My Honor Flight Read Free

current carried us down as we swam, and we came out right at the bridge. 
We crawled up to the bank’s edge and started shooting.  Sure enough, we
surprised the krauts.  They split their fire between us and the village
buildings.  Once our guys on the machine gun saw the Germans’ gun flashes, they
laid down suppression fire into the thicket of trees the krauts used for
cover.  Man, that was something.  That big gun sent splinters and small
branches flying, and then the rest of Buzz Company shot the Germans as they tried
to get away.  It took about fifteen minutes, then all went quiet.  After about
ten more minutes, we got up and called out.  Pretty soon, all of Buzz Company gathered
together by the bridge.  Well, not all of Buzz Company.  We’d lost three men—Paul,
Gunderson, and Taft.
    Cap Reynolds walked
up to Chartelli, a big frown on his face.  “Where the hell have you been?”
     “Cap,” I
said. “He saved our asses back there.”
    Cap turned
his frown toward me.  “I want to hear it from him, not you.”
     “Well,
remember, I was chief cook and bottle washer yesterday,” Oily began.  “We
needed water, so last night I took a bucket down to get some at the river,
around five o’clock.  There was this Jerry on the other side of the river.” 
Oily referred to Germans as Jerries, like the British.  He was the only one in
Buzz Company who called them that.  To the rest of us, they were krauts.
     “I thought
about taking him out.  I laid down on the ground and put him in my sights, but
then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, where there’s one Jerry, there are more!’  So
after he traipsed back into the woods, I ran like hell over the bridge and to
the woods.  I thought if I could catch up and spy on him, we’d know exactly
where they were.”
     “So what
happened?” asked Morelli.
     “I’m gettin’
there!” said Oily, all agitated.  “Just calm down and let me tell the story,
will ya?  So I come up to the woods, and I’m lookin’ all over the place for
where that damned Jerry disappeared.  I only had probably thirty rounds of ammo
on me, plus my pistol.  So I was real quiet, crouched in the weeds.  I couldn’t
see shit for a trail.  I don’t believe for a second those Indians in the movies
can track someone.  I was probably ten minutes behind this guy, and there was
no footprints, no bent twigs or grass, nuthin’.   So’s I just started crawling
and looking, right?  I was bein’ really quiet.  And I was getting lower and
lower, and the brush was getting higher and higher.  I’m laying there,
scratching my head.  How in the hell CAN’T I see this guy?  Then, I hear a twig
snap.  But it was behind me!” Chartelli slapped his forehead. 
     “I’m
thinking, ‘Jesus!  I passed him!’  I’m thinking, ‘How in the hell did I walk
right past him?’  But then I hear voices.  There’s TWO krauts, not one.  So I move
under some heavy brush.  Man, that’s some nasty stuff in there.  All pokey. 
Look at this!”  He held up his right hand, which was raw with fresh scratches
from thorny weeds. 
     “I’m still
picking thorns out of my clothes.  So I just laid down there for a long time—that
whole night.  Man, I was getting fed up with it.  They were walking all around
me.  I couldn’t tell how many of them were there.  Maybe ten?  I had some
chocolate on me, but that’s it.  And no water.  So by the end of the night, I was
gettin’ real uncomfortable.”
     “So, I’m
getting pretty pissed off by then, you know?  ’Cause I know old Cap here is
going to be chewing my ass hard for not being in camp.”  Cap shook his head and
smirked.  “So once it got a little bit of daylight, and I got hungrier, I got a
little more brave and started to move around the area.  I had to be real quiet—super
quiet, man.  Because there was Jerries on patrol.  Hell, they were only ten
feet away some of the time.  But as I was crawling around