Echo Beach Read online

  ***

  Behind the pub we exchanged clothes from underwear outwards, most of his clothes were a little tight on me but they'd be easy enough to exchange with a story of having shrunk them in the wash, convincing enough from a young man away from home and washing his own clothes for the first time. Swapping our photographs from one ID card to another was simple enough, his was still relatively new, easy to prise the image off.

  Mine needed a little more persuasion but a coin inserted behind the picture soon got it away from the backing. I'd picked up a small pot of glue from a local post office and sticking the images to their new places was simple.

  "Just keep some pressure on it for a few minutes and it'll hold. If you go South from here you'll hit the railway station, you might still make the night train if you run all the way." I pressed a crisp pound note into his hand, probably the most money he'd seen since arriving in England. It'd keep him going long enough to make a life for himself.

  He ran off down the road in the direction I'd indicated, eager to catch the last train to freedom. I adjusted his uniform as best as possible to try to make it fit me. The glue had dried on the Canadian Army ID card now. I was Robert Harris, citizen of Winnipeg, member of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

  Well, at least I was now.

  Back inside the pub the accents were Canadian with a twang of Scottish, I listened long enough to know I could copy it easily. I'd been working in London when I joined the Army, hoping to get into the Scots Guards or The Black Watch.

  I hadn't been able to get back home to Scotland and had to train amongst the English, the thing that had led to my eventual "disagreement" with our training officer. Around the pub I tested my new accent out on a few of the men I was now with for the duration of the war, borrowing a cigarette, cadging a light for same.

  No-one seemed to notice the new man amongst them.

  The remaining twenty minutes passed soon enough and a gruff Sergeant came into the bar insisting we get on the truck outside. I made sure I was one of the last to board. The less men who saw me, the better.

  "Who's that dragging their feet back there?" called back the Sergeant.

  "Me Sergeant, Harris." I called up to him.

  "Move it or walk Harris, why are you always last?" he shouted back.

  I fastened my side of the tailgate shut and banged on the side of the truck and we were on our way, back to a life a lot better than the inside of a prison cell. Before lunch the next day I'd be in possession of a full set of kit that actually fitted me and ready to face whatever hush hush mission was ahead of us Canucks.

  ***

  The following day I found out why the real Harris hadn't told me anything about the mission. Not because it was secret, but because he hadn't known about it. We were called to a briefing in the lecture hall. A senior Officer unveiled a series of maps showing French beaches, a small scale model sat on a table at the front of the room. Each of us got the chance to get a closer look after the briefing.

  "Gentlemen, you will be assaulting this particular section of beach in France - code named Juno, sector Mike Green." He gave us the date and time little more than 48 hours away, trying his best to make it sound less of a death sentence than it probably was going to be. After being dismissed we were given the rest of the day on the rifle range and I got a chance to zero Harris' rifle properly to suit me. Harris hadn't been a great shot by all accounts and the range instructors were extremely pleased at "my" apparent improvement.

  It took a few hours of asking around and another hour of finagling to get my hands on the item I wanted to take with me on the landing. Only three people had sniper scopes. Two of them weren't open to bribery or persuasion, the third was one of the range instructors who happily accepted my beer tokens for his scope. He wasn't going on the mission with us, he would be staying here to train the next wave of foreign arrivals; where ever they may come from.

  The following day was spent travelling to the coast, boarding our ship and waiting for our orders to ship out.

  By the next day we were climbing over the side of the Navy ship down to our waiting LCA. I couldn't see the point of doing nothing on the journey from the ship to the beach and took position up on one of the walkways that protected the LCA. From about 1000 yards I was able to see the Germans in their positions on the beach ahead of us. I shot my way through two ten round clips and can be certain I accounted for at least fourteen Germans before we got to the beach.

  "Harris, get down here. We're going in two minutes." The Sergeant called me down. I found my position in the LCA and decided to clear my conscience before we landed.

  "You fellers might as well know, I'm not really Harris. My name is William Sinclair, we swapped places." I said, loud enough for all of them to hear me.

  The man next to me turned around and was clearly speaking for the whole landing craft as he looked at me. "We know. We don't care." he said.

  The ramp fell, giving the rest of the men their first look at Juno beach.

  The Sergeant shouted "CHARGE! You too, Harris!"

  Oh what a lovely war!

  THE END.

  Authors Notes:- The intention was to finish this so it could be released during the week that D-Day fell upon, sadly the ending was a bit of a task and I wasn't able to finish the story in time. The regiment mentioned did go where I said. The ending is written in such a way so as to allow the reader to decide for themselves if the protagonist makes it safely back home to Blighty.

  An LCA is a Landing Craft (Assault), the beastie pictured on the front cover. It took a good while to find one that had the side walkways. I always wondered why no soldiers ever took advantage of the trip into shore to try and fire at the Germans on the beach from the landing craft, it's one of the reasons I actually wrote this.

  Beer tokens are what the military call money.

  The title is from an 80's song by Martha & The Muffins which features the line “My life is really boring, I'm an office clerk”. I saw this guy in my head who was bored with his lot in life and wanted to be in the war in a very bad way. It also partly comes from Echo Base, featured in The Empire Strikes Back.