My Honor Flight

by McCurrigan, Dan

  The next day, we found a squad of krauts holed up in an ancient stone church. The church was a beauty! I think it was built in the 1500s. There were still some stained glass windows intact, but several of the lower ones had been busted out by the damn krauts so they could shoot from there. Those stone walls provided perfect cover from our rifles.

  They were hunkered down real good, and they seemed to have a lot of ammunition, because every time one of us moved they took shots at us. We had them surrounded, but they had us pinned down. It was a stalemate.

  Cap came up with a really good idea. Some of the buildings around the church were a couple of stories tall, so he asked for the eight best shots from the company. The Ninth platoon was probably about twenty-five strong at the time. I was paired up with Frank Pearson. He was from Los Angeles. He was a good guy—he had blond hair and blue eyes, and we always teased him that he looked like the perfect kraut. If he ever got stopped by Germans, he would have a good chance of getting out of it as long as he wasn’t in a U.S. uniform and he didn’t have to talk. I remember that he was real tall and lanky. Decent shot too. He and I were one of the pairs.

  Cap pulled us aside and told us to get on top of the buildings around the church. Each pair would be on a building on one side of the church. Then the rest of Buzz Company would draw fire down on the street level. When the krauts shot, they would be exposed in the window. Since they wouldn’t be expecting us, we could take them out. Of course, Cap figured that would work only once or twice. He had the guys on the ground Bead Up so they would all shoot at the same time from all four sides of the church. That would look like an attack, and hopefully they would all draw fire at once.

  Pearson and me were up on a three-floor hotel facing the back side of the church. We were farthest away from the church because of the way the streets were laid out. There were two windows on the back of the church, so one was Pearson’s target and the other one was mine.

  But the guys who had the tough detail were the ones who had to draw fire. They couldn’t dilly dally around trying tricks like raising empty helmets, because they all had to draw fire at the same time. That meant live targets. They were opening themselves up for a straight shot. They would have to time it just right too. Too long, and they were dead for sure. Too short, and they wouldn’t draw fire.

  We could see Cap from our spot, and we waited for him to wave the ground guys on. Right down in front of us was Butler, crouched behind a broken-down German commander’s car. Someone had stripped off a bunch of parts from it. Cap raised his hand, and me and Pearson took aim on our windows. We didn’t watch Cap then, because as soon as he dropped his hand, the guys on the ground would start shooting at the church. We just waited for the sound of gunshots.

  Gunfire erupted. No one popped up in my window.

  “Shit!” yelled Pearson. “Help! ”

  I wheeled my aim over to his window. Pearson got one of the krauts, but there was apparently a group of them, standing way back inside the room. That made them hard to see. We pumped our clips into the darkness of the window, but they had ducked out of the way. Just then gunshots were hitting the building, inches below us! Krauts had moved to my window and were shooting at us. We ducked down under the ledge around the top of building, which had a one-foot high wall all around the roof. Bullets chipped away at the bricks on the ledge, and we could hear some of them whizzing pass us. Any time we moved, they saw our helmets and shot. The only thing that saved us was that we were on the third floor. The angle, combined with the one-foot wall, hid us most of the time.

  We belly-crawled backward away from the edge of the building and hustled down to the main floor. When we reached the lobby, we spotted Butler on the ground behind that car. He was bleeding. We ran up to the front of the building, but the krauts were laying down a suppressing fire, so we had to duck under the window. Butler was pinned down, and if we tried to reach him, a bunch of krauts would shoot at us.

  “How bad you hit?” I yelled at Butler.

  “It’s bad,” he yelled back. His voice was hoarse and higher-pitched than normal.

  “We’re goin’ for help!” yelled Pearson. “Sit tight!”

  “Not going anywhere,” Butler gasped. “But don’t take long.”

  We stayed there for a few minutes and then tried to look out again, only to have the Germans shoot at us again. We belly-crawled out the back of the building, and worked our way around the neighborhood to Cap. The attack had failed.

  “Butler’s down, and it looks bad,” said Pearson. “He’s pinned down and we can’t get to him. He needs a medic.”

  “Herb Johnson took one in the shoulder,” said Cap. “But we got him out of there.”

  We explained to Cap that Butler was probably fifteen feet in front of our building, against the old car. We told him that anyone who moved around the church was getting shot at. I couldn’t believe that we had those damn krauts surrounded, but they were in control of the situation.

  “We’ve got tank support,” said Cap. “Tanks are west of us, heading east. Get to a radio and get a tank in here to take the church out.”

  Pearson and I were both wide-eyed. We’d never had tank support before. From day one, we’d been infantry grunts, slogging our way through France. The thought of having tanks really excited us, because that meant combat would be in our favor.

  “What are you waiting for? Get to the radio station and call in the request!”

  “Yes sir!” Pearson and I shouted in unison, and we took off for the radio. Our platoon’s radio had been destroyed a few days before, and we hadn’t gotten a replacement yet. But for this town, we had a company base with a radio station. It was just a field radio with a power source, in a bakery. But it felt good being in there. The room was all closed in and felt secure. Nice and quiet, except for the radio squawking away. We told them our platoon was pinned down, and we had a man down and we couldn’t reach him because the krauts were barricaded in a church. The operator took the information and requested tank support at our location.

  Pearson and I were amazed at how easy it seemed. You just get on a radio and ask for tanks, and you get them? But it was just blind luck, because the tanks were nearby.

  We ran back to the church. We were supposed to retrieve Butler when the tank took out the church. We went back into our original building and hid under the window facing the church, just waiting for the roar and clanking of tanks.

  In the mid-afternoon, we heard noise coming from behind us—someone was coming in our building from the back. We spun around and aimed our guns at the back of the room.

  Joanie held out her hands, her fingers wide and her palms facing us, showing she held nothing.

  “Please, no shoot!” she whispered in her heavy French accent. Her clothes were gray. They weren’t originally gray, because we could see little telltale streaks of white, and yellow, and blue. We scrambled out of the lobby and pulled her to the back of the building, away from the church. She’d heard about our call to the tanks.

  “You must not harm the church!” she pleaded.

  I pointed in the direction of the church. “Germans are in there. We’ve got a man down!”

  “But this will destroy our church?” she asked.

  We paused, then nodded.

  “This you cannot do! That church is our life. It is our house of God for hundreds of years! You cannot destroy our church!”

  Pearson and I looked at each other with blank stares.

  “I-I’m sorry,” Pearson stammered. “I wish we could help you more.”

  Joanie stuck her chin out and scowled at us. She exhaled forcefully through her nose.

  “You Americans are no better than the Germans! You destroy everything!”

  “Hey, we’re here to save you and beat the Germans,” I said.

  Her eyes locked on mine. “No. You are here to kill. You are murderers, just like the Germans.”

  I swallowed and actually bit my tongue hard. We’d treated her real good, and we’d chased
goddamn krauts across half of France. And now here she was, judging us and saying we were the same as the krauts. Some gratitude. Pearson and I looked at each other. He nodded—we were done here. We turned away from her and walked back into the hotel. We’d lost a friend.

  “The truth hurts, no?” she spat, as we walked away. I didn’t look at her. I forced myself to only think about Butler.

  In the lobby, we crawled back to our spot under the window. We called to Butler, but he didn’t respond. We couldn’t tell if he was dead or not. A medic joined us a few minutes later.

  “First tank blast, we grab him and bring him in here,” the medic said. Pearson and I nodded. We sat there for a few more minutes. Then we heard a tank. They are easy to hear. Their engines roar, and their treads clink on the pavement. We heard this one coming from our left as we faced the church, and the engine noise wasn’t as loud as it slowed. We wanted to peek out at it, but the damn krauts were still taking shots at us every time we showed ourselves in the window.

  We heard a blast from the tank, followed a split second later by an ear-shattering crash. We didn’t even look at the church. We just crouched and charged out as we ran straight to Butler. We lay next to him and leaned against the old car. He had a pulse, but he was shot up bad—two shots to his right shoulder, one in the chest. His uniform was soaked in blood. The tank fired another shot, and this time slivers of roof tiles and stone pelted our building and rained down on us. Again, we didn’t even look, but grabbed Butler and dragged him back into our room.

  There were a couple more blasts, then it got quiet. I raised my helmet up in the window, and there were no shots fired. We could hear yelling, and I peeked out and saw Buzz Company firing far up to our right. The entire back half of the church was gone. We spotted four or five Germans lying in the rubble, and there was no movement in the church. We took up defensive positions, and trained our guns on the church. But nothing moved. Apparently when the tank hit, a lot of the krauts went to the front of the church and made a run for it, and Buzz Company was there, living up to its name. I snuck a peek at the tanks. But it was just ONE tank. I wished we could keep that tank for Buzz Company. But its engines revved, and it pulled away and left. It was probably only in our area for about ten minutes.

  The medic patched up Butler as best he could, and we waited for a jeep to take him to a field hospital. We stepped out into the street. There were civilians all around. But there was no celebrating. Just the opposite. People were crying everywhere. Some stood in the streets staring at the church. There were about a dozen people stepping among the wreckage, picking up pieces that might be salvaged. It was real quiet, so we could hear people murmuring as they mourned the loss of their church. I’d never seen anyone so attached to a place. I wished we could have taken the Germans some other way, but we did what had to be done.

  The jeep pulled up, and we put Butler in the back. He was unconscious. The medic climbed in, and he said he thought Butler would make it, but he was done with Buzz Company. I wished he were conscious. I wanted to say goodbye and wish him good luck in the future.

  Pearson and I turned to meet up with the rest of the platoon. Joanie leaned in the hotel lobby’s doorway, her arms crossed. I was still mad at her for comparing us to the goddamn krauts. Our eyes met for a moment. She had a cold-steel stare, and her eyes drilled into me. I nodded and touched my helmet as a gesture of goodbye, and turned to leave.

  “There were twenty Germans in there,” she called to us.

  We kept walking.

  “Wait!” she called.

  We turned to face her as she approached us. I really didn’t want to talk to her. I was afraid I would say something that wasn’t very gentlemanly. She was frowning, and walked up real close to me. Then she grabbed my face, pulled me down, and kissed me full on the lips! For a long time. When we finished, she looked up at me and cracked a smile.

  “I was wrong. Churches can be rebuilt. But if it was not for you Americans, the Germans would still be here.” She paused and then grabbed my arm. “Thank you. Thank all of you.”

  Pearson and I both smiled. I felt a really warm rush, both from the kiss and the fact that we hadn’t lost a friend. She stepped up to Pearson and kissed him on both cheeks, and hugged him.

  We wished each other well and told her to look us up if she ever visited America. Back in the camp, I was the hero of the platoon. Pearson dogged me for days about getting a full kiss from Joanie, while he only got pecks on the cheeks.

  Chapter 13 - Liberation

  A few years ago, the mayor of Lansing gave this fella a community award. The man created a charity for poor kids—getting them gifts at Christmas every year. He was a real hero in town. When he got the award, he gave an acceptance speech. During that speech, he said, “This is the best day of my life.”

  I’ve thought about that many times. If you ask someone about the best day in their life, they are probably going to say their wedding day, or when their kids were born. Pretty standard answers, and all true. But for me, nothing will ever compare to the week we were in Paris after its liberation.

  We didn’t fight at all in Paris. We were just headed east at the time, and we arrived the week after the official German surrender in the city. We’d been pushing hard since we arrived in France, and Brass gave us a week off in the city. Our timing was perfect.

  I’ve tried to think about how to explain this before, and I’ve never done it justice. Imagine, if you can, that your country—your city, your neighborhood—are all overridden by an invading army. A third of the city evacuated during the invasion. Of those that are left, the enemy brings bullying and brutality. The enemy takes whatever it wants. There is always a risk of rape. If you knew any Jewish people, they may have been shipped off. To Auschwitz.

  Now, imagine living like that for years. I think people SAY they can imagine it. But most people have never seen a man shoot someone right in front of them. They haven’t had someone take bread away from them. They haven’t walked city streets for years, avoiding eye contact with the enemy forces that stole their city. For years! I can tell you these things, and you can think that you understand what life would be like. But unless you experienced it, I don’t think anybody can really comprehend how bad that would be.

  Paris endured this for four years. And when we came through there, we had been flushing krauts out of their country for months. Everywhere we went, the civilians were grateful to Americans. We were heroes! But we didn’t let it go to our heads. I have to tell you though, getting those hugs and pats on the arms sure helped us realize that we were making a difference.

  So, when the liberation of Paris was officially recognized, Buzz Company was right in the thick of the city. All that oppression had been lifted off the people, and there was complete and total joy. I’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn’t just the French folks. We felt it too. For me, it really felt like my feet weren’t touching the ground. There was wine and food and music and laughter. Women kissed us as we walked by. Children came up and touched us. Men hugged us. We didn’t feel any different than the French. We had all just vanquished evil, and all that remained was hope and peace.

  Unfortunately, there is a downside to all that joy. I’ve never told anyone this before. During that week, I had an affair with a young woman named Claire. It happened by accident. I wasn’t looking to fool around. But with the celebration, and the euphoria, it just happened.

  I’ve always admired architecture. So one day, I wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower. None of the other guys were interested. It was late afternoon, and they wanted to get ready to go drinking. So I just lit out on my own. We were bunked up about four or five miles from the tower, and I walked to it.

  I found this wonderful little cafe about a hundred yards from the tower. The metal gridwork loomed large above me as I sat at a small outdoor table in front of the cafe. The waitress and I had been talking for a few minutes. Well, not really talking. I was talking in English and she was talking in French, as I tried
to order something to eat. We’d gotten coffee figured out. But regarding food, she would nod as I talked and gestured, and then say something soft as she tilted her head and blinked slowly. Suddenly she snapped to attention, held up a finger indicating I should wait, and went into the cafe.

  “Are you having troubles?” a woman’s voice behind me asked.

  I turned to see a stunning woman standing behind me. She was a redhead, and her wavy hair cascaded around her face and onto her shoulders. Her eyes were crystal blue. I blushed. Then I fumbled with my napkin, trying to look nonchalant.

  “Yes, uhh, I’m afraid I don’t speak French.”

  “May I help you?”

  I nodded. Then in a brief moment of bravado, I took a chance. I looked at her and tilted my head. “Would you care to join me?”

  “I would like that very much.”

  The waitress returned with a cook, but she sighed in relief as my new companion started talking in French. She ordered our meals.

  There are certain people in your life that you just click with. There’s a natural connection. I had it with Petey Anderson. We just knew we had each others’ backs. I had that connection with this woman. But in a way different than Petey. I was drawn to her, wanting to know everything about her. Her face glowed in the summer evening light, and we talked at that table nonstop for three hours. Suddenly we looked up, and dusk was upon us.

  “We should get going,” I said, and I left a huge tip for the waitress. We’d taken one of her tables for far too long.

  “Yes, let’s go,” said Claire.

  We stood and started walking down the sidewalk. She reached over and held my hand. I hesitated briefly. That touch was a shock, a reminder of Debbie back home. I thought I did a good job of hiding my apprehension.

  “I offend you?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, not at all,” I smiled and gently squeezed her hand. But Debbie’s face loomed in my mind. I shouldn’t be there.