“Twenty-four this past April, sir.”
There'd been no party, no birthday songs, only the blessing from the priest—“May God guide and protect you.” And a bit of stale cake sent weeks earlier from his mother.
“Ah, well, you'll be an old man before this is over,” Lovat added. “We all will be.”
“Aye, sir.”
He already felt like an old man, after living in London since the bombings began in '39, with the air raids, scrambling to get into one of the underground shelters, bodies crammed together...and bodies on the streets. People, just trying to live their lives. And dying. He'd taken pictures of it all—images and scenes that came back in the night in dreams.
Lovat motioned to a man behind him.
“Come along then, William,” he told him. “I want a picture as we go ashore, bloody proof that we made it, you see?”
A man stepped past him and joined Lovat at the bow doors of the landing craft.
“Bloody crazy maniac,” Callish whispered beside him, just out of earshot. “Brings along his own personal piper.”
They were closer now, those around them checking their equipment and weapons one last time, to a man their expressions fixed in what he would later describe as their 'war faces,' and the thought occurred to him as he took another shot with his camera, that it was all the same—centuries apart, but these twentieth-century warriors were much the same as those before them, in other places, other wars, about to step off into the unknown.
“They're called hedgehogs.” Callish pointed out the beach barricades, the Germans line of defense against a sea landing, steel cross-members like jacks in a line along the beach. But this was a deadly toy.
“They say there are mines strapped to each one,” Callish added.
How many would still be alive at the end of the day? Or the next day? Paul wondered.
“Take my picture,” one soldier had told him before leaving Dover, and had given his name—Ian Campbell. A good Scottish name.
“That way they'll be able to identify me if I don't make it back.”
If any of them made it back.
“Make yourself ready,” Lovat told the man beside him. “I want a good rousing piece for the lads.”
Click, click of the camera. Lovat's personal piper pumped up the bag with the pipes secured across his chest.
He made quite a sight, the bagpipes at his chest, the field pack at his back, like a beached turtle, legs and arms sticking out from the ponderous shape, and Paul wondered if he would be able to make it ashore through the churning surf that was as dark and dangerous looking as any he'd seen on holiday on the north coast of Scotland.
The man winked at him as he tuned up the pipes. “Stay with me, lads. If they take a shot at me, it won't make it past this rig I've got on.” He pumped and tuned over the whine of the engines as they rolled toward the beachhead, closer now.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” another man beside them prayed. “Protect us in our hour of need.”
Click, click, click. A half dozen more shots of those around him, faces that needed to be remembered. And then he was stowing the camera in the waterproof pouch. The landing craft lurched and the engines slowed then reversed. Only a hundred yards from that beach now.
“Have a care, lads,” Lovat said one last time.
The bow doors opened, commandoes jostled around them, then moved past, jumping into the rolling surf, then plunging toward the beach. They followed Lovat, his piper right behind him like the Pied Piper.
Bullets exploded all around them, popping on the surface of the water, whizzing past, and the churning surf turned blood red.
“Bloody Christ!” Callish swore beside him as they hit the water, scrabbling for a foothold on the sandy bottom.
Plop, plop, plop. Bullets rained down around them. They kept moving, past a body floating in the surf, then another rolling back toward them on a receding wave. A hand reached up out of the water and Callish instinctively grabbed for it. Just moments before he'd been sharing a cigarette with the man. The body bobbed in the water.
“Leave him!” Paul shouted. “You can't help him now.” He grabbed Callish by the collar and shoved him forward.
They kept moving, stumbling, pushing back to their feet, past another body floating in the surf, sightless eyes staring.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” the man had whispered only moments earlier. Now he was dead.
