“OK, gentlemen, our target will be the second kraut out of the house. Number two. Get it?”
We both nodded. I looked to the right and saw the remaining callers talking to their shooters, and then I glanced back at Cap. His eyes were fixed on the clearing in front of us. His right arm was bent at the elbow and his open palm faced everyone. I rested my elbow on one knee, and aimed my rifle at the house’s door. Then I shifted my gaze to the scene in front of us.
There was a pretty woman standing in front of the house, clutching two kids. A boy and a girl, both probably somewhere between six and ten years old. A man was on his knees a few yards away from them with his arms raised. The husband.
The krauts were having a real good time. One had a rifle trained on the man’s face from about three feet away. The other grabbed the woman by the shoulder and was talking to her in German. The krauts were both laughing and talking to each other in German.
Then the one kraut grabbed the woman by the back of the neck, and pulled her to him. He kissed her hard even though she struggled. After a long kiss, he let go of her and she pushed away with both hands, spitting and cursing in French. The Germans laughed even more.
I was furious! I’d been through plenty of combat by then and knew what to expect. But this was a civilian, and a woman. She should have been off limits, and it pissed me off.
“Shot,” Gunderson and I said in unison.
“Wait,” replied Butler. The kisser wasn’t our target, but I really wanted to shoot him. A few minutes later, the kisser beckoned to the woman again, and she pushed her children behind her to protect them. She didn’t move. She just looked down at the ground. He walked up to her and grabbed the neckline of her dress and yanked on it. Her dress ripped open, exposing her undergarments.
“Shot!” I called again. So did Gunderson. I heard Trumbull to my left call “shot” as well.
“Wait!” responded Butler. His eyes were on Cap, so he didn’t know what was going on. I kept my gun sight right on the kisser’s throat. I figured if I missed up or down, he’d be dead. I was a pretty decent shot. I knew Gunderson would take the chest shot, because he wasn’t as accurate as me.
Gunderson turned his head to Butler. “Let us take the goddamn shot, and we’ll take our target too!”
Butler hissed through clenched teeth. “You know the drill. Now shut your fucking mouth, and wait for the command!”
The woman had stepped away and held the pieces of her dress together with one hand. I give her credit. She wasn’t timid and sorrowful. She was full of vinegar! She was shaking her other fist at the kisser, and spitting at him, and saying something in French that I’m pretty sure meant he better not do anything else. The kisser let out a big raucous laugh and took another step toward her, but just then the three Germans in the house stepped out.
I put my sight on the second kraut as he stepped out of the house. “Shot!” Gunderson and I both whispered.
“Wait,” replied Butler. He was calmer now.
The Germans talked for a while. The three from the house had bags on their shoulders. Stolen food and valuables. After a few minutes of conversation, the three Germans from the house started to walk away. The kraut guarding the husband started walking away backward, with his gun still trained on the husband. The kisser looked at the woman, said something in German, and then in one smooth movement, pulled his pistol and shot the little boy. The boy spun around from the impact and dropped.
We were stunned! “Shot!” I called. I had Number Two’s head in my sights, and I wanted to take the shot and then turn to the kisser. I wanted to kill that monster.
“Wait!” replied Butler.
I badly wanted to say “Son of a bitch! What are we waiting for?” But I couldn’t take my sight off of my target. I wondered what Cap was looking at. What was he waiting for? I started counting Number Two’s steps. Five. Ten. Twelve.
“Ready!” called Butler.
“Thank Christ!” I thought, and matched my rifle to Number Two’s cadence.
“Fire!”
Gunderson and I shot in unison, and Number Two dropped immediately. We fired twice more on his body. Then I wheeled my gun around, looking for the kisser. He was motionless on the ground. I was frustrated. I wanted to deliver justice.
“Wait!” called Butler.
We ceased fire and panned our sights over the scene, looking for movement.
Cap called out, “Left flanking team, take the house!”
Six guys spilled out from the tree line and charged the house. The woman cradled the boy’s head in her lap. She wailed and spoke in French. The husband was on his knees next to his wife, and held his daughter, who was crying into his shoulder.
The flanking team came out of the house. “All clear in the house!” someone called.
“Check the krauts!” called Cap.
The flanking team split up and each walked toward a German. Robertson walked to the family and knelt next to them, examining the boy.
I saw movement in the corner of my eye. The kisser was alive! Just as Franklin got to him, he raised a pistol, and shot Franklin point-blank in the chest. Franklin dropped immediately.
The flanking team all turned their weapons on the kisser and fired. There were a half dozen shots from us shooters in the trees. I was one of the shooters. The body shook from the impacts of all the shots.
“Shooters, secure the clearing!” yelled Cap. He was mad as hell! He charged out of the tree line and ran straight to Franklin. The rest of the flanking team was already there. Franklin was dead.
The boy, however, was alive! He’d taken a round in the shoulder. He would live. After we had walked the perimeter, we came back to Franklin. Buzz Company was standing in a circle around the body, Cap, Kozlowski, and McIntire.
“What the fuck happened here?” bellowed Cap. His normal calm voice was gone, and veins bulged from his neck and forehead. He was really red!
Kozlowski and McIntire looked at each other, then back at Cap. “We wanted to teach this asshole a lesson. We shot him in the legs so we could take him prisoner and—”
“Teach him a lesson?” shouted Cap as he paced in front of the two men. “So how did that lesson work for him? How did that work for Franklin?” Cap pointed at Franklin’s body. Then he got right in Kozlowski’s face. “What do you think, you dumb son of a bitch? Do you think Franklin enjoyed that lesson? Do you think that kraut learned anything?”
Kozlowski was visibly shaking. Tears were streaming down his eyes. He held his temples with his fingertips. McIntire was crying, too—actually bawling.
“Goddamn,” said Cap, turning away and kicking at the dirt. “Goddamn.”
There was a long silence. Maybe five minutes. Cap paced back and forth, staring at the ground. Robertson and Torgeson worked on the boy, but the rest of us stood in that circle, watching Cap, Kozlowski, and McIntire. It was real awkward. We didn’t know if we should be tending to Franklin’s body or waiting for more orders.
Cap looked up at Kozlowski and McIntire again. His eyes were misty. That was a shock, because I’d never seen Cap get emotional. But his voice didn’t crack or anything. His voice was back to that normal calm, deep tone.
“You men disobeyed direct orders. As a result of that, you caused one of my men to be killed.”
“God DAMN it,” he said. He paused again, then looked around at all of us in the circle. “This ain’t no game, boys. This ain’t no school where we are teaching krauts lessons. We are here to kill the enemy before they kill us. It’s as simple as that. If you think you are going to be some kind of hero, tell me now, so I can get your ass out of my company!”
No one said anything. I looked down at the ground. I was pretty tight with Franklin and I was starting to mist up myself.
Cap bent over and pulled the letter out of Franklin’s coat. “This is Brady’s letter. Who’s got Franklin’s?”
Peters stepped forward, holding Franklin’s leather square. Cap waved him forward. “Trade me.”
> Cap exchanged Brady’s letter for Franklin’s, and then walked up to Kozlowski. He slapped the letter hard in Kozlowski’s chest. “Take this letter.”
Kozlowski raised a trembling hand and pulled the letter from Cap’s hand.
“You pull this square out every day and look at it until we mail it. And you remember how YOU killed Mike Franklin here today! You remember that for your whole life!” Cap said. He looked at McIntire. “By the time we reach our next Field HQ, I’ll decide if you two will be court-martialed and discharged. Meanwhile, you two are responsible for getting Franklin back to the outpost so he can be sent home. Everyone gather up, let’s head out.”
We were all really surprised that Kozlowski and McIntire didn’t get discharged or court-martialed. We never heard details about it, and neither of them talked about it. But Franklin’s death stained us. It was our platoon’s first death that could have been easily avoided. We would talk about how from now on, we take the shot, and we shoot to kill. No hesitation, no thinking. Kill or be killed.
I mentioned that Kozlowski used to love to scrap and he learned his lesson during our time in Europe. He lost his appetite for scrapping that day. He’d still fight with people, but from that day on, he wouldn’t fight unless he was provoked. He was a hell of a lot less cocky after that. We all were.
Chapter 10 - A New Holiday
We were working our way through some heavy woods in central France. Not as tight as those damned hedgerows. But it was a forest with few roads. The weather had finally broken after weeks of clouds and rain, and it was pretty comfortable in the dappled shade of the forest. We were pushing through undergrowth. I hated this area, because dead wood on the ground crackled with every step and we couldn’t avoid it. We might as well have had seventy-six trombones. Given how we were announcing ourselves, we were extra sharp. We’d take a couple of steps, stop and listen. We didn’t talk about it, but we quickly learned to step in unison, because otherwise we’d just hear each other snapping twigs constantly as we walked. All twenty-five of us would take three steps and stop, listen. Take three steps. You get the idea.
We had trained our ears to this pattern, listening for the tiniest noise other than our own walking. So we were stunned when the world exploded in front of us. A massive roar came through the trees. A wave of sound shuddered in our chests. We all dove into the underbrush. I thought for sure we were being bombed, but I hadn’t heard any planes. Above us, the sky brightened, and more light filtered through the tree canopies. But it wasn’t light from the sun. It looked more like fire.
We huddled up really close—all of us sitting or laying in the underbrush. Cap was up on one knee, looking in the direction of the blast.
“What the hell was that, Cap?” asked Charlie Moore.
Cap didn’t answer. He just shook his head and scanned the forest for several minutes. Then he looked down at us.
“Well, I don’t think that was meant for us. I don’t think they know we’re here.”
“Krauts?” asked someone.
“I’m sure,” said Cap. “And they are real close.” He looked around at the ground, shaking his head as he grabbed a stick of dead wood, snapping it in his hand. “The problem’s going to be getting anywhere near them without announcing ourselves.”
“Can we call in for help?” someone asked.
Cap nodded. “First we have to get a look at what we’re dealing with here. And it’s got to be quiet. So I need a single volunteer who can be damn quiet.”
A half dozen hands went up. Cap picked Clyde Thrailkill. He was a good egg from Maryland. Family was in the fishing business. Clyde slung his rifle over his head, and then he started walking through the forest. He looked like he was walking through a mine field—real slow, carefully placing each foot. After watching a couple of minutes, we got bored, so we all lay down on the ground and just tried to relax. Cap stood next to a tree, watching in Thrailkill’s direction.
About a half hour later, we heard a big ruckus in the forest. Twigs cracked constantly—something was coming right at us! We all jumped up to one knee and trained our rifles on the noise. Pretty soon we saw Thrailkill thrashing at branches as he charged through the trees. He saw us and adjusted his path to meet up with us.
He stood for a few seconds with his hands on his knees, panting hard. His eyes were real big.
“What is it, son?” asked Cap.
“Rockets!” said Thrailkill as he panted. “BIG ones! Biggest things I ever saw! Big as trucks!”
Big as trucks? We all looked at each other. Some didn’t believe it. Some looked really scared. Their eyes got big as well.
“How far?” asked Cap. He didn’t seem to be scared.
“Maybe two hundred yards ahead, there’s a bluff. It drops about twenty feet to a road below. On the other side of the road, there’s a big clearing. There’s about a dozen trucks, and at least four of them have those big rockets on them. And about a hundred goddamn krauts.”
Cap closed his eyes and sighed. “Goddamn it,” he whispered.
We all stood there watching him, waiting for some great idea. After a few minutes, he looked around at us.
“We can’t take them out. We don’t have the numbers or the firepower. They’ll wipe us out... I don’t have any ideas, men. Let’s radio it in, see what HQ can do for us.”
It took a few minutes, but it turned out that HQ was very interested in those rocket trucks. They told us to do whatever we could to keep them from moving out. They were going to send a plane overhead to check them out, and then decide if they wanted to bomb them or try to capture them. When Cap asked if that meant letting them fire the rockets, they said yes. So, we were going to watch them fire those things at allies, and not be able to do anything about it.
We moved up to the edge of the bluff. Cap wanted a good look so he could figure out how to react if they finished launching before HQ gave him more direction. When we got there, the clearing was as busy as a beehive. Krauts were scrambling around all over the place. There was one directing traffic, and we watched in horror as one of the rocket trucks roared to life, and pulled out onto the road heading to our right. They were on the move! A bunch of Germans were taking down one of the rockets off of some kind of crane and a launch pad, and they were working feverishly to get the rocket back to a truck.
Just then, bullets ripped into the trees that we were using for cover.
“Krauts!” yelled Morelli. “Looks like about thirty or forty of ’em!”
The Germans had taken defensive positions in the ditch on the opposite side of the road and they were firing on us. Somehow, they discovered that we were here.
Another rocket truck roared as it headed out on the road.
We fell back about ten feet. Cap looked around. “Trumbull, Peters, Mackinack, Thrailkill, Donovan, and Chartelli. Get your asses moving east. Figure out a way to stop those trucks from getting out of here. Everyone else, fall back with me. Let’s use these goddamn sticks to our advantage. We’ll hunker down in the undergrowth. If the krauts come after us, we’ll hear ’em coming.”
We didn’t waste any time. Trumbull asked for men to give us some of their grenades. We ended up with four grenades each. We took off running as fast as we could through the woods, dodging branches and watching for ankle-twisting sticks.
After about ten minutes of hard running, we turned left, and ran a few more minutes. We came to the road. In this part of the woods, the trees were thick, so the road was under a canopy of leaves. I liked the heavy shade, because it provided us some cover.
“So, I say we knock some trees over and block their path,” said Trumbull.
Thrailkill nodded. “We’ll need a bunch of ’em, so they can’t just drive around or through them.”
“You think we could blow up one of them rockets?” asked Chartelli. None of us had any idea. We’d never seen one before and didn’t know anything about them. And, all the trucks may have already pulled out of the clearing.
But we didn’t waste a
ny time. We put three men on each side of the road, and our job was to find trees where we could wedge a grenade into the trunk somehow, so that it would knock the trees onto the road. That’s not as easy as it sounds. We had no idea what size tree we could take down, and we didn’t have any way to control which way they would fall.
We each found a tree, and timed it so that we would count down and pull the pins at the same time, then run like hell to get away from them.
Boom! We did a pretty good job of timing it. But the results were horrible. Of the six trees, four still stood, one fell in a direction opposite of what we wanted, and the final one did cross the road, but at an angle that a truck could probably get around.
Trumbull took his helmet off and rubbed his hair, surveying the trees.
“I suppose we could hit the same trees again. See if we could weaken them to the point of falling.”
Chartelli shook his head. “Nah, this ain’t gonna work man. Plus, we just announced ourselves to the fucking Jerries anyway. They know we’re here. I think we should—”
Chartelli was interrupted by the sound of a truck engine coming from the west.
“Son of a bitch!” yelled Chartelli. “This is bullshit, is what it is.”
“Three men on a side!” yelled Trumbull. “If it slows down for the tree, throw a grenade under the truck and shoot at the driver!”
The road in this part of the forest was twisty, so we couldn’t see the truck coming, but it was close. Just as it rounded the nearest curve, I cussed under my breath. It wasn’t a rocket truck. It was a transport truck. We could hear the driver yelling “Achtung! Achtung!” He slammed on the breaks, and krauts spilled out of the back of that truck and ran for cover on either side of the road.
At that minute, complete chaos erupted. We heard distant gunshots from the woods. Our platoon had engaged the enemy. At least two of our men had thrown grenades at the transport truck. One had bounced off a tire and exploded out on the open road. The other had rolled under the truck. After the blast, we heard a hiss, and steam started pouring out of the truck’s hood. The grenade had taken out the radiator. Then the krauts started laying into us with heavy gunfire.
My Honor Flight Page 9