Allies by Alan Gratz

Author:Alan Gratz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Dee jogged along in a crouch with the other soldiers, staying in the protective lee of Valiant, the tank that had thankfully come up from the waterline to escort them higher up the beach. He turned to look at the two English soldiers who’d emerged from Achilles to dig the hole with them, and the one with the funny accent waved goodbye with his hat. What was his name again? Bill?

“If you get to Bayeux before us, look out for the tapestry!” Bill called. “The one about the Norman Invasion!”

Dee didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but he smiled and waved back anyway.

Dee saw the other English soldier say something and put a hand on Bill’s shoulder, and then—

KRA-KOOM!

Achilles exploded in a towering ball of smoke and flame, throwing bits of metal shrapnel everywhere. The blast knocked Dee on his back, and he had to be helped up by another soldier.

“No!” Dee cried. No—the tank crew!

But how? They had taken out the big German gun! Then Dee saw it—another German gun, in a bunker up on the cliffs in the other direction. Just close enough to the other big gun to cover the entire beach between them. Dee’s heart sank. Achilles had taken one of the guns out, but not both.

Dee scanned the raging bonfire that had been the Achilles, trying to find anyone who had survived. But there was nothing. Whoever had been inside the tank, and the two soldiers who had dug out the crater with him—they were all dead.

What were their names? Where were they from? Who had they left behind in England who would mourn them when they didn’t come home?

Bill. The friendly one’s name was Bill, and the tank was called Achilles. Dee knew that much. Bill and Achilles. Dee would remember them the rest of his days.

He just hoped “the rest of his days” wasn’t today.

Valiant took Dee and the other soldiers as far as it could, but Dee still wasn’t all the way up the beach. The German machine guns peppering the Sherman tank might as well have been on the moon for all that Dee could reach them yet. Between the high cliffs and the waterline, the Germans had built a concrete seawall. It was five feet tall and topped with concertina wire—coiled metal wire with razors along it every few inches.

The seawall was a deadly obstacle but a kind of shelter too. Dee saw that dozens of American soldiers had made it that far, and they now sat with their backs to it, protected from the German machine guns along the cliffs. To join them, Dee had to cross a distance of maybe ten yards—no more than a football first down. But that ten yards was littered with the bodies and equipment of all the American soldiers who hadn’t made it. He caught quick flashes: Busted radios. Abandoned gas masks. Broken men crying out for their mothers. Rifles. Burning bodies, the smell so rancid Dee gagged.

Valiant started to back away.

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