America Attacked by Nazis

The clouds are low and heavy on a typical New England spring morning. Cold rains begin to fall: small drops of fresh water fall from the sky and larger, salt ones blow off the tops of the waves. Both hit Kleg's face as he hunches forward on the narrow bench of life boat he and his squadron of fifteen men are squeezed into. Kleg leans forward to keep his face away from the drops of water, pressing his nose into the coarse wool blanket of the soldier in front of him. The broad visor of his helmet blocks out the oppressive gray sky, and the over-sized temples block out some of the chaos around him. For half an hour, since they launched from the Hamburg, a converted cruise ship, Kleg has tried to imagine himself he is back home in Berlin. In five minutes he will be on the beach of Long Island. Now another rain falling from the sky: lead bullets from multiple concrete reinforced nests all along the beach head.

von Blomberg stands, surrounded by low-resolution black-and-white screens, in his circular office on the top of the the Vimart. Two kilometers north is a destroyer laden with antennae and two kilometers south is another. These two continuously scan the beach for radio signals emitted from helmets on the shore and transmit the data to the Vimart.

Kleg leans further forward into the back of the soldier in front of him, desperately trying to keep away from the missiles, water, noise, and most of all the confusion that threatens to swallow him. In addition to his helmet - his most important piece of equipment - he carries an MP-40 and two stick grenades. The MP-40 is a submachine gun with a long metal rod sticking out the back, with a curved piece that fits against the shoulder, making it look like a skeleton. It is capable of firing five-hundred-fifty rounds per minute of nine mm shells. A thirty-two round box magazine hangs down between the trigger and the muzzle. The soldiers had been taught to fire from the shoulder, but most end up firing from the crook of the arm, using the magazine, incorrectly, as a hand-hold. It is easier to sweep side-to-side that way. Besides, the handguard made of bakelite, one of the first plastics, got too hot.

The volleys of bullets get thicker as the small boat nears the shore. Suddenly the pilot in the rear shouts, "Get out! Get out!" Kleg tumbles over the side of the boat and finds himself in a meter of cold water. Keep your helmet dry! is the first thing that passes through his fear racked brain as he scrambles toward the shore, lifting his knees as high as he can. Bullets splash all around him as though it were pouring lead. He runs up the sand as far as his lungs will take him and collapses twenty meters from the water's edge. Once on the ground his body desperately shimmies down into the soft sand, instinctively trying to get the highest point of his body as low as possible. Like a child protecting himself from the pummels of an older brother, his arms violently push the sand in a pile in front of his head. He clenches his fist and shuts his eyes tightly in a futile attempt to make his body feel it is safe.

It is not. The beach east and west of him is littered with bodies just like his, except that they are dead. The average life span of the infantry-man like him in this first wave of landings is five minutes. Kleg has already survived fifteen. Balloons in the ear pieces of his helmet inflate painfully against his head and his speakers crackle. The voice of Lieutenant Plessner, his platoon commander, blares into his ears. "Kleg - are you dead?"

"No, sir!" he shouts instinctively. There is a mike suspended from the left temple of his helmet.

"Then move out, soldier!" Instincts take over his body once again. It is as though his Lieutenant is standing directly over him, a ghost on the beach impervious to the bullets flying through the air. "Get to the first line of grass and take cover!" When commanded, a German private like himself has no choice but to move out. Kleg leaves the comfort and safety of his meager foxhole and darts up the beach. As soon as he rises to a crouching position he feels vulnerable, as though there were an invisible ceiling ten centimeters above his head which, if he were to puncture, would cut him down like an airplane propeller. He scrambles as fast as his shaking legs will carry him until he reaches the first fragile clump of dry grass he comes to and hunkers down once again. Digging, he finds that the root system is much more substantial than the delicate parts above the sand and he digs with all his might to bury himself once again. His eyes close and his fists tighten once again. He is the first soldier to reach the fifty-meter mark.

When at sea, the vessels on either side of the Vimart continuously detected the location of objects emitting FM signals and displayed their position using two variables: angle and distance. On the shore the same system was used, but now each location had to be translated into a system of coordinates for land. The beach was divided into sectors, half a kilometer each. Each sector ran one kilometer inland, where another sector would begin. Like a sheet of graph paper, the terrain was divided up into small rectangles. Each man on the ground was shadowed by a technician deep in the bowels of converted cruise liners floating off shore, following his position and measuring the distance between him and the various points of reference around him. Kleg's helmet appeared on von Blomberg's screen, and that of his company commander in another ship, as a blip on the right side of sector 12A-4. In the top left corner of that sector was a concrete bunker with two M2HB .50 caliber 'Ma Deuce' heavy machine guns.

"Kleg," his balloons awaken him from his shallow dream state and back into the awful reality of war on this American beach. "There is a gun emplacement twenty meters up and to your left. Can you see it?"

Kleg reaches up to his left ear and pulls down the mic. "Yes, sir!"

"On my mark, run up to it and crouch down under the retaining wall. Got it?" Kleg now feels he is going to die for certain. He has been commanded to run directly into the line of enemy fire and his extensive training, his long month at sea, and his entire life will come to an end as soon as he hears the word 'Mark' shouted into his ears form the two speakers. Presently, however, there are a series of small explosions in the direction of the bunker. Firepower from the ships off-shore have targeted his sector, and for a brief moment, the kak-kak-kak from the gun emplacement ceases. "Mark! Mark! Mark!"

Kleg darts out from the protection of his clump of beach grass. He runs high and exposed to his left and up the beach thinking his time has surely come. There is no way he can dodge all the bullets before he achieves the bunker. His legs give out just as he reaches the concrete wall. Directly above him the machine guns have stated firing again, loud now, centimeters from his ears. The balloons inflate and for a few seconds all he can hear is Plessner saying, "Now take out the bunker with a '24.'" Model 24 Stielhandgranate is the designation for 'stick grenade,' and 'offensive' or concussion device with at five second delay. Kleg unscrews the cap at the end of the stick, pulls the cord, and heaves it up over his head. The blast throws debris and body parts out of the bunker and onto the grass in front of him. Immediately, instinctively, he ducks around the side of the bunker and climbs the short ladder into the bunker. His actions are precisely the ABC's of bunker-taking: toss grenade, wait for explosion, then enter structure with weapon firing. The men inside are not dead he remembers from training - they are stunned, or wounded, or merely knocked over - until you go in and fill the inside with lead.

Kleg presses the curved butt of the metal stock of his MP-40 into the crook of his right elbow and squeezes the trigger. Spraying bullets even as he rounds the corner, he runs up the short ladder and splays fire into the concrete room. Four gunners and a radio operator are dead when his magazine is empty. He pulls down his helmet mic. "Lieutenant Plessner - I am inside the bunker."

"I didn't tell you to enter!" His voice is angry. "I told you to toss in a grenade! Hold - " There is static on the line then,

"Private Kleg. This is Captain Meier." Captain is one step up in the chain of command. "You are guilty of dereliction of duty. You countermanded an order of your superior. You will be sentenced immediately following the conclusion - " The bunker's radio blurts out something in English. "What is that noise, man?"

"The American's radio, sir!"

There is a slight pause. "Well get on it, Private! Do you see a microphone?" Kleg puts down his gun and kneels by the radio console.

"Yes, sir!"

"Listen to me carefully. Do you see any kind of designation on the unit ... some kind of number or identification -"

"Bravo 05, sir!" It is written on five centimeter tan-colored tape that is stuck on the top left hand corner of the radio.

"Good. Now I want you to remove your helmet. Rip out the red antenna wire from your helmet and connect it to the radio's antenna. Place the mic of the American's unit up against one of your helmet speakers. Extend your mic so it is close to the American's speaker... Is there a radio man? Look for the youngest man - "

"Hamburger, sir!" Kleg has done what the Captain Meier instructed and is looking around when he sees the body of a young soldier slumped by the console. On his chest is a name badge. Kleg had barely noticed its presence until just then. There are bullet holes - Kleg's bullet holes - in the man's face and chest. His helmet is off and his neck is bent at an unnatural angle. The man's face is clean shaven. His hair is black and straight. For the first time, Kleg is confronted with a man he has just killed. In the days and months to come, he will remember the young man's face. It will haunt him in his dreams. Oh, shit... "That's a German name!"

Meier's voice sounds weak now, coming from his helmet on the radio console. "Yes. He's a fucking American - What did you think their names are? Now... does he have a first name? Check his dog tag." Kleg hesitates. He does not want to touch the body that he has just murdered, feeling that he has disturbed it enough. The dead should be left with some dignity, he thinks, shouldn't they? In time he will be very much disabused of this notion, after he has killed his hundredth human. Gingerly, he lifts up the young man's collar and pulls out a chain.

"'Joe's,' sir!"

"What?"

"Its J-o-s-e..."

"That's Jose՛, you maroon."

"That's not a German name..."

"Idiot! Now listen to me. I want you push the button on the console mic when I say so and lift your finger when I tell the stupid Americans 'ober.' Understand, Private?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now look at the front of the radio. What frequency is it set at?"

Kleg scans the dials. "5902 Mega Hz, sir." There followed an excited conversation that Kleg couldn't understand. He held and released the button on the mic while Meier proceeded to tell the Americans that Bravo 05 was out of ammo and needed re-supply. A different voice, in English, brakes into the conversation.

"Kleg!" Meier's voice comes through the tiny helmet speakers. "Stand up. Who is talking?" Kleg slowly lifts his head over the bunker walls. He sees a soldier in the bunker to the West of him, staring at his position while talking into a mic.

"The position to my West, sir!" Meier resumes his program of disinformation, claiming that Bravo 06 and not Bravo 05 has been captured by the enemy. In the course of this short conversation, the Germans learn the entire orientation of battery designations and the communication frequencies used. Of course, this conversation is simultaneously picked up by the sensitive antennae on the ships off shore and it is found that the broadcast st frequency for this part of the beach is 6034 MHz. There is a pause in the conversation, and then Kleg recognizes the voice of General von Blomberg himself talking in the strange language.

"To all American armed forces, this is your deliverer speaking. Prepare to meet your makers!"

There is feedback from the helmet speakers to the mike and the radio receiver and voice crashes to static and the static crescendos to an ear splitting screech. Kleg presses his hands to his ears and his body twists around and he falls to the floor next to his bloody victims. From that instant until 11:06 pm on July 16, 1951 von Blomberg maintains radio noise over 6034 MHz. At that moment it will stop, due to formal, material, and final causes of Officer Kleg. The efficient one cause will be an American: Admiral Lynch.