My Honor Flight (20 page)

 “Ya, too bad
you couldn’t win one!” said Torgeson with a chuckle.

 “You see,
back then, I was always lookin’ for the quick buck,” said Chartelli, looking
around the group of people, smug in his newfound audience.  “So I created our
very own Olympics, and we had three hundred men compete for just nine medals. 
Well, ten medals.  But it was nine events.  You see, one of the events had two
men—”

 “Good Lord,”
said Pops.  “Sixty-six years later, and you still talk nonstop!”

 “Hey, shut
up, will ya?” Chartelli said playfully, then told everyone the story of the
Olympics, and how Torgeson had won the arm wrestling medal by beating out
Stackhouse. 

Torgeson told
how the platoon decided that he should carry Paul Taylor’s medal.  But when he
tried to give it to Jackson’s family, he couldn’t find anyone in St. Louis that
knew Paul.  He figured maybe his family moved away.  So he just kept it with
the other two.  And he told about how he ended up with the Rock Target medal at
the French Chateau.

Chartelli
looked at Pops.  “So, goomba. Which of us is next?  I don’t think you’re gonna
beat what I brung.”

 “Is that
right?” asked Pops. “Well, probably not.  You probably got Adolf’s mustache in
there.”

He looked at
Dad.  “Can you bring me the tool?”  Dad nodded.

Pops wrapped
gnarled fingers around the felt box and popped it open.  Then he held up
something brown.  It was leather.  Burned in the leather were the letters
DMc
. 
It was his letter to Great-Grandma.

He took a
couple of minutes to describe how McIntire came up with the letter idea, and
how they’d exchanged them in case they got killed.  People were wide-eyed. 
Even though I’d already heard the story, I got a chill when I thought of these
young men, my age, writing letters about their deaths.

 “When we
heard we were heading home, we all gave each others’ letters back.  Harry
Trumbull had mine.  Petey Anderson originally had it, but when he died...” 
Pops voice quivered a bit and he stopped talking.  I looked at the other men. 
They looked down and frowned.   

After a few
seconds, Pops shook his head and sniffled.  “Well, anyway, Harry gave me back
my letter.”

 “Harry was a
good egg,” nodded Chartelli, then he winked.  “But that bastard took a lot of
my poker money!”

All four men laughed,
and then Pops asked Dad to help him out.  First they passed the letter around. 
The stitching had rotted away—it was just two stiff pieces of leather,
sandwiching a pitted square of tin.  The solder was still solid.  Dad pulled
out tinsnips and carefully cut away two sides of the square.  He pried the tin
open, and extracted a yellow square of paper.

 “I wouldn’t
think it would age if it was sealed,” said Dad.

 “No, that’s
what color the paper was when we used it,” said Pops.  “You want to read it out
loud?”

Dad
hesitated.  “Pops, maybe you should read it?”

 “No, I
couldn’t get through it.  You’d see me bawling like a baby.”  Everyone laughed.

 “OK, here
goes,” said Dad.  He cleared his throat.  “
Dearest Deborah.  If you are
reading this, I was killed.  I hope I did the best I could.  I want you to find
a good man and get married, and have a family.  Know that I always loved you,
and more than anything, I want you to be happy.  Love, Doug
.”

Again, the
group got silent.  The men from Buzz Company were deep in thought, silently
nodding to themselves.  After a few minutes, Chartelli stirred.

 “Well, that
sure as hell wasn’t very poetic!” 

 “You think
you did any better?” asked Pops.

 “Well.  Hell
no.  I bet I spelled everything wrong anyway.”

 “How did you
fit a letter in that tiny square anyway, as much as you used to talk?” asked
Stackhouse.

 “What do you
mean
used
to talk?” asked Pops.

 “Yeah,
you’re a real funny guy,” said Chartelli.  “But I’m tellin’ you guys, I got
somethin’ here that will blow your doors off.”

 “Always with
the circus act,” said Torgeson.  “I’m glad some things never changed.”

Chartelli
opened a brown paper bag, and pulled out a leather wallet.  More like a
folder.  Pops sat higher in his wheelchair, peering at it. 

 “That isn’t
what it looks like, is it?” asked Pops.  Pops was leaning forward, stiff and
attentive.  He was making me nervous and a little scared.

 “Prepare to
be amazed!” said Chartelli as he opened the folder, and in a flourish, yanked
out a flash of pink.  He fluffed it up a bit.  It was a square of pink silk
with white embroidery, torn and stained.  Bo Cooper’s magic scarf!  Torgeson,
Stackhouse, and Pops all gasped.

Pops put his
hands to his temples.  “How in the world did you get that back?”

 “That was
easy!” said Chartelli.  “When we put this thing in this courier pack, I added
some paper with it.  One sheet gave the instructions.  Another sheet was for a
list of the people who used the scarf.  And a card included instructions that
when the war was over, this was supposed to be sent to my home address.  I
didn’t want it to just get thrown away.  I was going to send it to Bo Cooper as
a surprise.  Kind of a way of thanking his grandma for us.  But I didn’t get it
back until 1948.  And of course Bo died in Bastogne.  So, I didn’t know what to
do with it.  The damn thing scared the hell out of me, because I didn’t want
that bad luck hitting me.  I crossed my fingers and figured that since I never
used it in combat, and it was for good luck in combat, I was safe with it.”

 “What are
you talking about?” asked one of the relatives.

All four men
started talking about the scarf, taking turns remembering incidents where it
appeared the scarf saved them, and they told about Gunderson and how he broke
the rules and died.  And then they all talked about Stankowski and how Kozlowski
had said that Cooper was the toughest guy in the company.   They laughed and
talked about how skeptical Stankowski had been, but then it tamed him and shut
him up.

 “You told
Pops that combat tamed Stankowski, not the scarf,” I said.

Chartelli
nodded.  “That’s right, sonny.  Your great-grandpappy has one hell of a good
memory for being an old fart like us.”

They pulled
out the list of people and one of the other men’s relatives read off the
names.  I recognized a lot of them from Pops’s stories:  Petey Anderson, Hillbilly
Bert Jackson, John Stankowski, Tony Morelli, Fred Crimmins, Paul Taylor, Tinpan
Jones, Sven Torgeson, Charlie Moore, Tim Robertson, Mike Franklin, Gunderson,
Howie Dale, Vern Fisher.  But there were a lot of names on there I didn’t
recognize.  In fact, a huge number of names.  There were three sheets of paper
in the folder—the original one, and then two more.  Someone counted the names
as they ran them off.  Two hundred and twenty-eight.  The scarf had passed
hands over two hundred times.

 “You think
this thing really has magic?” asked Torgeson as he stroked it.

 “Well, I’d
say two hundred and twenty-eight men thought so.  More than that I’ll bet.  I
think everyone in our platoon believed in it,” said Chartelli.

 “This
thing’s worth at least two stars,” said Torgeson, nodding toward the Wall of
Freedom.

 “Yeah.”  A
few moments of silence as everyone stared at the wall across the memorial.

 “So, now
what?” asked Pops.  “Petey, you got any other surprises for us?  Because I’m
getting awfully tired.”

 “No, Pops,”
chuckled Dad.  “That was it.  Thanks for sharing this day with us.”
There was a moment of awkward silence.  None of us knew how to wrap it up. 
Pops cleared his throat.

 “Well, I
just want to say thank you to my grandson.  And thank you to all of you for
coming here with us.”  He choked back some tears as he talked.  “This has been
one of the finest days in my life.  It reminded me of some great men and
probably the greatest thing I ever did in my life.  That and getting married
and having a great family.”

The veterans
all stood and shook hands, and hugged each other real tight.  They all cried. 
I know what they were thinking.  They would never see each other again.  People
from different families all shook hands and hugged.  For that moment, we were
all one family—the family of Buzz Company.  There wasn’t a dry eye in the
group.

As the
goodbyes were said, someone handed the scarf back to Chartelli.  The families
were starting to separate when Chartelli yelled out.

 “Now, hold
on a minute, I ain’t quite done!  Gather around here!”

We all
turned, and surrounded him. 

 “Always with
the circus act,” said Torgeson through a smiling sob.

 “Hey, Light
Bulb,” called Chartelli.

 “Yeah, Oily,
what is it?” asked Pops.

 “Get that
big young fella over here.  Get that soldier over here,” said Chartelli.

Pops was
standing next to me.  He looked up at me through tears.  Then he looked down
and grabbed my hand, and we walked together forward a couple of steps.

Chartelli
stood in front of me, looking up at me through those thick glasses.

 “So you’re
going to war, eh, son?”

I nodded, but
didn’t say anything.

 “Your great
grandpappy told you a lot of our stories, didn’t he?”

I nodded
again, and looked at Pops.  I put my arm around him and hugged him gently.

 “Well then,
you need to do me a favor,” said Chartelli.  He was talking very loudly.

 “Anything
you want,” I said.

He looked
down, and held up the scarf.  “You take this for me.  You take this with you into
combat.  And you use it.  Then you share it.  You follow the rules.  Can you do
that?”

I nodded.

 “Son, you
take the Buzz Company with you, all right?  You remember us, and you take us
with you.  YOU are Buzz Company now.”

I couldn’t
talk.  I just took the scarf and folder, and nodded as I stared into
Chartelli’s eyes.  He gave me a stern look, his eyebrows scrunched over his
thick glasses.  Then his gaze softened, and he winked.  “Go get ’em, son,” he
whispered.  Then he slapped me on the chest, shook my hand, and walked away.

As we left
the memorial, Pops pulled me to the side.  He grabbed my right hand, and turned
it palm up.  I saw a glint of metal as he put something in my hand and closed
my fingers around it. 

 “Thanks for
being my date today,” he said.

I opened my
hand.  A bright yellow gold coin, worn smooth from years in his pocket.  His
lucky ten-dollar gold piece.

“Pops, I
can’t take this,” I said.

 “Sure you
can, sonny.  I don’t need it any more.  And you are definitely going to need
it.”

I fingered
the coin.  All the words had worn off.  I nodded.

 “I don’t
know how I can thank you.”

 “Sonny, you
already did.  You remember I talked about men having the greatest day of their
lives?  Well, this one is in the top five.”

I nodded
again.  “For me too, Pops.  This was my Honor Flight too.”

We hugged,
and joined the rest of the family.  I held back my tears.  I knew this would be
the last time I would be with this great man.  He died about a year later,
while I was in Afghanistan.  I gave up the scarf during my tour, but I left
instructions that it be returned to me after the war, just like Chartelli.  I
haven’t got it back yet.  I hope it’s working.  And I still carry that
ten-dollar gold piece.

The
End

Thank you for purchasing my debut novel.  I hope
you enjoyed it.  While the story is fresh in your mind, I’d like to ask for a
couple of things from you.

The publishing industry is undergoing a dramatic
transformation.  Thanks to e-readers and easy self-publishing, thousands and
thousands of titles are being released all the time.  For my story to have a
chance of being shared, I need to rely on word of mouth. 

So:

1.
     
If you liked the book,
tell your friends to buy a copy!  This is the single best way to get the word
out.  With so many titles being released, it’s very difficult to be heard above
the traffic.

2.
     
If you liked the book, provide
an online review wherever you purchased the book.  (Or Goodreads.com if you
prefer.  Or even better, both!)

3.
     
I’d love to hear from you
directly!  What was your favorite part?  Least favorite?  What could have been
done better?  Any questions for me?  I can be reached at:

Website: 
www.danmccurrigan.com

Email:
[email protected]

Best regards,

Dan