Your Forgotten Sons E-Book

Anne Montgomery

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Bud Richardville is inducted into the Army as the United States prepares to enter World War II in 1943.

A chance comment has Bud assigned to the Graves Registration Service, where his unit is tasked with locating, identifying, and burying the dead. Bud ships out, leaving behind his new wife, Lorraine: a mysterious woman who has stolen his heart but whose shadowy past leaves many unanswered questions.

When Bud and his men hit the beach at Normandy, they are immediately thrust into the horrors of what working in a graves unit entails. Bud is beaten down by the gruesome demands of his job and losses in his personal life, but then he meets Eva, an optimistic soul who despite the war can see a positive future. Will Eva's love be enough to save him?

Leseprobe

Your Forgotten Sons

Anne Montgomery

Copyright (C) 2024 by Anne Montgomery

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2024 by Next Chapter

Published 2024 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Lordan June Pinote

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

Inspired by a true story

Dedicated to all those who have served in the Graves Registration Service

Contents

Your Forgotten Sons

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

Author Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

August 4, 1945

Épinal, France

Dear Mom,

Isn’t God going to let me keep anything for myself? First, he took my son, and now he has taken my wife. And I don’t get to come home for a long time yet. There is too much time that I have to think about what has happened, and that bothers me too much. I know that you will start to worry about me. But please don’t. I’ll be alright.

Your Forgotten Son

Bud

Prologue

Baltimore, Maryland — October 2019

The waiting room is silent. Like a church. Friends and family members are numb, considering the possible outcomes for their loved ones undergoing the knife.

“When did we get so old?” Gina whispered in my ear. Then she laughed and hugged me, and the doctors took her away. Her surgery would soon get underway, and I had nothing to do but wait. A tumor had wrapped its way around her spinal cord. Ignoring the fatty loops that gripped her spine could be catastrophic. Of course, the surgery could render her paralyzed from the waist down. So, were there any good options?

My friend of over three decades tried to comfort me and her soldier husband: three tours, two in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, a navy-blue sweatshirt boasting an Airborne patch, a bracelet saying Remember The Fallen circling his wrist, a black, rubber ring dark on his calloused hand, the kind soldiers wear to honor others who’ve served or lost their lives in combat and which are easier to cut off if one’s hand is injured.

Sleep had eluded us in the hotel two blocks south of the sprawling Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where the doctor who specialized in this “risky” surgery plied his trade in scrubs, and would soon wield his scalpel on the pale lumps of my dear friend’s vertebrae.

I listened as the surgeon explained the situation, then the anaesthesiologist, then the head nurse, who offered to take Gina’s hand if she was scared. She said she was, and the nurse promised to hold on tight.

I kissed Gina goodbye, told her I loved her, and left her alone with her husband.

Later, I awoke on an iridescent-green, vinyl couch wrapped in a blue airplane blanket. The waiting room roiled with concerned people desperate for news about their loved ones. I blinked at the large electronic board that shared patient information. Gina was still undergoing surgery. I pulled the cover over my head, wanting to leave this place, but how could I? Gina’s husband had disappeared. The hospital and its patients gnawed at his belly, a reminder of dead and dying soldiers he’d been unable to help in another hospital in Iraq.

Hours later, I sat bedside, staring at my friend who looked small and fragile beneath a thin hospital blanket.

“I want to bring him home.” Her eyes were still glassy from the anesthesia.

“Who?” I gazed at my friend, her face etched with pain. The drugs weren’t helping.

“Uncle Bud.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that in the midst of her suffering, Gina thought of Bud. We’d spoken of her elusive uncle—her mother’s handsome, rakish brother—on occasion over the years, and of the odd circumstances surrounding his death. She’d toted those old letters to Baltimore, and the night before the surgery, she’d presented the yellowed pages to me in a Ziplock bag. A mandate, I think. My project should her operation go south.

“And I want to know what happened?” She smoothed her short blonde hair, pushed back her bangs, then winced and closed both eyes.

“Do you want me to call the nurse?”

“No. Bud…” her voice trailed off.

“It’s been a long time, Gina. And we don’t have much to go on.” I recalled the night before when she’d extracted the fragile letters with almost religious reverence. The epistles were tiny, square, the type soldiers used during World War II.

She opened her eyes and squirmed, trying to find a comfortable position, but was under doctor’s orders not to move.

“Stay still! Water?” I reached for a plastic cup with a bent white straw, in an effort to do something.

Gina shook her head and stared out the window. I followed her gaze and focused on the clear blue sky and showy fall foliage, brilliant orange and yellow leaves basking in bright sunshine. I searched for something to say. I’d always been the one who, faced with a problem, could tackle a job and get it done, a hangover perhaps from my previous life as a reporter. But how was I to determine what happened to a man who died mysteriously almost 75 years earlier at the end of World War II?

“I will have some water.”

“Okay.” I reached for the cup and guided the straw between Gina’s chapped lips. When she was done, I placed it back on the stainless-steel tray next to the bed. Then, she closed her eyes and let out a ragged breath.

I hated feeling helpless. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Let’s go get Bud!”

“Really?” She brightened instantly, a glimpse of the Gina I knew before the surgery.

I nodded. “When you’re better.”

And so, we agreed to travel to France, to the graveyard in Épinal where Joseph “Bud” Richardville had lain since his strange death in 1945. Even if Gina spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair, we’d go to France and bring Bud home.

One

Vincennes, Indiana 1930

Another body.

Bud, unable to sleep, squatted by the railroad tracks and squinted at the tiny spark in the distance. He absently dragged one finger along the iron rail, where blood still lingered. The death the day before was a rather common occurrence. After all, people had to get from one place to another as they searched for work, and since many couldn’t afford a car or gasoline or even a horse-drawn wagon, travelers would grab hold of that moving mechanical beast and hoist themselves onto the roof. Others clutched whatever they could grasp, balancing their feet on slim bits of metal as the behemoth swayed on its way to somewhere else. Even women, grinning from the excitement of it all, wearing ankle-strap shoes and small, flowery hats, sometimes made the leap, skirts billowing in the train-induced wind.

Bud thought of pretty Becky Lynn, who sometimes served him a vanilla ice cream cone on the rare occasions he had a few pennies to purchase the chilled, sweet treat. Cornflower blue eyes, vibrant auburn hair. He blinked at the cold metal tracks. He’d never helped remove a woman from the rails. Trying to recover the bloody human parts that were sometimes spread far down the line was difficult enough when the victim was a man.

The train growled through a bleak, gray landscape, lit by a colorless three-quarter moon. Sharecroppers’ fields sported last year’s stubble since constant cold kept the ground frozen and delayed planting. Bud straightened, dug his hands into his pockets, and fingered the hole. Momma had sewn the rip repeatedly, but the fabric was too worn to hold stitches, and since thread was scarce, she’d stopped trying to mend the tear.

He could feel the rumble of the oncoming train, a not-unpleasant vibration, though a flash of the unfortunate young man—one leg ripped from his torso, a caved-in face, bloody stumps where his fingers should have been—made Bud shudder. And yet, the lumbering freight train lulled him, the light announcing its arrival bright like a shooting star.

Bud glanced at his home, a crude, clapboard house that stood near an assortment of other homes equally devoid of color, even the once-white trim now a dirty gray. The broken man’s body had lain on the front porch, beside the swing that hung crookedly, one rusted chain busted for as long as he could remember. Flies had darted about the man’s mangled face until the sheriff came and took the corpse away, the shattered remains wrapped in a stained brown blanket, the body bouncing as the truck skirted the ruts in the road.

The train horn—a mournful sound in the half-light—alerted Bud that the engineer saw him standing on the tracks. He counted five beats as the sparkling light approached, the tracks pulsating beneath him. Then Bud stepped aside and felt a whipping torrent of wind buffet him as the train passed by. He watched as the train receded into the distance and disappeared between two low hills.

That afternoon, Bud sat in the grass beside the little house in the shade of a massive, gnarled oak tree, an open pocket knife in one hand, a small piece of wood in the other. He ran the blade over the chunk, unsure of what he wanted to carve. A bird maybe. Or a rabbit for his little sister Mickey. The slamming of the screen door on the front porch alerted him. Loud voices emanating from the kitchen informed him that his father was home and that, as usual, the old man was angry.

Bud frowned. He was supposed to be in school, but he wasn’t much for letters and numbers. He hated being in that stuffy room where Mrs. Maccabee droned incessantly, and since he overly enjoyed entertaining his fellow classmates and sometimes caused distractions in class, he sensed he was not a favorite of hers.

“Where is he!” His father’s voice boomed from inside the house.

He dropped the piece of wood he was whittling, snapped the pocketknife closed, and stood. Then 16-year-old Bud Richardville bolted toward the woods. He didn’t know why his father was angry. Did it really matter? The outcome was always the same, and though he realized there was no way to avoid the inevitable, he ran because he could and because he enjoyed the feeling of being free. He loped toward the tree line. Though only five-foot eight, Bud’s legs were long, his stride and lithe build those of a cross-country runner. His unruly dark hair bounced as he leaped over a dry riverbed and scrambled up the incline on the other side.

“You get back here, boy!” His father bellowed from the yard.

But Bud kept going and disappeared into the woods.

Two days later and again despite the foregone conclusion of the outcome of his actions, Bud couldn’t help himself. Spring in Vincennes had remained cold. Bitterly so. Mickey, wrapped tight in a ragged gray sweater and a pair of cuffed jeans, shivered uncontrollably even when inside the house. Mickey was Bud’s favorite. Her sharp eyes and sometimes irreverence toward adults made the two of them alike, though they were separated by eight years.

Bud crept out of the house an hour before dawn, his breath crystallizing in a huff of white. His coat—a short, cracked, brown-leather jacket that had come by way of the charity ladies at church—wasn’t enough to quell the dry cold that crept onto and under his skin despite the jeans and threadbare sweater. He grabbed the metal bucket that rested beside the uneven front porch and bolted toward the trees.

Ten minutes later, Bud looked down the track and waited. Finally, he felt the rumbling. He’d picked the perfect spot. The train would slow inside town limits, and the small hill would give him the perfect trajectory. The golden light, shining like a small sparkling sun, bounced along the track. Bud crouched in the bushes, not wanting the engineer to see him.

The engine moved past, the tick, tick, tick of the wheels a strangely soothing sound for a massive mechanical vehicle. Bud counted three cars. It was the fourth that was his destination. At the same moment the third car rattled by, Bud launched himself into space. The metal pail banged against the side of the car and, distracted in his effort to keep a grip on the bucket, threw him off balance. His foot slipped on the top edge of the car, and Bud tumbled, though he managed to maintain his hold on the pail, while the other hand clung precariously to the rail atop the car.

“Shit!” Bud mumbled as he grappled his way into the boxcar. When he’d finally lifted himself over the edge, he fell with a thud into the dirty cargo. He took several deep breaths that dissipated in white clouds in the frigid dawn air. Then he stood awkwardly, the uneven freight and the swaying railcar making his footing unstable.

The town was just around the bend. Bud quickly went to work making small piles of coal and lining them up against the side of the boxcar. A few lights glowed ahead, inside the houses on the edge of Vincennes.

He was finished just in time. The first home appeared out of the gloaming. Bud crouched, ready. He scooped the first pile and filled the pail with hard lumps of shiny bituminous coal. Just as the train car approached the dwelling, Bud dumped the coal over the side. Then, he dug into the next pile and flung the contents again. Over and over, he scattered the lumps of stone, knowing his neighbors were in dire need of the heat-producing rock, which many of them couldn’t afford to purchase.

Sweat formed between his broad shoulders and ran in rivulets down his chest. Bud—overly warm now from the exertion—wanted to remove the frayed leather jacket, but the next house approached so quickly, he couldn’t afford to take the time. He worked his way down the inside of the car, dumping coal by every house the train passed. Then his home came into view. Bud dug the edge of the bucket into the loose coal, hauled up the stone, and poured it over the side. He felt like Santa Claus and whooped as the train pulled away from town.

Bud knelt in the coal, the rocks sticking into his knees. He peered into the waning darkness and waited for the best spot to depart the train, which was now leaving Vincennes and picking up speed. After crossing a small trestle, the train rumbled toward the soft grassy area near the river where Bud often went when he skipped school and where he sometimes took girls who’d let him kiss them. He’d have to jump, but he’d done it before and wasn’t worried. Still, the realization of his actions and the knowledge that he would pay for his theft made him wince. He was covered with coal dust. There was no way to hide his crime. Bud tossed the bucket over the side and leapt. He tumbled away from the moving train and rolled in the grass, then stood, brushed off his clothes as best he could, and retrieved the now-empty bucket that had spun down the riverbank.

Later that day, Bud stood with his face pressed against the old oak, the branches of which were so large they’d dropped to the earth and then curved back toward the sky. It took three grown men hand to hand to encircle the massive tree that had stood for close to two hundred years. Bud, striped to the waist, had both arms around the rough trunk.

“What is the matter with you, boy?” His father brought the switch down on his son’s back, slicing through skin, raising an instant welt. “The Bible says thievin’ is wrong.” He whipped his son again. And again.

But Bud never made a sound. It was Mickey who cried on the porch, the bucket of coal by her side, while Momma dabbed her eyes with a hanky.

That evening, Bud’s back smarted. He was unable to sit or lie down comfortably, still he didn’t miss the irony of the fact that the purloined coal now blazed in the black, pot-bellied stove, next to which his father sat, a cigarette dangling from his thin, colorless lips.

Mickey idly played with several hunks of coal. Then, she emitted a gasp. “Look, Bud!” she scrambled from her place on the floor, holding two large pieces of rock.

Bud, sitting rigidly in a high-back wooden chair, smiled at his little sister. “What have you got there, Mick?”

“It’s a flower.” She turned up the two halves of the broken piece of coal, showing a perfect fossil imprinted on both sides.

“I think that’s a fern.” He rubbed her tawny head. “Like the ones that grow out in the woods. Remember those?”

Mickey nodded and hugged the stones to her chest. “They’re beautiful!”

Her father rose from his seat by the stove. “Give me those, girl!”

But Mickey held the fossils tightly in her grip.

Then, her father reached for the pieces of coal, wrenched them from the child’s hands, and hurled them into the fire.

Two

Monroe, Michigan 1943

Bud sat on the ground beneath the shade of a willow tree, its trailing branches dragging in the currently serene water of the River Raisin, named for the wild grapes that grew along its banks. He extracted an egg sandwich from a brown-paper sack, took a bite, and chewed as he contemplated the drastic change in scenery that would take place in the next few days.

The logs were coming, thousands of tree trunks roiling in the river above Monroe, a massive float of pulpwood that would keep the mill open 24 hours a day. When Bud had first arrived in Michigan looking for a job, he’d worked as a logger barely eking out a living. He’d graduated to river work, first as a roller, where he was charged with pushing logs off the banks and into the water. Then Bud took on the most dangerous job in logging. He became a river pig, where he faced three equally dangerous jobs. As a driver, he muscled floating logs off rocks and debris. As part of the sacking crew, he searched for logs that had become hung up on their way down the river and diverted them back into the flow. And he worked up front with the elite jam loggers to clear areas where the coming logs might get stacked up. Bud wore a pair of heavy cork boots that had rows of sharp spikes on the soles, in order to keep his footing on the wet, rolling logs. He used a long-handled tool with an iron spike on the end to guide the logs down the river and a device called a peavey—which consisted of a metal spear with a movable hook—that allowed him to grasp a log and maneuver it where he wanted it to go.

Because of his strength and athletic build, Bud eventually settled on a position with a jam crew, where he worked backbreaking shifts, sometimes thirteen hours each day. If he and the other men were unable to free the logs quickly, thousands could pile up over miles of river. Valuable pulpwood would be lost, and log dams could cause the river to rise, endangering the people who lived near the banks. The work was wet, exhausting, and hazardous.

Bud stared at the pastoral scene that would soon be flooded with men and logs and the turmoil inherent in trying to corral thousands of floating tree trunks. He flashed on Joey Carmichael, the 17-year-old kid who’d flipped into the water when the log he was riding smashed against a huge boulder that stuck up from the riverbed. The boy was quickly forced under by the mass of logs in what was one of the most dangerous stretches of the river.

Bud, balanced on a log nearby, saw the boy go down. A few seconds ticked by, and the kid popped up, gasping for air. Bud, his pike pole gripped in one hand, leaped from log to log, trying to keep his balance and his eyes on the boy. But when Bud finally came within reach, a smaller tree trunk sailed above the others and hit Joey Carmichael squarely in the head. Bud knew instantly the kid was dead.

Later, he and several drivers fished the boy’s body from the river. It would be the last time Bud watched a man be claimed by the rushing water and its cargo of spinning logs. Later, the rock that had caused the accident would be destroyed with dynamite, in order to avoid any future problems, but that did nothing to help Joey Carmichael and his widowed Irish mother and seven younger siblings.

Bud finished his sandwich just as the mill whistle blew, alerting him that it was time to return to work. He balled up the paper bag as he rose and placed the sack in his jeans pocket. Sometimes, he missed the river work—the excitement and the camaraderie—but when he’d been asked to take a spot as a foreman at the mill, a position with a much larger paycheck, he couldn’t refuse. He often wondered what his father would think of his job, where he now was the boss of a crew of mill workers. But the snarly old man had died two years earlier, having never once seen his son after he’d shipped the boy off to reform school.

A string of workers converged on the mill entrance, men and even women now that the world was at war and the need for paper products was constant, both from the military that had an insatiable need for paper and private companies that had replaced much of their tin packaging with paper products.

“After you.” Bud bowed slightly and gallantly waved his hand at two women, ushering them into the line in front of him. One, a red bandana covering what Bud knew to be lustrous blonde hair, smiled and dipped her head. Her blue eyes twinkled. Her name was Betty.

Bud smiled and brushed back a lock of wavy, dark-brown hair that was forever falling in his eyes and moved along with the line. Like logs in the river, the people were starting to bunch at the entrance, but the mood was jovial, despite the continuing menace of the war. The workers were happy to have steady jobs, the spidery reach of the Great Depression still vivid in their minds.

After entering the building, Bud split off from the others, entered a small office, and grabbed a clipboard from a nail on the wall. He would check the roll, once his crew members were in place at their assigned machines. Not for the first time, he found it ironic that he was in charge of anyone. After his dismal showing in his hometown school, no one who knew him would have ever thought Bud Richardville would amount to anything.

As it turned out, the time in what Bud called a reform school—which was actually a Catholic, military boarding school—had changed everything. Bud discovered he wasn’t as dumb as his father always pointed out. Perhaps he’d just been a late bloomer. In any case, he’d done well in math and greatly improved his reading skills, though he would never be much of a writer and couldn’t spell a lick. But Bud also had common sense, a quality that had made him a leader.

And, of course, just about everybody liked Bud. He had an easy way with people and animals and—to the consternation of many of his less-confident male friends—he was extremely popular with women. Perhaps girls liked him because he always seemed to be in a good mood, or because he could dance, or because he made people laugh. Whatever it was, there were few women Bud encountered that didn’t find him intriguing.

After the shift ended, Bud sat at a small, rough-hewn wooden table across from Mike Dubicki, who fiddled with a sweating bottle of Schlitz.

“It looks bad, Mike.” Bud held the newspaper close, scanning the headlines in the scant light that shone through the front window of Jake’s Tavern, a restaurant and bar frequented by mill workers and which, owing to the shift work, was open 24 hours a day.

“I’m going to sign up.” Mike lifted his gaze and stared at Bud.

“Have you heard anything from your family in Poland?” Bud folded the newspaper and placed it on the table.

Mike shook his head. “Nothing. It’s been over two-and-a-half years.”

Bud appraised the young man with bright blue eyes and square-cut jaw who’d been born in the U.S., but whose extended family members were now prisoners behind the wall built by the German Reich. Though the stories of atrocities committed by the Nazis had been leaking out since the onslaught began, America had yet to get a foothold on the European continent.

“You can do your part here.” Bud smiled. The kid was barely 18.

Mike shook his head.

“The mill is an essential service to the war effort. We need men and women to keep it running. You know the damned Army can’t function without its paper.” Bud tapped his beer bottle to Mike’s.

The two men drank in silence. A large white moth bounced against the bar window in an effort to reach the glowing light within, while a mossy earthen smell wafted up from the river. Then two women walked out the door into the cool, late spring evening. Bud smiled at Betty; her hair no longer bound in the red bandana. It fell in glorious waves just below her shoulders. Her eyes flashed at Bud, as she and the other woman walked into the parking lot.

“You seeing her?” Mike nodded toward the blonde and took another pull on his beer.

“Not yet.” Bud waved after she turned her head and gazed at him one more time. “Soon, I think.”

But Bud would never see Betty again.

The next day, Bud received his induction notice. He was ordered to report to Camp Warren in Wyoming in two weeks and decided he should head to Vincennes to visit his mother because who knew how long the war would last.

Bud shook hands with the mill manager, who assured him he would always have a job in Monroe, should he want to come back. There was sadness in the man’s eyes, and Bud thought perhaps it was his memories of having served in the Great War—The War to End All Wars—which was clearly misnamed and had permanently affixed a pronounced limp to the man’s right leg.

Bud took the envelope containing his pay, added it to the nest egg he’d amassed during his time at the mill, and lifted the canvas bag that held his scant belongings. He walked toward the train station, not stopping to tell his friends he was leaving, simply because he didn’t like goodbyes. Anyway, many of them were working at the giant rollers where vast sheets of paper were looped onto rolls that, when stood on their ends, were twice as tall as the average man. Others were preparing for the thousands of logs that were now approaching the mill along the river. Then, he thought of Betty with the beautiful hair and impish smile and reproached himself for not taking the time to get to know her.

Bud stared at the river where water rippled in the shallows over small rocks, then out toward the middle, the deep part where soon drivers would muscle the massive logs, hoping to move them in an orderly fashion. Bud laughed and turned again toward the train station. Nothing was orderly about a log drive.

It wasn’t until the train approached Toledo that Bud caught his reflection in the car’s window. He frowned. His wavy hair was too long and as unruly as ever. The collar of his shirt was frayed. He stared down at his scuffed, brown work shoes. Though Bud was not a vain man, he wanted to make a better impression on his return to the hometown that had always seen him as a problem; his reputation sealed, as it was, by his childhood habit of stealing food and other items from local establishments. He and a few of his friends were finally caught and publicly shamed in the local newspaper. Bud closed his eyes and could still see the article:

Two Charged in Juvenile Court: Joseph Richardville, 14, living near Fourteenth Street and C.& E. I., was arrested yesterday in connection with the alleged thefts committed by a juvenile ring. The boys were said to have stolen both from store counters and from parked automobiles. . .

The train slowed, and Bud opened his eyes. The Toledo station was just ahead.

After exiting the passenger car, Bud stepped into the warmth of a late spring afternoon. He hoisted the bag over his shoulder and walked. Though the trip had been short—just a little over 20 miles—it felt good to stretch his legs. After deciding he was in no hurry, Bud explored this new city. He wandered the streets that bustled with people, many, he noticed, dressed differently than he was. Some men wore suits with sharp creases down the front of their pant legs. Others sported slacks and jackets and thin sweaters underlain with silk ties, along with two-tone shoes. And fedoras were everywhere, with their rakish front dips and snazzy bands. The more Bud wandered, the more he felt conspicuous in his workman’s cuffed jeans and boots. It’s not that there weren’t others on the streets dressed like Bud, it’s that he admired those who looked successful and wanted to emulate them.

Bud approached a pretty woman wearing ankle-strap shoes—dark blue with gold buckles and open toes that Bud found fascinating. For a moment he considered his attire, but then smiled and asked, “I’m in need of some new clothes, as you can see.” He grinned.

The woman raised both eyebrows and started to turn away, but something in Bud’s smile made her stop.

“Can you point me toward a store where I might purchase some new things?” Bud stared at her with wide brown eyes framed by thick, dark lashes.