Kid Comes Back

by John R. Tunis

  “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!

  CHAPTER 10

  ROY 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 ch
ance 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?”

  Golden shafts of early morning sunshine etched the Statue of Liberty. “Yep, there she is. Got kinda fat, too, since we left,” remarked a jokester.

  Every whistle in the harbor was tied down as the Queen, doing about six knots, came up the lower bay. She was greeted by the sirens from the shore and the ferryboats laden with commuters who thronged the rails and waved. Then up ahead was the most gorgeous sight of all. Suddenly through that morning mist came the white towers of Manhattan, fairy towers, reaching into the sky, their lower parts still concealed in the haze. Boats with flags flying, giving three sharp whistle salutes, came alongside. Each one carried a band. The men on the packed decks shrieked approval.

  Now the loudspeaker began blaring out commands. “All Silver Star men report to forward promenade deck gangway. They will be the first to leave.”

  “Hey, Tuck, that’s you! Hey there, report to the forward promenade deck, all Silver Star men, didn’t ya hear?”

  Aw, what’s that mean! I’d rather go off with the boys.

  “Blue cards will debark for Camp Shanks, leaving by ferry from the pier. Red cards will entrain for Camp Kilmer immediately following debarkation.”

  Now the Queen was almost opposite the Whitehall Building at the tip of Manhattan. The ship had slowed down, and Roy felt the intense heat of a New York summer day. Horns, whistles, sirens, from both the New York and Brooklyn sides, drowned out the bands, deafened one with their noise. Hoots, toots, and short shrieks of welcome came from the tugs and tankers, from the freighters anchored up the river, from the railroad engines over on the Jersey side. A Navy blimp flew overhead. Behind them was an ancient Sandy Hook boat, waiting to take off the seriously wounded.

  We’re home! Cripes, I can’t somehow realize it. I can’t believe it’s me, that I’m home at last. Home, and I thought I’d never see it again.

  Suddenly the pain in Roy’s leg became so intense he had to sit down and rest for a few minutes. He had been standing in that excitement for several hours. What’m I gonna do? A ballplayer with a bum leg, what use is he to a club?

  The tugs were taking up the ship’s lines for berthing. Now they warped her gently against the pier, holding her flush with the slow tide and bringing her slowly round, four, six, eight, ten of them, puffing and blowing. Roy rose and, looking over someone’s shoulder, saw the long gangplank ready with a mat at the bottom, and on the mat a map of the United States with the word HOME on it. Now the pier was close, and WACS and Red Cross girls and lots of brass were waving at them from the second story. And a band was playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

  The men were singing, every single one. “Buy me some peanuts and crackerjack...”

  But what use is a guy with a bum leg to a ballclub?

  “I don’t care if I never come back”

  The boys round about were shouting at him. “Hey there, Roy! Hey, Tuck!” They turned from the rail to yell, “Hi, Tucker, that’s you! That’s you, kid.”

  Yeah, that’s me all right.

  “For it’s one... two... three strikes you’re out... at the old... ballgame.”

  Yeah, that’s me. Maybe it’s me.

  CHAPTER 11

  ROY DUMPED HIS barracks bag on a cot in a tent in Company 24A, and glanced around. Everywhere was the same hubbub and confusion he remembered in the Reception Center at Camp Upton where he had entered the Army four long years before. Here, however, the atmosphere was quite different. At Camp Upton one felt the aching loneliness of hundreds of men, many away from home for the first time in their lives, and one could see the distrust and dislike they felt at being herded in with strangers of every kind, at the promiscuity, the lack of privacy which came to some of them as a shock. Here this had all vanished. You were used to the Army, to strange companions; you took them as they came. There was none of the antagonism he remembered in the faces of the men in the Reception Center years before. At Fort Dix you understood each other without speaking.

  A city block away, down near Eighth Street, the loudspeaker was going full blast. From it were issued all orders about the roster. At Fort Dix, the one item of primary importance was the roster, because you could not be processed for discharge until you got on the roster. “Are you on the roster yet?” “How long does it take a guy to get on the roster, bud?”

  Apparently it took anywhere from two days to two weeks to get on the roster. Yet one had to listen carefully all day to the loudspeaker, for if your name was called and you failed to appear for processing, you might have to wait a week or more to get on the roster again.

  That evening Roy wandered into a movie about the Pacific, where it was easy to tell the soldiers who had served there by the shouts and jeers that rose. Then he went to the PX for a beer. He stood there, drinking, watching the crowd, when someone called his name.

  “Roy! Hey there, Tuck!”

  He turned quickly. “Earl! You old so-and-so! How are you?”

  “Boy, this is good! How are you?”

  “Me? I’m swell; at least I think so. How’d you guys ever get out of France?”

  “Kid, we climbed the Pyrenees, and lemme tell you something. They’re six times higher’n the Himalayas. It was rugged and no fooling. Say, we heard when we got to England that you and Jim had been picked up by the Jerries in France. That right?”

  “That’s correct. We were picked up all right, chucked into the coldest, dampest jail I ever hope to see. Then they started to send us into Germany, and we were rescued by the Maquis from a train on the night of D-Day. They hid us until the 7th Army worked u
p from the south and overran the place.”

  “Yeah? So? What then?”

  “Oh, the usual thing. England for a few weeks, and then I came back on the Queen.”

  “Ya did, hey! We come back on a freighter, the Kokomo Victory. But really, kid, how are you now? Does your leg bother you still? Will they let you go back to the ballclub this summer? They could sure use you to plug up that hole out in the field, couldn’t they?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t bother me so much at present. I spent the winter at the Greenville Army Air Base in South Carolina, and believe me, I took care of myself and rested.”

  They talked until lights out. The next morning Roy changed his tent to one in B Street, near Earl’s and closer to the loudspeaker. Nothing happened all day as he listened. The next morning was also without incident, and then suddenly at 4:30 in the afternoon, he sat up.

  “Roster eighteen dash thirty. Private first class George Wolheim, four three eight six three nine one. Corporal Edward T. Meltzer, nine six four one seven one seven. Sergeant Roy Tucker, six four one eight five...”

  He jumped from his cot, listening to those familiar words. “...Will report to the Operations Tent tomorrow at 0-eight hundred for processing.”

  Well, here we go. I’m on the roster and it won’t be long now.

  But everyone was nervous. The man in the next cot, a quiet, elderly man, suddenly burst out: “I’m worried about that physical. If you slip up, they’re likely to keep you here for weeks.” And an Air Corps boy remarked: “Don’t get mixed up, that’s the main thing. Don’t ask questions about your insurance or your back pay or anything. If you do, boy, you’re really here for life.”

  “I hear they can hold you as essential if you use a typewriter or can add figures. Thank heaven, I can’t.”

  They wouldn’t be likely to hold a ballplayer, Roy thought. But he shared in the general nervousness, and slept little that night.

  It was cold and rainy the following morning. A strong northeast wind drove the rain in squally gusts across the field east of his tent, whipping at the canvas and pelting the tent roof noisily. Someone suggested it was the tail end of the hurricane that Florida was getting. They were all ready for breakfast half an hour too early, and when it was there, Roy found he had no appetite and was far from anxious to eat. He returned to his tent, awaiting the call for Group eighteen dash thirty. It came just before eight o’clock, and he hustled over to the Operations Tent, lining up in the mud and rain in a column of twos under a soldier guide, who first called the roll to be sure everyone was present. The chap next to Roy had been scratched from the roster three times for not showing up or arriving late, and as a consequence it had taken him three weeks to get back on again.