My Honor Flight Read online

  My Honor Flight

  By Dan McCurrigan

  Copyright © 2012 Dan McCurrigan

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - Chartelli Deserted

  Chapter 2 - The Card Game

  Chapter 3 - Buzz Company Olympics

  Chapter 4 - D-Day

  Chapter 5 - Fight #2

  Chapter 6 - The Lucky Scarf

  Chapter 7 - Fresh Meat

  Chapter 8 - The Sleepwalker

  Chapter 9 - The Rescue

  Chapter 10 - A New Holiday

  Chapter 11 - The Chase

  Chapter 12 - The Church

  Chapter 13 - Liberation

  Chapter 14 - The Chateau

  Chapter 15 - Dissension

  Chapter 16 - A Bad Day

  Chapter 17 - Rage

  Chapter 18 - Bloodbath

  Chapter 19 - The Colonel

  Chapter 20 - The Camp

  Epilogue

  A Letter to the Reader

  Introduction

  Last year, my great-grandfather was invited on a flight to the World War II memorial in Washington D.C. They called it an Honor Flight. A local grocery chain sponsored the trip, and a family member was to escort each invitee. My father thought it would be a good idea if I accompanied my great-grandfather. I would soon be deploying to Afghanistan, and Dad said it might be a way for Pops to share some tips from his time as a soldier.

  I didn't know Pops very well before the trip. He was a nice old guy that made pleasant conversation and talked about the weather a lot. But during that trip, he shared stories from his tour of duty in World War II. I had no idea that such a gentle old man had been through so much.

  These are his stories, as told by him.

  Chapter 1 - Chartelli Deserted

  Whenever you watch movies about the war, they make Europe look cold and colorless and dark. Seems like the studios like to show snow and tanks. And we had plenty of time like that. Totally miserable.

  But in the fall of ’44, my company was in France. It was beautiful! It was early October, and still warm. The leaves had turned, and there was plenty of orange and yellow. I remember thinking that it felt like some Frenchie artist had painted the landscape. It was about that time that my good friend Oily Chartelli went AWOL. In the Army during the war, there wasn’t much worse a guy could do. It was desertion. And Captain Reynolds, our commanding officer, was pissed about it. He pulled me aside and said, “You’re that goddamn Chartelli’s buddy, aren’t ya?”

  I snapped to attention. “Yes sir!” I said. “But I haven’t seen him, sir.”

  He got right up in my face. His breath smelled like stale coffee and cigarettes. I’ll bet his nose was a quarter of an inch from mine. I felt a droplet of spit hit my lip as he chewed me out. “Well,” he said, “if you see him, you tell him that he better keep running. Because I’m going to kill the son of a bitch if I see him again.”

  “No sir! I mean, yes sir!”

  He just squinted at me and shook his head as if I were the village idiot. I chuckled inside as he walked away. How could I talk to Chartelli if he’d run away? But even though Cap didn’t make much sense with his threat, I understood where he was coming from. I’d been in Buzz Company for eight months. The company was assembled in England out of pieces from other companies, and we’d spent the last four months fighting our way across France. We had only each other. And if we weren’t there for each other, then we would all die. No matter how good a friend Oily was, I began to hate him for leaving us. And it was just stupid anyway. No matter how pretty the countryside was, there were krauts everywhere, so he would probably get captured or killed. I thought Oily was smarter than that.

  Our mission was to protect a bridge. There was nothing else in the area—just a tiny unnamed village, with a church and some houses. The bridge was made of wood, not steel. I don’t think it could take much weight. But it crossed a pretty good-sized river. Now, the bridge couldn’t handle tanks, but it could handle cars of German couriers and commanders, and maybe light supply trucks. So our job was to secure that bridge and guard it from the krauts. The river was the enemy line, so it wasn’t hard getting to the bridge, but it would be hard to defend it.

  Our company set up rotating shifts. We had groups on both sides of the bridge, and we would rotate around through four separate foxholes. There were foxholes on either side of the road, at either end of the bridge. No one liked being on the far side of the bridge. If the Germans attacked and we had to fall back, we had a long run back across the bridge, with no cover. There was a field just past the far side of the bridge. It was about seventy-five yards of open space from the bridge to the forest line. But the forest was thick, and we couldn’t see in there.

  Cap was nervous about that forest, so he added another job to the rotation. We called it Shooting Gallery. When it was time for a team to leave the far-side foxholes and come back to our side, they had to walk the perimeter along the forest line. I tell you what. That was the scariest part of the whole rotation. Since we were in teams of four, the perimeter team would scatter out in single file. The idea was that if the krauts were in there and they shot one of us, the other three might have a chance of making it back to the foxhole. And the damn forest was alive with noise. As we startled squirrels and rabbits and birds, they’d jump around in there. Every time a branch moved or a twig rustled, we’d train our guns at it. So we were constantly waving our guns all over. But most of the time we couldn’t see the source of the noise. If there were krauts in there, we wouldn’t be able to see them. It would be real easy for them to pick off all four of us.

  The day after Oily went AWOL, we had only three men in our foxhole team. It was me and Morelli and Paul Taylor from St. Louis. We called Morelli and Chartelli the twins. They weren’t related, but they were both Italians from New York City. They always made fun of my Midwestern accent. I never heard anyone else say that people from Michigan had an accent. Those two jokers could lay the New York lingo on real heavy. All this “bada bing” stuff. And they pulled pranks on everyone. I remember one night in our training camp in England, they caught a rooster and put it in a broom closet. They knew that Edwards was on patrol, and that he was scared of the dark. Well, that rooster was very unhappy, and was rattling around in the cleaning supplies. Poor Edwards was standing outside of the closet, with his gun pointed at the door. Just then Chartelli and Morelli hustled by and asked Edwards how it was going. They walked right up to the closet, saying something about needing a mop. Chartelli opened the door, and that rooster came BOLTING out of the closet, straight at Edwards! He fired about three shots, and actually missed the rooster with all three. Chartelli and Morelli dove for cover. They had no idea he would fire his weapon. They howled in laughter, laying there on the ground. Poor Edwards never heard the end of that. Scared by a chicken.

  So the twins really liked to have a good time. But when there was a fight, they’d protect each other like brothers. And they wouldn't protect just each other, but anyone in Buzz Company. So I liked having Morelli in the foxhole with me. I just wished Oily were there too.

  Paul was a Negro. I never had any trouble with black folks. But back then, you know, that was twenty years before all the civil rights stuff happened. Growing up in Grand Ledge, I’d never seen a colored guy before basic training. The first time I saw a Negro, I couldn’t help but keep stealing glances. I didn’t know how I was supposed to act around them. Boy, was I stupid about them. But that didn't last long. Once you get into battle, I don’t care what color you are, you’re going to fight to stay alive, and keep the guy next to you alive. Paul was a good friend of mine.

  So Paul, Morelli, and me lay in the foxhole, peeking out
and watching the forest line. It was boring as hell. The weather was perfect, probably in the seventies, and we all kept talking about taking the day off. We wanted to sit on the river’s shore. Maybe take a nap. Maybe get a bottle of wine and talk about girls, soak up the sun. Late in the afternoon, it was our turn to move to the far side of the bridge. We hated that shift because the sun was dropping, and the forest was to the west. So we couldn’t see much because we were looking into the sun. I pulled out a cigarette and asked Paul for a light. He reached out with a lighter, and just then one hell of a racket erupted. I saw a bullet hole appear in Paul’s helmet. He dropped.

  Morelli and I dove to the bottom of the foxhole. The gunfire was a constant barrage of thunder—big guns! They had to be machine guns set up in the forest. We looked at each other, then I crawled over to Paul. His eyes were still open, staring at the sky. He was dead. I threw up.

  Morelli and I couldn’t do anything. If we rose even a little above the foxhole, there would be a burst of machine gun fire. And we knew the other, far-side foxhole was in the same situation. We couldn’t look up to get a bead on the enemy. The rest of the company couldn’t help us, because they’d have to cross the bridge in the open. We were trapped.

  We affixed our bayonets. We figured that the krauts were going to lay down cover fire and charge our foxholes to take them over, so they could advance on the bridge and the village. So we had six guys to hold off a force of unknown size.

  After about a half hour, the gunfire subsided. The krauts were conserving their ammunition. But this gave us a chance to yell at the guys in the other foxhole.

  “You see anything?” I yelled.

  “We can’t see shit!” It was Kozlowski. “Every time we raise up to look, they shoot!”

  “Same here! Be ready for a charge!”

  “Why aren’t they throwing grenades at us?” asked Kozlowski.

  “’Cause they’re idiots!” I said. We all laughed, but we were sitting ducks. The Germans had us pinned down in cages. All they had to do was throw some grenades in the foxholes, and they’d have this side of the bridge.

  “We might make it out in the dark,” said Kozlowski.

  “They won’t wait that long. Too risky. They’ll be coming soon,” I said.

  “You think Cap’s going to get us any help?” asked Kozlowski.

  “No. They can’t make it across the bridge.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  We went silent for quite a while.

  “I got an idea,” said Morelli. “I think those assholes are low on ammo. If we prop a helmet up and move it around, maybe we can get ’em to waste shots.”

  I nodded. It was a good idea. I started to unbuckle my helmet.

  “Wait,” said Morelli. He stared at Paul. Then he kind of nodded toward him.

  I paused. That didn’t seem right to me. Paul had just died, and it felt like we should honor his death by leaving him alone. Leave him out of the battle.

  I shook my head. “That ain’t right.”

  “Look, I don’t like it either,” said Morelli. “But we can’t bring Paul back. We need to use everything at our disposal. There’s just the two of us now.”

  I slowly nodded. “I know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  Morelli started belly-crawling over to Paul. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do it,” I said.

  I went over to Paul, and for a minute, I just stared into his eyes. I’d seen plenty of death already, but this was the first close friend I’d lost. I fought off tears, and carefully unbuckled his helmet. I didn’t know what I was going to find inside. I was hoping his whole head didn’t come apart in my hands when I removed the helmet. It didn’t. It was a clean shot, of a smaller caliber than the big machine guns.

  I put his head down on the ground, real gentle. Then I took out a handkerchief, and covered his face. I scooped just a little bit of dirt up and put it on two of the corners, so the wind wouldn’t blow the cloth away. I turned to give the helmet and rifle to Morelli. He was sniffling and wiping tears away.

  “Fucking bastards,” he muttered as he put the helmet on the butt of Paul’s rifle, and slowly raised it up.

  Sure enough, every time he raised the helmet up, we’d hear that big old machine gun bang out a few rounds and the dirt around the foxhole would fly up in little clouds. We raised it up in different spots in the foxhole every couple of minutes for at least an hour.

  Then we heard a new noise, and we froze. There was gunfire on the village side of the bridge! Buzz Company wouldn’t waste ammunition by shooting at the forest—it was out of range. That meant that the Germans were on the village side of the river. We were surrounded. I just lay in the dirt, holding my head in my hands. This was the end. I thought about Debbie back home, and how I’d never see her again. We were going to get married when I got back, and I was going to go to the university in Lansing. I was going to be a teacher. But now I was going to die in this hole, like some kind of animal trapped in its own nest.

  “We’re screwed,” said Morelli.

  “Yeah.”

  “You see any way out of this?” he asked.

  I thought for several minutes. “We could try for the river, try to swim downstream. But we ain’t doing that until we’re the last ones.”

  Morelli nodded, his lips pursed tight. “We won’t be the last ones to die. We’ll probably be the first ones. I just wish we could fight, and not just sit here.”

  I started to reply, “Maybe when it gets dark—”

  We heard a grenade explode, followed a split-second later by another one. We waited. I was listening so hard that I wanted to close my eyes to really focus—I was trying to hear the kraut footsteps as they came. But I couldn’t close my eyes, in case a grenade flew into the foxhole. A couple minutes later, we flinched when the silence was broken by staccato automatic weapon fire from the woods. Morelli and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. The krauts were making their move! We lay in the bottom of the foxhole on our backs, facing the edge of the hole nearest the forest, our bayonets pointed up. We knew they’d be charging the foxholes or throwing in grenades, and this way we could try to either throw the grenades back, or shoot the krauts as they came in.

  There was no more machine gun fire, and the fighting on the other side of the bridge was far enough away that it was really only background noise. With the adrenaline running through me, it was so quiet. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and I had to keep reminding myself to loosen the grip on my rifle. The enemy could be five feet away and we wouldn’t know it. We waited maybe twenty minutes. I’m just guessing on that. It felt like hours, but if that was the case it would have been dark, and the light hadn’t changed much. Then we heard three bursts of rifle fire from the forest.

  About a minute later, we heard someone. “Buzz Company! Hey, goombas! Forest is clear!”

  It was Oily Chartelli’s voice!

  We jumped up, and peered over the edge of the foxhole. Here came old Oily with his rifle on one shoulder, and two German rifles on the other. I had never been so happy to see that guy before. But our happiness was short-lived, because gunfire continued on the other side of the bridge. The New York twins and I ran over to the other foxhole. Kozlowski, Peters, Jones, and Duncan were all OK. Seven of us. That meant that twenty-seven guys from the platoon were on the other side.

  “How do we help them out?” asked one of the guys.

  “Hey, Oily, does that kraut machine gun still work?” I asked.

  He looked at me and smiled. “GUNS, you mean. There was two of ’em. I don’t know. I just threw grenades at them. They might still work.”

  We sent a pair of men to each gun. Me and Morelli went to one, Chartelli and Kozlowski went to the other, which turned out to be busted. The other guys stood guard, in case the Germans beat Buzz Company in the village and advanced over the bridge. Me and Morelli hauled our gun back to the foxhole. That son of a bitch was heavy! Oily and Kozlowski brought ammo boxes. We set
the gun up so that we could shoot from the edge of the foxhole. That way if the Germans returned fire, they’d just kill one of us, and then another could take his place. The machine gun was heavy-caliber, and it had a good range. The trick was going to be finding and taking out Germans, because it was going to be dark real soon.

  We talked for a few minutes, trying to figure out how to get the krauts out in the open. Oily came up with an idea, but it was risky as hell. If we could cross the river and come up on the other side’s banks, we could lay down rifle fire. The krauts might attack. Then we’d let them have it with the big gun.

  We decided that four guys would cross the river, and three would stay on the big gun. The twins, Kozlowski, and I ran about a hundred yards upriver, then swam across. The current carried us down as we swam, and we came out right at the bridge. We crawled up to the bank’s edge and started shooting. Sure enough, we surprised the krauts. They split their fire between us and the village buildings. Once our guys on the machine gun saw the Germans’ gun flashes, they laid down suppression fire into the thicket of trees the krauts used for cover. Man, that was something. That big gun sent splinters and small branches flying, and then the rest of Buzz Company shot the Germans as they tried to get away. It took about fifteen minutes, then all went quiet. After about ten more minutes, we got up and called out. Pretty soon, all of Buzz Company gathered together by the bridge. Well, not all of Buzz Company. We’d lost three men—Paul, Gunderson, and Taft.

  Cap Reynolds walked up to Chartelli, a big frown on his face. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Cap,” I said. “He saved our asses back there.”

  Cap turned his frown toward me. “I want to hear it from him, not you.”

  “Well, remember, I was chief cook and bottle washer yesterday,” Oily began. “We needed water, so last night I took a bucket down to get some at the river, around five o’clock. There was this Jerry on the other side of the river.” Oily referred to Germans as Jerries, like the British. He was the only one in Buzz Company who called them that. To the rest of us, they were krauts.