J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [49]
When the order came, Salinger crammed into a landing craft along with thirty other soldiers. Thrown about by violent waves, they were dwarfed by their setting. Around them, immense warships discharged guns that set the morning sky ablaze and consumed the air with blasts of thunder. As their craft inched forward, the men could see artillery fire hitting the sand, sending up showers of debris. Slowly, the transport sputtered to a stop and a smoke screen was sent up to signal the assault. Some of the men whispered prayers. Some cried. But most were silent. Suddenly, the vessel’s landing ramp crashed open into the surf and they waded into the water and headed for the beach.
As part of the 4th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment, Salinger was to land on Utah Beach with the first wave, at 6:30 A.M., but an eyewitness report has him landing during the second wave, about ten minutes later.2 The timing was fortunate. The Channel’s currents had thrown the landing off 2,000 yards to the south, allowing Salinger to avoid the most heavily concentrated German defenses. There were also fewer land mines in this sector, and engineers quickly removed those they found. Within an hour of landing at Normandy, Salinger was moving inland along an underdefended causeway and heading west, where he would eventually connect with the 12th Infantry Regiment.
The 12th had not been so lucky. Although it had landed five hours later, it had encountered obstacles that Salinger had not. Just beyond the beach, the Germans had deliberately flooded a vast marshland, up to two miles wide, and had concentrated their firepower on the only open causeway. The 12th had been forced to abandon the causeway and wade through waist-high drainage water while under constant threat from enemy guns. In many spots, the ground dropped abruptly and soldiers suddenly found themselves submerged. It took the 12th Regiment three hours to cross the flooded marsh, and its members would for the rest of their lives remain terrified by the experience.3 By the end of the day, the unit had pushed nearly five miles into occupied territory when they were stopped at the village of Beuzeville-au-Plain.* There they encountered the now-infamous Norman hedgerow, a feature of the land their training had neglected. Called bocage by the French, the growth was insurmountable and blinded the regiment to the Germans within the village. Rather than engage an unseen enemy, the men decided to dig in beside the hedgerows. They spent a long, sleepless night—afraid to fire, afraid to smoke, afraid to speak. For members of the 12th, “the longest day” was not yet over. Instead, it had ushered in a living hell that would be Salinger’s quarters for the next eleven months. Somehow (and he must have realized this on that very first night), he would have to find the strength to survive and emerge with his soul intact.
For decades to come, J. D. Salinger would count among his most treasured belongings a small casket, a container protecting some of the most cherished articles he possessed: five battle stars and the Presidential Unit Citation for valor.4 Although an intelligence agent, once upon the field of battle, he was forced to become a leader of men, responsible for the safety and actions of squadrons and platoons. The lives of his fellow soldiers depended upon the orders he gave, and he met that responsibility with an unflinching sense of duty.
Unlike many soldiers who had been impatient for the invasion, Salinger was far from naïve about war. In stories like “Soft-Boiled Sergeant” and “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” he had already