OURS NOT TO QUESTION WHY

 

Sentient has lost patience with smug generals, certain of their safety no matter how badly their D-Day plans go.

Never anger an ancient entity from another plane of existence.

OURS NOT TO QUESTION WHY

“Two kinds of people are staying on this beach—the dead and those who are going to die.”

— Colonel George A. Taylor,

commanding the Sixteenth Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division, on Omaha Beach.

 

Everyone deep down thought that there was no Sentient. She was just some bizarre aspect of my insane, psychic mind.

If only.

I at least had some semblance of mercy. Sentient mocked mercy as a form of self-destructive timidity.

‘How gallant of you to think so. Again, you reveal how much you do not know.’

All in the chamber cried out as the world blossomed around us like some flower from Hell.

No, I take that back.

We were in Hell. First class ticket, courtesy of Sentient.

‘You are welcome.’

‘I didn’t thank you.’

‘How characteristic of you.’

I was in someone else’s body. How did I know? My wrists and hands no longer hurt. It was a burden lifted that near brought me to tears.

And I could feel the cold, wet deck of the Higgins boat beneath my fingers as I kneeled on it.

I could feel with my fingers!

The salty spray from the channel stung my lips, my eyes as it splashed over my face. The stench of vomit was thick. I tightened my face. I would be damned if I died on my knees.

I instinctively hunched over as the last of the naval shells soared so low overhead that they sucked the air from my lungs and lifted the Higgins boat inches from the water.

Soldiers all around me were retching, sobbing, and fingering their rosary beads.

One wiry soldier staggered over to me, grabbing me by the right arm. I stiffened as a woman’s voice whispered in my ear.

Lucile Churchill’s.

“Oh, Richard! Are we to die?”

“Ah, that’s Major Blaine, ma’am.”

“Shush! It’s Lucy now. We are in Hell, sir, so I believe first names are allowed.”

“Maybe yes. Maybe no. We will just make the most of where Sentient sends us.”

We suddenly hit a sandbar with a lurch. The coxswain who hit the sandbar shouted, “I’m unloading and getting the hell out of here!”

Lucy, in the soldier’s body, instinctively started towards the dropping ramp. I quickly pulled her back and headed her to the rear of the Higgins boat.

A group of soldiers rushed past us and started jumping out into water up to their necks. I saw their leader, a Lieutenant, get killed by an exploding shell.

Blood and bits of the brave officer splattered all over Lucy and me. The sound of it deafened me, but not so much that I did not hear Lucy scream.

Then, the flamethrower got blown up. Lucy and I staggered back from the force of the blow-back. I gently lifted the soldier who housed her spirit and jumped out.

The water went up to our chins. Lucy swore some very unladylike words when some of the dirty channel water splashed into her open mouth.

The radioman ahead of us had his head blown off three yards from us. Lucy started shivering violently. The water was covered with floating bodies, men with no legs, no arms.

“Oh, my dear Lord,” sobbed the soldier in Lucy’s voice. “This is horrendous. Horrendous!”

I raised my head to the dark skies and cried, “Sentient, she had nothing to do with this fiasco. Take her back!”

‘No.’

But I guess in her way, Sentient had her kind of mercy on her … and me.

I saw the zippering of the water ahead of us just before the hail of machine gun bullets ripped into our bodies.

They say you never feel the bullets that kill you.

They lied.

I jerked awake as if from a nightmare. For a heartbeat, I was back in St. Paul’s auditorium, observing all the dignitaries twitching in their seats as if being riddled with a hundred bullets.

Then, I was back in another Higgins boat being tossed about by the water and the shells exploding around the craft, my head ringing from all the blasts.

“Ow!” I cried as a bit of shrapnel bounced off my helmet.

“Thank the dear Lord!” came Lucy’s voice from a lanky soldier who stumbled to my side.

“I thought I had lost you.”

I smiled drily. “Me. too.”

A heavy-set Lieutenant stumbled up to the two of us. “Would you bloody well explain this madness to me? I was listening to your drivel at St. Paul’s, and now I am here!”

“Lucy” turned to him and roared over the explosions. “Col. Dawson, follow Major Blaine’s lead and you just might make it off this boat.”

“This boat? I want to go back to St. Paul’s not onto that bloody beach!”

Boats on either side were getting hit by artillery. Some were burning, others sinking. Dying men were screaming. Some for lovers, others for their mothers. 

They were all so damn young.

We hit the beach with a dozen other Higgins boats. “Col. Dawson” raced down the ramp as soon as it went down. Then, he went down, his head seeming to explode from some massive shell.

“Are you cowards?” snapped a captain as he rushed past us down the ramp.

“Southeast Champion,” I whispered as I jumped, sweeping “Lucy” behind me as we hit the shallow water.

As the captain jumped from the ramp into the water, he took a bullet through his throat. 

He staggered to the sand, flopped down near me and “Lucy”, and raised himself up to gasp, “Advance with the wire cutters!”

At that instant, machine-gun bullets ripped the brave captain from crown to pelvis, drenching the two of us with his blood and brains.

“NO!” screamed Lucy. “No more!”

“I am coming, my Lucy,” cried the voice of Winston Churchill.

We both turned to see the stocky soldier who housed the spirit of the Prime Minister wading his way as fast as he could through the thigh deep water.

He should have kept that big mouth of his shut. He drew the fire of a dozen Nazi machine guns. He reeled over into the water, cut nearly in two.

“Winnie!”

“Lucy” kept on screaming, and I shook her to keep her from drawing an equally lethal rain of machine gun fire. “Your Winston is still alive.”

“Can you promise me that in this Hell?”

“Yes. Sentient is not merciful enough to end his life and the nightmares that will follow him enduring this.”

A grizzled coxswain jumped at me, grabbing me by my blouse front with both gnarled hands and growled in General Patton’s gruff voice.

“Damn you to Hell, Blaine! That Sentient must have known I was burned on my face in WWI. I’ve been blown apart by not one, but two exploding flame ….

“Lucy” slapped the man hard. Very hard. His head rocked back.

“You are not a child. Stop acting like one!”

He looked like he wanted to slap back, but instead yelled to no one in particular,  ‘”Where is the damned Air Corps?’ ”

“Come on, boys and girl. We’ll be killed if we keep standing still. Let’s head to the shingles.”

“The what?” frowned Lucy.

“Those small round stones up yonder that make lousy cover, but they are better than nothing at all.”

I floundered in the water with my hand up in the air, trying to get my balance, when I was first shot through the palm of my hand. Then, I got one through the knuckle.

The hand that had blissfully not been hurting started to hurt like hell.

“This is so not fair!” I grumbled. “I can’t keep an unhurt hand for the life of me.”

A private waded to me, his pale face frantic. “Sergeant, they’re leaving us here to die like rats. Just to die like rats.”

And then, we were back at St. Paul’s auditorium.

Winston Churchill raced to Lucy at my side. “My love! You are all right.”

She patted his cheek with trembling fingers. “It may take me a sherry or two to be all right, Winnie. But I am safe.”

His face was once again an inflamed catcher’s mitt. “I hate you, sir!”

"It's a big club, Prime Minister. Take a number."

“Winnie! He took two bullets for me.”

I flexed my artificial hand which still seemed to feel the bullets going through it.

General Patton gingerly touched his face as if feeling a bit of ghost pain the same as I was.

I looked round about me. Most of the dignitaries were twitching unconscious on the floor. I looked to the unconscious Eisenhower.

He looked like he was having a grand mal seizure. I felt nothing.

Sentient mocked, ‘At least you are not feeling satisfaction.’

‘No, that would be you.’

‘But of course.’

A laggard thought hit me, and I rushed to the King. “Your Majesty, are you alright?”

He smiled wanly. “Like Lady Churchill, it may take me a whisky sour or two before I can truthfully answer 'Yes' to that.”

His haunted eyes met mine. “Major Blaine, I have often wondered what Hell would be like. I no longer have to wonder.”