My Honor Flight

by McCurrigan, Dan

  Buzz Company was to defend the north edge of town, which faced a forest. Another damn forest. Anyway, the Ninth Platoon was stationed in two buildings—a general store and a grain mill. One of those waterwheel mills next to a creek. They were separated by a clearing, about a hundred yards apart. By the time we were in Bastogne, we had twenty-five men. So we split into two groups, with some of the guys in each building. We walked patrols in the forest twenty-four hours a day. Our job for now was defense.

  We didn’t mind the detail at all. Both buildings had heat! We had been without heat for so long that we thought we were in heaven. We also had all the food we could eat. And finally, the grain mill was used as an ammo supply depot, so we had weapons and cases of ammunition. If something bad were to happen, we had everything we needed to hold out.

  It was quiet for a few days, and by the end of that time we were pretty rested, and healing. A lot of us had frostbite damage on fingers and toes, but none of it was severe enough to be considered a reason for discharge. The combination of warmth, full bellies, and some lingering euphoria about Morelli’s charge did a world of good for us. Humor finally returned to the group after months of steadily increasing depression. Oily and Dinger Morelli were returning to their old selves, joking and teasing everyone. Tom Duncan set up his rope in the grain mill and practiced walking across it. The mill had a catwalk around an open second floor, so he tied off the rope across the opening. That looked dangerous as hell to us, because it was a good six feet off the floor, and the rope stretched over the actual mill equipment. One fall, and I’m sure he would be hurt bad. But he never did fall. He would do cartwheels on the rope, and handstands, and juggle. It was good entertainment.

  One evening I was playing cards with Trumbull, which wasn’t a good idea because I could never beat him. That evening I was holding my own, though. But just as I was getting ahead a little, the door swung open. Big Swede and Morelli charged in.

  “Krauts! LOTS of them!” said Morelli. “I’m telling Cap!” He turned and ran out toward the store.

  Big Swede shut off the lights, crouched, and peered out the window. “This is not good, boys. There are many Germans there! Maybe hundreds!”

  Trumbull and I looked at each other, shocked. We’d grown complacent over the last few days. I had begun to feel like maybe the war was over, or far away. I cussed, got up, and grabbed my gear and rifle. I put on all my outerwear, because I didn’t know if we’d be defending from the mill or moving outside. Trumbull did the same. Bo Cooper, Vern Fisher, and Oily Chartelli were in the mill at the time, and they got their gear too. It was pretty dark in there, except for some dim light from the flames of the woodstove.

  I was walking toward a window when Big Swede reached up and grabbed the doorknob and flung the door open. Morelli came running in. He had Stankowski, Herb Johnson, Dan Rawdon, and Ted Phillips. We had ten men. The other fifteen were in the store.

  “We’re locking down, boys,” said Morelli. “There’s more of them than we can handle. We’ve got to hunker down, look like no one is here, and hope they keep going. Cap’s calling in for help. The tanks are down in the next village. And there are only four of them, so this ain’t gonna be pretty. Get on the floor, get small, and don’t move.”

  Chartelli threw a bucket of water in the stove to put out the fire. That would create a bunch of white smoke, but it would diminish quickly. He threw in a second one for good measure. It was completely black in the room. Four men squeezed in among the cases of weapons in a grain storage room. The rest of us hid behind the milling equipment or tucked ourselves in the corner between the wall and the floor, so we were as small as we could be. Morelli locked the door. The mill looked deserted.

  I was shaking. Hundreds of krauts. All the troops in our area were split up enough that we couldn’t get into a common formation. So for that moment, it would be hundreds against twenty-five. I kept looking at the two windows on the ground floor and at the door’s window. I didn’t move my head—just my eyes. Then I froze solid when I saw a German helmet in the door’s window. He was looking in, and was looking straight at me. I held my breath. I didn’t know if they could see anything in the mill, or if it was black to them. But I figured any movement at all might be visible.

  The knob clicked as he twisted it back and forth. He yelled something, but it was muffled by the door. Another minute later, a second helmet appeared at the door, and the knob clicked again. The second kraut leaned in and looked, and I could see his breath fog the door’s window. He wiped it away and shined a flashlight into the mill. He scanned back and forth over and over. Time stopped. He just kept scanning. My heart was pounding! Could he see us? Was he counting how many of us there were?

  I laid there with my right hand on my rifle, finger near the trigger guard. We’d planned to whip our guns around if they came in. The flashlight disappeared. After standing there for another couple of minutes, the two helmets moved on, and then I started seeing glimpses of other helmets as they walked past the mill. I lost track around twenty. As I watched them continue to pass by, I started to relax a little. I had been board-straight for probably fifteen minutes, and I was soaked in sweat. I wanted to stretch and move around, but I didn’t want to risk being detected.

  Then we heard gunshots from the direction of the general store. There was a bunch of yelling, and then the krauts were running past our windows toward the store.

  “Shit!” hissed Morelli. “Mack, take a look up top. See what’s going on out there!”

  I rolled away from the wall and ran to the catwalk ladder. It was more like a shuffle, because my muscles were all tight from being frozen in position for so long. But adrenaline quickly loosened the kinks, and I was on the catwalk. “Nooooo,” I whispered.

  The krauts were swarming around the general store. I could see gunshot flares coming from the store, and a huge line of kraut guns firing into the store. The other half of Buzz Company had been discovered, and they were trapped.

  “They’re under attack!” I whispered as loud as I dared. Germans were still going by our windows, but now they were running toward the store.

  “Son of a bitch!” Chartelli stood up and looked out the windows. “I can’t see past these damn krauts. Mack, you’re the eyes. What do you see?”

  “There’s at least fifty to seventy krauts, and they’re surrounding the store. They’re pounding it!”

  Morelli cussed, and whirled around, looking at the crates.

  “Swede and Trumbull, get cases of grenades up to the catwalks—two cases per window. FAST! Fisher, get up there with me. Mack and I will each take a window. Mack, when I tell you, you start throwing grenades as fast as you can.”

  Morelli dashed up the ladder. When he saw the scene at the store, his eyes were as big as baseballs in the dim light from the window. Swede slid a case next to me, then another next to it. Trumbull slammed a crowbar into the top of the crates and popped the lids. There was just enough light to make out the compartments in each crate. I reached in and yanked out handfuls of straw and threw it to the floor. Trumbull was doing the same to the other case as he stood on the ladder.

  “You’ve got forty grenades, Mack. Make ’em count, because we’re dead if they attack us,” said Trumbull. His voice was calm and deliberate.

  I nodded without looking at him. I was trying to figure out where to throw the grenades.

  “Trumbull, keep the grenades coming—hand me one in each hand—I don’t want to run out. But keep your damn head down!”

  I slid the window open, and the noise of gunfire was even louder in the mill as it echoed into the room. All the Germans were facing the mill. But there were so many damn krauts that they couldn’t all attack the store. So a lot of them were waiting back. They were lying in the snow to avoid getting hit by random shots from the store. And they were spread in front of us like fifty sitting ducks! I looked over at Morelli, who drew back in surprise. The Germans were totally unaware of us, and they were fully exposed to us!

 
“Now!” whispered Morelli. I pulled the first grenade ring and threw it between two Germans on the ground. I didn’t wait at all. I just pulled the next pin and threw it about ten feet farther to the right. I put my open hands out, and Trumbull put a grenade in each hand. I closed my hand on the spoons, and Trumbull pulled the pins. I threw those two, and turned to get two more, just as the first grenades exploded. I didn’t look to see what kind of damage I did, I just kept grabbing grenades, and chucking them out the window. All I could think about was the other half of Buzz Company being trapped in that general store. There was no way they could survive that attack, and I had tears in my eyes as I threw the grenades. I had probably thrown about a dozen grenades when I heard a zipping sound, and then I felt warmth on my left cheek. I threw the grenade in my hand and lay down on the floor. I touched my hand to my cheek, and it was dark when I pulled it back. I was bleeding. I reached up again to feel for the extent of the wound. That’s when I touched my ear and knew that it had been shredded by a bullet. It didn’t hurt. I was numb, and I didn’t care about the blood.

  “Keep ’em coming!” I said, and I grabbed the next grenades and threw them out. That’s the first time I looked out the window. The Germans had all shifted around to take cover. In the open area there were probably thirty or forty men down. But the gunfire coming out of the general store was weak—only a couple of guns, I guessed.

  We exhausted the first crate. I yelled down to the main floor.

  “We’re gonna run out! We can’t hold them off!”

  “Ya, we are working on that!” yelled Torgeson. I didn’t have time to talk, or to look. I just kept throwing grenades. But bullets were pinging the stone mill wall and the wooden window sill. The krauts were pounding us just like they were the general store. It got so bad that it was a constant pounding all around the window. I couldn’t risk standing up any more, so I was chucking grenades through the window while lying on the catwalk.

  I put my hands out, and Trumbull put a grenade in each. Then he grabbed my hands, not letting go.

  “The last two!” he yelled over the racket.

  We paused, our hands still together. Our eyes were locked in the dim light. We were talking without saying anything. We were probably done. After these grenades, there would be nothing keeping the krauts away. I nodded at Trumbull, and he winked at me. This was the end.

  Morelli and I finished within a couple of minutes of each other. When no more grenades fell, the gunfire let up. The krauts knew we’d run dry. I peeked up over the window sill. Some Germans were cautiously bent over, approaching the mill. I sighed and grabbed my rifle.

  “Trumbull, get up here,” I said. “We need to try to keep them away.”

  “Brace yourself!” bellowed Big Swede.

  “What?” I yelled back.

  Just then, the biggest thunder you could ever imagine erupted in the mill, and the room lit up. I was disoriented. What was happening? Was it German grenades? And who turned on the lights?

  It wasn’t lights. It was big goddamn thundering Browning machine guns. A pair of them! Torgeson and Chartelli had set them up while we were chucking grenades, and they were blasting the guns out the windows on the mill floor. There was one window by the door, and another on the next wall. They just kept bursts firing through the openings. There was no way a kraut could come through those windows or door. But it was deafening in that tiny stone building. We couldn’t hear anything else, and the reverberation shuddered through our bodies. We clasped our hands over our ears.

  I looked out the window. There were bodies everywhere from our grenades. There was still gunfire. But it was focused on the store. They weren’t attacking us anymore. The big guns must have scared them away. At least for now.

  Trumbull joined me at the window.

  I nodded toward the store. “They don’t have Brownings,” I yelled between gun bursts from the big guns.

  “The numbers, Mack. They ain’t gonna make it.”

  I nodded. “Morelli!”

  He joined us and looked at the store. “Jesus.”

  That constant shooting from the krauts that we had endured during our grenade attack? It was now focused on the store. But the store wasn’t built out of stone like the mill. It was wood, and they were slowly shredding it.

  I thought for a minute about the men in that store. I was helpless, watching them get killed. But we weren’t part of the battle anymore. We were safe. I felt like a coward. I shouldn’t be safe while my friends, my brothers, were being killed.

  I went to the ladder, and started down the catwalk. The Brownings stopped firing.

  “What’s going on?” asked Chartelli.

  “Keep firing!” I said. “Don’t let those bastards attack—”

  “Grenades!” yelled Duncan.

  The Brownings started up again, but the blast of the grenades rippled through the mill. I felt stabs in my arm, but got up and kept going. I found what I was looking for. A case of Thompsons. I grabbed one, and fumbled for an ammo case in the flickering light from the Browning flares. There it was. A case of magazines. I grabbed three magazines and stuffed them in my pockets. Then I slammed the fourth one into the gun, turned, and ran back to the ladder and up to the catwalk. Morelli, Trumbull, and Fisher just looked at me. I threw my rifle strap over my shoulder, same as the Thompson’s strap. I locked eyes with Morelli, nodded, walked to the window, and crawled out.

  “What the fuck?” asked Morelli.

  I hung from the window sill by my hands, let go, and rolled as I landed on the ground so that I wouldn’t hurt myself. Then I ducked down along the river next to the mill’s waterwheel. No krauts had seen me. I ran fast along that river for about fifty yards, then worked along trees until I was behind a big tree trunk, just to the left of the line of krauts firing on the general store. They didn’t know I was there. I peeked around the tree and couldn’t help smiling. There, laid right in front of me, was a long row of krauts on their bellies in a nice even row.

  I pulled the trigger on the Thompson, and lit into those krauts without pause. They were surprised. But the Tommy did its job. I quickly worked it up the line of krauts on the ground. Before they could react, I probably killed fifteen of them. I emptied the magazine, yanked it out, and slammed in another one. By that time some of the Germans started firing at me. But the big tree provided cover. So I stuck the Thompson out from the other side of the tree trunk and fired again, emptying the magazine blindly. It was working! The krauts fell away, looking for cover across the open space, in trees on the other side of the clearing. I slammed in another magazine. The gunfire was lighter now. I hoped they had stopped firing on the store, but I couldn’t dare look. They would pick me off. So I held the Tommy up on the left side of the tree, and did the same thing, blindly firing.

  When the third magazine emptied, it dawned on me what I had done. I sat in the snow, panting. I looked at the fourth magazine. I would be down to my M1 when the last Thompson mag was empty. Should I keep shooting randomly, or save it for when the krauts came?

  I thought about this for a couple of minutes. Bullets continued to hit the tree, but I was safe unless they spread out and shot from a different angle. I decided to wait.

  It didn’t take long. The krauts were working their way around by the mill, and circling to get me. The bullets now hit both the front and the right side of the tree trunk. They were going to squeeze my cover away until I was forced into the open. And since they were firing constantly, I couldn’t aim. I nodded to myself. I thought of Duncan. He was right. We were all going to die. I took a deep breath, and started to turn the Thompson toward the right side of the tree. I figured that maybe I could blindly fire and at least slow their advance. There was nowhere for me to run—it was at least fifteen feet to the nearest tree, and I’d get taken down if I tried to run. I raised the Thompson and reached for the trigger, when just then, I heard another Thompson. Actually, it sounded like more than one Thompson. The rounds weren’t pelting my tree from the right any more.
I decided to take a peek. I saw powder flares from the river—three of them! The guys in the mill followed me!

  I got goose bumps. I wasn’t going to die. So I peeked again around the tree, until I could see what was going on. There were dead bodies all over the clearing. The gunfire was now focused between the river and the trees across the clearing, while the big Brownings continued their staccato from the mill. No one was shooting at me now. I ran for the general store.

  “Buzz, it’s Mackinack! I’m coming in!”

  A German lying on the ground fired a pistol at me. I fired at him with the Tommy.

  “Buzz! I’m coming in!”

  The door was gone—shot to hell. I stepped into the store, blinking at the darkness as I tried to get my eyes to adjust.

  “Anyone here?”

  It was quiet in the store. After all the noise outside, it was unnerving. Moonlight streamed in through the hundreds of bullet holes. There was shuffling and some wood scraping on the floor.

  “Christ, Mack,” drawled Tinpan Jones. “What the hell are you doing here?” We met in the darkness. He hugged me for a long minute. Didn’t say anything else.

  “How many are down?” I asked Tin.

  “Too fucking many,” growled Cap behind me. Cap! He was alive!

  Just then a blast echoed in the clearing. Tanks!

  I stepped back to the doorway. There were only four tanks left in the area, and all four of them were here! They ripped into the trees for about fifteen minutes. Then men walked into the clearing. GIs. Lots of GIs. Over a hundred. They approached the store.

  “Could have used you boys a couple of hours ago,” I said, grinning.

  A lieutenant nodded and shook my hand. Casualties?

  Cap appeared in the doorway. “Nine dead.”