Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 2 - D-Day [AS]

AUTHOR GAMES: GOLDEN AGE - TASK TWO

"June 6 1944

"Dear Family,
Today we fight. I woke up and started pencilling without even wiping my eyes. Most of the men are not in bed; they're eating a hearty breakfast, something special just for today. I think I'll skip it. I'd rather write."

He wanted to write but he had no paper. There was no room for it, not on that cramped and suffocating square of metal. It rocked and it rolled, moving at the command of every undulation. Even if he'd had a crisp sheet across his lap, scripture would scribble, ink trembling up through moist fingertips. Shoulders clad in straps and uniforms bumped against his own, which would've thrown him off to begin with, but then the men beneath the sage began to retch and vomit, a stench of poorly digested food wafting up from the bottom of their craft.

Nauseous from odor alone, Asa decided he no longer wanted to write or daydream.

"We leave in five hours for the beachheads. Everyone's on edge but making as much fun as they can. Charlie keeps smacking people on the back and whooping about what a thing it'll be once we secure France again. That man is something else, I tell you, and he'll have my back so you've got nothing to worry about. Nothing at all."

Asa lifted his gaze to that of the man across from him, a man with a shade of green in his cheeks likewise to the color of his eyes. Charlie attempted a sheepish smile, but the discomfort was plain and clear as he pressed a hand carefully to the core of his stomach. Usually, Asa would expect some sort of sarcastic comment, but this was not a usual circumstance - nobody spoke, nobody laughed. It was silent except for the violent thrash of wind and sea.

He scanned the other infantrymen but wound up stopping on the sight of one particular man, eyes closed and lips moving silently to what was probably a prayer. A pull to clap the soldier on the shoulder for reassurance tugged at his fingers, but he kept them tucked tight between his knees to hide the quivering. It's not like I'm the only one, he thought, biting into a chapped lip, we're facing a wall of guns once we land.

Hundreds.

A thunderous chinking of metal on metal sent each of the heads in the boat ducking down, a scream in the throats of half while the other half weakened in pallor. Asa was part of the latter group, and for a moment he thought they'd just been shelled, or something. But then he remembered the arsenal of their enemy, the machine guns.

He couldn't even hear individual bullets. He couldn't.

"Oh, God."

"God bless you. Say, England threw us this nice shindig before we left! I remembered because this other soldier kept making fun of the fact I didn't speak to any girls there. (Lloyd's sort of an idiot, but that's okay. We love him all the same.)"

The ramp tossed itself over and men were quick to raise themselves if only to get off the damned contraption. Asa kept low, waiting for the others to march down and into the roiling surf. Hands had left the secure abode of his lap, instead clutching at Charlie's elbow so tightly that the man had to shake him off and say, "You're hurting me, kid."

He hadn't meant for anyone to get hurt. But they were hurting; every single one of those soldiers descending the ramp was hurting far before they ever made it past the threshold. It took Asa awhile to realize it over the constant bahbahbahbah of hurtling rounds, but then came the agonized screams and the instantaneous twitch of a body being struck and the fall, fall, fall.

Soon the roles reversed themselves, Charlie grabbing up Asa violently by the elbow and screaming something about getting "over the side!" which the younger boy simply blinked at because nothing made too much sense in the rubble of noise and and panic. A palm smacked against his ear; Asa stumbled from his place, boots slopping through a mixture of saltwater and regurgitated steak.