My Honor Flight

by McCurrigan, Dan

  I remember a few days after that walking along with Chartelli, and I said how I was impressed how he came up with the idea to tame Stankowski.

  “Nah,” Chartelli shook his head. “It wasn’t the scarf. Didn’t you notice, he tamed down right after that scrap with the supply convoy? You see, he was green when we met him. Green, man. He’d never been in battle. Never had to kill someone, never been shot at. Haven’t you noticed? All the piss and vinegar we all had back in England—it’s gone. Nobody here is pushy or arrogant. Hell, I figured Kozlowski would die in a fistfight somewhere. Look at him now. We’re all just trying to get the job done and go home. I figured if I could just get that asshole to stay quiet until he got into one battle, combat would tame him faster than anything.”

  Chartelli had a big mouth and a sense of humor. But he was a smart son of a gun. He really knew how people work.

  Chapter 8 - The Sleepwalker

  Jimmy Monahan was a kid from Philadelphia. We called him Leprechaun, because he had red hair and a bright red beard when he didn’t shave. He was a solid GI. But he had problems with sleeping. We called it sleepwalking, but it was a hell of a lot more than that. He would yell and scream at night, just in a terrible panic. When we would wake him up, he wouldn’t remember anything about it. Then he’d go back to bed and go right to sleep. Of course, by then we were all wide awake, because he’d scared us half to death.

  This happened more often since we reached France. He said that his nightmares were always worse when he was stressed. Being in a foreign country and being shot at by krauts all the time will make you stressed. So, we saw it almost every night. They weren’t nightmares like I had, where I was falling or krauts were attacking us. Jimmy would say some really crazy things. Sometimes something would be crawling on him, or he’d yell some gibberish that none of us could understand. The Company gave him a hard time about it. Most days at breakfast, we’d share the stories from the night before. Jimmy took it OK. We got to the point where he’d just shake his head and laugh about it. There was nothing else he could do.

  That was all fine and dandy until we got a little further into France. There were nights when we would be camped out right on top of the enemy. You can imagine what would happen if someone let out a big scream in the middle of a quiet night, alerting the Germans to our location.

  We came up with a solution. We figured out that he only had his episodes in the first hour of sleep. So we’d have two guys sit next to him for an hour after he fell asleep. If Jimmy started moving around or making noise, they would wake him up. Of course everyone had their own ways of waking Jimmy up. Kozlowski seemed to enjoy it the most, because he’d punch Jimmy hard in the gut. I thought that was really cruel, since Jimmy wasn’t awake.

  Our approach worked really well for the first few days. In fact, when we would interrupt Jimmy’s dreams, he would thank us because he could remember what he was dreaming. He told us he dreamed about spiders crawling on him, or someone holding him down, or someone trying to kill him. Our system worked great for three or four nights. But then Jimmy had one of his more physical episodes. He jumped up, screaming immediately, with no warning. I swear to God he jumped ten feet from a sleeping position to a full standing position, staring out into the darkness screaming his head off. We all bolted up to a sitting position.

  “Shut him the hell up,” growled Cap Reynolds. Cap had a pistol in his hand and was moving toward the commotion. He looked out in the darkness, trying to see if any krauts heard.

  “Jimmy, shut up, man!” Robertson said in a hoarse whisper, grabbing Jimmy by the shoulder.

  “Them krauts gonna hear you!”

  Jimmy jerked away and started to yell something. Robertson popped Jimmy with a hard right cross on the jaw. Jimmy’s head snapped to the side and came right back. He looked at Robertson with a furrowed brow.

  “Why’d you do that for, Tim?”

  “Sorry, Jimmy, you were yelling pretty good,” whispered Robertson.

  Jimmy nodded, turned, and got back in his bedroll. He rolled over and was instantly asleep.

  “He wasn’t awake?” someone asked.

  Robertson shook his head. “I thought he was, but I don’t know.”

  The next morning, Jimmy complained at breakfast about his face hurting. We all just shook our heads. He didn’t remember a thing.

  Cap Reynolds shook his head. “If we don’t stop it, Jimmy, we’re going to have to get you out of the Company.”

  No one wanted to leave Buzz Company. I suppose that sounds strange. None of us wanted to be on the frontline in a war. But since we were there, we wanted to be the best Company there was. We were Buzz Company! We got the job done, and we were proud of our results. We never bragged about anything—we just always made it a point to do what we were ordered, and do it well. If someone had to leave Buzz Company, that probably meant they couldn’t cut the mustard. And we knew we all could cut the mustard.

  So the next night, I was the lucky bastard who had Monahan watch detail, with Franklin. Franklin was from a town near Columbus, Ohio. We got along real good because we were both Midwesterners. So me and Franklin were just sitting there, waiting for the hour to pass so we could go to bed. Suddenly Jimmy rolled over onto his belly, laid there bolt-straight, and stared off into the distance.

  “Jimmy!” both Franklin and I whispered. “Wake up!”

  “Shut the hell up!” he whispered back. “There are krauts out there!”

  “No shit!” said Franklin. “You think we’re here on fuckin’ vacation?”

  “Shut up!” whispered Jimmy. “Get me my gun!”

  I eyed Franklin. Jimmy wasn’t allowed to carry firearms at night, because we didn’t want him shooting anyone he thought was a giant spider or something. I looked at Franklin as if to say, “Do you think he’s really awake?”

  Franklin knew what I was thinking. “Where are we, Jimmy?” he asked.

  “We’re in the fucking country and we’re about to get shot by fucking krauts!” He was really getting agitated. “If I can’t have a gun, YOU shoot them! But stay down!”

  I crouched down. Jimmy sure sounded awake.

  “Where are they, Jimmy?” I asked. “Point at ’em.”

  “Right THERE.” He stabbed his finger toward a pasture, just over a wooden rail fence.

  “OK, just shut up so we can listen,” I said.

  We all stayed motionless, and I just barely heard a rustling in the nearby field. It was a warm summer night. Really humid, I remember. Mosquitoes were biting. There was heavy cloud cover, so we couldn’t see very well. It felt like it might rain. I was straining to filter out the sounds of insects and frogs. Then I heard that rustling again. Someone really was in the field.

  I sighed and looked at Franklin. I tilted my head toward the noise, indicating I thought we should go check it out. He nodded. We both got down on our bellies and crawled under the railing of the fence. We made a huge mistake right there. Not only did we leave Jimmy alone, we didn’t wake anyone up to cover for us. We lay there for a few minutes in the weeds, listening. There was definitely someone there—they would move just a little bit every couple of minutes. We couldn’t tell if they were moving closer or passing the camp.

  Franklin moved next to me. “We need backup,” he whispered. I nodded, but I’m sure he didn’t see it.

  “I’ll head back to the camp,” I said. Then I slowly crawled backwards through weeds and the fence toward the camp. I reached Petey and shook him awake.

  “Gather the Company real quiet. We got krauts on us but they don’t know we are here.”

  “OK,” he whispered. He was real raspy, like he was panicked.

  “Franklin’s in the field. I’m going back to help,” I said. I pointed to our entry point to the field. “Watch where I go in. Don’t shoot me and Franklin.”

  “OK,” whispered Petey again, still raspy.

  I crawled back, and climbed into the field at the fence line again. If Franklin had moved, we could end up shooting e
ach other!

  I got to our original spot, and Franklin was gone. I didn’t know what to do. If I moved, he might think I was a kraut and shoot me. If he moved, the same could happen to him. I pondered on this for a few minutes, not moving. Finally I decided I needed to call him. I figured Buzz Company was loaded up in camp, so they were ready for a fight.

  “Franklin?” I called out in the quietest whisper I could muster.

  Nothing.

  “Franklin?” I whispered a little louder. Something rustled to my left. It startled me because it was much louder than I expected. I wheeled my rifle around to point it in the direction of the noise, but before I could turn it all the way, it smacked into something hard.

  “Goddamn!” whispered Franklin. I’d hit him in the face with the barrel of my rifle. “I’m right fucking here!”

  “Where are the krauts?” I asked.

  I felt Franklin’s hand reach my shoulder, then my ear. He pulled my head closer to him. “Maybe thirty feet, straight ahead. What should we do?” Something dripped on my cheek, right below my ear. He was bleeding from getting hit in the face.

  “Platoon’s awake. They know we are in here. They got flashlights. If we fire a shot, they’ll shine over here.”

  “Yeah, but the krauts will see our guns flash.”

  “How about we just sit and wait?”

  “Sounds better,” whispered Franklin. We went quiet.

  But about a minute later, the rustling started up, and it wasn’t just a little movement. It was constant. The krauts were on the move, and right toward us!

  We were laying on our bellies in the field, in total darkness. The rustling sounded like thunder! And we could tell it was getting closer. We aimed our weapons toward the noise.

  “Fire!” yelled Franklin.

  We both started shooting, spraying rifle fire left, center and right. When the clips emptied, we pulled our sidearms and kept shooting. A couple of flashlights came on in the camp, and they pointed them over our heads. At least we could see a little bit into the field. No one was standing there. We stopped shooting. I was panting hard from the adrenaline, and I held my breath so I could hear any telltale rustling. But my pulse was loud in my ears and I couldn’t hear anything. I exhaled and tried to breathe quickly to recover my wind.

  “Mackinack? Franklin? You boys OK?” called Cap Reynolds.

  We didn’t know if we should answer, in case there were krauts lying down like us. I fired the last two rounds in my pistol into the dark plants in the field, and we crawled out backwards toward camp.

  Everyone in the company was in defensive positions. We belly-crawled to Cap.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” I said. “In the weeds, it’s completely dark.”

  “We’ll wait until daylight and then attack the field. You two have seen enough of the field tonight—take perimeter patrol in the back.”

  No one got to sleep that night. The rest of the night was quiet. At dawn, Cap assembled us to take the field. We entered the field in three groups of four, and the rest of the company spread out along both sides of the perimeter. All of a sudden McIntire called out.

  “Clear!” He stood up in the field.

  “What the hell are you doing?” called Cap. “Field’s not clear until you cover it all!”

  McIntire looked back at Cap and casually saluted him. “Yes sir! But we got the bad guy here, sir. He ain’t going nowhere!”

  Morelli was in McIntire’s group—of course. He slung his rifle on his shoulder, the barrel facing the ground. He was chewing on a piece of long grass stem. “He’s right Cap, we’re clear. Hey Mackinack, you and Franklin peppered this guy!”

  We slowly stood up, looking around the rest of the field. “How do you know we’re clear?” I asked.

  “Who saw this guy?” asked Morelli.

  “Monahan,” Franklin said.

  McIntire nodded. “Well, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?” I asked.

  “Look for yourself,” said Morelli, gesturing to the ground. “We had to wake Monahan up last night in all the excitement. He didn’t see shit last night.”

  We looked down to find a dead cow.

  “Well, I give you credit for good shootin,’” said Morelli. “But goddamn. We coulda had STEAK today.”

  “Or milk this morning.” McIntire pointed at the udder.

  “Damn boys,” said Morelli. “You couldn’t even shoot a BOY cow?”

  We’d been attacked by a milk cow. Franklin and I both cussed and glared over at Monahan, who was standing at the perimeter, blinking innocently. McIntire and Morelli were cackling away, and I know I was blushing.

  “The great Buzz Company cow killers!” called out Chartelli.

  “No cow breaches our perimeter, not when you got the Midwestern dream team on the scene!” yelled Morelli.

  “But you know what?” yelled McIntire to everyone. “We coulda had us STEAK!”

  The rest of the platoon was already tending to our camp, preparing for breakfast. There was a lot of debate about how long a cow could be dead before it wasn’t edible anymore. Franklin and I walked up to Cap. We were both looking down, sure we were going to get chewed.

  Cap was standing with his arms crossed, looking at the field.

  “You boys got something to say?”

  “Cap,” said Franklin. “We swear to God that Jimmy was acting like he was awake!”

  I nodded. “We asked him questions and he answered. His eyes were open. He didn’t talk about lizards or anything. He looked awake.”

  Cap looked us over for a minute, then nodded. “Yeah, I know. You handled it correctly. No one is out at night in this area right now, unless it’s krauts. We’ll need to change how we handle Jimmy at night.”

  In the end, we decided the cow was probably still edible, but we couldn’t risk the smell of a barbecue this close to the enemy, so we had to leave it in the field. That seemed to make the whole incident even worse, because we had all the meat we could eat right there, and we couldn’t have any.

  A couple of days later we reached a field HQ. Jimmy was transferred out, sent to a supply outfit away from the frontlines. It was emotional for all of us, because no one had left Buzz Company before unless they were injured or dead. Jimmy cried as we left. He didn’t want to be left behind. He said he wanted to be there to finish what we started.

  Chapter 9 - The Rescue

  We were on a patrol out in the country, north of a city called Flers, when we heard a woman scream. This was a new experience for us. Up until that time, we had only seen combat and re-supplies. No civilians. They hunkered down whenever we were around.

  We were walking along a dirt road. Krauts were on the move back to the East, and we were assigned to flush out any German camps. The road in that area was tree-lined, and we saw a lane to the right. Cap sent Pavelchek and Crimmins into the trees to see what was going on. I always liked Crimmins. He was from California, and he had a real dry sense of humor. He was easy to be with, because he never got too agitated or anything. But this time, he and Pavelchek came back real excited.

  “Krauts! And they’re holding a family at gunpoint in front of their house!”

  “How many?” asked Cap.

  “Two holding the family. Three walked into the house.”

  “Only five?”

  “That’s all we saw,” said Crimmins, shrugging.

  “Hmm. Five seems mighty light to me, boys. You sure there aren’t more in the house, or in the trees?” Cap leaned back, looking down the road in both directions.

  “Could be, Cap, but we only saw the five,” said Pavelchek.

  Cap looked around at us. “Bead up! Five pairs of shooters, five callers. Shooters: Anderson and Cooper, Kozlowski and McIntire, Pavelchek and Crimmins, Mackinack and Gunderson, Trumbull and Peters. Callers: Chartelli, Morelli, Torgeson, Butler, and Moore. Everyone else, guard our flanks to make sure we don’t have any visitors from the sides.”

  C
ap had spent a lot of time training us on a technique he called Beading Up. I think he invented it, because I never heard of anyone else using it. It was a useful technique when we could ambush the enemy. Depending on the number of enemies, anywhere from one to five groups would be assigned a target. That’s where the term “Bead up” came from. We would line up our gun-sight beads on the target. Fewer enemies, then more shooters per target. Then there would be a “caller” for each group of shooters. The caller would watch the commanding officer and relay commands to the shooters. The commanding officer would use hand signals to tell the callers to “wait” (raised hand, open palm), “get ready” (raised hand in a fist), or “fire” (throw fist to the ground). He could also signal “abort” (like cutting his throat with his thumb), or “fall back” (raise both hands in a beckoning motion).

  “Beading up” worked great in places where we had to be silent, because the callers would watch Cap, and then whisper the commands to his shooters. If the shooters saw something that required a change in the plan, they would call out “shot” (meaning they had a shot and wanted to take it), “help” (need more shooters), or “fall back” (meaning we were going to be overrun). The caller would give a hand signal back to the commander, who could react accordingly.

  As long as we maintained line-of-sight between the callers and Cap, we could line up a pretty good set of guns and have everyone shoot at the same time. We’d never used the technique in combat before, but we’d practiced it a hundred times back in England.

  “Pavelchek, how long is the tree line?” asked Cap.

  “Twenty, thirty yards, easy,” said Pavelchek. “Lots of cover. Won’t be a problem at all.”

  “All right. Shooters, split up about four yards apart and get into position.”

  We crouched and worked our way through the brush, which was thick with weeds and brambles. It was a pain in the ass! Our uniforms snagged on thorns and we had to yank away from the bushes without making any noise. Gunderson and I found a decent spot where we could rest on one knee in the brush. I looked to the left, and saw the five callers talking with Cap. Then Butler made his way to us.