My Honor Flight (7 page)

Trumbull, who
had the scarf at the time, talked with another guy in some other platoon.  He
told them how the scarf worked, and how to use it.  The guy didn’t believe
Trumbull, so Trumbull brought him to our group.  We told all the stories about
the scarf, and about Gunderson, and I think he could see that we had religion. 

Trumbull pulled
the scarf out of its pouch.  It wasn’t much to look at any more.  It was dirty
and bloodstained and ripped.  The embroidery was fraying.  It had worn out so
quickly that we’d started carrying it in a small leather courier pouch to
protect it.  The guy frowned and looked around the room again with a
questioning look on his face.

 “This is
some kind of joke?” he asked.

Cap stood in
the back, and stepped between the men up to the stranger.

 “Soldier, I
can tell you that this scarf works.  Bet your ass on it.  And don’t screw it up
by not following the three conditions.”

The guy
raised his eyebrows in surprise at hearing a Captain talk about the scarf.  He
nodded, turned and left.  That was a depressing moment for me.  I don’t know if
the scarf really worked or not, but it gave us something to believe in.  And I
never got to use it.  I was one of the six guys who didn’t get a turn.

After our
battle at the farm where we took that barn, the Ninth Platoon had dropped from thirty-five
men to twenty-seven.  Apparently Brass expected this, because seven new men were
assigned to our platoon.  They were new to Buzz Company.  They felt like
strangers because they hadn’t been with us through training, and especially
combat.  We weren’t snobs.  If you were in Buzz Company, then Buzz Company
stood by your side.  But they hadn’t earned the swagger.

That
awkwardness was made harder by the fact that they were all good men.  Well, all
but one.  This jackass named Stankowski thought he could come into the platoon
and take command.  You know, one of those guys who thinks he should be running
the show, barking orders at people, telling them to straighten their uniform. 

We earned a
day of rest after clearing the area around the farmyard, and we were taking it
easy in the same barn that we took a couple nights earlier.  The bodies were
gone, but the bullet holes remained in the planks.  Me and Tin, Butler,
Torgeson, and Taft all studied the barn.  We recounted the series of events,
and found landmarks in the wood’s scars that helped us decipher exactly how it
happened.  If felt strange to be sleeping and living in there.

 “WELLL!”
shouted Stankowski as he walked into the barn, with six men behind him. “The
day we get here and you cupcakes are laying around doing nothing?  This ain’t
why I joined the Army!”

I looked
around the barn.  If eyes could shoot bullets, that guy would have been cut in
half.

 “Who the
fuck are you?” asked Kozlowski through gritted teeth as he looked up from
cleaning his weapon.

 “The name is
Stankowski.  Me and the boys—”

 “Hey, Kozlowski,”
Chartelli said without opening his eyes. “This some dumb Polack cousin of
yours?”

Stankowski
looked at Chartelli and licked his lips.  “As I was saying—”

 “Nah,” said
Kozlowski. “No cousin of mine.  But I think he is a dumb Polack.”

 “Listen
here, goddamnit!  You men—”

 “Well,
that’s a damn shame,” said Chartelli, throwing his feet off a hay bale and
swinging into a sitting position. “We already got one Polack.  We don’t need
another one.  Beat it, pal.” He jerked his thumb toward the door.

That brought
a few chuckles, not only from the ninth, but some of the men walking in with Stankowski. 
In fact, the other six men kept walking past the indignant Stankowski, standing
there with his mouth open. 

 “Name’s Vern
Fisher,” one of them said to me as he walked up.  “Don’t pay any attention to
that guy.  He’s an asshole who thinks he’s in charge.” 

A bunch of us
laughed.

 “We already
got a CO too,” said Stackhouse as he glared at Stankowski.  “We don’t need
another one of them neither.”

Stankowski
was still doing his best to command us.  “Listen, men!  This is the big bad
Buzz Company?  A bunch of women sitting around knitting?  I came here to win
the war—”

 “Whooo!”
called Tin. “You hear that boys?  The Polack came to win the war all by
hisself!”

By now, Stankowski
was getting mad.  His face was all red and shaking a little bit.  He was
getting disrespect from everyone, and he had to try to recover from his bad
first impression with the group.

 “Who’s the
meanest son of a bitch in this outfit?  Get up here, and I’m going to kick your
ass.”  He’d resorted to violence.  We moved past that mentality weeks ago.

A bunch of
the guys groaned.  Kozlowski had been behaving since he got his first taste of
combat.  Now here was some jerk egging him on.  Kozlowski looked around the
room, and he was clenching and unclenching his jaw again, just like in England.  
He slowly stood up, and sure enough, his fingers were twitching.  He’d fallen
off the wagon.  Most of us shook our heads.  Back to the bad old days.  I was
worried that once he got a taste of scrapping again, we’d have to deal with
that at the same time we were trying to fight the entire German army.  I was
irritated with this new guy for coming in and stirring up the pot.

I’ve got to
give some credit to Stankowski.  Kozlowski was a big, muscular man, and when he
was wanting to scrap, he pulled his lips back tight and glared with penetrating
eyes.  Kozlowski was an intimidating man.  But Stankowski didn’t budge as
Kozlowski moved toward him.  Their eyes were locked together.

He looked
Kozlowski up and down, disapproving.  Like Kozlowski was some puny guy like
Trumbull.  “So you’re the best this platoon’s got?” asked Stankowski.  A few
people chuckled.  Kozlowski could tear this guy apart and eat him for lunch.

Kozlowski,
with a deadpan look on his face, said, “Nope.  I ain’t nothing compared to the
meanest guy in this platoon.”

We all did a
double take.  I ticked off our roster in my mind.  Who would Kozlowski think
was tougher than him?  Stackhouse?  Big Swede? 

 “WELLLL!”
said Stankowski.  “Get him up here!”

 “WELLLL!”
yelled Kozlowski in mock imitation, then pausing for dramatic effect.  “Cooper!”

We were past
doing double takes now.  Half the guys in the room dropped their jaws in
disbelief.  Had Kozlowski lost his marbles?

 “Hold up,
man,” said Chartelli, all dramatic and breathless. “You can’t bring Cooper down
on this dumb Polack.”

 “Hey, that’s
enough of the Polack talk, alright?” yelled Stankowski, pointing a finger at
Chartelli.  “I’m proud of being Polish.  Shut your fat mouth!”

Chartelli
shrugged. “Hey man, I’m just sayin’ you don’t want to tangle with Cooper. 
He’ll bring the snakebite to you.”

 “Snakebite?”
asked Stankowski, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

 “Yeah!”
McIntire stood up, all wide-eyed.  He held his hand out with fingers spread
wide, like he was telling Stankowski to stop moving.  “Listen, friend.  You
don’t want to tangle with Cooper.  None of us tangle with Cooper!”

 “And exactly
why is that?” asked Stankowski, sneering in disbelief.

 “’Cause he’s
a GYPSY!” whispered McIntire, “He puts curses on people, and brings them occult
powers down on people that piss him off.”

 “So where is
this all-powerful gypsy?” asked Stankowski.  “I don’t believe in that voodoo
shit!”

 “Oh, he
ain’t here right now,” said McIntire, and then after a pause, “He’s out
collecting bat shit.”

I had to look
away because I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.  I bit my lip and pinched
my leg real hard.

 “Bat shit?”
asked Stankowski, incredulous.  “Cut me some slack.  You think I was born
yesterday?”

 “How do you
think they make their spells and curses?  They gotta have special stuff.  We’re
telling you man, don’t fuck with Cooper!”

The truth was
that Cooper was with a few of the guys in the small barn in the outbuildings.  Kozlowski’s
idea was genius.  No scrapping, and he put doubt in that blowhard’s mind.  And
we tried to grow that doubt to downright concern.  We told him all kinds of
stories.  We still had the scarf, so we shared its story.  Then we made up all
kinds of things about how someone lost a finger overnight—no wound or pain or
anything.  He just woke up missing a finger and it was all healed over.  And we
told him that one guy who stole something from Cooper woke up blind the next
morning.  And a few other stories.  But those guys were gone now.  Most of them
killed in battle.  Was that Cooper’s work too?  We debated it for a while in
front of Stankowski.  I could tell there was a smidgeon of doubt in there,
because he had finally shut up and just followed the conversation around the
room with his eyes.

Stankowski
had doubt, but he wasn’t sold yet.  He wasn’t stupid.  And we were laying it on
awfully thick.  Looking back, we were laying it on too thick, and made it
unbelievable.  I don’t think anyone would buy all the hooey we were throwing. 

 “OK, you
want your proof, we got your proof,” said Chartelli.  “If we can show you how
Cooper has mystical powers, as long as no one pisses him off, will you believe
us?”

 “How you
gonna do that?” asked Stankowski.

 “Now just
hold on there, goomba,” said Chartelli.  “Here’s the deal.  We prove to you
that Cooper’s got the snakebite voodoo going on, and you give up thinking
you’re gonna be some kind of leader here.  No more ‘WELLLL.’  You just shut
your pie hole and learn how to be Buzz Company.  We don’t need flash, we don’t
need big mouths.  We just need people killing krauts and watching our backs.”

 “I think
you’re the one with the big mouth,” growled Stankowski.

 “See!  There
you go again!  Look pal, I’m trying to help you with the gypsy, and I’m trying
to help you so this whole platoon don’t hate your guts.  Can’t have that when
we’re gettin’ shot at by Jerry.  And I sure as hell don’t want you causing none
of us to get killed.  Deal?”

 “Fine,”
shrugged Stankowski. “But I ain’t no idiot.  You’re not going to fool me with
some trick.”

I was
convinced that Chartelli had finally painted himself into a corner.  How in the
world was he going to convince this reasonably intelligent man that Cooper had
magical powers? 

The answer
was so obvious that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it too.  We had
already shown Stankowski the scarf and explained how we thought it might have magic. 
We just had proof that it worked, because at the farmhouse battle, Pete
Anderson got lucky in battle.  He’d passed the scarf to Bert Jackson.  We
called Jackson Hillbilly, because he was from Tennessee.  He wasn’t really from
the sticks or anything.  Just from Tennessee, so that’s where the name came
from. 

 “Hey Petey
and Hillbilly, come here,” called Chartelli.

Petey and
Jackson stood up and looked at each other, and walked over to Chartelli and
Stankowski in the center of the floor. 

 “Pete, tell
us what happened that night we took this farm.”

 “Well,” said
Petey, “I was in the left-most group.  Once the barn lit up with gunfire, we
started focusing on the house.  But with all the commotion from gunshots, we
didn’t hear a German patrol to our left in the trees.  I was standing up
against a tree for cover from the house, shooting at the windows.  When my clip
emptied, I went to switch for a fresh one, and I bobbled it.  I bent down to
pick it up, just as a half dozen shots pounded the tree where my head and chest
would have been. 

 “I dove down
on the ground and yelled ‘Krauts!’  Lucky for me, my group heard.  They dove on
the ground too, and we all fired to our left.  It took us about ten minutes to
get those bastards.  They were sneaky, moving around in the dark and splitting
up.  But we got them.”

 “See?” said
Chartelli.  “He had the GOOD snakebite going for him there!”

Stankowski
shook his head.  “That ain’t no magic.  That’s just luck.”

 “I don’t
know about that,” piped up Tim Robinson.  “I saw where the buckle deflected a
bullet for Cooper.  And I was in the group with Petey.  As near as I could
tell, having that kind of luck twice this close together, with the only thing
tying them together being that scarf...  That’s hard to call just luck.”

 “So here’s
what I’m thinkin’,” said Chartelli, “and fellas, you gotta work with me here.” 
He was talking to Jackson.

 “Hillbilly,
once you have your good luck, would you be willing to give the scarf to the
Polack—err, Stankowski here?”

Jackson frowned. 
I could tell he didn’t like being told who to give it to.  “I thought we said
we weren’t supposed to plan this out?”

 “Yeah, I
hear ya,” nodded Chartelli.  “But listen to me.  Which would you rather have? 
Some blowhard spoutin’, and gettin’ us all riled up—ah, no offense,
Stankowski.  Or let him see what Cooper can do, and shut this guy up
permanently and make him a contributing member of Buzz Company?”

Jackson
scowled.  “I reckon.”  Then he turned and walked away.  Sometimes he could be
pretty quiet.

So, we had a
plan, and Stankowski promised he’d shut up until after he’d had the scarf.  I
wondered about that a few times afterward.  Did he agree because he wanted the
scarf?  Or did he do it because he didn’t want to be in disagreement with the
platoon?  I never asked.  He didn’t have to wait long to get the scarf,
though.  A few days later we lay on the sides of a road and attacked a German
supply convoy as it approached.  Someone took out one of the truck’s drivers,
and it veered off the road, right at a bunch of the guys.  As it barreled down
on the men, it flipped onto its side and came sliding to a stop, maybe three
feet short.  Of Hillbilly Jackson.

Stankowski
got the scarf that night, and sure enough, it worked for him.  Something about
a dud kraut grenade not going off.  I don’t remember the details.  But I can
tell you that Stankowski never pushed anybody around again. 

I remember a
few days after that walking along with Chartelli, and I said how I was
impressed how he came up with the idea to tame Stankowski.

 “Nah,”
Chartelli shook his head. “It wasn’t the scarf.  Didn’t you notice, he tamed
down right after that scrap with the supply convoy?  You see, he was green when
we met him.  Green, man.  He’d never been in battle.  Never had to kill someone,
never been shot at.  Haven’t you noticed?  All the piss and vinegar we all had
back in England—it’s gone.  Nobody here is pushy or arrogant.  Hell, I figured
Kozlowski would die in a fistfight somewhere.  Look at him now.  We’re all just
trying to get the job done and go home.  I figured if I could just get that
asshole to stay quiet until he got into one battle, combat would tame him
faster than anything.”