What My Father Said To The Statue of Liberty

41 bester M. L. Hester What My Father Said To The Statue of Liberty Coming home on the boat after WWII, you smoked a Chesterfield and let it drop over the rail. A soldier beside you asked if you thought there would be a parade when the boat docked, or at least a band and some USO girls. You said probably not. You relaxed and took in the sun, remembering the rain in Italy and the corporal with a machine gun who on the first trip in '42 was ordered to kill anyone trying to climb the ladders to topside should a torpedo hit one of the convoy. Probably not, you said again. There was another soldier standing beside you when the ship landed in New York Harbor, one who lived in Brooklyn. He saw his wife waving from the pier. "Sleepy, Margaret?" he yelled to her. No one paid any attention to him in the noise and confusion, in the 11 o'clock sun. ...