Slapton Depths

The surf washes yet another three bodies onto the beach.  Even after less than twelve hours in the water, their burnt skin is swollen and their faces distorted into ugly expressions.  There is no smell of decay – only the fresh nip from long strands of seaweed adjoining the rock-pools which makes Judy flare her nostrils.

    She takes a photograph as a black-headed gull screeches loudly, wheels above her head, and then lands on one of the bodies.  There are hundreds of other birds swooping down on countless objects floating in the sea.  The big gulls and the gannets and the terns make the same squabbling noises they do when following the fishermen – gutting their catch and throwing the bloody entrails overboard.

    “You know you won’t be allowed to have your pictures published, Miss?” says Lance-Corporeal Charlie Baxton.

    She looks up at him.

     “We’re supposed to forget this?” she says.  “Umm?”

    Charlie runs his tongue behind his lips, as though searching – not for some morsel left over from breakfast – but for the right words.

    “Frankly, Miss.  Yes, you must.”

    She thinks he looks a little like James Stewart – has that same in-built niceness, that same goodness, the same empathy in his eyes.

    Judy then stares down at the face of a young man, newly dead, who stares right on back at her from somewhere where oblivion starts.  He reminds Judy of her brother Jason.  As does the one beside him, and the one being washed ashore on the next wave.  And the next.  Just as her brother’s body must have done on Tarawa.

    And then she is back, once again the thirteen-year-old, racing her older brother as he urges the chestnut stallion – the fastest horse on their father’s stud farm – while she begins to unleash the power of the young black stallion she had surreptitiously broken in the previous week.  No-on else can yet ride the unruly animal, and the only person not impressed is Papa – a man more concerned with the well-being of his latest expensive acquisition than the danger she had put herself in.

    Judy has always loved the initial changes from one season to the next, and spring in New England – the large fields lush with the new, sweet-smelling grass, the bright greens of the ancient trees coming out of winter slumber, and the blue sky breaking through clouds – seems to infuse her blood with a desire to express how vital everything feels.

    She demands her horse gallop harder.  It, too, has energy to spare.

    Then she is alongside her brother, so close that their boots occasionally brush against each other.

    “Out of my way!” she shouts.  “Pocket dynamite coming through!”

    “Go explode!” yells Jason back at her.

    She laughs at him and he, in turn, flashes his teeth in that big grin she knows he will never grow out of – even at seventeen, he already has deep lines creasing his cheeks.  Their father is doing his best to instil a sense of arrogance into his only son, but her brother is having none of it.  Yes, he has youthful confidence, has inherited their father’s devastatingly astute sense of business, but he is twisting it into something different – with the country still reeling from the Depression, Jason is amongst the vanguard doing their bit to promote Roosevelt’s New Deal work program.  Only last week he was helping demolish derelict buildings in the nearby town, prior to new housing construction – garnering respect from men twice his age with his management skills and willingness to work up a sweat beside them.

    She finds it amazing that Jason wants to spend any time with her – he is beginning to be involved in an adult world that is doing its best to shut her out and yet he still makes the effort to encourage her to be resolute in the face of such bigotry and to ensure the men she meets know she has potential.  And, more importantly: is an equal.  His enthusiasm is partially the reason she took it on herself to break in the black stallion without consulting anyone.

    As she edges ahead of him, Jason reaches across and slaps the rump of her horse.

    “I’m catching you up, Sissy!” he bellows.

    Judy glances over her shoulder and knows she loves him.  Jason is giving her no quarter and wants to win as much as her.  They both have everything to live for and are eager to grab life with a zest that can seem frightening to most.  They urge their horses to gallop even harder.

    And then just a few short months ago, his time amongst the living was over.  On some tropical island hidden in the Pacific, he died on the bloodied sandy beach, alongside men that had become the brothers he never had.

    But they had taken the island.

    They weren’t wasted like this.

    The assault on Slapton Sands was a training exercise for the forthcoming invasion into Northern Europe – the third front intended to spread Hitler’s armies from Russia, through Italy, to France.

    Somewhere, out on the horizon, in the dark of the previous night, E-boats had attacked the convoy of assault craft.

    Charlie wades into the surf to haul a body onto the beach.  The dead soldier has his hands entangled in his equipment.

    “Look,” says Charlie.  “He put his life-jacket on the wrong way, too.”

    Judy glances at yet another Jason look-a-like for the barest instant, then stares out at sea again.  The majority of the bodies have their heads forced under the water by a combination of the way their ill-fitting life-jackets push down on them and their weighty equipment.  That, and the coldness of the water with no rescue organised due to radio problems, contributed to their demise as they struggled to survive.

    “What a waste,” she says.

    “That’s about it,” says Charlie.

    The gulls continue to screech and to land and to peck.  And all Judy can think of is riding that black stallion as fast as she could.