We’d made a serious mistake. By splitting up, we were on separate sides of the road, so we couldn’t regroup. It got even worse for Pete, Donovan, and me. We were on the side of the road farthest from Buzz Company. At least the other three men could fall back to the rest of the platoon. If we tried to cross the road, we’d be cut to ribbons. And we were facing at least fifteen men.
The ground sloped away from the road into a shallow ditch. So we were lying in the bottom of a depression for cover. But it was only about a two-foot deep cover. The Germans were smart. They weren’t firing constantly, only when they saw movement.
“They’ll be advancing soon!” Chartelli yelled. “We got to get the fuck out of here!”
“No good! yelled Petey. “We’re pinned down. They got the angle on us!”
“No good for any of us!” replied Chartelli. “This is the end of the road for us!”
We heard a German call out. They were coming.
“Grenades!” yelled Trumbull, “Our only hope is to keep ’em backed off ’til Cap can get here! But we can’t waste ’em! Only one at a time! I’ll call out and tell you when to throw! Me first!”
He threw a grenade, and sure enough, we heard the krauts yell in panic. After it exploded, it was quiet for a few minutes. They were thinking.
Donovan stirred next to me. “I think we can crawl back to the tree stump, and then cross the road in the cover of the tree. Regroup with the other three.”
I looked back at the tree, then looked at Petey. He nodded. On our bellies, we started squirming to turn around to head for the tree that was about thirty feet behind us.
“Anderson, now!” yelled Trumbull.
“Of course...” grumbled Petey. He was in front of Donovan and me. He stopped, pulled a grenade, and chucked it toward the krauts. We didn’t wait for it to pop. We started belly-crawling again toward the tree.
We reached the tree. But we were all cussing. The tree trunk itself was about six feet from the road. It was broken off at ground level. We’d hoped to crawl under the tree for the cover. But there were too many branches, and we wouldn’t be able to crawl under. We’d have to get up and run around the tree trunk, which meant we’d be exposed to the enemy.
“What now?” asked Petey, “We can make a run for it, or turn around and put up our stand.”
“Either way,” said Donovan, “we gotta do something. Those other three can’t hold ’em off by themselves.”
“Mack, any opinion?” asked Petey.
I didn’t say anything. I was trying to calculate the risk versus the best attack. Before I could come up with an answer, Donovan spoke up. “The tree is a better defensive position. If we run for it when the next grenade blows, we might be able to get around to cover.”
Petey looked at me. “I agree,” I said. We waited for the next grenade.
“Chartelli, now!” called Trumbull from across the road. We waited for the grenade to explode.
At the sound of the blast, Petey, Donovan, and I all started moving toward the tree trunk. We had to cover about six feet to the trunk, then another four feet or so to get around and find cover. I guess we kind of looked like those fellas in track and field who come out of blocks. We started up off the ground into a crouched run.
The krauts were smarter than we figured. They had spread out and were taking cover behind trees. They were just waiting for us to move. Bullets started ripping through the downed tree’s leaves and branches. I was the last one in line, so I hit the dirt and back-crawled to the ditch. As I was moving, I watched the scene in front of me. Petey had made it. He dived past the tree trunk and out of sight. But Donovan took the brunt of the attack. He had four or five bullets hit his back, neck, and legs. He collapsed and didn’t move. I was sure he was dead. Too many bullets to survive.
The gunfire stopped after a few seconds, and I could hear return fire from Chartelli, Thrailkill, and Trumbull. Then there was a pause.
“Goddamn!” yelled Trumbull. “Donovan! Donovan!... Mack?”
“Here!” I yelled.
“Anderson?”
“Here!” Pete yelled from behind the tree.
So our plan had failed. And not only were we now down a man, I was a sitting duck. I was separated from our three men on the other side of the road, and also from Petey.
“Mack?” said Petey. He was on the other side of the tree. I couldn’t see him.
“Yeah, Petey?”
“You hit?”
“No, I’m all right. Donovan’s dead.”
“I know.”
There was a pause. “Pete, listen. Get around there to the other guys. Get your asses back to Buzz Company. We can’t fight these guys off.”
Pete actually laughed. “You think I’m just gonna leave you here?”
I paused, thinking about what was going to happen to me. Even if the grenades held them off for a while, they would eventually make a move. I was going to die in a ditch in a French forest.
“Pete?”
“Yeah?”
When a man knows he’s about to die, it’s a strange mix of adrenaline and sorrow. My mind was racing, and I started to cry a little. Pete waited for me to talk.
“Make sure Debbie gets my letter, OK?” I kind of sobbed as I talked.
“That ain’t happening, Mack. I ain’t leaving. And I’ll kill every goddamn kraut who comes close to us.”
I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “There’s too many of ’em, Pete. They’ll take me, and then they’ll start picking you guys off one by one. Your only hope is to regroup with the platoon and fall back. They may stop chasing you if they get their trucks out of here.”
I heard a rustling in front of me. Donovan had fallen right next to the tree trunk. Pete was using Donovan’s body for cover, and I saw Pete’s hand reach around the tree and grab Donovan’s rifle. Then I saw his hand pluck a grenade from Donovan’s belt. Then he disappeared again.
“Mack?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Hell yes!”
“Throw me your rifle and ammo.”
“Uhh. Why?”
“I need as much help as I can get here. It will save me some reloading time, and grenades will buy me time to reload.”
“Christ, Pete! That’s just goddamn crazy! Get the hell out of here while you can!”
“Mack, you’re a dead man with or without weapons. If I have them, we have a shot of getting out of here. And I am NOT leaving here without you.”
I choked up again. Pete was going to kill himself for me. He had no chance.
“Fine,” I said. “But get them to the other men so you all have a chance of getting out of here!”
I tossed the rifle as gingerly as I could over the tree, hoping it didn’t break. There were a couple of kraut gunshots in response. I checked my sidearm. It was fully loaded. I was going to keep it for the end, and take as many of those bastards with me as I could. I still had three grenades, so I threw them and my ammo to the stump. I saw a hand flash out and grab the ammo belt, then I heard the familiar clicks of clips being loaded.
For a few minutes I just lay there in the noise of the forest. There was an occasional bird tweet and that was about it. It was peaceful. I thought about home, and Debbie. And then I thought of the Ninth Platoon. How we had all been so young and naive in England. Then I started thinking of the men who didn’t make it. And I wondered how many would make it. Donovan’s words haunted me. “None of us are going to make it.”
“Hey, Pete, tell the guys I wish them luck getting out of this hellhole alive.... Pete?”
A single gunshot popped from behind the tree. I heard krauts yelling.
“One down!” called Petey. “That’ll set them back on their heels. I wish I had Peters with me!”
Pete was sniping the krauts! A couple of minutes later, he fired again, from a different part of the tree. More kraut yelling.
“Two down!” called Petey.
“Aaaaay!” called Chartelli. “That’s g
ood shootin’ Petey!”
There was a lot more yelling from the krauts now. Petey had pissed them off. They started firing at the guys across the road, then I heard snapping from the forest close to us. There was a group of men charging Pete through the forest.
“Pete, get the hell out of here!” I called as I pointed my sidearm toward the trees.
“I told you I ain’t leaving you here, Mack!” yelled Pete. Then he started shooting.
He emptied his clip, and the Germans surged forward, thinking he had to reload. Boy, were they surprised when he let into them with the second rifle. He dropped two of them. They all scrambled for cover. Gunfire continued. Petey emptied the third rifle, then threw a grenade. I heard him snapping new clips into the rifles. The krauts started moving again. I fired at them, but they returned fire and I had to get as small as I possibly could. I just lay, board-straight, as low as I could get. Petey started up again, and dropped another one. Then he started talking.
“Yeah, you fucking krauts just keep coming! You just keep coming on!” Gunshots. “Yeah, just keep coming!” Gunshots. Another Grenade. “We ain’t dying! Not today!” Gunshots.
Silence.
“Mack?” called Pete. “I don’t see any movement?”
I couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything either.
“How many did you get?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t counting.”
Gunfire was continuing on the other side of the road. But it was quiet by us.
“Ambush?” I asked.
“Maybe. But I think they respect us now. Best chance to make a run for it?”
“Yeah.”
“I got one grenade left. When it blows, run for it, and I’ll cover you.”
It worked as planned, and I scrambled around the tree stump and dived next to Pete. No krauts had fired. He was panting from the adrenaline.
“Let’s go help the others,” he said. He handed me my ammo belt and rifle. As I took the rifle from his hand, our eyes met. I stared at him for a long minute. He gave me a knowing nod and then we both blinked our misty eyes a few times.
“I—I can’t thank you enough,” I said.
“You’d do it for me, wouldn’t you?” said Pete, and he winked and punched me hard in the shoulder. That’s all he said. He’d risked his life to save me. He didn’t have to use words. The look in his eyes was worth more than words. No one had ever been so selfless for me before.
We worked our way around the tree to Chartelli, Trumbull, and Thrailkill. They’d found good cover in a cluster of trees. Even with gunshots all around, they smiled at us.
“Good to have you back, boys,” said Thrailkill.
After a few minutes of gunfire, we heard something new. Airplanes. The gunfire stopped as both us and the Germans waited to see what was going to happen. There was a tremendous racket from the west. Explosions and guns. Big guns. The planes were attacking the clearing! I can’t explain the surge in emotion this created for us. We had been fighting what was basically a suicide mission, and now we had air support! The air attack lasted for only a few minutes, and during that whole time, there wasn’t a single gunshot in our skirmish. The sound of planes diminished.
After about a half hour of silence, we heard rustling in the trees to the west. Were the Germans flanking us? Then we heard someone call out.
“Aufgeben!” someone yelled from the trees. But they yelled that German word with the worst accent possible—Oklahoman. It was Tinpan. Buzz Company had arrived. I saw glimpses of GI helmets in the trees, spread down a line about fifty yards long.
“Aufgeben!” Tin barked again. We peeked over at the krauts, and saw them start raising their hands. Five Germans came up on the road with their hands on their head.
The platoon manhandled the krauts a little, and walked them over to our cover.
“Goddamn, boys,” called Morelli. “Five little krauts here kept you all pinned down?”
“Yeah, we didn’t have no bombers helping us out,” replied Chartelli. “That whole fucking truck was full of Jerries when it got here.”
Everyone was smiling as we joined up, shaking hands and patting each other on the shoulders.
Cap walked toward us, but had his eyes trained on Donovan. Then he looked at us.
“Anyone else hurt?”
We told him we were all right, then we told him what happened. We all talked about what Petey had done. When we checked the woods, we found eleven Germans dead. Petey had killed them all. Cap said he’d be getting a medal for that. He said it would be a big one. Petey shook his head and looked down while he blushed. He didn’t care much for attention.
We asked what happened with the planes. It turns out that all but one of the rocket trucks had gotten out, but most of the krauts stayed behind to engage Buzz Company. But they couldn’t advance up the bluff without getting potshots from our snipers. Given the numbers, Cap had radioed in that he was going to have to fall back. Command decided that rather than lose the rocket to escape, they would take it out along with all the krauts that protected it. Cap had a big smile on his face as he told that story. We’d never had air support before.
We were supposed to wait in the clearing for an allied transport truck to haul us out of there. So we made some coffee and smoked cigarettes, just talking and playing cards.
“What’s the date?” asked Thrailkill.
“July twenty-third,” someone called out.
“Well, boys, today was the luckiest day of my life. I was sure that I was a dead man. And we survived it, except for Donovan, God rest his soul. I got a request.”
“What is it?”
“I want you all to promise me something. I want you all to promise me that you will treat July twenty-third as an official holiday for the rest of your lives. Every July twenty-third, I want you to think of this day, this moment, and what we just survived. Look around at each other, and remember all of us as we look today.”
“Yeah,” said Torgeson. “Buzz Company Day.”
We all agreed, promising that we would always treat July twenty-third as a holiday in honor of the platoon. I never worked on a July twenty-third in my entire life.
Chapter 11 - The Chase
Something strange started happening in our platoon from D-Day on. We kept losing our prized possessions in battle. We called it the Buzz Company Curse. After every battle, the next time someone went to use their cigarette lighter, or their favorite spoon, or pocketknife, it was gone.
You have to understand what it was like in that world. Physically, it was very strenuous. We were facing death constantly, and having to kill to survive. It’s easy to read about that in books, or watch movies that glamorize it, but it’s real damn hard to keep your head wrapped around it when it’s happening to YOU. So, you latch on to little things to help you cope, to keep you grounded. These little things were reminders of home, or previous good times. They were things that we could pull out and help us get our mind off the tasks at hand. They let us escape for a few seconds, and keep our sanity.
After about four things got lost, everyone made a practice of checking their inventory at the end of a fight. It seemed that the Curse went away for a few weeks. But I had a ten-dollar gold piece, and it disappeared a few days after our fight with the rocket trucks. And that really pissed me off.
When it was missing at breakfast, I pulled Cap aside.
“There’s a thief in the platoon,” I said.
Caps eyebrows raised. “That’s a pretty bold statement.”
“I’ve been carrying a ten-dollar gold piece I won in a poker game in England. After the Curse started, I checked it after every battle. I pull it out at every meal. I had it last night, and it was gone this morning.”
Cap pursed his lips as he scanned the men.
“Cap, that was my good luck piece. I carried it through all kinds of hell.”
Cap snapped his head around at me. “Well, that’s bullshit. There’s no such thing as a good luck piece. But all th
e same, that IS theft.” He resumed his scanning of the men. After a few minutes, he turned to me.
“We’re bugging out in a few minutes. Ten dollars isn’t going anywhere before camp tonight. I’ll talk to everyone at mess tonight, and get your piece back. It’s disappointing...” He shook his head, not finishing his sentence. “Move out, Mack. We’ll get it later.”
So Cap may not have believed in lucky pieces, but I sure as hell did. Especially after the scarf, which I never got to carry. That coin was my own personal version of the scarf. This was going to be the first day in France without having that in my pocket. I couldn’t believe one of my brothers would take that from me. Could I trust them in battle? What else would they steal from me? Were they stealing from everyone? Or was everyone stealing from each other? Was I in a nest of thieves?
After a few minutes of packing up and preparing for the day, I calmed down. I figured there was just one thief among us. But I’d let Cap worry about that. I just had to get by for one day without my lucky charm.
Our assignment for that day was to continue pushing our way east through fields, flushing out any krauts that were holed up in farm houses in the area. All the platoons of Buzz Company were in a line several miles wide, pushing to the northeast. We couldn’t see any other platoons. They were probably a half mile on either side of us.
We had made our way through fields and woods, probably about ten miles from our camp the night before. We found a small cluster of farmhouses nestled in a grove of trees. We took a break while a couple of guys watched the farmhouse for traffic. Krauts tended to take over places like this because they provided shelter and food. The place was really quiet. No one was out. There was no chimney smoke. It looked deserted. We figured the people were just hunkered down waiting for us and the krauts to stop scrapping in their neighborhood.
After a couple of hours, Cap ordered us into four groups and split us up about fifty yards apart from each other. We were going to work our way into the farmhouse area and engage any krauts in there. The two outer groups were going to use trees for cover as they came from the far left and right. The two inner groups didn’t have any cover, so we were walking in real quiet. We waited for the two outer groups to get into a sniping position, then we started walking toward the farmhouses.
My Honor Flight Page 10