My Honor Flight (2 page)

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.

 “I thought
about taking him out.  I laid down on the ground and put him in my sights, but
then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, where there’s one Jerry, there are more!’  So
after he traipsed back into the woods, I ran like hell over the bridge and to
the woods.  I thought if I could catch up and spy on him, we’d know exactly
where they were.”

 “So what
happened?” asked Morelli.

 “I’m gettin’
there!” said Oily, all agitated.  “Just calm down and let me tell the story,
will ya?  So I come up to the woods, and I’m lookin’ all over the place for
where that damned Jerry disappeared.  I only had probably thirty rounds of ammo
on me, plus my pistol.  So I was real quiet, crouched in the weeds.  I couldn’t
see shit for a trail.  I don’t believe for a second those Indians in the movies
can track someone.  I was probably ten minutes behind this guy, and there was
no footprints, no bent twigs or grass, nuthin’.   So’s I just started crawling
and looking, right?  I was bein’ really quiet.  And I was getting lower and
lower, and the brush was getting higher and higher.  I’m laying there,
scratching my head.  How in the hell CAN’T I see this guy?  Then, I hear a twig
snap.  But it was behind me!” Chartelli slapped his forehead. 

 “I’m
thinking, ‘Jesus!  I passed him!’  I’m thinking, ‘How in the hell did I walk
right past him?’  But then I hear voices.  There’s TWO krauts, not one.  So I move
under some heavy brush.  Man, that’s some nasty stuff in there.  All pokey. 
Look at this!”  He held up his right hand, which was raw with fresh scratches
from thorny weeds. 

 “I’m still
picking thorns out of my clothes.  So I just laid down there for a long time—that
whole night.  Man, I was getting fed up with it.  They were walking all around
me.  I couldn’t tell how many of them were there.  Maybe ten?  I had some
chocolate on me, but that’s it.  And no water.  So by the end of the night, I was
gettin’ real uncomfortable.”

 “So, I’m
getting pretty pissed off by then, you know?  ’Cause I know old Cap here is
going to be chewing my ass hard for not being in camp.”  Cap shook his head and
smirked.  “So once it got a little bit of daylight, and I got hungrier, I got a
little more brave and started to move around the area.  I had to be real quiet—super
quiet, man.  Because there was Jerries on patrol.  Hell, they were only ten
feet away some of the time.  But as I was crawling around under that brush, I
saw them setting up them two big guns.  I knew you guys were screwed.  I didn’t
know if I should try to weasel out of there, or if I should hunker down and
help from the inside.” 

 “But them
fucking Jerries wouldn't stop moving around!  They were walking by on patrol
ALL THE TIME!  It was really pissing me off, because I was getting hungrier,
and I was about dying of thirst.  I ended up laying around like a rabbit, not
moving.  I figured I’d just have to wait until dark to get out of there.”

 “Just then!”
He put his hands up in fists, and started shaking them. “Them big guns lit up,
and they was like thunder!  They was only about thirty feet apart, and there I
was right between them and a little behind them.  So all the krauts are
watching you boys in the foxholes.  I counted them.  Eleven!  And none of them
guarding the forest.  Well, you boys know what a great baseball player I am,
right?  I had two grenades.  That was it, just two.  So I knew if I was gonna
use them, they had to be perfect.  I pulled the pins on both at the same time,
chucked one left and one right.  With all the noise, they didn’t even hear them
roll in right next to them. I hit the dirt.”  He paused for a minute.

 “Then it got
crazy!  Those grenades went off.  Boom!  One went off.  And before all the
shrapnel sprayed, boom goes the other one!  I didn’t even look—just crawled
back into heavier brush.  It went quiet, and I could hear them Jerries
talking.  I thought it was strange that their voices were all coming from the
same area.  I peeked, and there were five of them all huddled up together real
close.  Real close.  I didn’t even think.  I just pulled my rifle and fired. 
Hell, I bet I only moved the barrel a few inches because they were so close
together, and I emptied my clip.  Then I hit the dirt again.  I don’t
understand why they were standing so close together.  Maybe they thought the
grenades came from you guys?  They sure acted like rookies.  Anyway.  I was
scrambling around in that brush, in case anyone saw me.  It was real quiet
again.  I knew there was at least two more guys, because I saw them take off
running when I gunned down the other five.  They probably thought I had a whole
company with me!  So then it was cat and mouse for about fifteen minutes.  I
ended up catching them behind a tree.  They didn’t even see me coming, so I
knocked those two Jerries off and grabbed their rifles.  I ran back to the machine
guns and counted the bodies, just to make sure I didn’t miss anyone.  Sure
enough, it was eleven.” 

The whole
company burst out talking at the same time.  Everyone was complimenting Oily,
or talking with each other about what he’d done.  Cap walked up and slapped him
hard on the shoulder, nodding at him.  Then he shook his hand.  We all started
taking turns walking up to Oily and shaking his hand, congratulating him and
thanking him.  For the first time ever, he actually got modest, and was even
speechless for a while.  That was it for the celebration, though.  We knew
krauts were in the area, and we’d lost three men.  But at least later on,
Chartelli got a Silver Star for that fight at the bridge.

Most of the
guys were in pretty good spirits, but me and Morelli were pretty sad.  I
couldn’t speak for Morelli, but I had that image in my head of Paul Taylor
laying dead in the foxhole, and I couldn’t shake it.  Death was getting closer
every damn day, and now it was touching people that were close to me.  It felt
like we were on a suicide march.

When I came
home from the war, everyone always asked for war stories.  I used that battle
at the bridge as my main story.  Kind of a canned story that I whipped out at cocktail
parties or barbecues to entertain people.  I didn’t tell all that personal
stuff about Paul.  They just wanted to hear something exciting or heroic, and
it was a great story.  But there was a lot that happened other than that
battle.  To really understand Buzz Company, and how we were more than just a
bunch of guys fighting Germans, you have to know the story from the beginning. 
So I’m going to tell you about our time in Europe from start to finish.

Buzz Company
didn’t just come together
all at once.  We weren’t pre-assigned to the company.  During the Allies’
preparation for the invasion, there was a ton of logistics that had to be
handled.  Remember that a million men were involved with D-Day.  A million
men!  So things shifted around a lot.

We were stationed at a
camp in England.  It was just a farm field with tents and lots of big simple
buildings.  Hundreds of men were there—maybe thousands.  Command gave us
additional training, outfitted us, and assigned us to companies.  They were
working on the battle plans for D-Day, so they were somehow mapping out which
companies went where. 

We in Buzz
Company were called mutts back then—Brass assembled us out of small groups from
several different areas.  This was a lot different than most companies, because
most of the companies were assembled in the States and then they came over
together.  But Buzz Company wasn't like that.  It was just the way the
logistics worked out. 

But in
training camp, we were the red-headed stepchildren.  People called us “the
Leftovers” or “the Liberties.”  I didn’t understand the “Liberties” name.  I
thought maybe it had something to do with having some company members from New
York City.  But Morelli clued us in.  There’s a sign on the Statue of Liberty
that says “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...”  So the other
companies weren’t being complimentary.  They were saying that we were the
rejects from all the other companies.  That really pissed us off. 

We had only been in camp
for a week or so.  I didn’t really know many of the guys.  Me and Petey
Anderson went to basic training together back home, so we stayed pretty close. 
He was from Michigan too—Battle Creek. 
Back
then I was kind of timid.  I didn’t like to talk much, and I usually let other
folks lead.  I just didn’t have any experience at it and didn’t really have any
desire.  Hell, I was only eighteen years old.  I learned a lot just by listening
and watching everything around me.  Petey used to razz me pretty good about
being so quiet. 

Every evening, we had
some downtime in the mess hall after the day’s drills.  We couldn’t leave the
camp, and there wasn’t much to do.  We played cards all the time.  There were lots
of tables, and groups played different games.

I was a really good card
player.  I liked Hearts and Pitch, and I could hold my own at poker.  Petey and
I wandered around the hall, pausing to watch games.  I imagine there were about
a hundred men in the hall, and I recognized five or ten from our platoon. 

We watched a few minutes
at one table because there was some excitement. 
A guy
from Buzz Company named Harry Trumbull was hauling in some serious winnings. 
He was from somewhere back East, but I don’t remember where exactly. I want to
say Maryland.  Trumbull was kind of a strange guy.  He was real quiet—probably
the quietest guy in Buzz Company.  See, I was quiet because of inexperience. 
Trumbull seemed to be turned inward, like he was more interested in his
thoughts than in other people.  He was real small.  Skinny, short, real puny. 
I remember we used to give him a hard time when we had to move on foot.  It
didn’t look possible that such a puny little guy could carry so much gear.  But
he handled it somehow. 

Trumbull was
on a streak with seven-card stud, and you could just see his eyes ticking off
cards as he saw them on the table.  He could really count cards!  There was
some asshole from another company playing at the table.  He was fat and he smoked
cigarettes constantly.  He had a big mouth.  He jawed constantly during the
hands, commenting on other player’s dealt cards, or cussing when he lost.  And
he lost a lot.  He cussed louder and louder as he lost hands. 

We watched
for probably ten minutes while this guy got more and more agitated.  After he'd
lost all of his money, he stood up.

 “You’re a
dirty cheating son of a bitch!” he yelled.

Trumbull didn’t
look up, just slowly gathered the money from the pot. 

By that time,
quite a crowd had gathered around.  There were about ten men standing around
the table.  I couldn’t tell if they were buddies with Fatty, or just curious.  Petey
ducked out for a minute and roused Kozlowski.  Petey was a big guy, stood
probably around six foot two.  I don't know, he might have weighed about two
hundred pounds.  He was easygoing enough, but if there was a scrap, you wanted
Petey with you.  But Kozlowski.  There’s one thing you have to know about Kozlowski. 
He liked to fight more than anyone I ever met.    

The loser had
been yelling for a few minutes, and he was real red-faced, spitting as he
yelled. 

 “Just take
it easy,” said Petey, as he returned to my side. 

 “This son of
a bitch your friend?” Fatty shouted.

 “Yeah, he
is,” replied Petey.  “What’s the problem?”

 “The fucker’s
cheating!”

 “How do you
know that?” asked Petey.

 “Because no
one can win every hand!  No one!  And he just won every single hand since I sat
down!”

A couple of
guys snickered in the crowd.  I'm sure they were thinking the same thing as me—he
must really stink at cards.  I bet there were about twenty guys standing around
the table now.  I didn’t like the way this was going, because I recognized only
one guy in that crowd except for Petey, Kozlowski, and Trumbull. 

Petey
shrugged.  “Maybe you’re just a bad card player,” he said.

Well, that
made the guy REALLY mad.  He kicked his chair back and sent it flying behind
him.  “You got a really big mouth, pal!”  He started around the table toward us,
and Kozlowski met up with him halfway around.  Kozlowski kept closing his hands
into fists, and then opening them again.  I could tell he was getting real
excited because he tilted his head back and forth, cracking his neck joints. 
He was smiling this big goofy grin.  The loser pulled up short, looking at Kozlowski. 
 

 “What the hell
is wrong with you, halfwit?”

Kozlowski
lost his goofy grin.  He clenched his jaws and his fists.  I’d been on the
receiving end of a scrap with Kozlowski a few days before, and I knew what was
coming next.  I looked around the room. Several guys stepped up next to the
loser.  This was shaping up to be a lot more than a fistfight between two men. 

 “This is
going to be trouble,” I whispered to Petey. 

 “Twins are here,”
he whispered back, nodding toward the door.  That made me relax a little bit. 

 “Whaaaaat? 
Yous goombas got nothing better to do than fight each other?” asked Morelli.  “Come
ON!  We got all the fucking krauts in the world to fight.  Save it for them
bastards!”  He waved his hand, like he was waving off a bad thought.

 “Yeah,” replied
Chartelli. “You know, we got a saying back in the Bronx.  Why smash each others’
heads when you can smash someone else’s?”

They just
kept talking as they walked.  It was clever, because it bought them time to get
up to the table in case a scrap broke out.  And, since everyone was watching
their little comedy show, people didn’t really notice another five or six guys
from our platoon walk into the hall a minute later, and join in around the
table.  If the fight dispersed, no one got hurt.  But if it turned ugly, they'd
stalled long enough that they were now in the middle of the crowd, and Buzz
Company had people all around the circle. 

 “So, what’s
the REAL problem here?” asked Chartelli.

 “This son of
a bitch cheats at cards,” said Fatty, pointing at Trumbull.

 “Nah, he’s
just some kind of card genius,” said Chartelli.  “He wins all the time.  I
think I’m paying for a new car for him back home, all by myself.”

 “He doesn’t
win every hand.  No one wins every hand.”

Chartelli’s
eyes got real wide, and he dropped his chin in astonishment.  “You sayin' this
guy beat you at EVERY hand?”

 “Yes!” nodded
the loser.

Morelli’s
eyes got real wide too.  “How many hands?” he asked.

 “Probably
twenty,” said the loser.

Chartelli
slapped his forehead in disbelief. 

Morelli let
out a whoop.  “Jesus, you’re right!  No one can win that many hands.  Unless
they are playing one hell of a dumb son of a bitch!”

About half of
the room erupted into laughter.  The rest cautiously eyed each other.  Several
guys used the laughter as an excuse to turn and walk away. 

But the twins’
cracks were more than the loser could handle.  His head shook and his face got
all bright red.  It looked like he was holding his breath, trying to keep it
all inside.  He looked around the table and made eye contact with three or four
guys.  They must have been in his platoon, because I watched them nod at him as
he looked at each of them.  He looked at the twins, then looked back at Kozlowski,
who was just itching to get started.  Then he looked at Petey, who stood a good
four inches taller than him.  Then he looked at me, and then Trumbull.  He was
really frustrated.  I imagine he was trying to figure out if he and his boys
could kick our asses.

Trumbull's squeaky
chair broke the silence as he stood up.  He cleared his throat, and everyone
turned to watch him.  He looked like one of those bankers you see in old Westerns—a
puny little guy with glasses.  He looked up over his glasses, making brief eye
contact with the loser.  “Could you empty your pockets?  It appears some cards
are missing.”

Have you ever
seen a tire spring a fast leak?  One of those times where it's not instant, but
over the course of a few seconds it goes flat?  This guy was the tire.  All his
bluster disappeared instantly, and his eyes widened a little bit in surprise. 
Then he tried to cover it up by sticking out his chin and sneering.

 “I ain’t
never been so offended in my life!”  His voice was much quieter now, and there
was just a little bit of tremble in it.  His eyes panned the room.  “First I’m
cheated, and then I'm accused of cheating?”

 “Oh, I see,
I see!” Chartelli nodded vigorously. 

 “Yeah, me
too!” said Morelli.  “Yeah, I get it, man.  That’s just offensive!”

There was a
really long pause.  It felt like a couple of minutes.  No one said anything,
and the silence became real uncomfortable.  Fatty just stared at Trumbull, his
lips pursed tight and his head shaking.  Trumbull stared back, unblinking. 
Finally, the loser snapped out of it, and turned away from Kozlowski, toward
the door. 

 “Well!”  he
said.  “I apologize to you, pal.  I know that no good American here would cheat
at cards.  I just was a sore loser, and I’m sorry to have raised a stink about
it.”

We looked
back at forth at each other, trying to decide what to do.  Do we make the guy
empty his pockets or let him off the hook?  After a few seconds, all of our
eyes fell on Trumbull.  He looked around the room at us and then just barely
shook his head.  The loser, his nose high in the air, nodded slightly as he
passed the twins and left the tent.  We all relaxed, and the crowd broke up.  We
gathered around Trumbull.

 “So was he
cheatin’?” asked Kozlowski.

 “King of
diamonds has been missing for about the last six rounds.  King of clubs
disappeared two rounds ago.  I haven’t seen the ace of hearts at all.”

 “Why didn’t
you call him on it during the game?” I asked.

Trumbull
looked up at me and flashed a mischievous look.  “I figured it was a good
handicap.  I wanted to beat him even though he had a pair of kings in his pocket. 
He really IS a lousy card player.”

 “So did he
play the kings on the last round?” asked Kozlowski.

 “Yes.  He
had two pair, kings and sevens,” said Trumbull.

 “What did
you have?” asked Kozlowski.

 “Full
house.  Threes over... kings.”  He winked at us.

We all
laughed about that one for days.