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Chapter 11. After the War
- The University of Tennessee Press
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C h a p t e r 11 After the War Now What? So now what? Good question. To avoid answering it, we in the Ft. Myers contingent settled on talking about “de-mobbing,” as the discharge from service was generally called, though for officers it was service “separation,” not “discharge.” Jack and I talked about this insistence on different terms for officers and men, and we agreed that death on the battlefield was very democratic, and it didn’t care if you went down with a corporal’s stripes on your sleeve or a general’s star on your hat. The big question thereby successfully put off once again, we spoke instead about who would be “demobbed ” and who would be asked to stay on while the military figured out how to handle the minutiae of ending a war. Jack and most of the boys were not among those asked to stay on, and we said goodbye to each other and went our ways, which meant we were going to wherever we called “home” to await word that the separation papers were ready to be picked up at whatever separation center was nearby. Nobody was talking seriously about plans. If the boys were asked what they were going to do, some would say, “Just see the folks,” and some, “Guess I’ll look for a job.” But what job? And where? The boys weren’t talking. They were just happy to be going home. Jack and I lucked out with a neighbor family who lived in Homestead just south of Miami, and we rode down with them. It had been decided that we would stay with the Subermans, and we were dropped off at their house in Miami. It was the logical place: My sister Ruth’s husband Phil was en route from Hawaii, and Ruth and Dale were living with my parents in 158 After the War Miami Beach. So the Suberman house it was, and Jack and I said to each other, “Until things are settled and we know what we’re going to do.” Living the Dream Jack was happy. He joked that having three months’ leave on full pay was not bad, not bad at all. Mostly, he was happy that he was free, as he had not been for a long time—free of having to wake up knowing that a combat mission awaited and, not to be underestimated, free of duties and free of orders. He was relaxed and funny and playful and occasionally serious, although never serious about personal matters, only about books or politics or “When the hell are they going to desegregate the armed forces?” Jack felt good about the war and about himself. He was coming off a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and he had come out a winner. Indeed, he felt super-lucky to be home at all and not, as he said, “crashing into some pagoda and being carted off in a wheelbarrow.” He thought that what he and the rest of the boys had done was a marvelous achievement, and wanting to put a bit of drama into it, he would say, “We were the good triumphing over the evil.” He was impatient for the announcement that his separation papers were ready, and he would also say that the only thing standing between him and happiness forever was those papers, and he would say that his life was “sitting there in some moldy desk drawer at an old army base in Waldo, Florida,” Waldo, Florida, being the location of Camp Blanding, our nearest separation center. No doubt the separation was awaiting him up there at Camp Blanding, but ultimate freedom and happiness forever? As Jack and the boys waited, they got out and about. Jack kept to his uniform—like most of the other boys, his prewar clothes no longer fit— and when they went about the town, they drew a lot of attention. When they walked along the downtown Miami streets, they were often stopped and greeted and asked for handshakes, or at the very least were smiled at, and little boys dashed up to touch them. Shouts of congratulations and thanks came from those in cars and buses. If we were in a restaurant, diners stopped at our table to slap Jack on the shoulder or, sometimes, to tell their own tales. Everybody loved Rick and me as well, and they asked us questions, and when they asked Rick if he knew his...