Kid Comes Back (6 page)

Someone then grabbed his arm and pointed toward a flashlight sparkling through the woods. He limped toward it as fast as he could, forgetting his back and his aching leg, stumbling over the ties, while machine guns kept sputtering at intervals up and down the track. Then there was an explosion when someone tossed a hand grenade at one of the front cars, and in a minute a crackling flame mounted as the woodwork of the coach caught fire.

Roy kept jogging along. Every few yards men with machine guns crooked in their arms protected his journey and directed him where to go. The
Maquis
had the attack well organized. The French boys from the box cars, who were able to make better time, were swarming past him now. Up and down the long train men were dropping from every window. Only in the front carriage, which evidently carried a strong armed guard, was there still any opposition.

Once Roy tripped and fell, then picked himself up and went on until he reached a country road, crossing the track some distance ahead of the engine. Trucks were parked all along the road in the dark. Nothing had been left to chance; nothing was unprovided for. There were even men with keys and others with hacksaws to cut their manacles or unfasten them. With a dozen other escaped prisoners, Roy swung himself slowly and with difficulty up the side of one of the trucks. Somebody from below gave him a welcome boost. Now that it was over or almost over, he was conscious of the agonizing pain in his leg.

But he was free again—with the invasion started up north and Allied troops slowly moving toward them. The truck ahead roared, rocked, and moved off. The sound of fighting around the front of the train increased, continued, and then slowly subsided. The glare from the burning car became lower and lower. More men clambered over the side of the truck. Roy could tell the fighting was ending by the way the machine-gun fire slackened. Shouts, cries in German, and quick bursts of fire came to him through the wood. Apparently the
Maquis
took no prisoners.

There was a jolt. The truck started, tumbling them all over on each other in a heap. It moved through the soft-smelling pine woods, gaining speed slowly. He was free again.

U
P AHEAD, THE BIG
Queen
loomed above the long line of men—wounded, disabled, and casuals who were going on board her. The line seemed never to move, and Roy thought how glad he would be when this standing in line was finished and done with.

Yet move it did, inch by inch, slowly, steadily, always under the glare of those powerful lights from overhead. Although it took several hours, eventually he reached a group of soldiers headed by a non-com with a long sheet of paper in his hand. They were standing beside a desk, checking names.

Suppose my name isn’t there! Suppose after all that someone has made a mistake! Suppose...

Then the non-com with the paper shouted at the corporal opposite, who bawled back:

“Tucker, Sergeant Roy, casual, six four one eight five three four. O.K.”

That’s me! Tucker, Sergeant Roy, casual, six four one eight five three four.

He slung the barracks bag, which got heavier every minute, onto his back again, and went up. It bumped the rail and hindered him as he mounted. His left hip ached terribly from the long period of standing in line, but he plugged along, up, up, up. Nothing mattered, nothing counted now. His name was on the list. He was going at last!

At the top another non-com made another name check. Once more someone bawled back:

“Tucker, Sergeant Roy, casual, six four one eight five three four. O.K.”

A square blue card was thrust into his hand by an M.P. at one side. There were M.P.’s everywhere. They pointed out the way to go, showing the blue arrows overhead that led to his compartment. Close to the top of each staircase was an M.P. At the end of every corridor was an M.P. Down, down, along narrow aisles, down staircases, along more aisles, with that barracks bag now weighing two hundred pounds at least. At last he began to reach the bunks, tier after tier of them, feet swinging from every end.

Then an M.P. grabbed his arm. “In there! Fling it where you can, soldier.”

Roy dropped the heavy barracks bag with relief and sank down. He needed badly to stretch out, to take the load off his feet, to relax and rest that aching hip. With some difficulty he climbed into the bunk, six feet six inches long and hardly wide enough to hold him. Only two inches separated Roy from the man next door, while a space of ten inches was between his heaving chest and the sag in the canvas made by the occupant overhead. Then, just as he got settled, just as he got stretched out, a voice came over the loudspeaker:

“Attention all personnel! Attention all personnel! At eleven hundred hours every morning there will be emergency muster on deck. All personnel will proceed to the nearest deck carrying life jackets which must be put on and properly tied. No smoking anywhere during emergency muster and inspection.”

At that moment, an officer came along with a squad of soldiers. Roy was “hot flunked,” meaning that he shared his bunk with another enlisted man; sleeping in turns, one night on deck, the next in the bunk below. He was to start on deck first. So, his aching leg rebellious, he began the endless climb to the top deck above.

“Hey there, soldier, your life belt,” someone shouted after him. “Must carry that life belt all the time.”

He reached out, grabbed it, and jammed along the packed corridors, up endless stairways, down narrow passages to the deck. Like everything else on ship, the deck was crowded; yet somehow he managed to squeeze in among the snoring hundreds on the hard planks and stretch out, covering himself with his coat and using the gray kapok life belt as a pillow. The deck was no soft mattress, and it was exactly where he would spend three nights out of their six at sea.

Never mind, boy, no matter; you’re on board, you’re going home!

The men around all had blue cards, too. For the ship was divided into three areas—the red (forward) area where the nurses and Red Cross girls lived; the white (midships) area where the officers were housed; and the blue (stern) area for enlisted men. No one, not even a colonel, could leave his designated area without permission. If he did, one of the seven hundred M.P.’s aboard made sure he got quickly back where he belonged.

There was a sudden piercing shriek from the ship’s whistle overhead, a noise which startled even the soundest sleeper and the most weary soldier. Everyone sat up. Then Roy realized that the snuffling and puffing at the rear of the ship came from a couple of harbor tugs. Despite his aching leg, he rose and found his way to the rail.

Ten stories below, three tugs poured smoke from their funnels. They were backed up to the side of the ship just forward of the stern. Then there was a ripple, a tremor, the merest tremble in the deck at his feet. Oh, boy, there we go! The gangplanks were up, and ten stories down the Negro soldiers on the pier loosed the last lines from the bollards. They stood looking up enviously in the electric light. Poor guys, he thought. I’m going; you’re staying. How many times will they see the big boat leave before they board her for good, too?

We’re moving at last! No, not yet. Yes, we are, too. He fixed his eyes upon a post on the dock, and almost imperceptibly it slid past. The ship was leaving the dock, a few inches, a foot. Then the next post went by more quickly.

Yes, sir, we’re really off! Well, he thought to himself, this is the moment, the thing a soldier dreamed about in the mud and filth and cold of Algiers, in the heat and the mosquitoes of Casamozza back there on Corsica, the thing he had thought about every night on those missions over Austria and Italy. That he was almost frightened to think about when they crashed in France; that he never dared carry in his consciousness when the Gestapo picked him up, when he was handcuffed with Jim in that clammy cell of the stone prison of Dax. Now it’s here, here at last. The engines are turning, we’re moving, we’re really going.

Somewhere down on the pier a military band started playing “God Bless America.” In the murky darkness fifteen thousand soldiers sang, sang intensely as they had never sung before.

Once it was just a song, a tune with words about your country. Now it was different. You’d been overseas twenty-two months, you’d seen something and lived through a few things since you left home. A few things you’d rather forget. So you sang it with a new meaning.

Now the dock was farther away, and the black stevedores on the pier were indistinct figures.

No mistake, the big ship was really trembling now, no mistake about it. The engines were turning at last. Toot-toot, toot-toot, toot-toot went the tug at the stern as a kind of salute. Toot-toot, toot-toot, toot-toot went a tug on the other side.

Good-by, England, land of warm beer and warm, friendly people. Good-by!

R
OY STOOD AT
the rail in the deep sunshine, watching the blue Atlantic swish past sixty feet below, until his leg ached all the way from the hip. Or he sat tailor-fashion on the deck, or else lay on his stomach propped on his elbows until they hurt and he had to shift his position. The only comfortable posture was stretched out flat on his back. Then he was free from that intolerable toothache in his leg, and only then. Unfortunately, on the big
Queen,
her decks brown with uniformed humanity, space was not easy to find topside.

Anyhow, I’m going home. This isn’t the unknown; it’s not subs and danger and a war ahead. This is home, and the things we know. It’s thirty knots, full speed ahead.

As the great ship rose and fell in the gentle swell of the Atlantic, every second meant a few yards nearer New York. Already he felt the influence of home—the news in the ship’s paper, with the baseball scores in detail, and the food, especially the good American food. As a man in the chow line next to Roy remarked: “Boy! It must
rain
milk in that-there country.”

For the first time in twenty-two months, Roy had all the milk he wanted, and American coffee. At breakfast there was fruit—real fruit, not juice from a can, and bacon and eggs—real eggs, not an omelet made from powdered eggs. And liver and sausages if you wished, also. As only two meals were served aboard ship, Roy made a sandwich of a piece of ham, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and shoved it into his pocket to hold him over until dinner at 4:30. Dinner meant more American food—soup, roast beef, vegetables, salad, ice cream, and coffee again—all he could eat of it.

On deck he scrounged a place, took a detective yarn, and tried hard to make himself comfortable with a blanket and a life belt for a pillow. All day long he listened to the conversation around him.

“Where ya from, soldier?”

“Omaha, Nebraska.”

“Omaha! Ain’t never seen it. But if it’s like Omaha, France, if it’s like that beach, you can have it, brother.”

“Boy, when I get home, know what I’m gonna do? First off, I’m gonna turn in and say to my Ma: ‘Ma, don’t wake me up, not if I sleep till next Christmas. Don’t wake me.’”

“The Jerries was over here... on this hill to our right, see? And Sam, his platoon was coming through the woods on our left, when they started to give us the works.”

“Remember that bottle of champagne he liberated in Lyons, remember that, Sid?”

It was the third day out that the familiar question came, the one he had heard so often during his service in the Army, the one he dreaded now because of the questions that invariably followed. It came, as it always came, out of a clear sky for no reason at all. Just a bunch of soldiers sitting in a circle talking, when one man asked casually, “Hey, soldier, you ain’t by any chance the Tucker usta play center field for the Dodgers, are ya?”

“Yeah, guess
so.
”

“You are!” Immediately a crowd formed. A second before he was only another Air Force sergeant.

Now he was someone, a celebrity, the man who led the National League in batting the year before the war.

“Say! You Roy Tucker!”

“Not
the
Roy Tucker!”

“Say...”

“D’you guess the Dodgers’ll win this year?”

“How’s the Cards look to ya, fella?”

“Are you going to get back in this summer?”

A dozen, a hundred questions were tossed at him. They were the same questions he always heard, and he could answer them in his sleep. All except one.

“Yeah... Nope... I guess... Sure is a sweet ballplayer... They’re a right fast outfit... Looks like we’ll have to go some to win this year... Dunno if I’ll make the grade or not.”

That was all Roy could say to the last question. But there was plenty more he could think. How does a guy with a leg like this play baseball? And if I can’t, what then? Suddenly as he talked to the crowd around him, his hands were wet with sweat.

Time passed slowly, but eventually came the last, the final night aboard. Roy found it impossible to sleep that night; so did fifteen thousand other soldiers, as the
Queen
churned through the smooth seas off the coast. At four
A.M.
the loudspeakers blared forth, but few men were asleep. After breakfast, Roy lugged his bursting barracks bag up topside, just in time to see a lightship slide past them in the dimness of breaking dawn. Suddenly a cluster of lights twinkled far to their right. It was America!

They didn’t yell or cheer or shout. A strange hush fell over the big
Queen
packed with soldiers from stem to stern. They said nothing; they just stood looking at those lights in the murky mist, everyone solemn and quiet. It was too immense for words. Boy, there she is!

Sunrise came, and the far rim of the horizon became shoreline, and the shoreline showed tiny houses and a green bank and an army fort with the flag flying above. A white transport launch poked through the mist. The men yelled, and a few WACS and Red Cross Girls aboard the launch waved back and kidded the soldiers. The shoreline was distinct now, and there were autos, real autos, and streets and people and houses intact, not smashed into rubble.

Slowly the ship glided into the upper harbor. “Hey, guys, look! Look, there’s the Old Lady, off there to the left. See?”