Nobody Comes Back A Novel of the Battle of the Bulge

Chapter One After doing the thirteen weeks at Camp Blanding he moped away his furlough in Tampa. He made a few strolls through the hallways at school, but he only did one semester at Hillsborough High, and nobody knew him that much. And nobody was impressed by uniforms anymore; always some hero already overseas, some brother or cousin. He did see Leora once, but she was talking to a girl and didn't notice him. He skated a little at the Coliseum, saw movies, and rode the streetcars to the end of the line, and back. He walked down Franklin Street and saluted the drunk, happy officers from McDill Field; home on rotation, covered with glory. He snapped his elbow at an exact forty-five degrees, hand and forearm straight, fingers together, only the edge presented. He saluted their bars and oak leaves, their sexy girlfriends, their hats crushed out of shape, their wings, shoulder patches, their ribbons and overseas service stripes---just to get them to salute him back. Some had to untangle their right arms and pull away from their girl, startled by this downtown display of military courtesy from this stiff kid in plain khakis with his infantryman's badge and the non-GI forage cap with the blue piping that he had to buy himself at the PX. When it was over he said good-bye to Victor and Aline, Norman already in the navy. He took the streetcar downtown, got on the Greyhound, put his barracks bag in the overhead rack, and sat by the window. He listened to the baggage thumps in the bottom compartment and watched the sailor on the platform getting kissed, and hugged by his teary-eyed mother, and father, and by a weeping teenage girl. The sailor came in and took the aisle seat next to Parker, leaning over him to wave. Parker reclined the back cushion and closed his eyes. He reported at Fort Meade. He was inoculated and classified, put on a bus to an embarkation center in Baltimore where he joined the line that struggled up the gangway of a converted Liberty ship. He followed the guides and the marking tapes to one of the cargo hatches, and climbed down the iron ladders to his assigned area in the lower hold. They were kept below for two days while non-coms yelled and feet pounded; steam winches yammered; food stores and barracks bags were piled on cargo slings, and hoisted aboard. On the first day out, the merchant ships in the convoy tested their guns, the replacements grinning at the flat booms around the horizon. They got two meals a day. The drinking water was turned on twice for an hour and they were allowed on deck in two-hour shifts. They took lukewarm saltwater showers every third day. They were issued life belts and had boat drills. He was allotted one of the pipe-frame, canvas-and-rope bunks stacked five high. He could sleep in his clothes at any time during the day from eight in the morning until eight at night, but then the alternate took over the bunk. The ship rolled and pitched for fifteen days. The GIs climbed the ladders through the latrine smells and the stink of vomit to reach the main deck, and get their rotation of fresh air. They ducked away from the spray and the wind, and gaped at the dull gray seas, the scattered ships, the navy men in their pea jackets standing watch in the gun tubs, the destroyers that churned around them, listening for U-boats. But the crew was merchant marine, what Toby really wanted all along. They saw the world, those guys, and made hundreds of dollars a month---war zone bonuses, attack bonuses. You could get in at seventeen with parent permission but didn't need a birth certificate. He didn't want to ask his mother, and wasn't sure where she was then, in Georgia someplace with Bob; so he hitchhiked up to Philadelphia. But his father wouldn't sign him in either, afraid of what his mother might do. But he did let Toby stay in his apartment. He wasPearce, Donn is the author of 'Nobody Comes Back A Novel of the Battle of the Bulge', published 2005 under ISBN 9780765310842 and ISBN 0765310848.