Billy McCoy passed the low stone wall that ran along his parking lot almost everyday - he tried not to notice it - but he never managed himself well enough to escape it. The memory reel was always wound to play.

First came deep echoes of furious noise and gunfire, and then bodies over his head, floating, dark shadows moving across the sky. Nonsense he thought, too long ago, and he moved on. He shifted the weight of the groceries in his arms and walked the few paces to the ground floor duplex.

He was more weathered than aged, with long thin limbs that still moved gracefully when he walked, some hair he could still comb, and the same intelligent eyes, the color of blue jeans, that he was born with.

He was alone at the Sunny Isles Condominiums, it had been two years since his Maxine died. Their only daughter, Claire, had told him now was the time to sell, get out of that big house and join them down in Fort Meyers. The time was right she said, real estate wise.

That was two years ago. But whether or not it was a good time, real estate wise, didn’t matter much in the end, because while turning the ignition on his Camary, two months after Maxine died, his heart ground to a halt. He woke up alone, in a green smock in room 101 of the Community Hospital. He was 86 years old and it was time to move on. May as well be Fort Meyers. The plain truth was, everybody he’d known in Medford, Oregon was already dead.

Inside the condo, he set the two bags on the counter, hit the remote and listened to the noise while he unpacked.

Today would be eighty-eight degrees with a heat index of ninety-four. A toothy blonde from the local news station wearing a red blazer suggested everyone drink lots of water and avoid the sun. “Gads,” Billy McCoy shouted toward the TV. screen, “wonder how I made it this long without getting that advice?”.

Her next story ran down the Fourth of July events at River Park. “This year, for those parking in the main lot, there will a five dollar parking fee". The blond newscaster paused, looking pleased with herself in a way that gave Billy the feeling she’d personally come up with the idea. During the war, he’d convinced himself he was fighting for freedom, but these days he wasn’t too sure. Everything looked to him like it was a pay as you go proposition.

Her perfect oval face turned into camera two for a close up. “And please remember,” she composed a stern tour guide smile, “no alcohol, no ice chests, no pets, no personal barbeques, no amplified music, and no fireworks in the park." Alternate back to happy face.“A spokesman from the Parks Department says they think this year’s event will be the best ever!.”

Then a scrolling text of event sponsors rolled over a faded still shot of the American flag waving from Iwo Jima. Billy muttered, “Don’t forget to tell all them folks about wearing protective eye gear honey…..for watching fireworks tonight.“ He put a deep crease in the brown paper shopping bag and shoved it between the stove and the refrigerator.

His heart medications were lined up on the pass through over the sink but he couldn’t remember whether he’d already taken his digoxin.Probably have he thought, save a few buck on refills if I haven’t.

After unpacking, he’d left the ham and mayonnaise out on the counter, but it wasn’t worth the trouble he decided. He called for a taxi to take him to the Eagle's hall for lunch.

He walked inside to a room as cool as an ice box. Billy never had thought Florida was quite what everybody made it out to be, eight months of summer is a stretch. In order to compensate he thought, every grocery store, movie theater and business in town is turned into a meat locker. Makes it easier to forget about all that ‘perfect weather’ outside that bakes the hide off you and boils the afternoon clouds until they turn to gunpowder gray and rainy downpour.

He took a stool at the padded bar next to J.J. Henry, a retired Marine with skin slack forearms covered in faded tattoos the color and size of dollar bills. He saw his action in Italy.

“Billy McCoy, out to celebrate?”

“How you doin’ J.J.?” he said, “Give me a brandy and water Heather.” The bartender scooped a glass of ice and poured.

“I don’t know about celebrate, probably just watch a few fireworks from my front lawn. Pretty good spot since they trimmed out all that Australian pine.”

J.J. nodded. “I got the grand kids, and the great-grand kids coming over for a while. I guess they’ll all leave and watch the fireworks after that.”

Master Sergeant Henry glanced up at the TV. over the bar. “Poor sons of bitches, Iraq, what a place to fight. No booze, no French broads to liberate. What kinda of war is that?” J.J. let out a soft chuckle and sipped his glass. But then in a quieter voice, “I guess the only thing that’s the same as the one we fought, is the getting killed part.” He didn’t laugh at that, just took another sip.

“Poor sons of bitches. What a mess,” was all Billy could answer with.

CNN was showing a small squad of men in desert fatigues and surfer style sun glasses entering a crumbling stone building; muffled shouting, inaudible through the dusty breeze. Billy turned sour. More soldiers and guns and helmets. He took a big drink of the brandy and sat back. He let his senses be consumed by the earthy flavors of ripe soil, seasoned vines, and the bitter tastes that come of aging.

He could smell Sicily.

The German’s were holding in a castle of jagged rock and had been launching mortars and spraying the beach with heavy machine gun fire, off and on, most of the night. When Captain Degas finally blew his whistle just before daylight, McCoy was nearly relieved and searched his jacket for a smoke.

At least the wait was over. He knew the answer to the question he‘d had since Fort Dix. He would die on a scratchy hillside in Sicily, in July of 1943. He would die under a beautiful morning sky that glowed with orange and lemon sherbets, streaked in patches of white cotton on a background of the deepest indigo silk.

Go! Go! Go!

He’d made only a hundred yards when an explosion to his left lifted Dewey Herman and Tommy Bolton off the ground. The sky choked with black smoke, chaos, and clods of the clay earth. The blast dropped McCoy to his knees. A piece of shrapnel had ripped through his jacket at the zipper leaving a bloody half-dollar sized hole over his heart. He clutched at his chest covering the gash, and looked for cover.

A low stacked stone wall appeared through the smoke, he ran for it, comically catching the flapping torn sole of his boot on a rock and jamming up short smacking his helmet against the stone, nearly knocking himself unconscious. He pulled himself up, sitting, the low rocky fence line just high enough to cover his head.

Then the German’s attacked.

On the other side of his wall, McCoy heard the rush of running footsteps closing in, two, maybe three men, breathing hard. The first man leaped the wall directly over McCoy’s head like a great shadow against the sky, barely clearing his gun barrel. McCoy looked up, tucking the carbine under his arm, squeezing a single round squarely in the soldier’s chest inches away. The German fell, shot from the sky.

Then, the scrape and thud of another boot hitting the wall. He crouched and rolled onto his back ready to pull the trigger again, another shadow was over him to block out the sky. McCoy squeezed, another man’s body fell dead at his feet.

The third attacker leaped the wall a few feet further down giving McCoy the chance to fully shoulder his carbine and fire the weapon at a point between the German’s shoulder blades. The wounded German struggled to turn and face McCoy, but his knees buckled, and his arms sagged and dropped along with his rifle. Only feet away, McCoy watched his face paint over with odd surprise that death was hidden and waiting behind such a tiny rock wall.

A few men had gathered and Billy McCoy was content to spend the afternoon under the air conditioning at the Eagle's hall playing cards and nibbling from a plate of cold cuts Herman Dealing’s wife had brought in. He kept the brandies light, tall with lots of ice, but he kept them coming. Around dusk when the taxi arrived to pick him up, he had convinced himself that, all in all, it had been a fine day to still be alive.

Billy could see everything just fine from the low Adirondack chair in his front lawn. The fireworks started exactly at nine. The first fiery trail rose above his stand of Australian pine and exploded with a single flash of magnesium white. Billy could feel his ears warm with brandy and his head a little heavy. It was a good feeling.

The Australian pine began a soft whisper. The heavy air of Florida nighttime was being pushed away. A rare direction, a light breezy front was coming in from the east.

Billy rubbed at his arms and slipped on his light jacket. Did he notice a different, unusual, tang in the air? Yes, he was sure something was different tonight, Billy closed his eyes and thought he tasted the metallic lightness of the Mediterranean.

Europe.

Sicily.

He’d never taken Maxine to Europe. She’d hinted one time, but never brought it up again when she saw into Billy‘s eyes. I’m sorry Maxine. I just couldn’t go back. But we had a good life anyway, our world turned out fine, didn‘t it?

In the sky, the display was spectacular. Dazzling mushrooms and rainbows one after another. Billy realized he was seeing things he’d never seen before lighting up all around him.

Then,when the sky had stilled, when he thought it was all over, Billy’s face was lighted with a monstrous, cascading explosion of red, white and blue; streaking across the night time, lighting the world with the very colors of passion.

Billy McCoy’s left hand suddenly cramped and his back stiffened against the wooden slats in his chair. He clutched at a searing burn in his chest. With his good right hand he covered the spot over his failing heart and squeezed desperately.

Then it was over…

under a beautiful sky that glowed with orange and lemon sherbets, streaked in patches of white cotton on a background of the deepest indigo silk.

Happy 4th to All.

z

You get better with every post!

I swear I could smell sulfur and brandy.

Just plain awesome. I noticed, too, the period after the exclamation point. Good one, that.

Freditor... Check, Please!

And, zuko, Happy Dang 4th to you, too.

Well-executed, well-executed.

But it always makes me think - what the hell happened to that generation ... my parents' generation - the one that Brokaw has called "the greatest generation"?

Did VE and VJ day make them so cocky they couldn't believe anything was wrong with this country till it was too fucking late?

Or did they simply believe that having grown up during the Great D, and then having won a big one, they were entitled to look out for themselves and no one else?

It's an excellent question, one that not too many people are willing to ask now that we've diefied them.

Billy McCoy struggles with being stuck himself in a single moment in time, wondering if he could have done better with the rest of his life. He asks,

"But we had a good life anyway, our world turned out fine, didn‘t it?"

Here he realizes that maybe everything was not fine. He's feeling slightly guilty. Maybe he should have put Maxine over himself and taken her to Europe. Maybe the world that he'd played such an important role in creating didn't turn out fine. As in this line as Billy contemplates Iraq,

"Poor sons of bitches. What a mess." was all Billy could answer with.

Billy McCoy was an average guy that I think represented the majority of the greatest generation. He drank a little too much, was stubborn and didn't always take his medicine. (both literally and figuritively) They weren't all captains of industry and wildly successful.

I would suggest that they were just like us, blown along by the winds and struggling in the unique currents of their of their own generation.

z

This story did not contain any discernable bullshit.

Jack

I was concerned that you might point out that my use of the M1 Carbine, for operations in the realitvely open countryside of Sicily, was doubtful. That a more efficient weapon would have been the more powerful M1 Garand.

But as the character was a front line infantryman, I felt the lighter Carbine with its faster action and mobility may have been the right choice.

z

No, while I am aware that both rifles were used in the war, by Army and Marines, I don't know which troops used them when or where.

I liked the story, of course, because it is of the style in which I write....first person account of historical events. what has often been called in military lore...a side show of the big show.

There are still several of these Billy McCoy's in my church. For quite some time now I have been meaning to sit down with them and capture their thoughts and experiences and write them into a story. I have been lax in doing so.

I think I will make that happen now.

Jack

Ps: I spent five months in Sicily, on deployment to the Sigonella Naval Air Facility just outside Catania, at the foot of Mt Etna. It must have been a hellish place for our troops to fight.

There were still German pill boxes along the roads, one group was set just around a bend in the road and could not be seen before you came right up on it. Whoever came around that turn first, was dead.

I was joking a little, but you would have an eye for that sort of detail. As for talking to some of the old timers, I believe, of course , that it's an opportunity not to be missed. While the eyewtiness accounts of big events and spectacular engagements are exciting, I propose that it's the little things that they, themselves don't realize are important pieces of the story reveal that put heart into the action. Did the supply sgt. the day before the big battle forget to requisition fresh socks and entire company charged up the hill in wet, blistered feet? Was every one being so brave during the Kamikazi attack, or were most of them too sea sick to give a damn? How did they feel about the guy next to them, was he an asshole? Did he almost get everybody killed? How about the French broads, real ? Maybe not great examples, but you get my drift. The big picture accounts are already drawn. I had a very good aquaintance, WW2 vet, Silver Star reciepient the real deal, no BS in this guy, later became the senior partner in a huge lawfirm, who told me that one of his most memorable scenes was the liberation of Buchenwald. (I may be fuzzy on my death camps, but I'm almost positive) He was literally the first guy to open the gates. He said he couldn't believe it when the Polish prisoners begged the GI's for weapons to go kill Germans. People, he said, that their stomachs were no thicker than the rifles they wanted. z

WOW!

jo

Hemingway once went on at length about how novels are easier than short stories because you don't have to be as picky about how many words you stuff them with - and short stories are easier than poetry for the same diminishing reason, poetry being the most demanding, short poetry the most precise and difficult of all.

So it's no surprise that your single word reply I will consider a master piece! Your devotion to brevity is only exceeded by your good taste....... : 0) lol

BTW, Hemingway's proclaimed this the 'perfect short story' and the best he ever wrote,

For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

regards,

z

A few years back, one memorial day the church did a video, of one gentleman who had hit the beach at Normandy, and played it during the service. It was somewhat disappointing because the man tried to relate the battle in terms of the big picture rather than from his own personal viewpoint. His historical accuracy was wanting.

I intend to proceed with the effort. Hopefully I can drag some of their rememberences out of them and turn them into interesting stories.

For the Vietnam sequences of the fiction novel I am writing, I used the experiences of my cousin, an Army Warrant Officer, who flew a helicopter in the war, was shot down but avoided injury while losing his good friend and co-pilot, and some others. I talked to him for several hours and recorded the conversation then wrote my own version of it.

It was interesting that, after reading my account, he made some comments like, I didn't do that, or I wouldn't do that. I responded, but the character in the story is not you, he belongs to me. I just used my cousin's experiences, I didn't write the book about him.

Also, when talking to WWII vets, we must keep in mind fading memories. They may not remember events and places accurately, names of friends, etc. The best to be learned is what their feelings were under fire, or in enduring the hardships and deprivation they faced.

Jack

Did VE and VJ day make them so cocky they couldn't believe anything was wrong with this country till it was too fucking late?

Or did they simply believe that having grown up during the Great D, and then having won a big one, they were entitled to look out for themselves and no one else?

What was it like growing during the Great Depression? What was it like when the actual world was at war, when some 16 million of us served, died, got wounded and survived winning " big one" Tell us big mouth, tell us all about it.

Meanwhile, those of us who did survive the Great Depression and WWII, as we went back to work, got married, went to college and begat the Baby Boomer Generation,were called back to fight a Police Action in Korea. Sent to fight a modern army equipted by the Soviet Union, with obsolete gear, with one arm tied behind our backs by Politicians who would not let us take the war to the enemy's sancturary on the other side of the Yalu River.

All the while our tax dollars were taken from us to rebuild Europe and Japan among other things. And jerks like we were becoming, we didn't say hell no we won't go, hell no we won't pay We fought and died again even as we gave our national treasure to those who recently were attempting to destroy us and our way of life.

All the while the Soviet Union was building bigger and better A-Bombs and Hydrogen Bombs designed to incinerate us. All this as Sputnik flying the Hammer and Sickle orbited the earth, And China fell to the Communists

We were getting some weary by 1963 as we entered our forties and President John F Kennedy was an augen blik away from getting our east coast incinerated by the Soviets.

But still we kept our noses to the grindstone, kept shelling out our pay for the betterment of mankind looking out for everyone else including those at home in our soon to become welfare state.

Then came LBJ and his Guns and Butter. By now our begats were reaching military age and were sent to Vietnam to fight, once again with their hands behind their backs. It took Nixon to take the fight to the enemy and win that war. And we re-elected him in a landslide.

By now some of our begats were screaming hell no we won't go, some of our begats were spreading their legs screaming make love not war, some of our begats began creating a nation of legal bastards.

Pick up the story now, you horses as and tell us just what you did in the great war, daddy, just what theNairobitrio did for others. Me. I recall that this was the time when our youth began the current life style that calls for instant gratification.

You ungrateful horses ass,.how is it you didn't have the balls to piss on us when most of us were still alive You knew that you would have got a knuckle sandwiche to eat.

You cheap shot artist. Get lost.

One of the best accounts of the afterlives of WWII vets comes at the end of the series Band of Brothers. The narrator talks about the men in Easy Company.

One went back to driving his cab, another to his regular job, still others to new opportunities, and one became a District Attorney of LA County and prosecuted Sirhan Sirhan for the murder of Robert Kennedy.

After engaging in the greatest crusade ever executed in the endeavors of man, the Greatest Generation went back to being just common folks helping to build a nation.

My Dad's brother came back from the Army and the occupation of Japan and was killed in a car wreck in 1947. My dad wrecked his car and died in 1962. He was 42 years old and drunk at the time.

Jack

Thanks for the input.

After the war I, on my own, have read much about both World Wars. Including a lot of fiction. Including the Band of Brothers.

In my travels I have also had a beer and a chat with a survivor of the Death March on Bataan. A Candadian who lived through Dieppe and spent the war in a Nazi prison camp. A neighbor drove our marines ashore at Iwo. A college pal went lost the use of his arm on Iwo. Another neighbor had to swim for it on D-Day when the tank he was in foundered. Kin hassled a B-24 over the Hungarian oil fields. Another pal running, in his Sherman, from a Tiger tank watched a Long Tom split the Tiger in half with one shell. A drinking buddy went to the stockade after being AWOL in Italy, Many of us did just a lot of walking, ducking and praying. Some of us got trench foot during the Battle of the Bulge.

None of us were thinking of ourselves. Maybe, at times we were thinking only of one another and how to make it out alive while doing our job

Hundreds of us went to Brown on the GI Bill. Others from my home town made to Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth and Northeastern

This Nairobi pissant ticked me off.

Cheers.

the Greatest Generation went back to being just common folks helping to build a nation.

Thanks for encapsulating the cop-out that even zuko acknowledged could legitimately be read into his post.

Plus, zuko has also acknowledged that he tried to allude to this cop-out indirectly by a line he puts in the mouth of one ot his characters.

Too bad skeppy can't see this cop-out as clearly as you and zuko do - perhaps he wouldn't have decided to take an extra-curricula dump in an otherwise fine thread.