice was not lost on Phips, who was well aware that he’d panicked and screwed up royally.
Stover continued, “In case you haven’t noticed, they’re chasing us south and west. In a while we’ll run out of gas and have to bail out even if they don’t manage to shoot us down first.”
“I know,” Phips muttered. Despite the cold, he was sweating profusely.
The tail gunner, Sergeant Ballard, broke in. At thirty, he was the old man and his deep voice had a calming effect. “Skipper, it looks like one of them is pulling back. Maybe he’s running out of fuel.”
Phips prayed it was so. The ME only had a range of about three hundred miles and must have used up a lot of gas chasing the bombers around the sky. Maybe the second one would have the same problem.
No such luck. As time dragged on, the lone ME stayed behind them, darting in and out, firing an occasional burst, and looking for an opportunity to make a kill. The German respected the bomber’s many guns, which fired short bursts every time he got within range. It looked like an impasse but it wasn’t. As long as he had fuel, the German held all the trump cards. At least they were low enough that the men of Mother’s Milk didn’t need oxygen to breathe.
“Skipper, will you take a suggestion from your beloved navigator?”
Phips managed a weak smile. “Yes, Mr. Kent.”
“We are getting farther and farther away from Mother England. If you want me to find our way home, we’ve got to stop this running shit and head back.”
Damn it, Phips thought. It was time to make up for his mistake. “Okay, we turn and attack the bastard.”
The German must have thought that the plane’s sudden and sharp banking to the right was an indication of damage and he dashed in for the kill with his machine guns and 20mm cannon blazing. Pieces flew off the bomber, and Phips heard shouting through his headset. Loose items caromed off the inside of the hull.
“Carson’s hit!” someone yelled. Christ, Phips thought. One of the waist gunners was down. “Oh, Jesus, he’s bleeding all over the place.” The wounded man’s screams carried up to Phips, who felt nauseated as the bomber continued its stately turn.
Suddenly, the German fighter pilot found himself facing an array of .50 caliber machine guns from the side, top, and belly that spewed torrents of bullets in his direction. Now it was the German’s turn to panic and he tried to escape. As he did so, he exposed the belly of his plane for just an instant. A handful of bullets ripped through his engine. It started to smoke and the ME began to fall back.
“Christ almighty,” yelled Stover. “We got us a kill.”
The German pilot fell from the plane and a parachute opened. The ME was gone, but the pilot would live to fight another day. Now the Mother’s Milk had to do the same damn thing—live to fight another day.
“How’s Carson?” Phips asked.
“Dead, sir.”
Phips sagged over the controls. His first mission and not only had he disobeyed orders to keep formation, but he’d gotten lost, and a crewman, one of the guys he’d been with for six months, had been killed. Now he had to make sure this miserable situation didn’t get any worse.
“Navigator,” said Phips. “Where are we?”
“Over Germany, Skipper.”
Damn smart aleck, Phips thought. “Can you possible narrow that down, Kent?”
“Seriously Skipper, I’m trying, but we were all over the sky for a little while and I need a frame of reference. I think we’re over East Prussia and now we are heading towards Russia. I suggest we turn north and west and hope to God we find something that makes sense, like the Baltic Sea. I also suggest we lighten our load. We’ve got a few tons of bombs doing nothing but weighing us down and using up our fuel.”
Stover turned toward Phips, his expression still unforgiving. “We can go north to Sweden if we have to, bail out, and be interned. That assumes, of course, that we can even find Sweden.”
“Yeah,” Phips responded angrily, “and we’d be interned for the duration of the war and who knows how long that’ll be. The experts say it’ll be over in a few months, but with our luck it might just be decades. It also presumes that the Swedes won’t turn us over to the Nazis. I hear the Swedes spend a lot of time kissing Hitler’s ass since the krauts are right next door to them. And, oh yeah, we might just accidentally bail out over Nazi-occupied Norway or over those nice people in Stalin’s Soviet Union.”
It was common knowledge that Russia had interned some American and British fliers and wasn’t keen on returning them. Winding up chopping frozen rocks in Siberia was not a pleasant option.
Kent chimed in. “Again, I suggest we turn north and west in hopes of finding the Baltic. At that point, I further suggest we stay over the water until we hit Denmark, and I mean that figuratively and not literally.”
“Good.” agreed Phips. “And then we can cut the angle by flying over Denmark. I don’t think the krauts will waste sending fighters after one lousy lost bomber.” Of course, he thought, nobody thought their little flight of eighteen bombers would have been attacked by so many German fighters.
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Kent said, and Stover sullenly nodded agreement. “But when are you going to dump the bombs? We will need that fuel if we’re going to make it back.”
“I don’t have a target,” Phips said.
Stover shook his head in disbelief. “Christ, Chief, we’re only a couple of thousand feet over Germany. The whole fucking country’s a target. Just drop the damn things.”
Phips thought for a second and decided he agreed. Finally he felt he was doing the right thing. Maybe he could recover from this nightmarish day. Back in England, he’d be criticized for his mistakes and the loss of Carson, but maybe, just maybe, he’d be allowed to learn from those mistakes and fly again. Regardless, his first job was to get his crew home.
“Just for the record,” he said, “does anybody see anything that even remotely looks like it could use a good bombing?”
Stover’s eyes were the sharpest. “Looks like a cluster of buildings coming up in the woods to our right front. And I don’t see any red crosses or anything.”
“Got it,” said Cullen, the combination nose gunner and bombardier. “We’ll use the Norden and drop bombs in their helmets.”
It was a feeble attempt at a joke. The super-secret Norden bomb-sight was better than what anybody’d had before, but it was far from precise. Even at their low altitude, they’d be lucky to hit the compound.
“What the hell?” Phips said in surprise. Antiaircraft guns had opened up at the last second and black puffs of flak were exploding well above them. Whoever was down there was as surprised as he was. At least their shooting was off.
The bomb bay doors opened and more cold wind whipped through the plane. They might be closer to the ground and it might be the middle of summer, but it was still like being in a savage winter storm. A few seconds later, the bombs fell, and Mother’s Milk, freed from their weight, lifted. Now Phips and the Milkmen really began to feel that they might just make it back to England.
“Anybody see if we hit anything?” Phips asked.
The only one with a view of the target was Ballard, the tail gunner. “Well, sir, we did hit the ground. Seriously, some of the bombs did fall in that cluster of buildings. Not a clue as to what kind of damage we might have caused. Looks like we’ve outrun the flak, though.”
And we’ll probably never know what we hit, Phips thought. An unwanted realization popped into his head. If they did make it back, he’d have to write a letter to Carson’s family explaining how he’d died heroically and painlessly when the poor guy had really died screaming and bleeding all over the plane like a stuck pig.
A few hours later they had crossed Denmark and were again over water. They sighted a gray smudge on the horizon. Kent assured Phips it was England, Mother England, and they all breathed a sigh of relief. They were very low on fuel. A pair of British Hurricanes flew by and took up position on either side. They were used to nursing cripples and would guide Mother’s Milk back to an airfield. They’d be on fumes when they landed, but they had made it. It was the middle of June 1944. Allies had landed in Normandy and the men of the Mother’s Milk were still part of the war.
Finally, Phips could relax. He did wonder just what they had managed to bomb on their first and so far only run over Germany. He hoped to God it wasn’t a girls’ school or an orphanage. But then, how many girls schools were protected by antiaircraft guns?
* * *
Colonel Ernst Varner walked away from the undistinguished one-story wood building that was jammed with the military hierarchy of the Third Reich. For the moment it was the site of the OKW, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the headquarters of the German military. The Wehrmacht controlled the regular army, the Heer; the navy, the Kriegsmarine; and the air force, the Luftwaffe. A walk in the surrounding woods was what Varner needed to clear his head. The air within the building was stale in more ways than one.
Varner had been inside a few moments earlier and had actually heard Adolf Hitler speak emotionally and illogically about solutions to the military dilemma confronting Germany. And, the more he heard his Fuhrer pontificate, the more he realized the little man with the mustache was delusional at best.
Varner hadn’t always felt that way about his Fuhrer. As a younger man he’d been an ardent supporter of Hitler and an early member of the Nazi Party, which had, in part, helped him reach his current rank at the age of thirty-eight. Of course, being a legitimate hero and combat veteran who’d seen action in both France and Russia hadn’t hurt, either. His wounds suffered fighting the Russians were still healing and it was decided that he would serve better as a staff officer and aide to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the army’s Chief of Staff and a man Varner had come to realize was little more than a spineless toady. Keitel would not question Hitler’s orders no matter how preposterous they were. And many of them were well beyond preposterous. The chief of operations, General Alfred Jodl, was even worse. Both would simply nod and send men out to die.
Varner had been told he’d soon be promoted to general, but now wondered if it was worth it if he had to suffer working for fools like Keitel and Jodl.
Varner reached for a cigarette and recalled that he had given up smoking at the insistence of his wife, Magda, and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Margarete. They said it was a disgusting habit. Varner agreed, especially since the only cigarettes available in wartime Germany were absolute shit rolled in paper. He’d picked up the smoking habit to contain stress while fighting the Red Army outside Stalingrad. Now he needed to combat the stress of listening to Hitler.
“Here,” said a voice from behind.
Varner laughed and took a cigarette from a fellow staffer, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. They had met in the hospital while being treated for their respective wounds. The darkly handsome Stauffenberg had lost his left eye, right hand, and two fingers on his left hand when his vehicle had been strafed in North Africa. Varner had been wounded in his upper left arm and shoulder, and doctors were still trying to remove shrapnel that moved and sometimes caused him great pain. Varner was shorter than the lean and aristocratic Stauffenberg. He was stocky, like a tank. This was serendipitous since Varner’s specialty was armor. His dark hair was thinning and he was thankful that Margarete got her pixy looks from Magda, a woman he thought was far above him. Varner would never be mistaken for a blond and blue-eyed Aryan superman.
Between the two of them, they managed to light up. As always, the cigarettes were awful.
“Why aren’t you in there with the others?” Varner asked.
Stauffenberg almost snorted. “Because it’s too crowded and they don’t need me to help them make their mistakes. I think it’s incredible that there’s still doubt as to whether the Allied landings in Normandy are the real thing or are just a feint. The Fuhrer does seem to be coming around, however, and no longer insists that Pas de Calais is the eventual main target instead of Normandy. However, the decision has come too late to throw the Allies out.”
Varner was surprised at the other man’s candor. Stauffenberg’s comments were dangerously close to a criticism of Hitler, which was not a wise thing to do, especially for a relatively low-ranking staff officer, hero or not. Disagreements had a nasty habit of being interpreted as treason. Some very high-ranking generals had argued with the Fuhrer and were now languishing in obscurity.
He and Stauffenberg, while friendly and cordial, were not close enough to share intimate thoughts, and Varner wondered just what the other colonel was thinking. Was he being sounded out, and if so for what purpose? Rumor had it that Stauffenberg was not an enthusiastic supporter of either Hitler or the Nazi Party. Well, Varner now had his own doubts.
Varner decided to make light of it. “I left because it was obvious I wasn’t important enough to stay.”
Stauffenberg laughed. “Perhaps being unimportant is a good thing. If you’re careful, you can become invisible.”
Casually, they walked farther from the building where the meeting was taking place. It was in the headquarters complex and command center near the Prussian city of Rastenberg. Hitler liked to come there to be away from Berlin, a city he heartily detested because of its perceived decadence. Hitler had few vices. He rarely drank and ate sparingly. Varner thought Hitler had a mistress, a plump blonde named Eva, but no one was certain. Varner decided he didn’t care.
Berliners returned the favor and did not appear to love Hitler as much as other parts of Germany did. Most of the field marshals and generals vastly preferred the luxuries and flesh pots of Berlin. Varner would have preferred being in Berlin, but only because his small family was there.
Sirens went off and antiaircraft guns began to fire.
Varner automatically looked skyward. “What the devil?”
A plane appeared, flying low and fast. A bomber. Dear God, he thought. It was an American B17.
The two men ran to a slit trench and dived in just as the bombs began to explode. The earth shook with the power of the bombs and Varner felt he was back in Russia with Red Army artillery shells raining down on him. He tried to control his fear. Shock waves washed over him and he realized he couldn’t hear. Dirt and debris rained down on them.
Finally, he sensed there was silence and lifted his head. Stauffenberg lay still in the bottom of the trench. His skull had been crushed by a falling piece of metal, and his one eye was dangling out of its socket. Varner crawled out of the trench and gasped in horror at the desolation. Then one thought occurred to him. What about Hitler?
He lurched to the building he’d just left. It was in ruins. There were great clouds of smoke, but little in the way of flames came from it. Survivors were staggering about and a handful of people were trying to pull others from the wreckage. It was utter chaos and he realized that some people were screaming as his hearing returned. Nobody was in charge. He realized that Germany might have just lost her leadership. Whatever doubts he might have about Hitler, he could not allow Germany’s enemies to realize she was leaderless.
Varner took a deep breath. He would be the man in charge. He grabbed a dazed looking lieutenant and two confused enlisted men. His hearing had largely returned, although his voice sounded tinny to himself. “You. Go to the radio center and shut down all communications. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out. Do it on my authority on behalf of the Fuhrer and if anyone balks, kill them.”
The three men saluted and ran off to do his bidding. He did the same with a handful of others, sending them to the gates of the compound. Again, his orders were that nobody comes in and nobody goes out.
Recovery efforts at the devastated building seemed to be progressing. Medics were crawling around through the mound of rubble. One of them was holding a dismembered leg, and there was a row of bodies on the ground. Several survivors walked around in a daze, their uniforms torn to shreds.
Varner forced himself to look at the dead. Keitel, the man he’d referred to as a toady lay face up with a look of perpetual astonishment on his face. A medic informed him that Jodl was badly wounded, with both of his legs blown off and would be dead within minutes.
He was about to ask about Hitler, when a desperate shout and howl of emotional pain came from the men searching the rubble. They had found the Fuhrer.
Debris was removed and a doctor climbed down beside the pale and crumpled body of Adolf Hitler. Varner followed. Hitler’s eyes were open and staring at the sky. He wasn’t moving. “Is he alive?” Varner asked.
The doctor shook his head sadly. Again it was time for action and Varner realized what had to be done. “Doctor, you are quite wrong,” he whispered. “You will announce that he is badly wounded and must be taken to the clinic. You will do it immediately and without anyone seeing his real condition.”
The doctor, stunned, was about to argue when he realized what Varner was telling him. “Stretcher!” the doctor yelled. “We need a stretcher now! Get the Fuhrer to the clinic immediately. His life may depend on it.”
Hitler’s limp remains were put on a stretcher and covered with a blanket that exposed only part of his head, presenting the illusion that he still lived. The bearers almost ran to the clinic with the doctor alongside. Varner was now comfortable that only he and the doctor knew that Adolf Hitler was dead.
* * *
Jack Morgan, Captain, U.S. Army, wondered just what the hell was so important that the naval officer commanding the LST had summoned him. He also wondered just what the hell he was doing on an LST heading for France in the first place. He was an Army Air Force officer, even though he’d washed out as a bomber pilot, and American air bases were in England, not France. He’d assumed he’d be used by the air force in some capacity, but sent to France? Never. Even more important, why?
He had no idea what naval protocol was as he approached the bridge and, in the words of Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, he frankly didn’t give a damn. The LST was supposed to take him from Dover to the beaches of Normandy where he would depart and find a military unit that wanted a washed-up bomber pilot. This was a complete shock. When he’d been first posted to England, he’d logically thought that he would be assigned as a staff officer at an air base. Now he had no idea what was going to happen to him.
The LST was more than three hundred feet long, and close to five hundred men were jammed in her along with tons of supplies for what was supposed to be a cruise of not more than a few hours from Dover to Normandy. Under those circumstances, the soldiers’ discomfort meant nothing to those in charge. The LST was supposed to land the men after their short journey and that was it.
The LST’s skipper was a short, plump, and very serious lieutenant commander named Stephens who was far from happy. “Captain Morgan, I’m certain you don’t understand the navy’s rules so I’ll forgive you your transgressions.”
“Thank you, sir,” Morgan said with only a hint of sarcasm. Both men were standing and Morgan, at just under five-eleven, was several inches taller and much more slender at one hundred and sixty pounds. He also had a full head of short brown hair; Stephens was balding.
“In the future, when you come to the bridge you will ask permission before entering.”
“I was under the impression you called for me, sir.”
The naval officer was one rank higher than Morgan, which did not impress him. However, Jack did understand enough about the navy to know that the pompous little prick was considered God on his ship. He also decided that he would likely never again be on the damned bridge, so screw Stephens.
Stephens nodded solemnly. “I called for you because you are the senior officer among the mob the army stuffed in here. Therefore, you are the one who will maintain discipline among the passengers and get them organized and out of the way of the more than a hundred men who will be running this ship. I will not tolerate fights, drunkenness, or gambling. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” Jack said.
“Then get it done,” Stephens said. Jack saluted and
departed.
He had an hour before the LST was scheduled to depart. The first thing he did was to find any other officers and senior enlisted men. These he had organize the rest of the men into groups of a dozen or so. Some of the officers and NCO’s were reluctant, even wondering why the hell the boys couldn’t have a good time their last few hours before landing in hostile France, and Jack really didn’t have a good answer. Rank, however, ultimately prevailed, and they did what Stephens ordered.
By the time he accomplished this and was satisfied that the mass of men in the hold of the LST were under at least a semblance of control, darkness had fallen and they were actually pulling away from Dover.
Stephens approached him on the upper deck by the railing. He had descended from Olympus to deal with mere mortals, Morgan thought.
“Good job organizing the men, Captain. I know I was short with you, but we were running out of time and I needed things under control. The English Channel is not one hundred percent safe from the krauts. I’ve made a number of trips like this and I haven’t lost a man yet and I don’t want to start now.”
“Understood, sir.” Perhaps the little man wasn’t such a jerk after all.
“You know what LST stands for, Captain?”
“No sir.”
“Large Slow Target,” Stephens said with a hint of a smile. “It actually stood for Landing Ship Tank, its original purpose, and it’s evolved into a very useful all purpose vessel, but it does make a hell of an inviting target.”
He explained that the thirty-eight-hundred-ton LST had a top speed of a mere twelve knots, and Morgan doubted she was doing anywhere near that. Other ships, including more LST’s were making the trip and were visible as shadows in the night.
“Usually we carry supplies to the beaches. This is my third trip with unorganized replacement troops, Captain, and the first two were miserable experiences. The soldiers are going into war and they bitterly resent the fact that my sailors will head back to England and safety, hot meals, and maybe even girlfriends once they’ve dropped them off. This resulted in fights and vandalism. Two of my sailors were stabbed during the last trip and I am now trying to head that off by having you enforce discipline. A number of soldiers got into fights when they decided they’d been cheated at cards, and a larger number got drunk on booze they managed to smuggle in, and a lot of them got sick all over the place. Are you getting the picture?”
“I guess this isn’t the Queen Mary,” Morgan said with a smile of his own.
“Not even close. I have to put up with a normal degree of mess and the fact that half of the soldiers will be puking over the rail in a little while is considered normal, but the other stuff will cease.”
To emphasize his point, a young soldier ran past them to the railing and heaved his guts over the side. Stephens actually laughed. “Another satisfied customer.”
Morgan made his rounds and saw that all was reasonably well, or at least under a semblance of control. The drunks were quiet and the card players were working seriously at losing their money, but so far without fighting. He walked to the railing and looked over at the Channel and the other ships, which were little more than silhouettes in the night. He saw something in the water. What the hell? A line of white was racing through the water and towards the ship.
“Torpedo!” he screamed and threw himself onto the deck in an attempt to protect against the explosion. The torpedo struck and the LST shook violently from the impact. Jack was drenched with water and debris. Men screamed and were thrown about. Already prone, Morgan was spared much of it. Still, his head smashed against something and his shoulder was painfully wrenched.
He managed to get to his feet. Soldiers and sailors were already pulling wounded from below. Morgan grabbed a sailor who was about to protest until he saw Jack’s captain’s bars.
“What’s going on down there?”
“Lotsa men trapped, sir, and water’s coming in like a bandit. You could drive a truck through the hole.”
Morgan fought his way down against a tide of men coming up. Water was filling the hold. Several bodies floated face down, mangled and clearly dead, but the dead weren’t his concern. The trapped and wounded were. He grabbed some men and had them start passing wounded up top. Most of the men complied, although a few were too scared to do anything but scream. These were useless so he let them scramble up the ladder and out of the way.
Morgan found a pair of men trapped under debris. They were unconscious and hadn’t been noticed in the darkness and confusion. Their heads were almost under water.
“Give me a hand,” he yelled. A couple of men started pulling while Morgan held the unconscious men’s heads above the rapidly rising water. One man was quickly freed and carried away. Smoke was coming from somewhere. He wondered if there was ammunition on board and whether it would explode.
The answer came seconds later and just when the second man had been freed. Small arms ammo began to pop off and fires began around him. Morgan suddenly realized he was alone. Everyone else had fled the fire and the rising water.
“Damn it to hell,” he said to the unconscious man. He draped the soldier over his good shoulder and began to climb slowly and painfully up to the deck while bullets whizzed and clanged around him. Several struck him, but with not enough force to do much damage. Finally, hands grabbed him and relieved him of his burden. He fell to his knees on the deck. He recognized a very young sailor as of the men who’d run away. “Sorry, I panicked, sir,” the young man said sheepishly.
Jack nodded and patted the kid on the shoulder. Being scared is one thing. Getting control and coming back forgave a lot. He knew a helluva lot about that.
Captain Stephens helped him to a chair. “You’re wounded.”
“I am?”
Morgan checked himself over and found a gash on his forehead that was bleeding all over his face, and a number of burns and bruises on his arms. His shoulder hurt. It might have been dislocated but it had popped back in.
“Hell, I never even noticed it.”
“I’d say you were too busy to think much,” said Stephens, who handed him a cup. “Medicinal brandy. I think you need it.”
Morgan took a swallow and felt its warmth spread through his stomach. Stephens was definitely not a prick. “We going to sink, sir?”
“Nah. My men are plugging the hole and the pumps are working. We’ll be low in the water, but we’ll make it. Fire’s being put out, too. That was never a major threat. Bad news is that we’ve got more than a dozen dead and three times that many wounded. So much for my perfect record. Most of my crew were scared shitless for a bit, and that includes yours truly, but we’ll make it to shore.”
A medic slapped a bandage on Jack’s forehead and wiped the caking blood from his face. “That’s good to hear,” Jack said.
Stephens grunted. “Oh yeah, welcome to France.”