Allies

Bill and his crew prepare for the boat to let them off at the beach. He wants to get as far inland as a town called Amiens, where his father carved his name on a rock during the first world war, so he can carve his own name beneath it. Bill and his wife Maggie are expecting their first child in a few months. Bill is also fascinated by the figure of William the Conqueror, for whom he is named, who came from Normandy and conquered England, and he wants to make it to Bayeux to see an ancient tapestry commemorating the event. Bill’s tank, the Achilles, reaches the beach and begins to move off the boat.

Bill and his crew discover that they’ve accidentally landed amid the American invasion rather than the British one. Both of the other tanks with Achilles quickly run into problems, leaving Bill and his crew to try and take out the large gun that is shooting at them. Before they can get a shot at it, something hits their tank, knocking it around and damaging some of the controls.

Bill determines that the tank has hit an underground mine, which has made a crater underneath it. The gunman in the tank can’t get high enough to get a good shot at the German’s gun, so the commanding officer sends Bill and another soldier outside to dig the tank out so it can be shifted.

When Bill and the other soldier climb out of the tank, they find that Dee’s unit has taken shelter behind the Achilles. The Americans help dig out underneath the tank, and the British gunman is able to destroy the German gun. As Bill talks with his fellow soldier, he reveals that his father died during the first world war while Bill’s mother was pregnant with him. He wants to get to Amiens to carve his own name in the rock, which his father wrote home about, to honor his memory.

A new section begins, returning to Dee’s point of view. His unit has just left Bill’s when another large German gun shoots the Achilles, destroying it and killing the entire British unit. Dee mourns for Bill. He sprints over to a seawall that will provide him some shelter.

This chapter introduces a new character, Henry Allen, and begins a section called “Operation Integration, June 6, 1944, Midmorning, Omaha Beach.” Henry is a medic from Chicago who is Black. He treats a wounded soldier, who is white, despite the fact that Henry serves in a segregated Black unit and is only formally responsible for those soldiers. He sets up a small medical tent to tend to the soldier and others who will be wounded.

As Henry takes care of soldier after soldier, he keeps them conscious and engaged by asking them about their favorite movies. He is alarmed and surprised when he finds one of the soldiers who was in boot camp with him in Georgia, a white man who made his life miserable. However, Henry treats the man anyway.

Henry remembers being treated badly by the wounded man, who was a commanding officer over Henry and ordered Henry and other Black soldiers off a bus in order to free up seats for white soldiers. The Black men also endured racial slurs from commanding officers and other white men.

Henry finishes treating his former commanding officer, then finds two other soldiers who need his help. One has visible burns, which Henry starts to treat until he realizes that the other soldier has an internal chest wound that threatens to suffocate the man. He decides to operate on the man immediately.

The wounded soldier’s friend panics when Henry explains the procedure for treating the chest wound. He calls over a medic, who is white, for another opinion. The other medic angrily tells the soldier that Henry’s diagnosis is correct. Henry performs the procedure, saving the man’s life. He patches up both men afterward.