Jack stood on the highway, hitchhiking. He was on his way to Vermont to see Dotty. His uniform helped him get rides. He’d hardly put his thumb up when a couple in a thirty-seven LaSalle stopped for him and took him the rest of the way to the camp. It was beautiful country. Low mountains and green hills. From the road he could see a lake.
At the camp office he asked for Dotty. “Dotty Landon,” a woman in shorts and a halter called over the PA system. “You’re wanted at the office. Pronto!” The words rolled over the hills.
Jack saw Dotty coming up the hill and started down toward her. She was barefoot, wearing a green bathing suit. She looked up and he waved. Then they ran toward each other.
She was out of breath. His cheeks were burning. They embraced and kissed. His hand was on her bare back. She had her arm around his neck. It was wonderful! There was one kiss, then another. From above them on the hill a cheer arose. People had come out of the office and were watching.
“Very funny!” Dotty yelled up. She took Jack’s hand, pulled him along with her to introduce him to everyone who worked in the office.
“So you did get here,” the woman in shorts and halter said, smiling mischievously at Jack. “We wondered if you would.”
“Be quiet, Lillian!” Dotty said, laughing.
She got permission to stay out till supper. A junior counselor would take over at the waterfront for her. “They’re not overly strict here,” she said. “Which is one of the reasons I like it.” She led him down the hill. Jack followed her in a daze. He could hardly believe how beautiful and nice Dotty was.
She went flying down the path in her bare feet. He was having trouble. He felt clumsy and awkward. He was afraid that once she knew he was sixteen she wouldn’t want anything to do with him.
“Dotty—” She was getting away from him. He stumbled in his heavy boots and went down, head over heels.
“Jack, are you all right?”
He let himself roll down the hill a few more times. It was just a relief to be silly and laugh.
They walked along a path skirting the lake. “I’ve got something to tell you,” he said.
“I’ve got a million things to tell you. Jack, you’re a hero.” She looked at him. “I’ve told everyone how you bailed out of a plane, how you were a prisoner—”
He shook his head. He liked the way she was looking at him, but it was such a lie. Hero? Too much of a lie! “No. When I jumped out of that plane, I was just trying to stay alive. I was terrified.”
“I would have been, too,” she said.
“You know something I’ve been thinking about—all the time I was in, I never fired a shot at the enemy. I never did what I was trained to do.”
“Why not?”
“Because war is crazy. People don’t matter the way I thought. It’s not men fighting each other. It’s all machines and bombs and what your luck is. You just try to stay out of the way, just try not to get killed.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“War is stupid.”
“Yes, but, Jack—Hitler!”
“I know,” he said. “I know we had to do it. I don’t know if we could have done anything else. But almost anything has to be better than war, Dotty.”
They sat down in a beached rowboat. He threw pebbles at the water. “I hope—” Jack cleared his throat. “I hope that what I’m going to tell you is not going to mean we can’t be friends—”
“What is it?”
“It’s nothing bad, I don’t want you to think—”
“Is there somebody else, another girl?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Jack, were you wounded? Did something happen you didn’t tell me about?” She sounded alarmed.
It was becoming so hard. “You’re talking about something else,” he said. “What I’m talking about is—” He scooped up a handful of pebbles. “—how old I am.” He licked his lips. “Dotty, I’m sixteen.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You’re in the Air Force.”
“No, I lied about my age.” And again he explained.
“How extraordinary.” Dotty looked at him. “You did all that when you were only fifteen.” Then she was silent.
Jack looked out at the water, squinting against the glare of the sun. He gathered little stones into a mound. She was searching for the polite way to tell him—Go home, little boy. So what was he sitting here for? Get up, and go. Don’t wait for her to tell you to go! But still he sat.
Finally she nodded her head as if deciding something in her own mind. “I’m glad you told me, Jack. I can see why you didn’t tell me sooner.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I had to wait till the war was over.”
“Yes, I can see that. Well. This is really something. I have to get used to the idea. I thought I could tell how old people were. I guess you don’t act that young. Why should you, with all the experiences you’ve had. Jack, you’re a very unusual person. I’m glad I know you.”
There was a note in her voice that made Jack lift his head. “You don’t mind?”
“Oh, maybe a little, in one way. No one likes to be fooled. But it would be awfully shallow of me to stop liking you because you’re younger than I thought. I liked you before—why shouldn’t I like you now?”
“I’m glad, but—” He didn’t know how to say what was on his mind. He wanted to ask if she’d be his girl, but he didn’t dare.
“We’ll go on being friends,” she said. “If that’s okay with you.”
“It’s what I want,” he said quickly. Then he blurted, “Will you go with me?”
“You mean steady?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t, even if you were older. Jack. I’m serious about school, and I’m not going to get really involved with anyone yet.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry, we’ll still see each other.”
They were both smiling, but he knew beyond a doubt that something had changed.
They went back to the camp. Dotty wanted him to meet her girls. The waterfront was full of little girls in rubber bathing caps. “Beaver Hut!” Dotty called, clapping her hands. A cluster of girls in orange and yellow bathing suits gathered around her.
“Girls, this is Jack Raab. He’s just come back from the war.”
“Hello!” the girls chorused. Jack smiled. All these eight- and ten-year-old girls looking at him!
“Are you Dotty’s boyfriend?” one said.
“What’s your name again?”
“Are you going to stay for a while?”
“What are you—a captain?”
“No, stupid. He’s a sergeant.”
Jack looked from one to the other, smiling.
“Why don’t you talk?” one girl with braids said. She turned to Dotty. “Is something the matter with him, Dotty?”
“Talk,” Dotty said to Jack.
“Hel-lo,” he said, in a deep voice. The girls applauded.
“You’re a hit!” Dotty said.
They spent the rest of the day together. Jack stayed overnight at a nearby boardinghouse and saw Dotty in the morning before hitching back to the city.
“Write me,” Dotty said, standing with him at the entrance to the camp. “Okay, Jack? I’ll write you back.”
He wanted to kiss her, but it wasn’t easy now. He touched her arm. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
For the rest of the summer Jack spent most of his time with other vets who were gradually returning to the neighborhood. They were all older than he was. Kids his own age didn’t seem to know how to act with him. Even his old neighborhood friends acted embarrassed around him. He didn’t feel as if he belonged anywhere. Even at home things had changed. The excitement over his return had passed, everyone was busy, and his parents wanted him to make up his mind about the future. It irritated his father that Jack was doing nothing, and his mother got upset at his smoking and drinking.
He woke up late every morning, dressed, and left the apartment. He hung around a pizza joint or upstairs in the Allerton Bowling Alley. Sometimes he’d meet another vet, and they’d talk about the Army, the war, what they had seen, what they had done.
All day Jack would talk, eat pizza, smoke, drink beer. Then when he came home his mother would smell the beer. There would be an argument. He didn’t care that much about beer or even smoking. What he didn’t like were the restrictions, explaining his comings and goings, having to apologize if he forgot himself and swore a little.
It was hot all through July and August. The war in Asia was dragging on. The newspapers were full of speculations about General MacArthur invading Japan. A lot of the vets Jack met were only home on furlough, but everyone expected the war in Asia to be over soon.
One weekend Jack took the train up to Buffalo to see Stan. That broke up the monotony. Stan had had enough points to get out of the Army and was already working with his father as a plumber’s apprentice.
Jack didn’t know what he was going to do. He hadn’t made up his mind about school, or work, or anything else. He kept putting it off. That’s what he did best that summer—putting off things, drifting, not concentrating on anything. Now that he was out of the Army he had nothing to focus on, nothing to dream about. He didn’t know what he wanted. It didn’t matter that he said to himself, You’re the only one who survived, so you have to make your life mean something. How else could he understand why he had lived, and they had died? But he had no idea what that something was.
Late in August the news came about the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and after that on Nagasaki.
A few days later the Japanese surrendered. The war was over. Everyone poured out into the streets, screaming and dancing. Jack was out there, too, dancing in the streets.
The newspapers said the atomic bombs had saved a lot of American soldiers’ lives by ending the war fast. It was true it had saved American lives, but the bombs had done it by killing civilians. Ninety thousand in Hiroshima, and forty thousand in Nagasaki. More kids and women killed than soldiers. It was a hard thing to understand. No easier to understand for Jack than the Germans’ killing ten thousand Jews a day, day after day and week after week.
In September he went back to Christopher Columbus High School. Everybody wanted him to go back to school. His parents, Irv, and Dotty. “Sure, you’re going back,” Dotty said when they saw each other at the end of August. “What else, Jack? It’s either that, or get a job. No, you’d be crazy not to at least get your high-school diploma.”
Jack wasn’t the only veteran returning to school, but he was the youngest. Getting used to school again wasn’t easy. He had trouble concentrating, even sitting still was a problem. And although he was only a year behind his own class, he felt ten times older than everyone else.
Weekends he spent a lot of time at Dotty’s house. They didn’t do anything special. Half the time she had schoolwork and he’d just hang around, doing his own work, or listening to music. It was a long trip to Coney Island, two hours each way, but he didn’t care. He could talk to Dotty better than he could to anyone else. It was too hard with his parents—they were always urging him to try harder, settle down, be like his brother. Dotty was easier, and what she said made sense to Jack.
“The first thing you do is stop worrying about your brother. Irv is Irv, and Jack is Jack. The next thing is finish high school.”
“And then what?”
“And then you’ll see. You don’t have to figure your whole life out in a day. You’ve got plenty of time.”
It was becoming clear that while they were going to remain friends, that’s what they were—friends. More and more Dotty acted like an older sister to Jack—warm, interested, friendly, but definitely non-romantic. But, still, he liked being with her.
In November on Veterans Day the school had a special assembly honoring the students from Christopher Columbus who’d been in the service. All of them were asked to come dressed in their uniforms that day and to take a place of honor on the stage.
The principal, Mr. Wood, asked Jack, as the youngest veteran, to say a few words. “I’m not asking you to make a speech.” Jack agreed, although he had no idea what he would say.
When his mother heard that he was going to speak, she said she was coming to the assembly. She called Mrs. O’Brien and invited her, too.
“Ma, for God’s sake,” Jack said. “I’ll make a fool of myself.”
“No, you won’t. Just get up there and say what’s in your heart.”
On the day of the assembly Jack still didn’t know what he would say, or how he’d have the nerve to say anything to a hall full of hundreds of people. It was strange going to school in his uniform. The kids in his class stared at him.
On the stage, along with the student veterans, about two dozen guys and four girls, were veterans from the First World War, the American Legion, the Jewish War Veterans, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The school band played the “Star Spangled Banner” as a color guard presented the American flag. Then a priest and a rabbi each said a prayer for the ones who had died.
The principal made a speech. “Today we are honoring the boys and girls from our high school who served our country. We won the war. Now we must win the peace. To win this peace each of you must get behind the peace effort the way you got behind the war effort.”
The principal got a big hand. Then he introduced the representatives of the veterans’ organizations, and the color guard. And last he introduced the student veterans.
As each name was called, and each one was asked to stand up, Jack grew increasingly nervous. It took Mr. Wood a long time to reach Jack’s name. He introduced everyone else first.
When his name was finally called, Jack stood at attention. Mr. Wood told briefly how Jack had bailed out and been a POW. “But what I really want to emphasize is that Jack Raab might be the youngest soldier of World War Two. We’re proud of Jack! His country is proud of him!”
The veterans on stage clapped. The kids cheered and whistled. It was real hero stuff. Jack stood at attention, his face getting hotter and hotter.
“Now I think Jack wants to share a few thoughts with us,” Mr. Wood said, stepping aside for Jack.
Jack went to the podium. He looked out over the audience. He saw kids he knew. Everyone was watching. He saw his mother and Mrs. O’Brien sitting together.
“My name is Jack Raab,” he started. His mouth was dry. “I was in the Eighth Air Force. I’m a Jew. I wanted to go and fight Hitler. I got in the Air Corps by lying about my real age.” He stopped. The auditorium was dead still. He gripped the sides of the podium.
“Go on,” the principal whispered.
“I’m glad I served.” Jack licked his lips. He wanted to say something true and real that would reach all the kids out there listening and looking up at him. He didn’t want them to look up at him that way, as if he had done something great.
“I’m glad we won,” he said. “We couldn’t let Hitler keep going. We had to stop him. But most of all, I’m glad it’s over.” Had he said enough? There was a silence … a waiting silence. There was something more he had to say.
“I don’t like war. I thought I’d like it before. But war is stupid. War is one stupid thing after another. I saw my best friend killed. His name was Chuckie O’Brien. My whole crew was killed.” Now he was talking, it was coming out, all the things held thought about for so long. “A lot of people were killed. Millions of people. Ordinary people. Not only by Hitler. Not only on our side. War isn’t like the movies. It’s not fun and songs. It’s not about heroes. It’s about awful, sad things, like my friend Chuckie that I’m never going to see again.” His voice faltered.
“I hope war never happens again,” he said after a moment. “That’s all I’ve got to say.”
He sat down. He hardly heard the applause. The floor of the radio room was still slippery with Chuckie’s blood.… Dave was still fumbling with his chute … the plane was still falling through the sky.…