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 protect
ion 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.
Chapter 6 - The Lucky Scarf
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.
My Honor Flight Page 6