A few brave men
Can devastate an army.
Maria & Howard (Anthony, Age 4)
Maria's POV
Though we could afford a toy store worth of toys, Howard had initially been adamant that Tony's 'toys' should be real things that he could construct with.
I had retorted, "Toys are a necessary part of construction. You test your weapons, don't you? If he's going to build a trebuchet, he needs toys to put in the bucket and a castle to attack. If you don't let him imagine and experiment with what he builds he's going to lose interest in building."
Howard's POV
I relented. I couldn't tell Maria, so she wouldn't understand how important it was that Anthony learn as much as he could about technology. That he'd need that knowledge to create a time machine. But perhaps Maria was right. Inspiration required imagination.
The WWII Veterans Benefit Banquet…
Howard's POV
After an hour of schmoozing and clinking glasses, Maria and I made our way to our assigned table. They weren't at the table so I asked, "Where's Ant'ny and his nanny? This shindig doesn't have a kids' table."
"Nanny Cynthia sent word that Tony's become enthralled with a WWII vet and that they'll be dining at his table."
A few months later...
Maria and Anthony, Age 4
Maria's POV
We were at the Malibu home while Howard was away on his expedition to find the remains of Captain Steven Rogers. I really did not understand Howard's obsession with these annual trips. Soldiers die in war and many of their bodies are left where they fell, never to be returned home. After all these years, what could be left to find? By now, the corpse was likely desiccated. The chance of retrieving blood from the body to create more serum was practically non-existent.
And for some reason, Howard spoke of the Captain as though the man was still alive! I've seen Howard work miracles and heard of others. Back in the 40s he'd made a car that could float. Rumors had it that it only stayed in the air for a few seconds before crashing to the floor during a Stark Expo. But according to Peggy, Howard later perfected the automobile and she'd watched it traveling several feet while suspended in air. Though, the car was apparently destroyed soon after that on one of Peggy's missions.
Maybe there was an infinitesimally small chance the Captain was alive and bobbing along the North Atlantic, encapsulated in a cube of ice. But why give our son so much hope that he'd soon be meeting his hero?
At least this year Howard waited until the day after my birthday to go on his adventure.
I arrived home, intending to enjoy a Long Island iced tea and the afternoon soaps, but my living room was a warzone. Specifically, the Battle of the Bulge, according to Tony.
"Mom! I created a play for you!" He grabbed my fingers and pulled me to the viewing area (the one chair not currently occupied by Lego forest, a white sheet, a Lego village and toy soldiers and toy tanks). "But I kind of have to play all the parts so the action figures are doing the acting bit."
Then he started, "Dear ladies and. Hold on." He disappeared and returned a minute later with two Kens and a Barbie and propped them up on the arms of my chair, presumably to expand the audience. "Jarvis is at the store and Nanny Cynthia is my stagehand and camerawoman. We're recording it so Dad can watch when he gets home."
So much for finding out if Nicky and Victor were going to get steamy on today's episode. Apparently, today's show was going to be the battle of the Nazi's against the Allies.
Tony started again. "Dear ladies and gentlemen, today Stark Theater is presenting for you The Battle of the Bulge.
"Our first scene begins in a bunker in Germany." The bunker was a cardboard box with the top and one side missing. Inside there was a block for a table, a paper on the table with some jagged lines on it (a map), 6 plastic toy soldiers and one other plastic person with a mustache drawn on.
"We need supplies!"
"The Allies own all the ports."
Tony kept switching to various pitches of male voices talking to each other.
"Then we take one!"
"We've tried. They beat us back."
Tony pointed to the map. "We haven't tried for the one in Belgium."
"But our soldiers would have to cross the Ardennes Forest. Vehicles can't drive through it. Our men would have to walk the whole way."
"So let them walk."
"Sir, its winter. We'll lose dozens from the chill alone."
"All the better. Put them in long, white coats. They'll blend in with the snow and no one will see them coming."
"Nanny Cynthia, please prepare us for scene two."
Cynthia shot a glance at the dark grey tv screen, then at me and mouthed, "Sorry." While grabbing the box and removing it from the 'stage'. She didn't need to apologize. I love my son. He'd put time and effort into making this play and he deserved an audience.
In a narrator voice, Tony said, "For our second scene we are in the Ardennes Forest with the 18 young bucks of the INR 99th infantry platoon. They were a recon team, never tested in battle. Until today."
"Lieutenant Bouck, what are your orders?"
"Sneak into Lanzerath." Tony used his hand to cover the right half of his face and stage whispered, 'Lanzerath is a village.'
Then he continued with the play.
"Find a building to hide in and see what the Nazis are up to. Then report back."
Tony maneuvered two of the toy soldiers away from the group of 18 and towards 'a village' consisting of a Fisher Price castle, a Fisher Price barn and a few small Lego houses.
In his narrator voice he said, "The rest of the 99th dug bunkers 30 yards back from the main footpath." Most of the floor was covered in a white sheet. I assumed that was snow. There were bumpy parts, probably with either clothes or pillows under the sheet to create hills. And it seemed that he'd talked Nanny Cynthia into letting him dip the flat, green Lego trees into white paint. The trees stood wherever there was a flat spot and laid on some 'hills'.
There were bowls sitting in the 'snow'. Tony dropped 2 or 3 plastic soldiers in each, so those must've been the bunkers.
"My feet are going to freeze off!" Tony used a gruff voice as he removed the boots of a Gi-Joe and then placed him back in a 'bunker'. "Private, run back to base and get me dry socks and dry boots."
"Yes, sir, Corporal Milsoevich." Tony responded in a different voice then leapt one of the soldiers out of a bowl and down through 'the forest'.
Then he left that scene and went to 'the village'
Tony took the two soldiers and put them in the top of the barn, leaving the sliding door slightly open so the soldiers could peak out. Then he rolled his toy tanks over the houses and used his hands to help break down the walls to show they'd been destroyed. He occasionally made blasting noises and Ken and Barbie dolls played casualties on the ground.
One soldier whispered to the other, "We need to report back to Lieutenant Bouck."
Tony ran the two soldiers through the snow, then stopped them and removed white towels from either side of the two soldiers. In his narrator voice Tony said, "Suddenly, they were ambushed on both sides." Beneath the towels lay little toy soldiers, also obviously dipped in white paint, like the Lego trees had been. "Their white cloaks hid the Nazi soldiers in the snow. The two privates dropped to their bellies and started firing back. Pew! Pew! Pew! BANG!" As each Nazi was shot Tony turned a white toy soldier face up in the "snow".
Then the two infantry men from the 99th stood up and started rushing back to the rest of their unit, one saying to the other:
"We were outnumbered ten to one!"
"I can't believe we took them all out!"
"Better training. Better weapons. Something was on our side."
"I'm just glad it was. Keep an eye out for more of them."
Tony paused in his lecture. "Mom, can I practice at the shooting range today? Those two only made it because they were really good shots and you can only get good with practice."
"Your gun slinging days will need to wait until your Dad returns. But I'm certain there will be no need for you to defend the fort before that time."
His lip stuck out in a pout for a moment before he continued the story. Tony put the two soldiers in one of the bunker bowls and used that soldier's accent to say,
"Lieutenant Bouck, the Nazis have taken Lanzerath."
"We came across one of their scouting parties on our way back. We managed to take them out, but their plan has to be to come through this forest, right down this path, I suspect, Lieutenant."
Then Tony picked up the Gi-Joe that was representing Lieutenant Bouck (he had a silver stripe on his sleeve). Then he picked up a walkie-talkie, "Lieutenant Bouck to base. The Nazis have invaded Belgium and are preparing to cross the Ardennes Forest. Troops are needed in this area. Repeat troops are needed in this area."
Then Tony ran from the room and I heard the walkie-talkie he left behind crackle into life. "Troops are not available. Hold the line."
Then Tony ran back in. In his narrator voice he said, "Lieutenant Bouck was mad, like Yosemite Sam mad, but he showed it with a tight lip instead of jumping up and down yelling because he was in charge and when you're in charge you can't go nutty. So he told his men,…
"We're to hold the line. Prepare for battle men. Aim well. We have a limited arsenal, but don't hesitate to take them out. We'll spend every round we've got if we have to, but make them count."
"Yes, sir."
"Nanny Cynthia, can you help setup the next scene?" Cynthia brought out a flat, white Lego board. Attached to it were more plastic soldiers, dipped in white paint to blend in with the snow. Each soldier appeared to be hot-glued to a Lego block and then the block attached to the wide flat piece. She laid two of those between the bunker bowls.
Once Nanny Cynthia had returned to her spot behind the camera Tony started making gun noises and knocked one Nazi soldier after another into the snow. Then he moved the boards 'off set', stood the soldiers up again, put the board in the 'warzone' again and started with the gun noises knocking each soldier back into the snow.
"They just keep coming!" Shouted one of the Gi-Joes.
"Then keep shooting!"
Then Tony grabbed a Barbie and in a girly voice said, "Oh, no! My cousin is a Nazi soldier. They might kill him! I better tell the other Nazis so they don't get ambushed." Then he showed the Barbie running back towards the town where she found a Nazis soldier and said, "None of your men are making it through! They're being ambushed by the enemy!"
Then Tony moved back to the bunkers and picked up one of the two soldiers. "Ow!"
Another soldier responded, "You get shot?"
"No. Damn machine gun, so hot feels like I'm holding a pan straight out of the oven!"
"Tony! Language."
"It's a play, Mom! That's how soldiers talk!"
"That had better be the worst thing they have to say."
"Yes, ma'am." I could tell Tony was more anxious about the interruption of his play than of any potential consequences.
Another soldier responded, "Trade out your weapon. Go back and forth between 'em. If the barrel warps no bullets'll get through it."
Then Tony interrupted the script himself, with a tech issue of course, "Do you think Dad's fixed that issue? I wonder if a polymer would work better. But that might melt too." Then my son just sort of froze. I knew what was happening. Howard did it too. Their brains got so absorbed with trying to solve a puzzle that it was like someone flipped all of the breakers, turning off everything that wasn't related to solving that problem.
I could take advantage of it, flip on the T.V. to see who was kissing who on today's episode, but that wasn't fair to Tony or to Cynthia's efforts in assembling this play. I clicked my fingers in front of him a few times, rested a hand on his shoulder, "Tony?"
He gasped, like a drowning man just pulled from the water. "Mom?"
"You can ask your Dad the next time you talk to him, or you can ask Obie if you can't wait that long. Cynthia's still filming. How about you finish the play?"
" 'Kay."
But he didn't start. He just looked around, like he was a little lost about what he'd been doing and where he left off. I decided to prompt him by asking, "How do you know so much about this? It doesn't seem to be one of Captain America's battles."
"Milsoevich did a speech about it at the Smithsonian that Nanny Cynthia took me to. Then you and Dad attended that veteran's party that night and I sat with Mr. Milsoevich and got to ask him more details."
"Who's Mr. Milsoevich?"
"Corporal Milso…, Mom! You're not supposed to know yet that he lived. The play isn't done."
I smiled, "Then maybe you should get back to it."
Tony switched back to his narrator voice, "For hours and hours the German soldiers just kept trying to walk down the trail between the bunkers and the 99th just kept killing all of them. But after that girl tattled on them the Nazi's got sneaky and sent some of their men to crawl on their bellies up behind the bunkers."
Tony maneuvered a few of the toy soldiers on their bellies towards the bowls. Then Tony picked up one of the men from a bowl, the one that had removed his shoes and socks and explained to me, "This is Corporal Milsovich.
"Bang!" Tony made one of the soldiers on their belly roll down a pillow hill.
"You just saved Lieuanent Bouck!"
"Kid, if you haven't figured it out, we're not making it through this day. I just gave him time to take out a few more Nazi's before we all kick the bucket."
The other toy soldier replied, "Then I'm using the machine gun to take out as many as I can."
"Three round burst. Or it'll just overheat."
"Mom, do you think oven mitts would help? But they're too thick. You wouldn't be able to put your finger in the trigger. Maybe a different kind of glove…"
I was losing him again, and I was worried he was coming up with a plan that would require testing. "I don't know, honey. But I don't want you touching hot metal. And even though I know your Dad is teaching you to use guns, I'm putting my foot down at machine guns. You're much too young to handle one of those."
The pout was back.
Tony's POV
I wasn't happy, but I wasn't surprised. Mom had thrown a fit when she found out Dad had been letting me use the gun range. She was a worrier, which is why Dad had warned me to keep mum about the lessons, but it had just slipped out one day and Mom had gone nuts!
Flashback
"How could you think that was a good idea, Howard? He's 4!"
"He's got surgeon's hands. Do you know how steady your hands have to be to make a circuit board by hand?"
"I don't care if his hands are steady, they shouldn't be holding a gun."
"I'm not taking him hunting, Maria. He's just shooting at targets. So far, he's followed every rule I laid down about them and he knows his ass will be toast if he disobeys."
That part of the memory wasn't good. Dad had put all the rules in writing and each time we went to the gun range he made me read them to him, including the bit about consequences that said, 'If any of these rules are disobeyed, I will be spanked.' It was so embarrassing to have to read that to him every time.
"It isn't only about his safety," Mom had said, "It isn't good for his brain. He has a vivid imagination. He shouldn't be imagining what it's like to shoot things."
Dad had replied, "Weren't you the one who insisted he have toys to use to test out any weapons he creates. I believe you said he needed a castle, toy people to rescue and a trebuchet to attack with."
Defeated, Mom's anger turned cold and she didn't talk to Dad for 3 days. Eventually she came around to the idea, after she'd tagged along to see me shooting. I proved that I could do it safely and that an afternoon of shooting practice hadn't turned me insane.
I sighed. It was unlikely Dad would agree to me using a machine gun anyway. Most of the time I'd only been using a BB gun. As far as we were telling Mom, that was the only thing I'd used.
Maria's POV
Tony disappeared for a moment and then a pinecone flew through the room and into one of the bowls. "Owww!"
"Holy…" Tony paused with the soldier's voice. "Damn is worse than crap, right Mom?"
I sighed and rubbed my fingers against my eyes. Why did Howard have to use foul language in front of our child? I suppose I should be thankful he wasn't looking for permission to say, 'Holy shit' in his play. "Yes, you are correct."
"Holy crap! It was a dud!"
"That dud just broke half of Private Houste teeth."
As if my son's story couldn't get more gruesome.
Tony's POV
Next came the German medics. I'd made a white flag for them, but I'd forgotten to put the Red Cross symbol on their chest. I ran and got a red marker and drew on the chest of 4 of the plastic soldiers.
I started up with my narrator voice once the medics were in place. "Lieutenant Bouck had honor, so when the medics came with their white flag he told his men to stop shooting and to let the medics do their job."
I wanted to say the next line in German because one of the medics was the one saying it, but I didn't know very much German, mostly just a few lines that Dad would use when he was pissed or trying to hide what he was saying from me. I didn't think any of those would fit what the medic needed to say, and if Mom happened to know any of those words in German she wouldn't be happy with me. So I could either go with French or English.
Dad said the French had setup a really good security system against the Nazis, but that security systems only work in the places where they were installed and the Germans had just bypassed France's security system by walking through the more treacherous terrain on either side of the security check points, kind of like they were doing in Belgium in my play. I'm guessing Hitler had read that poem about taking the road less traveled and applied it to war.
Since France had given up to Germany's advances I decided to go with French for the medic, but I gave Mom kind of a guilty look since she is half French. I held up a walkie talkie to one of the Nazi soldiers and had him say, "Ils ont 17 hommes campés dans 6 bunkers juste au nord de…" (They have 17 men camped out in 6 bunkers just north of) "Bang!" Then I dropped the Nazi medic and the walkie talkie showing that one of the 99th had killed him.
Then I picked up the walkie talkie that was in the bowl with Lieutenant Bouck and said, "Mayday, mayday, our position has been… Bang!" I dropped that walkie talkie too. A German had destroyed it.
I took another of the toy Nazis and had him crawl right up to Bouck's bunker, "Bang"
"Ow! My leg!"
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"
"Holy sh…" I glanced up at Mom, "Crap!
I forgot to use the narrator's voice. A narrator's voice was too calm for these events anyway. "Private Almont had taken 5 bullets to the face! And he was still breathing!"
Maria's POV
Personally, I felt like vomiting at the mental image.
Tony was excited. He'd switched out of play mode and had jumped to analyzing the battle, a conversation more suited for him to have with Howard than me. "Were German guns and bullets that bad? If so, how'd the war go on for 6 years? I mean, they had some decent plans, but how could they shoot back at the 99th for 5 hours and never take out one of them. Well one of them, but he'd been out on his own running an errand. And not that it was a bad thing that all of the 99th survived, but who was making their weapons, a toy company? They couldn't even take out one of our soldiers when they were two feet away!"
I hoped the army had paid for plastic surgery for the man. Tony ran around maneuvering the white painted soldiers so every bunker had some peering over the edge of the bowl.
"Übergeben!" (surrender in German)
"Lieutenant Bouck looked around. His men were out of ammunition and all of them had guns aimed at their heads.
"We surrender!"
"Milsoevich said they were forced to surrender at that point, because Nazis had snuck up on all of their bunkers. He said he finally got a moment to put his boots back on. He'd been barefoot all day!"
Tony's POV
I pulled the G.I. Joes out of the bowls and bent their knees and as best I could, bent the plastic arms so they were behind each soldier's head. When I got to Milsovich I put his boots back on him because that is what he said he had done. Then I put a Nazi soldier standing behind each of them, ready to kill them.
But act one wasn't over yet.
Earlier, I had tied a ribbon around the arm of one of the little plastic people, to show he was a Nazi with a superior rank. Milsoevich had said this one knew English so I didn't have to use French or German this time. I showed him walking up to the group and ordered, "Stoppen! Where are the rest of your men?"
"We're it."
"17 of you took down over 500 hundred of my men?!"
I switched to my narrator voice, "You'd think taking down that many people would've made the officer even more angry. But I guess sometimes soldiers can have respect for the skills of other soldiers even if they fight for the other side. Or maybe he just wanted to see if they could get more information out of 'em. Either way the 99th were taken prisoner instead of being executed."
"That's quite the tale."
"That was only day 1, Mom."
Maria's POV
I loved my son's enthusiasm, but I didn't think I was up for another hour of war recounting, "Do you think day 2 could wait for another time?" I had little to no hope that he'd play quietly while I indulged in the next soap that had started a few minutes ago. I could have his nanny take him to do an activity, but it was obvious he still wanted to spend time with me. So, I gave it up for a lost cause and suggested, "How about I give you a swimming lesson?"
"Really?"
"Really."
And he was off to put on swim trunks and asking, "Nanny Cynthia, can you find our beach towels? Mom's going to teach me to swim!"
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool while I showed Tony various swimming strokes.
Author's Note: In my home, my parents avoided swearing in front of us. They'd use the first letter of the word instead of the full word. I knew the real words from a young age from movies and from my older sister, who didn't refrain from their use when she was angry. But my parents were demonstrating the inappropriateness of those words by not fully saying them. But neither of them hesitated to say damn. I don't think anyone in my part of the country considered it to be any worse than crap. It wasn't until I was an adult, had moved to the southern U.S. and had used the term in front of an 11-year-old that I even realized anyone considered it as bad as S, B or F. But apparently, in some families or cultural zones it is considered equal to them.
Second Note: Tony's play was based on real events. I got the details from a History Channel documentary.
