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“So, when you come home, Jack, I’ll take you up to the college, and we’ll see if they can find you a position if that is what you want. Are you sure that it is what you want? It’s fairly grim here right now, and I don’t see improvement in the near future. Has anyone spoken to you about going to Palestine? I don’t suppose the government knows exactly what they are doing – as usual.”
Leaning on the hood of the black pre-war automobile, Lieutenant Jack Moffitt, formerly of the Royal Scots Greys, now of the Special Operations Executive, refolded his father’s letter and tucked it into his copy of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. He put the book into the pocket of his trim uniform, and watched his friends as they came out of the separation center buildings at Fort Dix.
He knew the trio as well as his own family. Maybe better. For the last four years they had been a family, with all the normal squabbles and friendships, all sealed by a bond of blood – a great deal of it their German enemies, but some, their own. That was what a war could do – build new families.
They looked unfamiliar in civilian clothing.
The first man, Sergeant Tully Pettigrew, had an eager expression meant he was halfway back home to mountains of Kentucky and the woman he loved.
The youngest of the trio, Sergeant Mark Hitchcock, looked slightly bewildered and a bit lost. Hadn’t he expected this moment to come? Probably not. There was little to no certainty that they’d survive North Africa, much less the European campaign. Suddenly, there was a life beyond the next raid, the raid that would now never come. Hitchcock’s family had his future planned out for him – wife, children, taking over the family business at the textile mill. Moffitt wasn’t sure that Hitchcock was sold on that.
Former Master Sergeant, now Captain Sam Troy walked with a guarded expression. What was he thinking? Moffitt had always had a hard time reading Troy but now his face was an opaque mask. He wore his new officer’s uniform, complete with shiny insignia and a row of ribbons earned the hard way as if it was a costume donned to go into enemy territory.
Troy grinned at him, his face creasing in a familiar smile, and Moffitt relaxed. Whatever was going on in Sam Troy’s mind, he wasn’t worried about his future.
“All done here, Troy?” Moffitt asked, straightening up.
“Yep.”
“Heading home out West?” Hitchcock asked Troy. “Not going to spend some time in New York or Chicago?”
Troy shook his head. “Got to get back to the ranch and Mother. I haven’t heard anything from David in months.” His brother had been shot down in a raid over Berlin on Christmas Nineteen Forty-Three. Only a few months ago, Troy had helped release David Troy from a prison camp during a raid in Germany but after the regular army moved in, and the prisoners returned home, Troy had lost touch with his brother – something that worried him immensely
“It’s a long trek, Sarge,” Tully commented, shifting a toothpick to one side of his mouth. He looked years younger without the steel helmet that he’d worn for most of their adventures. Maybe it was just lack of edginess. For the first time in years, he didn’t have to worry about someone shooting at him or his friends.
“Says the man headed for the mountains of Kentucky,” Troy retorted.
“That’s right,” Moffitt said. “Please give my regards to your sister-in-law, Laura.”
Tully’s neck went red. They had joshed him about his love for Laura, but Moffitt was the only one who had ever met her. Her husband, David, Tully’s abusive older brother had died in Nineteen-forty-four, leaving Laura and her son the struggling farm. “I’ll do that. What about you, Hitch?”
Hitchcock shrugged. “Heading out to Long Island and home. Spend some time there with the family.”
“Going back to school?” Troy asked seriously. “Using that GI bill they told us about?”
“Dunno, Sarge-Captain. How about you?” Hitchcock replied with a slight edge.
“Well, if you’re going to catch trains, I’d better take you to the station,” Moffitt cut in hastily. The GI bill offering educational benefits to all qualified was a touchy subject with Hitchcock. He’d been in school before enlisting, and wasn’t sure he wanted to go back. What could they teach him that he hadn’t learned in the war, he'd protested the night before. “Get in.”
***
Troy never expected this day to come. The new uniform didn't feel comfortable. The captain's bars were still shiny and new. After all these years, the Army had finally caught up with him, and insisted he become an officer, then booted him out to make his own way.
He rode the trains home finding the uniform entitled him to free meals at every stop, and a seat most of the way. The train ride was soothing after all he’d gone through but it gave him time, too much time, to think about the future.
In his one foray to the base’s Officer’s Club before separation, he and Moffitt had discussed what would happen next. Troy had what he was going to do. Moffitt advised him to go back to school on the GI bill, the same advice that Troy had given Hitchcock. When Troy pointed out his age, Moffitt brushed it aside saying more education was the only way for a secure future, and Troy was too smart to not see that.
Troy wasn’t sure that advice applied to him considering it came from an academic.
What kind of education should I get? What was he so interested in that he'd take the government’s generosity and go to back to school? The last time he was in college before the war, he'd dropped out and joined the Army.
By the time he reached Colorado Springs, he was tired and restless, ready to go the last stretch. The sight of the tall Rocky Mountains, so different from the Swiss Alps, reminded him that he was close to home. But there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that something was missing and he couldn’t put his finger on it. He had survived hardships, torture, the loss of close friends. What was wrong with him?
He debarked with a crowd of G.I.s being enthusiastically greeted by wives and girlfriends, and made his way to the front of the railway station to where the local buses were loading. He saw old cars, lovingly tended by men who hadn’t made it into the army because of age or disability, teenagers and single women who eyed him with interest. He walked out to where the buses stopped, and hailed the driver. “How much?”
The man eyed the uniform and ribbons, and shook his head. “Nothing, Captain, not for you.”
“Can you drop me off where I tell you? It’s closer to my home,” Troy explained, feeling a surge of homesickness.
“Sure. Just tell me where to stop. I’m leaving in about ten minutes.”
It took three hours to reach where he wanted to be dropped. While it was miles from the small town where the bus ride normally ended, but it was only a mile or two, cross-country, to the ranch.
Troy marveled at the growth of factories and plants beside the road. The city had spread during the war years, and there were many unfamiliar faces among the crowds on the streets. Mexican? Perhaps migrant workers. Even POWs from a group of men loading on a truck further down, many speaking German. The towns had changed so much over the years.
He watched the bus drive away in a cloud of dust. Removing his new jacket, he folded it neatly and put it in the bag, then undid his tie and collar. He placed the tie in the bag and rummaged around for a second, finally pulling out a creased and battered Australian bush hat. Knocking it back into shape, he settled it on his dark hair, and thought how long it had been since he first got the hat back in North Africa. He hadn’t worn it much in the last year – the Army in Europe was a little stricter than they had been in North Africa.
He tossed the duffle on his shoulder and started across the meadow. To the west were the tall mountains, some with their winter snowcaps glistening in the sunlight. Fat white puffy clouds dodged the peaks, sometimes blocking the sun, making the familiar landscape as unfamiliar as Troy’s future. There was a touch of summer’s heat in the May sunshine beating down on him. Reached the stream that ran across the northern part of the ranch, he put down the duffle beside a boulder where he had often sat and fished, and sank gratefully on the warm stone.
Around him bees harvested from the bright yellow flowers among the grasses that spread for miles around him until they met the foothills of the mountains. The air was so rich it was better than that apple brandy he’d enjoyed in France. Every thing reminds me of the war.
He came over a hill and, in the distance, saw the ranch. Parked on one side were two cars, one that looked very familiar, and a truck. He remembered the truck – he’d learned to drive in it, as David had. Was it still running? Who did the other car belong to?
The sprawling ranch house was in good shape, with new paint on the shudders, and a repaired veranda from the raw look of the wood. There was a new barn alongside the old one behind it. A paddock held several horses. It looked empty but Troy was pretty certain that his mother was home. She didn’t leave the ranch much except for a trip to town every week, to go to church or to shop for supplies. He felt the normal tinge of guilt that he always felt when thinking of his family – he hadn’t written often enough.
The ranch hadn’t been home after his father died, and all Troy had wanted at the time was to leave. I can’t do that this time. It’s my responsibility keep it in the family. Where is David? He’d stay if he were here. He loves this place.
He walked down the hill to the dirt road that led to the farmhouse. What about that new car? He recognized it as a 1938 red Chevrolet. Had his mother been able to afford a new car on the money he sent back? It was neat as a pin, he thought, squinting as the sunlight reflected off the chrome.
A blond woman in a plaid dress pushed open the screen door, and gasped when she saw him, dropping the bucket in her hand.
Troy checked, his instincts honed by war, screaming to him that this could be an enemy. “Hello?”
She gasped. “Sam?”
He felt a surge of old anger that faded in a fraction of a second. It wasn’t the enemy, not any more. Too many years had gone past to still consider her the enemy. “Sheila?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Sam! Why didn’t you say you were coming?”
Troy's feelings were mixed. Sheila had been the reason, no, one of several reasons, he’d gone to college in the first place. When she dropped him for a college-trained engineer, he realized that he needed more education. That hadn't worked out and he fled into the Army in relief. “Is my mother here? Why are you doing here?”
"Sam?"
She stepped back, holding open the screen door, and a dark-haired stocky young man stepped out, balancing on a crutch. Holding onto the for frame, his younger brother grinned at hime. He was painfully thin. “Welcome home, Sam! Thank God, you made it back!”
Troy let out a whoop. “David!”
Sheila laughed. “Both of you back, larger than life! What a day!”
Troy looked around. “Where is Mother?”
“She’s in town getting some supplies,” David said. “Boy, won’t she be surprised!”
Troy laughed. He dropped his duffle on the porch and embraced him.
“Well, I’ll get started on a special dinner,” Sheila said with a broad smile. She stepped inside. “I'll let you two get reacquainted.”
David limped forward until he could support himself on the banister. “She’s living here now, Sam. Her husband died in the Pacific, and Mom needed help around the ranch so she invited Sheila.”
“Sounds good,” Troy replied, surprised that he didn’t feel more emotion. After all he had been so angry about Sheila years ago. Now he felt relief. Or was that because David could take over the ranch? “Who else is here?”
David laughed. “Believe it or not, most of the help are German POWs, Sam. They’re learning how to be ranchers.”
Troy shook his head. “Not going to be a lot for them to go home to, David.”
“Not from what I remember,” David agreed. “Come on inside, and let’s talk. What do you have planned for the future?”
Troy hesitated. “Future?”
“Think I’ll go back to school if I can get in,” David confessed, leaving on the arm Troy offered. “And there’s a lot to do around here.”
“You’re going to stay?’
“Yeah. I’m going to stay. What about you?”
“I don’t know.”
***
Mark Hitchcock walked from the station up to his parents' house on the Long Island Sound. He could see the traces of neglect in the overgrown hedges and crabgrass in the driveway, but the windows still glittered in the small ten room mansion that overlooked the gray waters with their white-capped waves. The air smelled of salt with a trace of rain to come from the lowering gray cloud cover. It was going to rain.
Home. It looked smaller than he remembered. His memory went back over four years of North Africa, France, England, Norway, Germany, and he realized he'd gotten used to bigger buildings, decaying chateaus and the cold ruins of modern cities. This place was lush with life -- not bombed into submission or hidden away from greedy hands.
But the country was still not what he remembered from five years before.
It may not have been blitzed, but war had touched America. On the way here, he saw gold stars hanging in the windows of the row houses and knew the families had lost soldiers. The ruins here were those of men and women lost in battles far away, or coming back wrecked inside.
“The war is over. I’ve come home,” he chanted under his breath.
Hitchcock wasn’t sure why he felt a trace of depression as he walked up the gravel drive. He’d dreamed of this moment for months when he was in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He thought about the family's sail boats that had been tied up at the slip extending off the eastern end of the property. During his escape, he’d seen carved fountains that reminded him of the one in the back of his home. Going through France after D-Day, he’d browsed in libraries that reminded him of his father’s. All of Europe had been tinged with memories of home.
For a second he wondered how the others were facing their homecomings. What would happen to them after the pleasurable rush of return? Of what use was an ex-commando who was very good at fixing jeeps, bluffing the enemy and killing men? Go back to school as Troy had been unsubtly hinting?
What am I going to do with the rest of his life?
He shook himself. In the short term, wasn’t there anyone to greet him? He had called ahead to say he was coming home today.
He dropped his duffle bag on the well-scrubbed marble steps and lifted the shiny ring on the lion’s head knocker.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
He heard footsteps and wondered who was coming to the door. His mother? No, she would never answer the front door. She would probably be at some civic function if she’d forgotten his homecoming. Maybe his father at home from the textile factory? In the middle of the day? No. His sister, Alicia? No, she had lighter footsteps. He’d seen her in the last couple of weeks. She’d known he was coming today and offered to meet him, but he wasn’t sure of when he was going to arrive, so he’d turned her down.
Where was the family?
The door swung open, and there was a woman he knew very well. Virginia, the family housekeeper, had been with them for many years.
“Welcome back, Mark,” she said, beckoning him in. “Just drop that bag inside there.”
That meant she’d probably clean everything in it whether or not the clothes needed it. He made a mental note to take some of the personal trophies out before she got her hands on his duffle.
“That’s not necessary. I’ll take it up for you, Virginia. Where is everyone?” he asked taking off his hat and laying it on a polished side table. The wood-lined hallway was unchanged with a mirror on the wall reflecting the closed doors to the parlor, living room and library.
“In the parlor waiting for you,” she said with a smile. “There’s a storm coming in.”
He frowned. “So what?”
“Or they’d be out in the garden. Go see them,” she retorted. She gave him a small hug. “You’ve become a fine man, Mark! I am so glad to see you back here!”
He hugged her back tightly. “I’m happy to see you, Virginia. Keep everyone in line while I was away?”
“You go see!” She gave him a slight push.
“I’ll take that bag up later. Don't get into it,” he said, opening the door to the parlor that overlooked the back garden.
Seconds later, he flinched all his war instincts telling him it was a trap. A second letter, he realized the room was decorated with red, white and blue ribbons draped from the chandelier to the curtain rods and fragments of light from the sun shining through the crystal chandeliers. Outside the open doors the fountain burbled a well-remembered welcome, spraying water into the marble basin around it.
It looked like his parents had rounded up everyone he’d ever known and then some for a welcome home party, and had probably used their precious ration coupons on the multi-layered sugared cake that sat on the decorated table. They smiled proudly, clapping, as his sister rushed forward and hugged him. Over her shoulder he saw that there were many gorgeous girls in the crowd. This homecoming might not be as difficult as he thought.
His eyes blurred. He was home, and for this moment in time, he wasn’t going to think about the empty and frightening future. Right now, he was going to just enjoy being alive.
***
Tully Pettigrew walked up to where the path split, and took the bend that led home.
He hadn't told Laura that he was coming. He wanted to surprise her.
The trees were starting to get the darker green leaves of early summer. Mosquitoes buzzing around him, and he swatted them with his free hand. Squirrels scrambled from branch to branch, playing games. It was lush and green and the wonderful future lay before him. A future with the woman he loved, and he was pretty sure was in love with him.
At least she had always liked him. This was a step in the right direction.
She'd come to the farm as his older brother, David's wife and they'd had one son, Mack. Tully hadn't been there the night when David's abuse had driven his father to throw David out of the house, threatening him with a shot gone. He'd gone into the Navy and disappeared.
Tully joined the Army and ended up in North Africa with the Rat Patrol until the near-fatal raid that had left him badly wounded. Invalided home, Laura had nursed him back to full health.
That was when he'd fallen in love with her, though he tried not to show it. Then he'd been recalled into the war, leaving Laura and Mack to keep up with the apple orchard.
Thank God for Hans Dietrich, Tully thought walking along the winding path up to the farmhouse. The man who they’d plagued in North Africa, nearly killed in Norway, then saved in France, had ended up providently as a POW in Kentucky when David Pettigrew returned and began abusing his wife again.
David ended up being shot with the same gun that his father had threatened him with so many years before.
The official report said that Laura had done it in self-defense. Only the Rat Patrol, their commanding officer Peter Alexander, and Dietrich knew the truth. The German had done it to prevent Laura from being killed. He owed Laura’s life to Dietrich’s intervention. Someday, Tully was going to pay him back if it took him a lifetime.
He whistled softly, falling into a familiar stride that grew longer and longer as he walked. He wanted to get home.
Coming around the corner, he saw the house was starting to fall apart. Laura and Mack had tried hard, but age showed in the drooping of the gutters and the flaking paint on the front porch. Gnats buzzed around his head, attracted by the slight perspiration from his walk, and he batted at them.
A dog started barking. Damn, did they still have Roland? Mack’s dog had been the survivor of a pair, and a loyal companion to the boy over the years.
There was a stirring at the front door, then the screen door opened and Laura flew out and down the stairs. “Tully!”
He dropped his duffle bag, caught her in a bear hug and swung her around. “Laura, Laura!”
“Are you home for good?” she asked, her face half-buried against his shoulder. He could feel tears soaking his collar.
“For good?”
“For good!”
He laughed. “Yeah until you throw me out, Laura.”
She pushed away from him. “Don’t be silly!” She wiped the moisture away with the back of her hand and blushed.
“Do you want me here?” he asked with a trace of deadly seriousness. “Always?”
She smiled at him, her face filled with happiness. “Always, Tully. I love you.”
“Love me? From when?” he questioned. It was suddenly important that he know when she’d fallen in love with him. He knew when he realized he was in love with her. It was when she’d been helping teach Mack to walk. Tully thought that the boy should have been his son, after the way David treated her, and knew that he’d have to leave before he did something that he’d regret.
“When you came back wounded,” she answered seriously. “I loved you before then but like a brother.“
He hugged her again. There was probably a prohibition with falling in love with your brother’s wife, but she’d fallen in love with him after David left. It was a sin to be glad that David was dead, but Tully had been through years of war and nearly lost his life too often to worry about that sin. David had been an evil to be exorcised and was gone.
“Laura,” he said stepping away, but holding her hands. “Will you marry me?”
Her eyes widened. “Marry you?”
“Marry me.”
She laughed. “Of course, Tully. I’ve waited long enough for you to ask!”
He reached in his pocket to for the ring he’d bought in New York, and flicked it open. “Here. I got this for you.”
Her smile grew as she held out her left hand. The skin was brown from working outside, and scarred from years of farm work but there was no trace of where a ring had been when she was married before.
He slid his ring over her knuckle to its proper place, and her hand closed around his. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “It’s lovely.”
“I bought it in New York just for you.”
“Just one thing.”
He felt stricken, then recognized a teasing note in her voice. “What?”
“Mack’ll be home in a couple of hours and he’ll want to do nothing but talk to you. Do we have to wait for the preacher?”
He looked taken aback for a second, then smiled.
She stepped towards the house, tugging on his hand. “Come on, Tully. Let’s go into our home.”
***
Major Hans Dietrich sat on the bus with other Germans returning to the New Jersey prison camp, musing over what he’d just seen. Around him some of the officers were denouncing the films of the concentration camps, but the majority of the younger men were silent, obviously questioning what they were taught over the years.
Dietrich was appalled. He knew how many Germans felt about the Jews, and about the deportation of many to labor camps, but the concentration and death camps shocked and revolted him. Once he had had to run an interrogation camp, and order executions of convicted spies – now he wondered how those convictions were gained. Thank God that had been for only a month or two and then it was back to the war where dying was part of the job, not murder.
How would Germany be forgiven for doing this? The world would hold the country responsible for the next hundred years, and there was no way to scrub its reputation clean.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and his seatmate eyed him suspiciously. What kind of a future will Germany have? What will I go home to?
Actually, he knew more about the current state of Germany than most of the men around him. Dietrich was a work-release prisoner, working on a horse farm, and had been invited by the family he had worked for to see a movie called Casablanca that was supposed to be placed in North Africa. Despite the fact that he was the enemy, they’d slipped him the back of the theater with them after the lights had gone down.
But before the movie came the newsreels, and Dietrich had watched all the war news with a hunger not assuaged by reading the daily newspapers.
He saw the bombed remains of cities from Italy to Russia. He recognized some of the German cities. He had walked through those streets as a young man, then as a soldier in a uniform he was proud to wear. In all those cities, in the countryside, there was desperation and despair. He saw old women who could be his mother carrying buckets of water from broken mains, and climbing over piles of rubble that had been their homes. Young women, dressed as well as they could, worked alongside the old and the very young men -- all that was left in Germany since so many had gone off to the war, to clear the rubble. Some of the soldiers, wounded or maimed, stared defiantly from benches.
It was depressing and frightening, and by the time the movie ended, he had not forgotten what he’d seen in the very beginning. He gently disabused his hosts that North Africa was anything like Casablanca, but admitted that he’d known Germans like the ones portrayed. His only memory of the movie was that Ingrid Bergman was as pretty as girls he’d known in Norway, but not by much.
Dietrich climbed down from the bus into the camp where he’d spend the night before being sent back to the farm, and went into the temporary barracks, settling on a bunk. He tried to imagine what he would do if – no, when he went back home. His mother was up in the British Occupation Zone and that was where he would be sent if it turned out she was still alive. He had asked Sergeant Moffitt – no, Lieutenant, he had to get used to that -- if there was any way to find out about his mother, and Moffitt had promised to put in a request to his superiors for information.
But what would he, Hans Dietrich, do with the rest of his life? Of what use would an ex-Afrika Korps officer, fluent in English and Arabic, schooled in the military, do when there was no military? What should he learn that would enable him to make a living for the rest of his life? Construction? There would be a need for builders in those cities. Maybe he should become a teacher. He could teach English.
For the first time in years, he was totally at a loss. The near future was bounded by the Americans. It was the distant future that was empty.
What am I going to do?
***
Moffitt looked up at the giant ocean liner that would take him back to home. He’d been ordered back to England, probably be re-assigned to the Middle East or maybe Germany. There was no civilian life for him, not yet. England was still on food rationing, and waiting for its men to return from war, waiting for better times. He knew he was going to miss American food.
The others were gone and maybe that was for the best. To be stuck at one moment of time for the rest of eternity, good or bad or trapped in the cruelness of war, would be unthinkable. How had Marcus Aurelius put it in his Meditations?
“Observe how all things are continually being born of change; teach yourself to see that Nature’s highest happiness lies in changing the things that are and forming new things after their kind.”
The moving finger had written their fates together for a time, and now moved on.
The war was over for the Rat Patrol.