Chapter Two - The Landing

The boat hit the beach and the men lurched, hearing the constant ping of machine gun rounds hitting the ramp at the front. "RAMP GOING DOWN GO GO GO" screamed the driver. Sgt adkins immediately followed this command up with "IF YOU ARE IN THE BACK HALF GO OVER THE SIDES AND WADE TO SHORE, IF YOU ARE IN THE FRONT HALF PUSH UP THE BEACH. GODSPEED, ILL SEE YOU AT THE SEA WALL!" The ramp dropped and within tenths of a second the front four marines were shredded by machine gun fire, the men right behind hit the deck and blocked people behind them who were immediately chewed up next. "FUCK IT OVER THE SIDE EVERYONE!" after saying this adkins and his squad went up an over the edge and stayed as low as possible as they moved into the nearest bomb crater they could find. Adkins turned around and looked at the rest of the men from the boat, around 8 more had fallen rushing up the beach along with the 7 who'd been hit when the ramp dropped. That left him with 15 dead or wounded and 20 more who'd made it at least as far as they had. Adkins peered over the edge of the crater and calculated that they had another 75 yards to go to hit the sea wall. Sgt adkins waited until the cross crossing machine gun fire was pulling away from him and his men and he screamed "UP THE BEACH GO!" he immediately took off crouch running to the next crater about 20 yards away. Diving into the crater and turning to look behind him he saw everyone make it except for pollard who took a shot to the leg right before he made the crater. One of the new marines not listening to the advice he gave earlier turned around and jumped up to drag him in and immediately took a sniper round through the back of the neck, severing his spinal cord and dying immediately. Sgt adkins noticed The marines body landed with in reach of pollard and still close to the crater. He shouted "pollard grab an arm, We'll drag you in using the body!" Pollard immediately grabbed the arm of the dead marine. "Alright boys on the count of three were going to pull the dead guys legs and drag pollard in. ONE, TWO, THREE! PULL!" Three marines plus adkins grabbed the legs and heaved as hard as they could yanking pollard into the crater. "Dickson! Take care of pollards leg so he can survive till the next wave get here." "On it sir!" Said dickson who immediately pulled out his small med kit which came with a turniquet, some morphine, plus some bandages. He wrapped his wound and put a turniquet above the wound to slow the blood loss, following this with morphine. Adkins looked at pollard and said "stay here and provide some covering fire for our next push if you can." Adkins looked back over the edge of the crater looking for a hole in the machine guns fire to make a break for the next crater, luckily the next one was only 10 yards away. After about thirty seconds of watching adkins yelled "move on three! One, two, THREE! MOVE IT!" He took off to the next crater as pollard poked his head and started firing in the direction he thought the sniper had hit the other marine from. Sliding into the next hole he counted his remaining men. 18 with him and 19 with pollard in the previous crater. Grateful he still had all the men from the previous crater he looked over the lip of the crater and notice there were no more to run to. That left a 45 yard dash to the sea wall with the machine gun fire only getting more intense until they made the sea wall to hide behind. Again he watched and waited for his gap in the machine gun fire. " He yelled one more time, on three we move! 45 yard dash to the wall. Don't stop no matter what! One, two, three! GO!" He jumped up and ran. He felt like there were hundreds of bees swarming around him as he made his last push to get to the wall. Feeling like he was on death's door and hearing bullets snap past his head he finally made the dive into the sea wall. Catching his breath and finally feeling a little safer he turned and looked behind him to check his squad. He watched what felt like man after man fall until the last remaining man reached the wall. He counted to 11 counting himself. 11 men, that's all he had to go over the sea wall and take the machine gun emplacement just past it.