The Last Jump: A Novel of World War II

by John E. Nevola

  After Jake laced up his new boots he and Johnny continued walking up the dark street toward the bus depot. They left the major sitting in the alley holding his bleeding nose and trying to lace up Jake’s old boots.

  “Crap,” Johnny complained. “We’re in for it now. I hope he didn’t recognize us.”

  “If he recognized anyone, it’s me,” Jake shot back. “You’re not in for anything.”

  Johnny looked at him and smiled. “When are you going to get it, brother? What happens to you happens to me. When you’re in shit, I’m in shit, too.”

  Jake contemplated that thought for a moment. “You’re right. I should know that by now.” He shook his head. “You’re right!” Then he smiled broadly. “We’re in deep shit.”

  They both laughed. “I get your point,” Jake finally said.

  They continued walking in step with long, quick strides anxious to get to the bus depot and out of Rheims. It was about a mile to their destination and they were nearly halfway there when they heard the unmistakable engine sound of an American jeep behind them. The vehicle stopped to the loud screech of its brakes. There were two MPs in the jeep.

  “Hey, Mac. Are you two airborne?” the Military Policeman growled as he tapped his white nightstick on the side of the windshield.

  Johnny was sure the major had called out the MPs and reported the assault. He was equally sure they would be thrown into the stockade and probably be shot at sunrise.

  Jake answered. “Hundred and first.” The driver shined a flashlight at Jake’s face and then the patch. Jake winced at the bright light. He had been identified. The MPs surely had them now.

  “Your outfit’s been alerted for movement. All leaves are cancelled. You’ve got to get your butts back to camp immediately,” the MP ordered.

  “We’re headed to the bus depot now,” Johnny explained.

  “Hop in, we’ll give you a lift. We’ve been rounding up paratroopers all night.”

  Jake and Johnny could not believe their luck. They had amused looks on their faces as they piled into the back seat. The driver pulled away.

  “What’s going on?” Johnny finally thought to ask.

  The driver responded. “Krauts launched an offensive. Attacked through the Ardennes. Punched a pretty big hole in the First Army lines. You airborne guys are supposed to plug it up!”

  Chapter Sixty

  Bedford, Virginia - November 11, 1997

  “A man is his own easiest dupe,

  for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.”

  Demosthenes (384 BC - 322 BC)

  J.P. Kilroy made a left turn at the small school that served as his landmark. He drove slowly up the gravel road, which elevated as it proceeded toward the eighty-eight acre tract of land that would contain the National D-Day Memorial on Bedford’s highest hill. The small Blue Ridge town lost twenty-one of its sons on Omaha Beach. It was the highest per capita loss in the nation. Only twelve of thirty-five members of its Able Company survived the War. They could not have picked a better day, Veterans Day, to break ground for the ten-acre memorial to be built there. It was a symbolic day for this most solemn yet uplifting event.

  Senator John Warner and Governor George F. Allen were speaking at the dedication. Senator Warner had pushed the bill through Congress resulting in the selection of Bedford as the site of the National D-Day Memorial. The bill was signed into law on Veterans Day, 1994.

  As J.P. traveled south on Interstate 95 that morning his mind mused over the events that had brought him to this point. He reflected back to the beginning as the milepost signs of I-95 whispered by. It all started with his mother asking him to reconcile with his father who had abandoned the family nearly thirty years before. She told him about a family secret and that his father should be the one to reveal it. To his everlasting regret, he dismissed the idea and procrastinated long enough to see his mother pass on without ever fulfilling her last request. Time passed, life took over and the entire matter was about to be shoveled into the deepest recess of his mind when Colonel Chase called out of the blue. Would he receive his father’s Medal of Honor? Was this a coincidence or was the spirit of his saintly mother working overtime to compel him to face the consequences of his negligence? But then Colonel Chase perplexed him with the news that his father had passed away. That revelation, coming as a complete shock from a stranger, spooked him.

  Once he agreed to attend the ceremony, his conscience and curiosity coerced him into a simple plan to seek out Lincoln Abraham and determine if there was anything between the two men that might help him get to the bottom of the mystery. It might require a bit of amateur detective work and some research but since he would be there anyway, he had nothing to lose by trying. When he spotted Lincoln speaking cordially with three other veterans, he became confident that if they knew anything at all, he ought to be able to get them to reveal it.

  J.P. also met Cynthia Powers, a colleague of Colonel Chase. Her assignment for the day was to keep him occupied so she latched onto him so tightly that he missed his chance to speak to the four veterans. With her help he invited them to dinner that evening. Sky Johnson, Frank West and Harley Tidrick accepted but Lincoln couldn’t attend. The men seemed to enjoy talking about their experiences during the War but were somewhat evasive when J.P. probed about his father. He wasn’t even sure they knew anything at all until he left his recorder running while he went to the rest room. When he played it back later, he discovered there was something they all knew. While he didn’t learn of any specific secret, he understood the men were engaged in a conspiracy to withhold information they swore never to reveal.

  J.P. continued probing at Frank, Sky and finally with a visit to Lincoln’s cabin in Michigan. Initially Lincoln was no more forthcoming than his buddies. However, one thing became clear. The old men knew J.P. was aware of their collusion but remained persistent despite their alliance of silence. But then Lincoln stunned him when he told J.P. his father was alive. His initial reaction was to drive directly to Bedford but then the same old familiar fear paralyzed him into inaction. He returned to D.C. to mull over his next move.

  J.P. took I-95 straight through Richmond as he looked carefully for his exit in the maze of intersecting roads. He finally found State Highway 360 and took it west.

  After he left Lincoln’s cabin in July he called Cynthia. He wanted her to find out how Colonel Chase knew his father had passed on and how Chase knew to contact J.P. After a few hours she called him back while he was driving home from Dulles Airport. Cynthia told him Chase found out about his father’s passing from Harley, who also told of the existence of a surviving son.

  When the Pentagon began reaching out to the survivors and family members of the Medal of Honor awardees, they sought out military service records indicating next of kin. That otherwise simple task was more complicated than it should have been. The service records of more than 16,000,000 veterans, many from the Second World War, were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri on 12 July 1973. The army lost eighty percent of the records for personnel discharged between 1912 and 1960. Colonel Chase had to employ alternate sources such as reaching out to veteran’s organizations and associations. It was the only way he was able to locate the family members of the honorees.

  It didn’t make sense to J.P. that Harley would have been the one to pass information on to Colonel Chase. Either Frank West or Sky Johnson was more likely to have contact information for his father. So why was it that Harley provided the information to Colonel Chase? Besides that little ambiguity, Harley also lied about his father’s death. He sat across the dinner table, never said a word and seemed determined to keep the others silent as well. What was he hiding?

  J.P. knew Harley lived in Bedford because his mother once told him his father had moved there but this still didn’t explain why Harley would be playing such a prominent role in his father’s affairs. J.P. would soon confront Harley and his father about all these nagging qu
estions.

  J.P. also asked Cynthia to check up on one other thing. Was a John Kilroy buried in the Henri-Chapelle Cemetery in Belgium? Nobody wanted to tell J.P. how Jake died in the War so he wanted confirmation. Cynthia checked with the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) who administers, operates and maintains twenty-four American burial grounds on foreign soil. She received verification from senior executives of the ABMC who consulted their official records. At least this piece of information was accurate.

  J.P. navigated the turnoff to State Highway 307 bypassing the village of Farmville. The countryside was a beautiful scene of rolling hills dotted by small farms and old wood frame barns. It would be a straight shot into Bedford.

  Following Lincoln’s advice, J.P. decided to search through what possessions he already had. Sitting on the living room floor of his condominium, he and Cynthia turned over the small box of memorabilia for yet another time. They carefully poured out the precious cargo of the shoebox on the rug and sat around the contents as if sitting around a campfire. Every article had a history or its own little story. They went over the items one by one, held them, shared them, treated them with reverence and speculated about their origin and purpose.

  They quickly discussed and dismissed some of the more routine items they were familiar with. J.P. picked up and held the two sets of jump wings. Obviously, his father had saved some of Jake’s memorabilia as well as his own.

  “Frank said these are very rare,” he commented as he handed them to Cynthia. She gently wiped them clean with a small cloth before placing them on a fresh white towel. The towel would go back into the shoebox when all the contents had been inspected.

  Next were the patches for the three different airborne divisions in which the boys served. J.P. handed them to Cynthia. Before placing them on the towel, she turned over the Golden Talon patch of the 17th Airborne and scraped off a sticky substance. “Chewing gum, I’ll bet.”

  J.P. reached into the shoebox and handed her the photo of Jake and Johnny in Oujda. The two boys looked dangerous with grim shadow-covered faces as they held their deadly weapons. “It’s hard to imagine those nice old men in their youth when they were all full of piss and vinegar,” she muttered as she placed the picture aside.

  The other photograph was more interesting. His mother, father and Jake were posing on the roof of their apartment building in Washington Heights. They were all smiling. One of the towers of the George Washington Bridge could be clearly seen in the background. On the back of the picture was written, Johnny, Rose and Jake, September 1943. J.P. didn’t realize his father had brought Jake home with him until he saw that picture.

  “He was only home for about a day,” J. P. handed Cynthia the picture. “The day I was conceived,” he added wryly.

  She looked at the picture and studied it for a moment. “It’s kind of weird to know that,” she smiled. “I mean…to know the specific day you were actually conceived.”

  “I suppose,” he acknowledged.

  He picked through the small pile and handed her two medals. One was a Bronze Star and the other was a Silver Star. The Bronze Star was a five-pointed star, deep bronze in color and attached to a ribbon that was mostly red with a white-bordered blue stripe down the center. The Silver Star was actually gold in color with a red, white and blue ribbon. He handed her the two medals and the lapel ribbon bars that matched them. “I don’t know about these,” he confessed. “I’ll have to remember to ask the next time I talk to one of the guys.”

  Cynthia nodded, took the medals, wiped them, held them for a moment and placed them on the towel. “You don’t get these for just showing up for work!”

  Next he handed her two sets of dog tags. The tags had name, serial number, religion and blood type. There was a set for John NMI Kilroy and John P. Kilroy. The information on the tags was not a surprise. Jake was Protestant and Johnny was Catholic. Both were blood type “O”.

  She straightened out the long link chains used to hang the tags around the neck and said, “It seems like your father took back a lot of stuff that belonged to Jake.”

  “It certainly seems so,” he answered. “But I guess you would do that if your best friend was killed. Perhaps he couldn’t get Jake’s personal belongings back to his family though I’m not sure Jake had any family besides Harley. Who knows why he kept most of this stuff?”

  He handed her one Combat Infantryman’s Badge. It was a silver musket on a rectangular blue field superimposed over a laurel wreath. The musket was awarded to any soldier completing Advanced Infantry Training. The laurel wreath was added after the soldier saw combat.

  “Now these are really special,” he picked up three Purple Heart Medals along with the bar ribbons and handed them to Cynthia. The medal was a heart-shaped device of deep purple trimmed in gold. A brilliant raised white cameo profile of George Washington was inscribed in the center. The ribbon was deep purple with slender light blue stripes down both side edges. “My father never talked about any of these. But I think one or two belonged to his friend.”

  “Probably. There is so much other stuff from Jake in here.” She reached in to retrieve the next item, which was a pocket bible in the King James Version. It was stained, dog-eared and the back cover was torn in half. It obviously had been through a lot. On the inside cover was the name Clyde Kilroy. She thumbed through the pages and a marker fell out of Luke Chapter 20. She carefully placed it back and closed the Bible.

  J.P. took out the last items. They were the Medal of Honor and the citation. He opened the citation. “Lincoln told me I already had what I needed to figure out the secret. I’ve read this citation a dozen times and it really doesn’t provide any insight.”

  She took it from him. “Let me try. I’ll read it aloud.”

  The citation was written on a piece of letter-sized paper. The top of the letter had a color picture of the Medal of Honor. Directly under the picture, centered in the middle of the page, was his father’s name in big bold letters. JOHN KILROY. Then there was a paragraph for Rank and Organization administrative information and then the actual citation. Cynthia began.

  “Rank and Organization: Corporal, Unites States Army, Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Place and Date: Near Noville and Foy, Belgium, 19-20 December 1944. Yada, yada, yada.” Anxious to get on to the actual body of the citation, she skipped the rest of the prologue.

  “Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy near Noville and Foy, Belgium on 19 and 20 December 1944. Volunteering to secure arms and ammunition for his regiment, he commandeered a truck and requisitioned supplies from the 10th Armored Division near the town of Noville making numerous trips to supply his airborne comrades in Bastogne. On the last trip, superior encircling German Panzer forces cut him and another soldier off from friendly lines. Mounting a halftrack, he used the weapons aboard the vehicle to hold off the enemy forces and, knocking out a 20-millimeter enemy flakwagon, allowing his comrades to escape encirclement. Still surrounded himself, he drove the vehicle through the enemy force and escaped into a thick blanket of fog. He took refuge in an abandoned farmhouse with enemy patrols all around his position. He then killed four Nazi soldiers masquerading as Americans. Had they not been discovered, they would have been exceedingly disruptive to retreating American forces. Some time later he heard the sound of engines. The American force at Noville was conducting a fighting withdrawal to the village of Foy and back to Bastogne. There were dozens of wounded men on this evacuation convoy and it came under enemy attack. Without regard to his own personal safety, he attacked a superior enemy force with his vehicle and drew fire allowing the convoy to proceed. Undaunted by this enemy fire, he closed with the enemy and knocked out two scout cars. He also caught a company of infantrymen in the open and drove them back inflicting heavy casualties although wounded himself. While the enemy infantry retreated, the convoy continued toward Foy with its wounded. Finally, using the fog for concealment, he knocked out a Mark V Panther ta
nk, as it was about to attack the column approaching Foy. Had the tank attacked the column, hundreds more soldiers would have become casualties. Corporal Kilroy’s intrepid courage and superb daring while vastly outnumbered during his all day action of engaging and distracting enemy forces at grave risk to himself enabled the successful evacuation of over fifty wounded and more than 500 soldiers safely to friendly lines.”

  She looked up at him. “This is remarkable. But I don’t see anything revealing in here.”

  “Like I said, I’ve read the citation over and over and I can’t derive anything from it. Except that my father was a crazy son of a bitch who never talked about anything that happened in the War. Not with me, anyway.”

  Cynthia Powers gently lifted the towel and placed it and all of the contents back into the shoebox. “What makes you think there are any clues in here?”

  J.P. pulled his recorder from his pocket and hit the play button.

  Keisha: Are you going to tell him about his father?

  Lincoln: I don’t think I’ll need to. He’s smart enough to figure it out for himself.

  Keisha: Are you going to tell him anything at all?

  Lincoln: I might tell him something but I’m not breaking my promise.

  J.P. pushed fast-forward on the recorder. He stopped it and hit play again.

  Lincoln: The first is that you already have everything you need in your possession, right now, to uncover the secret. Letters, papers, memorabilia, citations…all the information you need to figure it out.

  J.P.: And the second piece of advice?

  Lincoln: There is someone living in Bedford, Virginia, who knows everything, more than the rest of us, and you need to talk to him face to face.

  J.P.: Who? Harley Tidrick? I plan to visit him next.

  Lincoln: No. Not Harley. Your father! He’s not dead but rather very much alive.”