The Dark of the Island by Philip Gerard

Author:Philip Gerard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/Action & Adventure
Publisher: Blair

CHAPTER SEVEN

1942-45

1

Chance Royal was as good a handler of small boats as any boatswain in the navy.

His Higgins boat was lowered from the deck of the auxiliary ship, and he throttled up the two-hundred-twenty-five-horse diesel. Dawn was breaking gray and drizzly over the bluffs of Normandy, and the channel was choppy and swollen with crosscurrents from old storms. He wore a blue steel helmet and a gray flak vest and already was soaked from the driving sea spray.

He had skippered a Higgins boat during the eight days of invasion rehearsals off Slapton Sands in April. By some accident of terrible luck and timing, German E-boats had slipped in among the flotilla and sunk two troop transports, killing nearly a thousand men. Chance had dodged the enemy boats and rescued scores of sailors and infantry amid the melee.

Today was payback day—for those men, for his brother Kevin, for all of it. He understood it was his job to deliver killers onto the beach—as many as he could, as fast as he dared, for as long as it took.

Chance knew what he was doing, all right, but that didn’t calm the flutter in his stomach.

His legs felt rubbery, and he took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself to the task ahead. He was about to do what he had bragged he would do that night on the beach back home with his brother and his buddies—a long time ago and a long way from here. He was going to assault Fortress Europe. It wasn’t just a catchphrase now but a looming fact, water and rock and steel and a cataclysm of fire to be endured. It was both unreal and the realest thing that had ever happened to him.

Nothing felt accidental about this moment. He was born to do this. He had a skill, and now that skill was going to be tested and used, and when he emerged on the other side of this day he would at last be at peace. He had to believe that. It was a thing to steady him in his purpose.

He knew the drill: Maneuver the flat-bottomed landing craft alongside the transport ship, matching its speed. Load the troops from cargo nets slung over the side of the transport. This was the maddeningly slow part, for the soldiers were not sailors. They mostly hated being on a boat at all, and the only thing they hated worse was getting off a big steel boat onto a little wooden one bobbing around, defenseless under the dive bombers. They were clumsy and overloaded. The commanders made them carry too much gear: rifles, ammo, rucksacks, hand grenades, trenching tools, mines, extra machine-gun barrels, mortar baseplates and tubes, tools and rations and radios.

Then, when they were all aboard, he would take up his position in a rotary file of boats spinning in a tight circle offshore while the rest of the boats loaded.

That was the part that called for patience and nerve, holding formation at a fixed speed while fighters made low strafing runs and Stuka dive bombers screamed down, aiming for a kill.

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