Pacific Interlude
Page 36
Syl stared after her as she sailed past the wrecks of Japanese ships and the breakwaters. The surface of Manila Bay was as still as a mirror that sunny morning, and as she steamed into that blaze of light he had to look away, but even so, for a few minutes, he could still hear the beat of her Diesel like the pounding of his own heart. Then there was silence, broken only by the sounds of the city at his back, and this ship too disappeared as completely as though she had sailed over the edge of the world.
EPILOGUE
Oh, now that the battles are over,
I’ll tell you what we won:
A chance to fight more in some other war,
And our pride in a job well done.
The heroes who died aren’t remembered.
The wounded we try to forget,
And we poor damn sinners who came out as winners
Are blamed for the national debt.
The Krauts soon got richer than we are,
The Japs found gold in their sun,
But this we can say till our last dying day:
They sent us to war and we won.
So bless ’em all, bless ’em all, bless ’em all,
The long, the short and the tall,
There will be no promotion this side of the ocean,
I still say, my lads, bless ’em all!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my wife, Betty, for being my whole life support system.
Mr. John Franklyn Bailey, who served as engineer aboard the small gas tanker which I commanded in the Philippines, helped me to remember many of the details of those ships and those times. I did not base any fictional character on him because he was too good an officer and too fine a man to be believable.
Donald I. Fine’s contribution to the writing of this book was far above and beyond the call of editorial duty. He should get some sort of publisher’s medal.
S. W.
About the Author
Sloan Wilson (1920–2003) was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, and graduated from Harvard University. An avid sailor, he joined the US Coast Guard shortly after Pearl Harbor, and during World War II commanded a naval trawler on the Greenland Patrol and an army supply ship in the South Pacific. Wilson earned a battle star for his role in an attack by Japanese aircraft, and based his first novel, Voyage to Somewhere, and two of his later books, Ice Brothers and Pacific Interlude, on his wartime experiences. In 1955 Wilson published The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, a classic portrait of suburban ennui heralded by the Atlantic as “one of the great artifacts of popular culture in the 50’s.” It was adapted into a successful film, as was its bestselling follow-up, A Summer Place.
An author of fifteen books, Wilson was living with his wife of forty years, Betty, on a boat in Colonial Beach, Virginia, at the time of his death.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Cup and Lip” originally appeared in the March 31, 1945 issue of The New Yorker.
Copyright © 1982 by Sloan Wilson
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8966-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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