My Honor Flight
Authors: Dan McCurrigan
My Honor Flight
By Dan McCurrigan
Copyright © 2012 Dan McCurrigan
All Rights Reserved
Last year, my great-grandfather
was invited on a flight to the World War II memorial in Washington D.C. They
called it an Honor Flight. A local grocery chain sponsored the trip, and a
family member was to escort each invitee. My father thought it would be a good
idea if I accompanied my great-grandfather. I would soon be deploying to
Afghanistan, and Dad said it might be a way for Pops to share some tips from
his time as a soldier.
I didn't know Pops
very well before the trip. He was a nice old guy that made pleasant
conversation and talked about the weather a lot. But during that trip, he shared
stories from his tour of duty in World War II. I had no idea that such a
gentle old man had been through so much.
These are his stories,
as told by him.
Whenever you
watch movies about the war, they make Europe look cold and colorless and dark.
Seems like the studios like to show snow and tanks. And we had plenty of time
like that. Totally miserable.
But in the
fall of ’44, my company was in France. It was beautiful! It was early
October, and still warm. The leaves had turned, and there was plenty of orange
and yellow. I remember thinking that it felt like some Frenchie artist had
painted the landscape. It was about that time that my good friend Oily Chartelli
went AWOL. In the Army during the war, there wasn’t much worse a guy could
do. It was desertion. And Captain Reynolds, our commanding officer, was
pissed about it. He pulled me aside and said, “You’re that goddamn Chartelli’s
buddy, aren’t ya?”
I snapped to
attention. “Yes sir!” I said. “But I haven’t seen him, sir.”
He got right
up in my face. His breath smelled like stale coffee and cigarettes. I’ll bet his
nose was a quarter of an inch from mine. I felt a droplet of spit hit my lip
as he chewed me out. “Well,” he said, “if you see him, you tell him that he
better keep running. Because I’m going to kill the son of a bitch if I see him
again.”
“No sir! I
mean, yes sir!”
He just squinted
at me and shook his head as if I were the village idiot. I chuckled inside as
he walked away. How could I talk to Chartelli if he’d run away? But even
though Cap didn’t make much sense with his threat, I understood where he was
coming from. I’d been in Buzz Company for eight months. The company was
assembled in England out of pieces from other companies, and we’d spent the
last four months fighting our way across France. We had only each other. And
if we weren’t there for each other, then we would all die. No matter how good
a friend Oily was, I began to hate him for leaving us. And it was just stupid
anyway. No matter how pretty the countryside was, there were krauts
everywhere, so he would probably get captured or killed. I thought Oily was
smarter than that.
Our mission was
to protect a bridge. There was nothing else in the area—just a tiny unnamed
village, with a church and some houses. The bridge was made of wood, not
steel. I don’t think it could take much weight. But it crossed a pretty good-sized
river. Now, the bridge couldn’t handle tanks, but it could handle cars of
German couriers and commanders, and maybe light supply trucks. So our job was
to secure that bridge and guard it from the krauts. The river was the enemy
line, so it wasn’t hard getting to the bridge, but it would be hard to defend
it.
Our company
set up rotating shifts. We had groups on both sides of the bridge, and we
would rotate around through four separate foxholes. There were foxholes on
either side of the road, at either end of the bridge. No one liked being on
the far side of the bridge. If the Germans attacked and we had to fall back, we
had a long run back across the bridge, with no cover. There was a field just
past the far side of the bridge. It was about seventy-five yards of open space
from the bridge to the forest line. But the forest was thick, and we couldn’t
see in there.
Cap was
nervous about that forest, so he added another job to the rotation. We called
it Shooting Gallery. When it was time for a team to leave the far-side
foxholes and come back to our side, they had to walk the perimeter along the
forest line. I tell you what. That was the scariest part of the whole rotation.
Since we were in teams of four, the perimeter team would scatter out in single file.
The idea was that if the krauts were in there and they shot one of us, the
other three might have a chance of making it back to the foxhole. And the damn
forest was alive with noise. As we startled squirrels and rabbits and birds, they’d
jump around in there. Every time a branch moved or a twig rustled, we’d train
our guns at it. So we were constantly waving our guns all over. But most of
the time we couldn’t see the source of the noise. If there were krauts in
there, we wouldn’t be able to see them. It would be real easy for them to pick
off all four of us.
The day after
Oily went AWOL, we had only three men in our foxhole team. It was me and
Morelli and Paul Taylor from St. Louis. We called Morelli and Chartelli the twins.
They weren’t related, but they were both Italians from New York City. They always
made fun of my Midwestern accent. I never heard anyone else say that people
from Michigan had an accent. Those two jokers could lay the New York lingo on
real heavy. All this “bada bing” stuff. And they pulled pranks on everyone. I
remember one night in our training camp in England, they caught a rooster and
put it in a broom closet. They knew that Edwards was on patrol, and that he was
scared of the dark. Well, that rooster was very unhappy, and was rattling
around in the cleaning supplies. Poor Edwards was standing outside of the
closet, with his gun pointed at the door. Just then Chartelli and Morelli
hustled by and asked Edwards how it was going. They walked right up to the
closet, saying something about needing a mop. Chartelli opened the door, and
that rooster came BOLTING out of the closet, straight at Edwards! He fired
about three shots, and actually missed the rooster with all three. Chartelli
and Morelli dove for cover. They had no idea he would fire his weapon. They
howled in laughter, laying there on the ground. Poor Edwards never heard the
end of that. Scared by a chicken.
So the twins
really liked to have a good time. But when there was a fight, they’d protect
each other like brothers. And they wouldn't protect just each other, but
anyone in Buzz Company. So I liked having Morelli in the foxhole with me. I
just wished Oily were there too.
Paul was a Negro.
I never had any trouble with black folks. But back then, you know, that was
twenty years before all the civil rights stuff happened. Growing up in Grand
Ledge, I’d never seen a colored guy before basic training. The first time I
saw a Negro, I couldn’t help but keep stealing glances. I didn’t know how I
was supposed to act around them. Boy, was I stupid about them. But that
didn't last long. Once you get into battle, I don’t care what color you are,
you’re going to fight to stay alive, and keep the guy next to you alive. Paul
was a good friend of mine.
So Paul,
Morelli, and me lay in the foxhole, peeking out and watching the forest line.
It was boring as hell. The weather was perfect, probably in the seventies, and
we all kept talking about taking the day off. We wanted to sit on the river’s
shore. Maybe take a nap. Maybe get a bottle of wine and talk about girls,
soak up the sun. Late in the afternoon, it was our turn to move to the far
side of the bridge. We hated that shift because the sun was dropping, and the
forest was to the west. So we couldn’t see much because we were looking into
the sun. I pulled out a cigarette and asked Paul for a light. He reached out
with a lighter, and just then one hell of a racket erupted. I saw a bullet
hole appear in Paul’s helmet. He dropped.
Morelli and I
dove to the bottom of the foxhole. The gunfire was a constant barrage of
thunder—big guns! They had to be machine guns set up in the forest. We looked
at each other, then I crawled over to Paul. His eyes were still open, staring
at the sky. He was dead. I threw up.
Morelli and I
couldn’t do anything. If we rose even a little above the foxhole, there would
be a burst of machine gun fire. And we knew the other, far-side foxhole was in
the same situation. We couldn’t look up to get a bead on the enemy. The rest
of the company couldn’t help us, because they’d have to cross the bridge in the
open. We were trapped.
We affixed
our bayonets. We figured that the krauts were going to lay down cover fire and
charge our foxholes to take them over, so they could advance on the bridge and
the village. So we had six guys to hold off a force of unknown size.
After about a
half hour, the gunfire subsided. The krauts were conserving their ammunition.
But this gave us a chance to yell at the guys in the other foxhole.
“You see
anything?” I yelled.
“We can’t
see shit!” It was Kozlowski. “Every time we raise up to look, they shoot!”
“Same here!
Be ready for a charge!”
“Why aren’t
they throwing grenades at us?” asked Kozlowski.
“’Cause
they’re idiots!” I said. We all laughed, but we were sitting ducks. The
Germans had us pinned down in cages. All they had to do was throw some
grenades in the foxholes, and they’d have this side of the bridge.
“We might
make it out in the dark,” said Kozlowski.
“They won’t
wait that long. Too risky. They’ll be coming soon,” I said.
“You think
Cap’s going to get us any help?” asked Kozlowski.
“No. They
can’t make it across the bridge.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
We went
silent for quite a while.
“I got an
idea,” said Morelli. “I think those assholes are low on ammo. If we prop a
helmet up and move it around, maybe we can get ’em to waste shots.”
I nodded. It
was a good idea. I started to unbuckle my helmet.
“Wait,” said
Morelli. He stared at Paul. Then he kind of nodded toward him.
I paused.
That didn’t seem right to me. Paul had just died, and it felt like we should
honor his death by leaving him alone. Leave him out of the battle.
I shook my
head. “That ain’t right.”
“Look, I
don’t like it either,” said Morelli. “But we can’t bring Paul back. We need to
use everything at our disposal. There’s just the two of us now.”
I slowly
nodded. “I know. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Morelli
started belly-crawling over to Paul. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do
it,” I said.
I went over
to Paul, and for a minute, I just stared into his eyes. I’d seen plenty of
death already, but this was the first close friend I’d lost. I fought off
tears, and carefully unbuckled his helmet. I didn’t know what I was going to
find inside. I was hoping his whole head didn’t come apart in my hands when I
removed the helmet. It didn’t. It was a clean shot, of a smaller caliber than
the big machine guns.
I put his
head down on the ground, real gentle. Then I took out a handkerchief, and
covered his face. I scooped just a little bit of dirt up and put it on two of
the corners, so the wind wouldn’t blow the cloth away. I turned to give the
helmet and rifle to Morelli. He was sniffling and wiping tears away.
“Fucking
bastards,” he muttered as he put the helmet on the butt of Paul’s rifle, and
slowly raised it up.
Sure enough,
every time he raised the helmet up, we’d hear that big old machine gun bang out
a few rounds and the dirt around the foxhole would fly up in little clouds. We
raised it up in different spots in the foxhole every couple of minutes for at
least an hour.
Then we heard
a new noise, and we froze. There was gunfire on the village side of the
bridge! Buzz Company wouldn’t waste ammunition by shooting at the forest—it
was out of range. That meant that the Germans were on the village side of the
river. We were surrounded. I just lay in the dirt, holding my head in my
hands. This was the end. I thought about Debbie back home, and how I’d never
see her again. We were going to get married when I got back, and I was going
to go to the university in Lansing. I was going to be a teacher. But now I
was going to die in this hole, like some kind of animal trapped in its own
nest.
“We’re
screwed,” said Morelli.
“Yeah.”
“You see any
way out of this?” he asked.
I thought for
several minutes. “We could try for the river, try to swim downstream. But we
ain’t doing that until we’re the last ones.”
Morelli
nodded, his lips pursed tight. “We won’t be the last ones to die. We’ll
probably be the first ones. I just wish we could fight, and not just sit
here.”
I started to
reply, “Maybe when it gets dark—”
We heard a
grenade explode, followed a split-second later by another one. We waited. I
was listening so hard that I wanted to close my eyes to really focus—I was
trying to hear the kraut footsteps as they came. But I couldn’t close my eyes,
in case a grenade flew into the foxhole. A couple minutes later, we flinched
when the silence was broken by staccato automatic weapon fire from the woods.
Morelli and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. The krauts were making their
move! We lay in the bottom of the foxhole on our backs, facing the edge of the
hole nearest the forest, our bayonets pointed up. We knew they’d be charging
the foxholes or throwing in grenades, and this way we could try to either throw
the grenades back, or shoot the krauts as they came in.
There was no
more machine gun fire, and the fighting on the other side of the bridge was far
enough away that it was really only background noise. With the adrenaline
running through me, it was so quiet. I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my
ears, and I had to keep reminding myself to loosen the grip on my rifle. The
enemy could be five feet away and we wouldn’t know it. We waited maybe twenty
minutes. I’m just guessing on that. It felt like hours, but if that was the
case it would have been dark, and the light hadn’t changed much. Then we heard
three bursts of rifle fire from the forest.
