Free Once a Warrior by Fran Baker Page B

in a farmer’s barn.
    Now, remembering how his lifeless body—tortured and beaten almost beyond recognition—had been dumped on her aunt and uncle’s doorstep, she was more determined than ever to see the Germans defeated.
    Thunder boomed, loud as a cannon shot, as she switched off the radio and got to her feet.
    Downstairs, her grandfather was dozing in his chair. His neck was bent at an odd angle and the medical journal he’d sat down to read after dinner had fallen to the floor. Something inside of him seemed to have died with Maurice. He could barely drag himself out of bed in the morning and he just picked at his food. When he wasn’t working, he slept.
    Anne-Marie hated to disturb him, but she didn’t want him to wake up later and be alarmed by the fact that she was gone. Besides, he wouldn’t be able to turn his head tomorrow if he didn’t change positions pretty soon. She finished buttoning her raincoat, then leaned down and gently kissed his brow. He opened his eyes and looked up, staring at her in confusion.
    “I have to go out,” she told him.
    “Is it still raining?”
    Her face softened. “Yes.”
    “You should wear a scarf.”
    “I will.”
    Once he might have grilled her. Demanded to know where she was going and why, and when she would return. Now he simply nodded and began drifting back to sleep.
    The rain was coming down straight as a measuring stick when she went out the back door of the house and into the garage. She would have to ride her bicycle because there was no gasoline in her grandfather’s car, and she only hoped that the new patch on her front tire would hold. If it didn’t, she could always hide it in a ditch and complete her errand on foot. That would add almost an hour to her journey, though, and time was of the essence.
    Anne-Marie was fairly certain that no patrol cars would be out on such a foul night. Still, she kept a weather eye out for them as she pedaled along the street. Rain soaked her scarf and cold droplets ran down the back of her neck, but she took comfort from the thought that, even if the Germans caught and killed the messenger, they couldn’t kill her message.
    The Allies were coming!
     
    * * * *
     
    Omaha Beach, France; June 6, 1944
     
    One minute Mike Scanlon was stationed behind the Landing Craft, Tanks’ lowering ramp with his rifle in his hand, ready to hit the beach; the next, he was hurtling through the air sans rifle.
    They’d hit an underwater mine; it had blown the ramp off and sent him flying.
    He felt weightless—like an eagle soaring. Which seemed impossible given the gas-impregnated coveralls, heavy boots and steel helmet with the white officer’s stripe up the back that he was wearing. Only when he came splashing down in front of the crippled craft did it occur to him that he could easily become hamburger if the current pulled him under and the propellers caught him up.
    To his relief, his lifebelt inflated, keeping him afloat. But his heart sank like a stone when he opened his eyes and saw the carnage before him.
    The body of the first lieutenant who’d been standing to his right was now bobbing facedown in the water. The scarlet stains on his back told Mike that machine-gun fire from the German pillboxes on the bluffs had gotten him. Another body, that of the staff sergeant who’d been standing behind him, drifted face-up—dead from a bullet to the throat.
    A spray of water exploded in front of him, and he realized with a start that he was the target now.
    “Need a hand?” a loud voice called above the spanging of shells on steel.
    Mike glanced up and saw a Navy crewman, hunchbacked in a bulky life vest, looking down at him over the side of the beached craft he’d just been blown off of. Without waiting for an answer, the sailor threw him a line. Geysers of water from machine-gun fire erupted around him as Mike grabbed hold of it and let himself be pulled aboard.
    Except for the two of them, the LCT was deserted. The water was knee