I whirled around. “Nine? Who?”
“Donovan, McIntire, Moore, Pavelchek, Johnson... Crimmins, Jackson, Peters, Robertson.”
I stared at Cap, watching his mouth as he said the names. I didn’t hear the men from the mill walk up behind me.
“We lost three,” said Morelli.
“What? Who?” I asked.
“Duncan, Rawdon, and Cooper. Grenades,” said Morelli.
“You mean... the grenades when I came down the ladder?” I asked.
“Mack, it wasn’t your fault,” said Morelli. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done here?” he asked, sweeping his hand toward the dead Germans outside the store.
I shook my head as I looked at him, wanting to understand. Had I done something wrong? My head was buzzing from the noise. Pain began creeping into my shoulder and my face. The adrenaline was wearing off.
Cap stepped next to me. “Mack, if it hadn’t been for you, none of us would be alive. You saved six of us in the store. And maybe the men in the mill, because the Germans would have turned to it next.”
I didn’t care. I just thought about my friends. So many of them! And they were all killed in an hour or two. Tom Duncan’s words haunted me. “We will all die. There is no hope.” The world started spinning, and everything turned black.
Chapter 19 - The Colonel
I came to, but felt horrible. The adrenaline was gone. In the cold, my body had stiffened. My bandaged half-ear throbbed with each heartbeat. My arm was stiff and I couldn’t lift it. My head pounded, and I couldn’t think clearly. I felt like I was locked in a giant tin can. I couldn’t hear anything and all I could see was the dark ground in front of me. Cap had a tight grip on my right arm and he was pulling me along. He sat me down on a bench in a church vestibule and then he disappeared. The church was our HQ. I just sat there, staring at the floor. Cap showed up again.
“Drink this,” he handed me a bottle of something, then he walked into the church. I didn’t move. I held the bottle and stared at the floor. So many were gone. I didn’t want to talk. I just sat there, hunched over, thinking of my friends who were dead.
Apparently a jeep pulled up outside, but I didn’t hear it. Tears streamed from my eyes. I was bawling.
“Ten-hut, soldier!” someone yelled. I didn’t move.
“Goddamn it man, look alive!” he called again.
I sat there with my left hand open on my lap, and my right hand loosely clutching the bottle. I didn’t look up.
I saw a hand grab at my collar. The fingers grabbed my coat and firmly shook me.
“You drunk? If you are on detail, your ass is mine!”
I slowly looked up and saw two piercing blue eyes under a helmet. It was a Colonel.
“Snap to, soldier! There are men dying around here!” yelled the Colonel.
“No shit,” I mumbled, and I tried to open the bottle. But my left arm was so weak that it was useless.
“Boy, do you know who you are talking to?” The Colonel was pissed off now.
“Yeah, I’m talking to some asshole who probably hasn’t had a minute of infantry combat time!” I said. What was he going to do? Discharge me?
Now there were two hands on my coat, and he yanked me up to my feet. We were standing eye to eye. “How’d you like a court martial, boy?”
I gave him the meanest glare I could muster. I squinted and stared right into his eyes. “Suits me fine. SIR!”
That set him back. I don’t think he was used to anyone backtalking him. “Who the hell are you? What’s your unit?”
“I’m Doug Mackinack. One of fourteen surviving members of Buzz Company’s Ninth platoon!” I yanked myself away from his hands. “We just got shot to hell. And I don’t give a damn if you’re Eisenhower. SIR!”
You have to remember that I was eighteen years old at the time. I’d just lost most of my friends in this foreign land, I’d been shot, and I’d been combat-hardened for months and months.
The Colonel kept those laser eyes on me, for what felt like several minutes. I didn’t back off at all. In fact, I was getting angrier and angrier. He was some bastard who probably directed combat from nice warm places like this church. Probably never saw real battle. I wanted him to have to join the platoon. Take him out and roast this fresh meat in the heat of battle. Let him see what war is really like.
He looked me up and down. I watched his eyes change as he saw the ear bandage, the bloody arm, the uniform caked in dust. He nodded slowly, looking me in the eyes again.
“Let’s have a seat, soldier.”
I shrugged and flopped back down on the bench. I didn’t care if he was there or not. I kept trying to open the bottle, but my fingers were thick and they wouldn’t bend right.
“Give me that,” he said quietly.
I handed it over. He opened it and handed it to me. I took a swig. It was brandy, and it burned as I swallowed. But I liked the pain. I could actually feel something. So I tipped the bottle and gulped hard.
“Easy, son,” the Colonel said, and pushed the bottle down.
We sat there for a long time, neither of us talking. I thought of the guys again, and started crying again.
“I tell you what,” the Colonel said. “Let’s not be soldiers for a while. Let’s just be two men sitting on a bench.”
I nodded.
“You got a girlfriend?”
I nodded again.
“Tell me about her.”
I started talking, telling him about Debbie, and how she liked the color lavender, and she liked lilacs. I told him about our prom dance, and how beautiful she looked. I told him about our plans to go to the University together, how she was going to be a nurse and I was going to be a teacher. I just talked on and on, and he sat there staring into space, nodding and asking me questions. He told me about his wife. We talked about Buzz Company, and my friends. I told him some of the stories from our time together. I made him laugh a few times, and I made myself cry a few times.
After about twenty minutes, he put his hand on my leg and squeezed. “Well, son, I have to go. It was a real pleasure to meet you.”
“You too... sir.” He’d regained my respect. I started to stand up to salute him. He waved at me, indicating that I stay seated.
“You’ve had enough Army for today, son. You just take it easy now. I’m just sorry my boys didn’t get here sooner. I’m sorry you lost your friends. They were good men.”
“You’re the tank commander?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I appreciate you guys,” I said. “We never would have survived it.”
He nodded again, and turned to head into the command center. There were a few men watching us from the open doorway.
“What’s your name, sir?” I asked.
“Abrams,” he said, and then he disappeared into the command room. If I could have crapped my pants right then, I would have.
Chapter 20 - The Camp
I don’t have much to say about combat anymore. I’m all storied out. That’s the rise and fall of Buzz Company on the battlefields of Europe. We had some more assignments in the coming three months, but they were nothing like what we faced before. We were paired up with the Fifth Platoon of Buzz Company. They called us the five-nine. I think we numbered about twenty-five or thirty.
Come April, we were assigned to provide humanitarian aid at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Anyone who tells you the Holocaust didn’t happen is a goddamn liar! We arrived on a rainy day. The only noise we heard as we made our way through the open iron gates was the mud sucking our shoes.
As we entered the camp, the CO met us.
“You boys need to brace yourself. This isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen.”
We all nodded grimly, but I remember thinking there wasn’t much I hadn’t seen in the last year. I looked forward to having a job without someone shooting at me.
I was wrong.
“First thing to understand,” said the CO, a balding Colonel, “is that you don’
t give them anything. They’re going to look weak and helpless. But there are crooks among them just like normal men. They’ll steal from each other, and they’ll hurt each other doing it.”
I saw a figure in the distance, past the CO. It was a man who wore a black-and-gray striped prisoner’s uniform. He shuffled around a corner into my field of view, paused, and collapsed. I made eye contact with the Colonel and nodded toward the figure, pointing. He looked.
“He’s probably dead,” he said matter-of-factly. “We’re losing about twenty men a day. Fucking Nazis starved them, and we didn’t get here in time. You men are here to help get these people food, help them get on the transport trucks as they arrive, and maintain order. But you won’t have too much problem with that. These people are damn glad to see you, and they’re damn glad to still be alive.”
We were split up to support different barracks. Tinpan and me were assigned a building with no name, other than the number nine. I thought it was ironic that we, original members of the Ninth Platoon, had Building Nine. Someone was supposed to bring an interpreter to us, but we figured we would at least eyeball the prisoners while we were waiting for the translator, see if anyone needed anything right away. We walked up two wooden stairs and entered the building.
The room was filled with racks and racks of bunks, four high. Just a big wooden frame with big wooden shelves, where the prisoners slept. There were two small windows on each wall, but they didn’t provide enough light to really let us see anything other than clusters of prisoners laying on the racks in those black and gray striped uniforms. The windows were open, but they didn’t help get rid of the stench. Human waste and rotting flesh combined to overpower my senses. I gagged and stepped back out for a minute. Tinpan joined me.
“Jesus H.,” said Tin. “We cain’t go in there.”
“How long until this building evacuates?” I asked.
“Cap told me we were first in line, then we are supposed to go help in the hospital. He said we should have trucks here in an hour or so.”
I sat on the step, and Tinpan sat down next to me. We looked around us at the barbed-wire perimeter fencing, and the whitewashed buildings. I thought I could smell the barracks through the closed door. Either that, or I’d caught some of it in my nose and I couldn’t shake it. I hoped that wasn’t the case.
Some guy from another platoon walked up with a man in a German uniform. No hat, no belt, insignia, or weapons. The GI had his gun trained on the German.
“What’s the story here?” I asked, staring at the GI but nodding toward the German.
“This piece of shit was a guard here,” said the GI.
“What’s your name?”
“McGregor, been here since yesterday. After cleaning out one of these buildings, they put me on babysitting detail with this little prick.”
I looked at the guard. He had blond hair, blue eyes. He was short, maybe five feet four or so. I couldn’t help but smile a little bit. Probably too short for the ultimate race, so he was assigned to be a prison guard out here. “So you speak English?”
“Ya,” he muttered.
“Say something in English,” I said.
“I am to translate vat the prisoners say so that you know vat they are saying.”
“You were a guard here?”
“Ya.”
“How many people did you kill?” Tinpan asked.
He drew back. “I fulfilled my duty to my commander.”
I stared at him, didn’t say anything for a while. He fidgeted after a minute or two, uncomfortable with my stare.
“You’re going to help haul these people out of here,” I said.
“No, dat is not vat my duty is. I am supposed to translate ven you bring them out of the barracks.”
“Ah don’t give a shit what you think your duty is,” said Tin. “If we’re goin’ in there, you’re goin’ in there with us.”
The guard flinched a little, and grimaced. He stood all straight and at attention. McGregor poked him real hard in the back with his rifle, knocking the kraut’s balance off and making him take a recovery step.
“Get your ass in there,” said McGregor, motioning to the door.
The guard glared at McGregor, and then at me and Tin. But he complied. As he climbed the stairs, McGregor said to us, “I’ve been waiting to smack this fucker all day. He’s a smug little bastard.”
We walked into the darkened barracks again. I was ready for the stench this time, so I breathed through my mouth, like when I used to skin rabbits back home. It helped a little, but it was so overpowering that I couldn’t avoid it completely. But at least I wasn’t gagging.
Tinpan and I approached the closest body. I think it was a man. White stubble covered his head. We fanned away a cloud of black flies, and we each grabbed an arm to help him up. I was startled by what I found. This man’s upper arm was thinner than the handle of a baseball bat. Absolutely no muscles, just a bone with some loose skin covering it.
“Hold up,” I said to Tin. He nodded.
“Goddamn. We gonna break this poor bastard’s arms if we help him up?” asked Tin. “Or pull his arms out of their sockets?”
“Hey, guard,” I said. “How do we move these people without hurting them?”
“How should I know?” asked the guard. “I am no doctor.”
Tin and I both straightened. Suddenly I wished I had Kozlowski with me. I took a step toward the guard, and got right up in his face.
“You don’t seem real motivated to help us here,” I said.
“Vat is... motivated?” Even in the dim light, I caught just a hint of a smirk. He knew what it meant.
I forced a grin. But I didn’t want it to look like a smile. I wanted to make him know that I was forcing a smile.
“You see,” I said as I pulled in real close. Our noses were almost touching. “You’re not the only one that’s killed a lot of men. Me and Tin here killed us a whole bunch of you kraut bastards. And it don’t really matter to either of us if we kill one more. So, if you don’t start getting a little more cooperative, you might find you don’t make it through the day today. THAT is what motivation means. Do you understand now?”
He didn’t say anything, but he nodded. Then he said something in German to the prisoner. The prisoner nodded. He looked at me. “I told him that you were going to help him to his feet, and it hurts him too much to say something.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s real good. Now, you get down real close to this man’s face, and if you hear even a little gasp, you tell us. Because if we hurt this man, we’re going to hurt you next. Does that motivate you?”
The guard just stared at me, not acknowledging. We were off to a bad start. He stepped over and knelt before the prisoner. “Ven ever you are ready,” he said.
The prisoner was a living skeleton. I grasped his upper arm and fully encircled it with my fingers. His breath was absolutely horrible. Even in the stench-laden barracks, a smell like rotten meat came from his every breath. He struggled to sit up, and I put my other hand on the side of his torso. I grasped his ribcage. Again, there were no muscles. I could feel individual ribs. Slowly, we helped him struggle to his feet. But he was too weak to stand. So Tin and I each put an arm over our shoulders and hugged his torso from either side. We lifted him and carried him into the daylight, his feet dragging along. Outside, two more GIs were waiting. A medic and another man standing next to a big metal pot and a canvas bag, with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
“Set him down here, I’ll evaluate him,” said the medic.
I sucked in fresh air, thankful for the break. “How long you been here?”
“Yesterday,” said the medic, not looking up from the prisoner. “The day the camp was liberated.” He nodded to the GI, who pulled a metal cup from the bag, dipped it into the pot, and brought out a cupful of warm soup. He looked at the guard.
“Tell him to drink this slowly, and then signal when he’s finished so we can get him more.” The guard rattled off som
ething in German.
“We’re rotating between this barracks and that one,” the medic said, pointing a thumb back over his shoulder. “When you bring the next one out, wait for me to check him out before you bring out any more.”
So for the next two hours, we labored to bring these prisoners out of the barracks. They had all soiled themselves and reeked of human filth. All of them had horrible breath. They probably hadn’t brushed their teeth in months. They had sunken eyes and the skin on their faces was drawn tight from starvation. We broke one prisoner’s arm as we lifted him up. Three of the prisoners were dead. We left them lying by the barracks but didn’t have anything for covering them.
Even though we sat down in the dirt after finishing, the stench hung on me. I couldn’t shake the sensation of picking up these men, so light and frail that they were more like skeletons than people. We were supposed to get a mess break, but none of us had any appetite, so we just decided to go to the hospital and start working there.
The hospital was actually the guards’ quarters, cleared out and retrofitted. To get there, we had to walk down a line of prisoner barracks. A prisoner was sitting, propped up against one of the barracks as we passed. He rasped something at us in German. We turned to the translator.
“He wants to know if you want to buy a souvenir.”
“What is it?” asked McGregor.
The prisoner held something up. I held my hand out, and he put it in my palm. It was a human tooth. I looked at the prisoner.
“Is this his?” I asked.
“Nein, but some of them are his,” translated the guard.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The prisoner brought up his other hand, trembling in weakness. He opened his hand, and displayed at least a dozen human teeth.
“He says he will sell you these souvenirs for one American dime each,” said the guard.
I stared into the prisoner’s eyes. He looked up at me, and even with his starvation-tight-skinned face, his lips pulled down at the corners. His eyes glistened with tears.
I knelt down on both knees, keeping my eyes locked to his. I nodded slightly, and put a hand on one of his shoulders. I tried to convey to him that he would be all right now. I reached into a coat pocket, and pulled out a chocolate bar. Then I pulled out a buck. I offered them to him with my left hand, and held my right hand out to take the teeth. He nodded, and we traded. I walked to the fence and threw the teeth as far away as I could.
My Honor Flight Page 17