The Long Way Home

By Wayne M. Hoy

The First World War is coming to a close, and American army captain Ernest Mathews awakens in a London hospital with a face he doesnt know, a name he cannot remember and a past wiped clean as a slate. His sole possession is a photograph of a dark-haired beauty whose unknown face is the only thing capable of bringing a sense of comfort and peace to the black void that now inhabits his mind. When given direction to his fathers ranch in Arizona, Mathews has little choice but to travel back to America to find a man he doesnt know with the hope of discovering his memory and identity at journeys end.

In New York, as soldiers begin to return from the war, the Holden family receives the devastating news that their son, Jack, has been killed in action. Cathy and her best friend, Judy, mourn the loss of Jack and the girls quickly become disillusioned with their privileged life. In an attempt to find purpose and restore normalcy to her world, Cathy attracts the attention of a dangerous gangster and quickly becomes the object of his twisted obsession. When Cathy and Judy are discovered eavesdropping on the gang and overhear their malicious scheme, they realize their lives are now in danger and impulsively decide to travel west to find Jacks best friend, Ernest Mathews, whom Cathy has not heard from since his return from the war.

Despite her risk of exposure, Judy carries a secret of her own on their perilous journey: a photograph of Jack, a man now dead, whose unspoken gaze both haunts and consoles her while he sits next to her bed each night in her dreams. As the girls embark on their cross-country adventure, narrowly managing to evade one danger after another, they find themselves in a race to reach Mathews and safety before the vicious gangster catches up with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504973151

Wayne M. Hoy

Wayne M. Hoy presently resides in Southern Indiana with his wife of 62 years. A retired Police Lieutenant and father of nine, Wayne has taught a wide range of courses in criminal justice during his law enforcement career. His diverse education has supplied him with an expertise in many areas and he is an educator in the field of Theology as well. In his spare time, he indulges his passion for writing and researching settings for his historical romances, which include, The Wolf and the Stag, The Miniature, Appeal to Honor, Banners of Canvas, Fire in the Sky, Lone Star Justice, Ambush at Piñon Canyon, Day of the Outlaw, The Long Way Home, Where Eagles Dare, The Lady and ‘The Eagle’, The Eagle’s Wing, Casey Sue Thornton, A Chance Encounter and his latest, An Occasion of Valor.

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The

Long Way

Home

Wayne M. Hoy

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© 2016 Wayne M. Hoy. All rights reserved.

Cover Art by the author’s daughter: Theresa Susanne Ysiano

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/15/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7316-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7317-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-7315-1 (e)

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Author’s Note

In memory of my uncle and godfather, James B. Jarboe (1892—1982) American

Expeditionary Forces, WWI, Western Front, 1917—1918. The Great War.

Uncle Ben Jarboe.jpeg

Reims, France

July 1918

Chapter One

W ith a weary sigh Captain Jack Holden tucked the letter he had just written to his sister, Catherine in the envelope and sealed it. He placed it in his coat pocket with the one addressed to his parents. The letters were not long. He just didn’t have the heart to write much, for they were going through a very perilous period right now. His regiment had been in nearly continuous action since May. He had just wanted to let them know that he was all right physically. That was all he had written. When he had arrived in France little over a year ago he had been so eager to trounce the Huns; show the French commanders what the American fighting man could do. But since then he had become disillusioned with the war, oh, not the right or wrong of it, but the senseless way men were sent forward in the face of entrenched German machineguns and their murderous fire. Fear not. He would do his duty, wouldn’t shirk his responsibility to his men, but his heart was no longer in it; this terrible waste of human life.

For a long moment Jack stared at the photograph of his younger sister, Catherine. He had received the photograph upon his arrival in France; her yearbook picture she explained. More than a year had passed since that day. He couldn’t believe how much she had changed; grown from the time he had last seen her. Had it been four years? How old was she now, eighteen?

Christ! he cursed under his breath. He had missed her birthday! She turned nineteen in May. He’d have to send her something, something special from Paris. Hopefully that would make up for his forgetfulness—if there was ever a lapse in the fighting and he ever made it to Paris that was. It had been a brutal three months. But there was no longer any doubt in the French command’s mind of the fighting ability of the Americans.

He stood and unbuckled his web belt followed by his Sam Browne and tossed them over a rickety table one of the few items that remained in the deserted house. Hastily he unbuttoned his wool olive drab uniform coat and draped it over the same table. Couldn’t the Quartermaster’s Department have issued summer khaki by now? Christ, it was July, and hotter than blazes. Uttering an angry grunt he slipped the aluminum identification tags, (or dog tags as the troops called them) the size of a silver half dollar and attached to a thong up over his head. The damn butcher’s twine was rubbing his neck raw. And he was sure he was allergic to the metal tags.

Up until two years ago they only had to wear one tag, but new regulations specified two tags stamped with the name, rank, company, regiment, or corps of the wearer: one to stay with the body and the other to go to the person in charge of the burial for record-keeping purposes. Then again just this year in addition to the other information, an individual serial number was to be stamped on the dog tags. The regulations required that the tags be habitually kept in the possession of the owner. Well, he grinned as he slipped the tags in the upper pocket of his uniform coat and buttoned the flap. He would keep them in his possession; forget the fact that the tags were to be suspended from the neck, underneath the clothing, by a cord. The butcher’s twine was too damn uncomfortable in this heat.

His eyes fell to a second photograph. It was of a young woman that his sister had enclosed in her latest letter. The girl was hauntingly lovely. She wore a white cotton lawn dress with a sweetheart neckline, and elbow-length set-in sleeves. Her abundant ebony hair was swept up atop her head in the contemporary pompadour and chignon with a waterfall of curls about her cheeks. Great dark eyes in her heart-shaped face peered out from the photograph with an impish innocence.

Her name is Judith Ann Wilcox, his sister explained in her letter. She’s my dearest friend in all the world. I just cannot wait for you to meet her.

He had to smile at that. His dear little sister was up to her matchmaking machinations again. She was at an age where she tended to glamorize things. She adored her brother and saw the war as a great adventure.

Across the lower right hand corner of her photograph the girl had written in ink in a flowery script: Affectionately, Judith, and had also included a postscript to his sister’s letter.

"Hi, Jack,

Your sister has told me so much about you; how brave and daring you are fighting to protect the world from those dreadful Huns. But you really must be careful and not take risks unnecessarily.

I hope you like my picture.

Yours, Judy."

P.P.S.

You look dashing in your uniform.

A shadow fell across the doorway and Captain Ernest Mathews poked his head around the bullet-riddled door frame. He gave Jack a raised-eyebrow look. Am I interrupting? he asked.

Just finished, Jack said and quickly slipped Judith Ann Wilcox’s photograph into his shirt pocket.

If one chanced to study the two officers, one would think them brothers so alike in appearance were they. Both were tall, with an athlete’s trim physique, fair-haired and piercing blue eyes. John Holden (better known to his friends as Jack) had been born and raised in the Hudson Valley of New York. Ernest Mathews on the other hand hailed from the Tonto Basin in Arizona. Separated nearly by the length of a continent, and yet they had struck up a strong and lasting friendship since their West Point days, rising in the ranks together. Only one year separated them in age, Mathews being the older at twenty-five.

Mathews stepped inside the house unbuckling his helmet as he did so. He tossed the helmet followed by his gasmask on a pile of rubble beside the table where Jack’s gear lay, and after shrugging out of his coat threw it atop Jack’s on the table.

Ah, that’s better—what’s this? he called spying the photograph of Jack’s sister atop the small portable writing desk. Mathews reached and grabbed it before Jack could react. This can’t be little Cathy! He let out a piercing whistle. Boy, has she grown up!

Yes, that’s Cathy, but hands off! Jack remonstrated, although unconvincingly as he made a halfhearted attempt to retrieve the photograph.

I can’t believe it. What has it been, three—four years? Mathews sighed staring at the image of the beautiful young lady. Her neck was slim, her cheeks smooth and silky. Her golden-blond hair was piled high upon her head in that same waterfall of curls fashion that was the present-day trend.

Four years, Jack said, stretching out his long powerful legs and crossing them at the ankles. He wore breeches and brown leather cavalry boots. New Years 1914. You ought to remember, you reprobate. But then you were half-soused that night and fell for my sister’s sulky mug and let her get behind the wheel of dad’s brand-new Packard coupé. And she knocked down a whole section of the fence in front of the house. I thought dad was going to have a conniption fit.

Gosh. What do you know? Mathews breathed easing himself down on the dirty floor. He leaned back against the wall of the heavily damaged, but surprisingly intact building despite days of artillery bombardment from both the allies and the Germans. He continued to gaze at Cathy Holden’s photograph, but it was obvious he wasn’t recalling the fence incident. When this is all over… his voice trailed off.

A sudden explosion shook the building.

Damn! Mathews cursed ducking behind a pile of stones from one collapsed wall.

Watch for gas! Jack cried.

That was a high-explosive shell.

The Boch combine the two, Jack said as the building shook with another loud detonation.

Mathews growled something unintelligible.

We best get over to headquarters. An infantry assault is bound to follow, Jack said grabbing up his coat and thrusting his arms into the sleeves and quickly fastened the row of buttons. He then slipped on his Sam Browne belt after which he buckled a khaki web belt around his waist. The belt held a brown leather holster with US stamped on the flap and a canvas ammo pouch containing two magazines. The weight of the newly issued, Model 1911 Colt .45 automatic caused the belt to hang slightly lower than the snug-fitting Sam Browne. He slung the pack with his gasmask up over his shoulders where it rested snuggly on his chest and secured the strap around his waist. By the time he had his helmet on, Mathews was ready. Neither had spoken a word. They knew what to expect.

Colonel Bedford Strong was a tall, spare, businesslike figure. He wore coat and breeches that fit perfectly and tall thick-soled cavalry boots that seemed always to possess a polished shine no matter the weather or conditions. He had a short-clipped moustache, and a voice that could immediately capture one’s attention. When Jack and Mathews joined the other field officers in the farm house Strong used as a headquarters, the Colonel wasted no time dispelling the notion that they would simply await an attack from the Germans, but quickly outlined a battle plan that had apparently been pending execution for some time. A short time later Jack joined his company to await the order to advance. Mathews was assigned to First Battalion Headquarters.

The terrain was mostly rolling plain, heavily wooded in spots. After three years of occupation, the Germans had turned the area into a fortress with heavy bands of barbed wire and strong artillery and machine-gun emplacements.

The Aisne-Marne Offensive began on the morning of July 18, with a combined French and American attack on the German forces inside the St. Mihiel Salient. Captain Holden’s Company C, 3rd Battalion, 103 Infantry Regiment moved out eagerly in a well disciplined line despite heavy machinegun fire. Their objective was to take the Torcy-Belleau-Givry Railroad line running from Givry to Bouresches.

Jack discovered quickly that there were no trenches in the area of the front, and his men found themselves moving from one shell-hole to another. They steadily advanced, however, taking machinegun fire continuously as well as artillery, both high-explosive and gas. Companies A and C of the 51st Infantry Brigade were to their right. The left flank supported by the French. What was once a thickly wooded area was now a wasteland of splintered and uprooted trees the result of the hard fighting earlier in June involving the Marines. Equipment, unburied bodies, were still strewn everywhere some bodies even hanging in trees. The sickening smell of death and decay was heavy in the air. The cumbersome gasmasks made it tiring to breathe and the stench of rotting bodies clogged one’s nostrils, but to dispense with the masks would expose them to the devastating and lethal mustard gas.

Securing the rail line Jack had his men dig in as they continued to be fired on by machine guns and artillery of the German 7th Army. Food and water had to be carried to the forward troops by ration details under cover of darkness. Jack took up position behind what was left of a house where a machinegun squad set up their weapon. Only one stone wall, pockmarked and scored by machinegun and artillery fire, remained. As he received a count of casualties from Lieutenant Collins, Captain Mathews sprawled beside him. His eyes through the lens of the gasmask wore a grim expression. He was breathing hard.

Just come from Headquarters. Orders are you’re to hold this position until relieved, he said, his voice muffled by the gasmask, sounded reedy.

Jack nodded, but made no comment as he peered around a corner of the wall through binoculars toward the German line. A splatter of machine gun rounds struck the wall with piercing thwacks. Mathews got cautiously to his hands and knees, reached and grabbed Jack’s shoulder getting his attention.

Command’s left you hanging out to dry—your Company a bloody sacrificial goat, he said. It’s the damn French. They—

A deafening screech was the last either man heard before blackness engulfed them.

Chapter Two

J udith Ann Wilcox let the photograph rest in her lap and gazed dreamily out the window. It was a day typical of late August in New York, rather warm and muggy, with hazy sunlight. Summer breathed in the air, and the women passing along Sixty-Ninth Street in groups of two’s or four’s wore frilly day dresses and wide-brimmed hats adorned with sweeping feathers. Couples too, promenaded, the gentlemen in somber blacks and grays, the ladies in pastels and soft whites. Judy, as she liked to be called by her friends, heard the distant clatter of an L train and then the hum of a motor car, but she paid little attention to those sounds. Instead her thoughts were of the handsome young officer in an olive drab wool army uniform whose photograph lay in her lap. She had never met Cathy’s brother, John—or Jack as his sister referred to him, but she was certain she was in love with him. Cathy just laughed at her.

In love with Jack? her friend scoffed. You’ve never met him; no matter I would be thrilled if it were true. But I know you, Judith Wilcox. You fall for a handsome face, especially if the fellow wears a uniform, like a new hat that catches your eye that you just have to have—

I do not! Judy huffed arching an eyebrow indignantly. And she meant it. Well, perhaps she hadn’t heard of anyone falling in love with someone by just gazing at their picture, but wasn’t it possible?

Well, for one thing I intend to fall in love only after a man has sworn undying love for me, Judy said.

Good luck, Catherine said a little wry smile turning the corner of her lips.

Thank you, Judy answered smugly.

Jack has been gone over a year, his sister mused, four months over a year and it’s been nearly two months since we’ve heard from him. I hope he is well.

Judy nodded sympathetically but didn’t reply. She casually slid Jack’s photograph into her purse before Cathy noticed.

Oh, look at the time, she cried leaping to her feet. We’re going to be late for the Red Cross Auxiliary meeting.

You’re right, Cathy replied coming swiftly to her feet. I’ll just get my hat.

Judy peered out the window down at the street below while she waited for Cathy to fetch her hat. A motor car had pulled up in front of the townhouse. As she watched two men in military uniform exited the vehicle. Judy’s breath caught for a moment wondering if one of them might be Cathy’s brother, Jack. Impossible, she sighed shaking her head. But then a chilling thought struck her; ‘Why were they here?’

Cathy, she said in little more than a whisper as her friend entered the room pinning her hat in place.

Cathy glanced at her curiously, but Judy continued to stare wordlessly down at the two soldiers. Shiny brass buttons on their uniform coats glinted in the sun. One tilted his head and looked up. If he noticed her in the window he gave no indication. Cathy came to stand by her shoulder and looked down. She gave a breathless gasp and stood frozen for a moment hand clenched at her throat.

The two girls were at the top landing when the buzz of the front doorbell sounded. They both halted unbidden watching the Holden butler, Fleming cross the foyer and open the door. The sound of voices spoken low drifted up the stairs. Suddenly Cathy’s hand clutched Judy’s arm as Fleming ushered the two officers into the parlor. After a moment he reappeared face ashen and started up the stairs.

Mother—! Cathy cried all thought of the Red Cross Auxiliary meeting forgotten.

Judy sat beside Cathy clasping her hand tightly in both of hers. It was beyond Judy how Cathy and her parents could set there so stoic as one of the officers, a Major Hendricks, spoke in an emotionally flat tone. Shock. That had to be it. She was in a daze herself. Captain John Francis Holden had been killed in action in some faraway place called Aisne-Marne. His remains had been interred in a cemetery near the village of Château-Thierry, France. His grave, the officer explained would be cared for with the utmost reference by a grateful French people. However, he continued, should the family desire the remains returned to the United States it would be done without regard to expenses.

Yes, Major, Mrs. Holden said her voice barely a whisper. I believe we would like that.

Mr. Holden nodded. Yes, he belongs here.

The major presented the family with a small box containing Captain Holden’s personal effects. But neither Cathy nor her mother could bear to look at it, and it remained the task of Mr. Holden to check its contents, which he did with clinched jaw and damp, shadowed eyes.

Judy remained seated beside Cathy her gaze upon the large portrait of Jack hanging beside Cathy’s over the massive fireplace mantle. Judy had been drawn to this painting the first day she had entered the house those many months ago and saw it hanging there. It was a photograph that had been hand painted accentuating Jack’s luminous blue eyes—eyes she now realized she would never look into, ever.

The following days passed for Cathy in a blur, her grief a palpable thing. She would awake after a fitful sleep thinking it had all been a horrible nightmare that a letter would arrive saying it had been a terrible mistake. But no letter came. She felt like a vital organ had been gouged out of her. Her brother whom she loved more than life was gone. Never would she see that teasing sparkle in his eye or that smile that seemed to say he knew a secret no one else did.

The New York Times released an account of the Aisne-Marne offensive giving a count of the dead and wounded. Cathy scanned the list of the wounded and there midway down the second column was the name, Mathews, Ernest E. He was alive, recovering in a hospital in London. She leaned back in her chair remembering the handsome officer for whom she had had a girlish crush. He and her brother had been close friends and he had visited their home on holidays while attending West Point on a number of occasions. She sighed torn between relief that he had survived and the still haunting grief of the loss of her brother.

As for Judy, she read and brooded, and for a time avoided her friends, even Cathy. She often found herself walking along Fifth Avenue during rush hour gazing aimlessly into the exclusive shops but never venturing inside. Distraction and amusement seemed to be dead issues for her. And so many nights she took out the small framed photograph of Jack Holden from her bureau drawer where she had hidden it. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him, dead so young. What would he have been like? Would he have found her attractive, have liked her? What could their future have been like? But then, refusing to be drawn into what surely would be madness, she hid his photograph in the bottom of her drawer. It wasn’t normal to stare at a dead man’s photograph and pine for him. If her mother knew she would have her committed. It was madness. And she recognized the folly, but still she could not seem to help herself. Each night she withdrew the photograph from the drawer where she had secreted it away and gazed longingly at it before once again stuffing it under her clothes.

She devoured books on the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that she would find some enlightening legitimacy as to the pointlessness of sacrificing young men in the glory and prime of their lives. Gone was that naïve notion of war she once espoused. She analyzed every argument for war and discredited each against the ringing passionate truth—that of dead and mangled soldiers and the suffering and misery of their families. There was no justification for offensive war. It was monstrous and hideous.

Nightly it seemed his face came to her in her dreams. And in them he was alive, his face was perfect and he smiled at her. But she resisted these dreams because when she awoke from them she suffered such a yearning that it became nearly unbearable. And it was then she knew the feeling of loneliness and solitude for the first time in her life. It was after