Donold J. Grump #35

VS

Storming the Beaches Pt. 3

Normandy Field Hospital, June 7th, 1944 Midnight

The canvas roof creaked in the wind. Outside, artillery thunder still echoed faintly, like the sky itself was mourning. Inside, the field hospital was lit only by flickering lanterns. Shadows stretched long across the blood-stained floor.

Corporal Donold J. Grump lay awake in his cot.

Bandaged from the waist down, a fever of panic roiling in his chest, he stared at the sagging canvas above. The moans and coughs and whispered prayers of the wounded filled the air like fog.

Pete Hoggs-Breath hadn’t moved in hours.

His chest still rose and fell—barely—but his face was gray, his lips cracked and trembling.

Donnie turned away.

He hadn’t slept.

He couldn’t.

He was afraid of what would come.

Then he noticed the stretchers.

Six of them.

Each carried by medics who walked without urgency—slow, reverent. The bodies were covered in tan woolen blankets, boots still visible, tags hanging from their necks.

They lined the bodies up along the far wall.

Donnie closed his eyes.

And when he opened them again—

They were standing there.

Not ghosts. Not monsters.

Men.

Young men.

Their uniforms were muddy, torn, stained with blood—but their faces were clear. Calm. Resolute.

One stepped forward.

A Black soldier. Tall. Broad-shouldered. His helmet in his hands.

“Private Henry Carter,” he said, voice deep and steady. “Harlem, New York. I had two kids. Twins. Just turned six. I was a longshoreman before this. I didn’t come here for politics, Donnie. I came so they’d never have to kneel to a dictator.”

He nodded once, then stepped back.

A second man stepped forward.

Asian-American. Barely twenty. His face still held the ghost of a teenager’s softness.

“Private First Class David Sakamoto. Los Angeles. My parents are in a camp in Wyoming. Japanese internment. But I still volunteered. Because I wanted to prove I belonged. I fought for a country that locked up my family. And I’d do it again. Because hate doesn’t win, Donnie. Not if we stand up.”

He looked down at Grump’s bandaged body, then walked away silently.

The third figure was Latino.

He held his hand against a chest wound that no longer bled.

“Corporal Juan Manuel Torres. El Paso. I was a mechanic before this. My wife is pregnant. I'll never met the baby. But I left home because I knew what fascism looked like. I saw it in Spain. I wasn’t going to see it rise again here. Not on my watch.”

His eyes shimmered with something unspoken. Regret. Pride. Maybe both.

Then he turned and disappeared into the shadows.

The fourth soldier limped forward.

A Jewish boy, no more than 19, with a shattered arm and a crooked grin.

“Sergeant Ezra Roth. Chicago. My bubbe left Poland before the camps went up. She cried when I told her I enlisted. Said she didn’t want to lose me to hatred again. I told her I had to go. Because if we don’t fight it now, it just keeps growing. Like mold in a dark room. You can’t wait for it to go away. You’ve got to open the windows and burn it out.”

He looked directly into Donnie’s eyes.

“You can’t lie your way through this, Donnie. Not here. Not in war.”

And then he was gone.

The fifth figure stepped forward slowly.

A Native man.

He said nothing at first.

Just stood there.

His hair was tied back, a small eagle feather tucked behind one ear.

“Private William Red Elk. Lakota Nation. South Dakota. My father served in the Great War. They wouldn’t let him vote when he came home. But he still raised me to fight for this land. Because even if it doesn’t love us back, we still protect it. That’s what warriors do.”

He placed one hand gently on Donnie’s chest.

“Don’t disgrace it again.”

Then he vanished into smoke.

The final figure emerged last.

A woman.

Her uniform was that of a field nurse. Bloodstained apron. Sleeves rolled to the elbow.

Her face was hardened by experience. Beautiful in a way that only truth is.

“Lieutenant Sara Moreno. Army Nurse Corps. Brooklyn. I held the hands of boys as they died, Donnie. Boys who cried for their mothers. Boys who begged me to tell them they weren’t alone. I came knowing I wouldn’t carry a gun—that I had to carried their pain. And I stayed. I stayed when the bombs fell. I stayed in the trenches. Because someone had to.”

She knelt beside him.

“You treat loss like theater. We didn’t. We knew every minute was borrowed.”

She reached out and brushed a tear from his cheek.

Then she stood, and with her, the others gathered again.

They faced Donnie.

As one.

And then, in silence, they disappeared into the darkness beyond the flaps.

Grump lay still.

His cheeks wet. His breathing ragged.

The air was thick with memory. Regret. Revelation.

He turned his head.

Pete was still there.

Broken.

But alive.

For now.

Outside, a bugle began to play taps.

Donnie didn’t move.

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Just remember if you have someone in your life that loves you, holds you at night, makes you laugh, cry...

Then you are richer than

"He Who is PU!"