As the wheelchair stopped in the sand, the old soldier looked out at the calm surf. It was just him, his great grandson, and his memories. He had seen this surf before — but the last time, it was much angrier. A lone gull broke the silence as tears filled his eyes. The sweet salt air was replaced with the smell of vomit, seawater, blood and cordite. Explosions and screams filled his head. Fear froze his limbs. Death was ahead of him — and behind him. Blood and entrails splattered his face and bullets wizzed over his head. There was no cover. It was move forward or die on this Godforsaken beach. The looming rise ahead of him twinkled as machine guns raked every inch of the sand he and his brothers were trying to grab. More screams filled his head. Courage, born out of a deep survival instinct (mixed with training), kicked in. A fighter plane roared down the beach, spraying the hillside with bullets, giving them a brief moment to pull them out the riptide of death. He and his men laid explosives to clear a path through the mines. BOOM! This time the explosion was a gift. He picked himself off the sand and started to stumble forward down the path it had cleared. The man to his right’s head exploded in a spray of blood and brains but he couldn’t think about it the carnage. There would be years to work that out. Now the bunker on the top the hill was his objective. Ducking more bullets, he charged with his rifle prepared to kill. Three grenades from his belt went into the machine gun nest, extinguishing the threat. He pulled his knife and lunged it into the heart of the sole surviving German. He heard the dying man’s life slip out of his lungs with a bloody gurgle. A primal scream woke him from his flashback.
“Grandpa Buck, you OK?”
The old man blinked and was brought back to 2024. Confined to his wheelchair for nearly a decade, he stood proudly on Omaha Beach. This time, he knew he couldn’t cheat death. Time was doing what the Germans could never do. Looking around him, he saw the ghosts of the men who had died on June 6, 1944 running toward him on the beach. Soon, he’d be one of them. He’d concur death’s bluff soon enough. Today, though, he’d enjoy the Freedom that his moment in Hell had given the world.