My Honor Flight (6 page)

 “Now!” I
yelled over the gunfire.  We charged around the barn corner, right into direct
gunfire.  Guns flared from the outbuildings.  They weren’t empty!  Bullets
ripped the barn boards by my head and stuck splinters in my cheek and neck.  Porter
fell to the ground. 

 “Fall back!”
I yelled.  We dragged Porter back around the barn’s corner. Taft took a flesh
wound to his shoulder.

I was
drenched in sweat and breathing hard, like I’d just got done running a few
miles.  Like they say in emergencies, everything went into slow motion.  I
looked at Torgeson’s group at the windows.  They still crouched, fanning their
rifles over the window sills into the barn, guns flaring like flash bulbs.  I
panned to the treeline, and could see the gun flares from our snipers.  I
couldn’t tell where they were shooting.  As I continued panning, I looked at
the corner of the barn.  Pieces of wood were splintering as bullets continued
to pound the wood. 

Then I looked
down at Porter.  He lay on his back, his dead eyes staring up at the sky.  He’d
been cut down by multiple shots.  I thought back to our conversation at the
card game only a couple of hours before.  And I thought of Duncan saying we
were all going to die.  Time froze right then as I stared into those dead
eyes.  It was probably only five seconds, but it felt like an hour.  I was in a
bubble of silence, oblivious to the world erupting around me.  A scream brought
me back to the battle.  Howie Dale collapsed at one of the windows.  The
Germans in the barn were shooting through the wooden planks.  The rest of
Torgeson’s men dived to avoid getting shot through the wood.  We were screwed. 

The snipers
fired nonstop, and the whole farmyard exploded in gunfire.  I could hear Buzz
Company firing from the South.  The Germans in the barn were shooting, but I
could tell it wasn’t fourteen men any more.  The grenades had helped.  There
was still heavy fire coming from around the corner.  My group was on the
ground.

Taft
belly-crawled to me and yelled over the din of shots. 

 “We need to
take out the barn!” he yelled. 

 “Yeah,” I
yelled back.  “Grenades!”  We all carried two grenades.  I pulled both of mine
out.  Taft reached over and pulled Porter’s two grenades.  Tin had two in his
hands.  I held up a grenade toward Torgeson, and he nodded.  I saw him turn and
say something to his two remaining men.  We lay on the ground and waited.

There was a
lull in gunfire from the barn.  The Germans were probably trying to figure out
if they’d killed us all.  Everywhere else around us, the battle continued.  Tin
and Taft studied my face as I listened.  I was listening for the reloading of
guns as I stared at the barn wall.  Suddenly, the lights in the barn went out. 
Goddamn, I thought.  We just lost our advantage.  Now the krauts in the barn
were invisible to us. 

 “Now!” I
yelled.

Torgeson and
his two men each threw their remaining grenade through their window, and Taft
and I threw a total of four grenades through the window nearest to us.  But
Tinpan took off running toward Torgeson’s group.  I couldn’t figure out what
the hell he was doing.  As he ran, he started yelling.

 “Grenades! 
Grenades!  Grenate!  Grenate!” and as they started blowing, he dove hard into the
dust.  The barn echoed with blasts.  When the grenades finished, Tinpan got up
on his knees and said something to Torgeson.  Then he put both grenades to his
mouth, pulled the pins with his teeth, and threw the grenades into the barn. 
Then he yelled again, “Grenades!”

Again, there
were blasts in the barn.  After a few seconds, Tin got up on his knees again.

 “Again! 
Grenades!” he yelled.  But he didn’t have any grenades.  Then he dove through
the window into the blackness inside the barn!  As he dove, Torgeson and his
men fired their rifles into the planks on either side of the window.

I couldn’t
believe it!  Tinpan had just dived into the barn, with an unknown number of
enemies.  I was dumbfounded.  I scrambled to the window nearest to me, thinking
I should dive in and join him.  But he might think I was a kraut and shoot me. 
And we couldn’t shoot into the barn, because we might kill him.

Then it
dawned on me.  Tinpan had been yelling about grenades so the krauts would take
cover.  So when he dove into the window, they would all be ducking for cover. 
Now he was in there with them.  The question was if they saw, or heard, him dive
into the barn or not.  Maybe Torgeson’s shots hid the sound of him landing on
the floor of the barn.

Everything
was silent in the barn, but the rest of the farmyard was filled with the sounds
of battle.  We waited.  Either everyone was dead in the barn, or the Germans
were waiting for us to make another move.  I figured we couldn’t sit there
waiting, because that would increase the chances of the krauts hearing or
seeing Tin.

 “Swede, we
got no more grenades!”  I lied, staring at the two grenades still hanging off
Taft’s belt.

 “Yah, we are
out too.  Shoot them fucking krauts!”  Then he fired two rounds into the air. 
Taft and I did the same thing.  A series of shots erupted from the barn.  But
it was only a handful.  The grenades had done their job.  We heard three shots
from an M1.  Then we heard nothing. 

We lay there
waiting.  I counted heartbeats, which were fast and loud in my head.  I figured
if I counted one hundred and twenty, that might be around a minute.  That was a
long damn count.  Taft stirred, wanting to move closer to the barn.  I put my
hand on his shoulder as I kept counting.  I got to one-twenty, then figured I’d
wait another one-twenty.  It was an agonizing delay.  I could see the black
shape of Torgeson’s figure lying on the ground.  I knew he was watching me,
waiting. 

 “All right,”
I yelled.  “We got Porter’s last two grenades!  Give us cover while we throw! 
Grenades!”

None of us
moved.  There were no sounds from the barn. 

 “Fire!” I
yelled, and shot into the air.  Everyone else did the same thing.  There were
no shots from the barn.

Was Tinpan
playing possum?  Was he dead?  Was he trapped?  I got up on my hands and knees
and strained to listen for sounds from the barn.  I couldn’t hear anything, and
the sounds of gunshots from the farmyard made it hard to hear anything else.

 “Tin! 
Tinpan!  I’m coming in!”  I yelled.  There was no response.

I looked up
at the window and sighed hard.  I had to give the krauts a reason to shoot.  Then
Tin could see their gun flares and take them out.  I was about to make myself
the easiest target possible.  If there were krauts still alive in the barn,
they would probably kill me.  But if we didn’t do something, Tin would surely
die, and we might not take the barn.  The rest of the platoon could fall.

It’s an
unnatural act to put yourself in harm’s way.  You find out what you’ve got in
you when you know that you might be dead in a few seconds.  I focused on the
window.  I was fighting self-preservation hard!  I didn’t have much time, and
the ground was sucking my hands down.  I couldn’t get moving!  My body was
fighting me.  I dragged myself to the barn on all fours, and took off my
helmet.  My fingers were thick and numb, not wanting to free the buckle.  I
raised the helmet up to the window sill in trembling hands.  No shots.  I put
my helmet back on, and stood up at the side of the window.  Real quick, I
turned to the window and pulled back.  A single gunshot came from the barn and
I heard the bullet whiz by my face.  Before I could say “Goddamn,” I heard two
more shots from an M1.  It was Tin!  I turned to face the window real quick,
twice more.  Nothing.  Then I faced the window again and fired a round up to
the ceiling.  Nothing.

Tin wasn’t talking. 
That meant he was either injured, dead, or he didn’t know if there were still
krauts in there.  I stood in front of the window, motionless.  I couldn’t
figure out why I was getting real uncomfortable.  Then I realized that I was
holding my breath.  I forced myself to exhale and start breathing.  There were still
no shots. 

 “I’m coming
in, for real this time!” I yelled.  I put my belly on the window sill and
pivoted over it headfirst into the barn.  I landed on my back, and my feet
followed, thumping into something soft on the ground.  It had to be a body.  I
lay there for a few seconds, straining to hear any movement. 

 “Tin?” I
called.  “Are we clear?”

I heard a
shuffle to my left, and snapped my rifle in that direction.

 “I reckon
we’re clear,” came the Oklahoman drawl.  “I ain’t heared nothin’ since that
last kraut.”

He struck a
match, and light filled the barn.  There were bodies everywhere.  I scanned the
whole barn.  I was really nervous about the hayloft, because we hadn’t shot
anything up there.  But nothing moved.  Tinpan found a lantern and set it to
let out just a glimmer of light.

I stood up
and stuck my head out the window. 

 “All clear!”
I yelled. 
Taft climbed in my window.  Torgeson climbed in his, and then helped Brady
through the window.  He’d been gutshot.  Butler climbed through after Brady.

The barn was
the picture of destruction.  Dead Germans were everywhere.  One body was
missing an arm.  I’m guessing he tried to throw a grenade back.  Another body
didn’t have a face.  Most of the rest had bloody spots on their uniforms where
shrapnel or bullets had ripped into them.

It was real
quiet in the barn.  No one was firing at us.  The Germans probably figured the
krauts still held the barn and they didn’t want to shoot into it.  Buzz Company
probably thought we were in the barn, so they didn’t shoot into it.  There was
still plenty of ruckus out in the farmyard between the house, the outbuildings,
and Buzz Company to the south.

I was with a hell
of a group of men.  Torgeson, Taft, Butler, and Jones were natural leaders and
very intelligent.  Without even talking, we all started moving.  We pulled the
bodies toward the walls that faced the house and the outbuilding.  It’s grim,
but we stacked the bodies like sandbags.  We knew the planks didn’t provide
enough protection from gunshots.   But we didn’t have to say anything—we just
worked silently, all knowing what the others were doing.

The rest of
the battle was pretty nondescript, if there is such a thing.  Pearson and
Perkins softened up the outbuildings by sniping three krauts.  The remaining
five or so bolted for the house.  We cut down two of them, and Buzz Company got
the rest.  The house fell a few minutes later.

After the
battle, Pearson and Perkins joined us.  We pulled Porter and Dale into the
barn.  We just sat around the bodies.  I felt different this time than with
O’Halloran.  With O’Halloran, it felt like we were ambushed.  I felt like a
victim that time.  And O’Halloran dying really pissed me off.  It pissed off
the whole platoon.

But this time
it was different.  I was sad more than angry.  When I thought about how I’d
talked with Porter earlier that day, I’d cry a little.  “We can do this,” he
had said. 

Then I
thought of Duncan’s comments, that we were all going to die here.  That sat
hard in my belly.  In this one battle alone, we lost two of eight men, with a
third seriously injured.  Three out of eight in one battle.  How many more
battles were we going to face?  The best we could do is just keep fighting. 
Keep moving.  And hope someday we would make it home.

We had a gypsy
in Buzz Company.  For a bunch of young men without a lot of world experience,
that generated a lot of excitement.  You see, back then, gypsies were
mysterious and a little scary.  None of us really knew much about them.  Several
of the guys had heard stories about how they could tell fortunes and make death
curses.  So, we were all pretty nervous around Bo Cooper when we were first
assembled in England.

Cooper had a
darker complexion, but not as dark as Paul Taylor.  In England, he kept to
himself for the first week or so.  One day Big Swede Torgeson was done with a practice
drill in the rain.  Big Swede was from Minnesota.  He was real approachable—he
smiled a lot, and he loved to tell jokes or laugh at them.  We all gave him a
hard time, calling him nicknames like Viking and Norvegian.  He would always
respond with something like “Ya, you betcha!” or “Don’t be jealous—you can’t
all be perfect!”  He was sturdy.  He was bigger and stronger than Kozlowski, but
he didn’t like to scrap like Kozlowski. 

Big Swede was
soaked head to toe, and it was about forty degrees.  So he was freezing.  We
were all just watching the rain from a barn that was part of our practice field,
and we had a fire going.  So Big Swede sat down next to the fire and removed
his wet clothes and shivered.

 “Goddamn!”
he shouted.  “It’s fucking cold out there boys!”

Someone
handed him a cup of coffee and he cupped it in his hands, and moved right up
next to the fire in nothing but his underwear.  Someone threw him a blanket. 
He looked over at Cooper, who was leaning against the barn door, watching the
rain.

 “Hey Cooper,
when’s it gonna get warm again?” he asked.

The whole
group stiffened.  No one had really talked much to Cooper before.

 “How should
I know?” asked Cooper, as he stared off into the distance.

 “You're a
gypsy, aren’t you?  Can’t you predict the future?”

Everyone was
looking at Cooper.  We had all been dying to ask him about gypsy stuff, but
none of us knew how to politely bring it up.  Leave it to Big Swede to just
barge in with it.

 “It doesn’t
work that way,” said Cooper.  Long pause.

Old Big Swede
cocked his head to one side, thinking real hard.  “Well then, how DOES it work?”

Cooper was
frowning as he stared outside.  He looked real defensive, his arms crossed. 
But as he looked over at Big Swede, he couldn’t help cracking a smile when he
saw that big white naked Norwegian sitting there loosely wrapped in a towel,
with his head cocked to one side.  “That’s more from my grandma’s time.  I went
to school just like you guys,” said Cooper.

 “So, you can’t
predict the future?” asked Big Swede.

Cooper
grinned.  “Nah, I can’t do that.  Before you ask, I can’t put curses on people
either.”

 “Son of a
bitch!” shouted Big Swede. “That was going to be my next question—see if you
could put a curse on old Adolf for us.  Or the whole damn German army!”

The whole
group erupted into laughter. 

After that, I
guess we realized that Cooper was just a normal guy, and we weren’t scared that
he was going to put a curse on us or something.  We all started treating him
just like one of the guys, and he took to the group real well.

Right after
our fight at the farmyard, we all put up in a camp.  Cooper was crying. 

 “Cooper, you
hurt?” asked Cap. 

Cooper shook
his head and didn't say anything.  Cap eyed him for a minute, nodded to himself,
and walked off.  I guess Cap could tell he was going to be all right.  We all
just kind of laid low for a while.  I figured if Cooper wanted to talk about
it, he’d come to one of us.  He regained his composure a few hours later.

 “Guys, come
here,” Cooper said, as he stood near a fire.

It was especially
chilly for June, so a lot of guys groaned, but they got out of their bedrolls
and stood around the fire.  It lit up all of our faces in bright yellow.  It
was like black and white, but it was black and yellow.

 “I want to show
you something,” said Cooper.  He grabbed his pack and held up a strap.  The
buckle was twisted and broken.

 “Bullet,”
said Cunningham.

 “That's some
big luck,” said Petey Anderson. 

Cooper
nodded.  He grimaced as he tried to hold back tears. 

 “Am I
missing something?” asked Petey.  “Good luck’s hard to find around here, pal.”

Cooper nodded
again, and reached into his coat.  He pulled out a scarf.  We couldn’t tell in
the firelight, but it was pink, with a lot of white embroidery in fancy
patterns.

 “You guys
remember when Big Swede asked me about fortune telling and curses?” asked
Cooper.

 “I knew it!”
exclaimed Torgeson, pushing himself in closer to Cooper.  “I knew you could do
magic or something.  All gypsies can do that stuff!”

Cooper shook
his head, still fighting back tears.  “No, I can’t do any magic.  But my
grandma made me this before I left home.  She said that it would bring me luck
in combat.  Once.  Then I had to give it away.  And she said it would continue
to give luck once in combat to anyone who owned it.”

 “So why are
you sad?” asked Petey.  “It worked.”

 “I know,”
said Cooper.  “But that means it won’t work any more for me.”

 “Maybe you
could keep carrying it and squeeze out some more luck?” asked Trumbull. 

Cooper shook
his head again.  “No, my grandma said that once you use the luck, you have to
get rid of it, or bad luck will follow.”

You can
imagine the thoughts this triggered in about thirty men, the oldest of which
was twenty years old.  There was an explosion of talk about using the scarf for
treasure and gambling.  Some of the guys laughed at how stupid some of us could
be, believing in nonsense like that.  We stood there in the flickering
firelight for probably half an hour.  At any time, there were probably three or
four conversations going on.  Finally all the conversations died down.

 “So what are
you going to do with it?” someone asked.

 “I want this
to be passed around the platoon.  If you have good luck with it, no matter
what, you need to give it to someone else.  You guys need to promise me that
you will keep passing it on.  If everyone in the platoon uses it, we need to
pass it to another platoon.” 

There was a
pause as we all looked around at each other.

 “Christ,
we’re getting shot at all the time.  We’ll take any help we can get to stay
alive,” said McIntire.  “What is it going to hurt to try it?”

Whether we
believed in the scarf or not, we all nodded. 

Cooper handed
the scarf to Petey.  It wasn’t alphabetical or anything—it was random. 

 “I think
there are two conditions we need to follow,” said Petey. “One:  We don't follow
any specific order—you just pass it to the next guy you want.  And two: you can’t
ask for it.”

 “And three,”
said Morelli, “If you have luck with it, you can’t keep it.  Bad luck for you
might mean bad luck for all of us.”

The mood
turned somber.  We all stood there in that yellow firelight and stared at the scarf,
but no one said anything.  Finally we broke up and returned to our bedrolls.  I
remember thinking that maybe the opposite could happen—good luck for one of us
might mean good luck for all of us.

Well, that scarf
got used up real quick.  Buzz Company was frontline, so we had plenty of
action.  I don’t remember all the details.  I know Petey was caught off guard
ten feet from a kraut, and the German’s weapon misfired.   Petey killed him
before the kraut could fix his weapon.  Over the next two weeks, it passed
hands about every two days.  Each time, the giver would share his story and
pick the next person to carry the scarf.  By then, we all completely believed
in that damned thing.  But there were mixed emotions with it.  The giver would
be happy that the scarf had worked, but sad that it wouldn’t protect him any
more.  Cap didn't say much about it.  He knew we were passing it around, and he
didn’t seem to care one way or the other.  But the scarf was working as I had
hoped.  Every time it brought a little luck to one man, that usually meant it
helped the platoon.  So I didn’t mind that it only worked once per person,
because that meant thirty lucky times for the whole platoon.

Gunderson was
the next guy to get the scarf.  I never much cared for him.  He was from Texas,
and he was an arrogant S.O.B.  Pavelchek passed it to him, and none of us could
believe that he did that.  I don’t think Pavelchek liked Gunderson either, but
he'd just had a bullet glance off his helmet and we think he was a little
punchy.  Anyway, Gunderson carried it for five days with no luck.  I joked with
Petey that even the scarf didn’t like Gunderson.  The next day, we were
crossing a field and we got ambushed by a bunch of Germans.  As we were jumping
over a fence to find cover, a bullet splintered a fence post right next to
Gunderson’s head.  Some of the wooden splinters actually stuck in the side of Gunderson’s
neck.  It was a pretty serious injury, but he'd be dead if the bullet would
have hit him.  He didn’t give the scarf to anyone that day.  That was the first
day we got to the small village with the bridge I mentioned before, when
Chartelli saved the day by taking out a pair of machine guns.

That night in
camp, Petey approached Gunderson.

 “Hey, pretty
lucky break with that fencepost, huh?” asked Petey.

 “Luck?  You
call this luck?” Gunderson tilted his head away from Petey, showing his
bandages.

 “You’d be
dead if it wasn’t for that fencepost.”

 “Nah.  I
wouldn’t have big holes in my neck if it wasn’t for that fencepost.  It was BAD
luck, not good luck.”

 “Come on
man,” said Kozlowski. “The scarf did its job.  You need to pass it on.”

 “Bullshit,” said
Gunderson. “I’ll tell you when it’s worked.”

Morelli spoke
up.  “So what, you gonna hang onto that thing for the whole war?  You remember
what Cooper said about bringing bad luck.  You betta’ hope that thing just
brings YOU bad luck, ’cause if it brings me bad luck when I’m standing next to
you, I’m gonna kick your ass!”

Gunderson
didn’t say anything.  He turned away from the conversation.  But Kozlowski
wasn’t done talking yet.  He grabbed Gunderson by the arm and spun him back
around. 

 “So, I say
you give it up now.  Your good luck is you won’t lose any teeth right now.”  Kozlowski
grabbed Gunderson by the shirt and pulled him close.  But Gunderson jerked away
and said, “Fuck off.  I’ll tell you when I’m done with it.” Then he walked out
of the building.  I can’t believe Kozlowski didn’t chase him.  He just stood
there clenching his teeth and scowling.

That next day
was when we got attacked while we were defending the bridge.  I mentioned what
happened to those of us at the bridge.  But there was a story in the village
too.  It turns out that there were about fifteen krauts that snuck up on the
village as the rest of us were pinned down by machine gun fire.  The Ninth had
taken up positions to defend the bridge, and they weren’t really paying
attention to their flank.  So the krauts got up real close.  One of them
stepped on a twig and alerted Taft.  He called out to everyone just as the
krauts open fired on him.  They killed him instantly.  But it gave the rest of
the guys time to take cover, and a firefight started.

Most of the
company was pinned down, but they could squeeze shots off now and then.  Gunderson
was pinned down behind a hay wagon.  A kraut threw a grenade at him and it
landed about six feet away from him.  Gunderson couldn’t run for cover because
he’d be out in the open.  So he dove for the grenade to throw it back, but his
gear got caught on the cart, and he stumbled.   He was about six inches short
of the grenade, and he scrambled on his belly to reach it.  Just as he picked
it up to throw it, it blew.  He died immediately.

I told you
the rest of that story, about how Chartelli cleared the forest and we were able
to come back and help out.  It’s wrong to say, but none of us felt that bad
about Gunderson dying.  None of us liked him, and we were all pissed off that
he was hanging onto that scarf.  And now we were ALL convinced that the scarf worked,
just like Cooper said it would.  Gunderson had luck and kept it, then he had
really bad luck. 

 “What do we
do with it now?” someone asked.

 “Cooper,
what do we do?” someone called.

Cooper held
the scarf.  It had a rip in it now, and it was stained with blood from more
than one member of the company. 

 “You think
it still works?” someone asked.

Cooper
shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to try, does it?”

So someone
got it, and we kept going.  Sure enough, we continued to have good luck with it
for a few more weeks.  Then we got to a field HQ where a bunch of platoons had
assembled.  We got together and decided that we didn’t have much luck remaining,
since only about six guys hadn’t held the scarf yet.  We figured it was better
to pass it on to a larger group, rather than use it up in the middle of
nowhere, and then we’d have to throw it away.  Or worse, that a kraut would get
it.