Kid Comes Back (7 page)

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.

R
OY 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 up 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.

First they were marched to the Post Theatre, where with several other groups they were given a talk by the chaplain. “Please go directly to your homes. Lots of men from other parts of the country hang around New York and blow in their money. Then we have telephone calls from home about them. There are many pitfalls between Fort Dix and your home, remember that, boys.”

“Wish he’d give me the phone number of a couple of good pitfalls,” said a wag near Roy. But this was a serious thing, and Roy was far too nervous to laugh. They were marched next to the Counseling Building several blocks away, where as usual they waited for their records to arrive. Just before noon, Roy’s name was called, and he stepped forward to sit down across from a soldier at a small desk. The soldier looked over his records, checked them, asked what he had done in civilian life, and before Roy had finished explaining that he was a professional baseball player, out came the inevitable question.

“Say! You ain’t Roy Tucker of the Dodgers, are ya? Ya are? Well, we’ll hustle you through, boy. Them guys can use you out in the field right now.”

He went to work immediately on Roy’s records. “Any disabilities, fella? O.K. Insurance all set? Fine. Fill this out, Form A100, your work-record form. A job waiting? I’ll say, and do they need you over there in Ebbets Field!” The soldier grinned cheerfully.

Roy only wished he was as certain about that waiting job as his questioner. It was all finished in a few minutes, and next the gang marched to the clothing supply building, where he drew a blouse, shirt, trousers, and new shoes. In an adjoining room, a WAC sewed on the golden discharge emblem with the eagle, “the homing pigeon” in Army parlance. Then to the medics.

This was what Roy had been dreading. It began in that usual atmosphere of sweating, naked bodies, with everyone stripping to shorts, socks, and shoes. A technician in a white apron measured his chest. Then an X-ray plate in a dark room was flattened against him. “Say 99. 99. 99.” Boy, I’d sure like a nickel for every time I’ve said 99 in this man’s army.

In the next room, Group eighteen dash thirty went in turn to three medical officers, each at a desk. More questions, a dental examination, and a squint by a captain down throat, ears, nose. After that an eye-testing chamber. His vision was perfect. Next his blood pressure was taken, then his pulse, and he was weighed.

A doctor took him into a cubbyhole and tested him for rupture. Another medic at a table glanced over his service record and began to ask questions.

“Any wounds, injuries or diseases contracted in the service?”

“H’m. I see you were brought down in France and sustained a back injury. That right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bang you up some, did it?”

“Yessir, just a bit.”

“How you feel at present?”

“Oh, I’m O.K. Never felt better in my life.” It was the truth, too.

The doctor wasn’t satisfied. He had Roy bend over and touch the floor. “Left you with considerable stiffness in that lumbar region, didn’t it? Here... let me feel that back of yours.”

Reluctantly Roy submitted to the doctor’s fingers. Would he be sent back to a hospital? Would the doctor find an injury sufficient to keep him from obtaining his discharge?

“You been on active duty in Greenville all winter, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What sort of work were you doing?”

“Well, major, I was in the control tower at Greenville for a few months; then they had me working in the Base office.”

“I see. You had no ill effects, no trouble at all with that back of yours? No pains, no record of hospitalization since you’ve been back in this country?”

“No, sir,” replied Roy truthfully. What he didn’t talk about was that constant ache in his leg.

The doctor stood looking. “H’m...” He ran his fingers up and down Roy’s back, pressed him over toward the floor. Then he went round to the desk and wrote something upon Roy’s service record. It was evident that he was making a notation of the stiffness for future reference. Then he nodded, and Roy hastily escaped. That finished the day, and as far as he was concerned it was enough.

When the bugle sounded the next morning, he woke with a start. This is the day! At eight came the call for Group eighteen dash thirty. Again they formed in a column of twos and were marked off to be paid. But things had been going too well. The rain had been pouring down all night, and now they discovered what was meant by the famous Fort Dix mud. It leaked into their shoes; the rain seeped through their raincoats. They stood outside the building, wet, angry, impatient. But there was nothing to do.

They stood there until lunch, when they slogged to the mess hall through the oozy mud, and then back again. The place was locked and the personnel gone to eat, so again there was nothing to do but wait grimly in the downpour. Shortly after one, a private first class entered with an armful of service records. One hour later they were called inside and told to form in line. At last the call had come for Group eighteen dash thirty.

Everyone was lined up at a desk and told to sign three copies of their discharge, two in ink and one in indelible pencil. The records were then taken to the other end of the room, where a chap impressed their thumbs on an inked glass plate and transferred the impression to their discharges.

So to the Finance Building to be paid. Fortunately they could wait inside, for there was another delay of forty minutes here. Then their group was called to go through a small, numbered gate, where Roy signed his name on a pay roster and walked to a window to receive cash. What followed was the most aggravating hour of his life. Everything was ready. They were all but separated from the Army. Almost civilians. A big sign on the door ahead told them to “Move to Next Building for Farewell Speech and Discharge.” But the man first in line at the pay window was short seven dollars and sixty cents. Moreover, he was determined to get it.