Walking Backward in My Father's Footsteps (ePub)

The story my father told me long ago goes like this.

Sometime during his Army career, at a time and place unknown, probably 1943 or early 1944, he would routinely check a certain bulletin board for the names or numbers of those soldiers slated to go overseas. One day, he noticed his name had "flopped" from the "not going overseas" list to the "going overseas" list. My father also noticed he had been "switched" with another soldier who, the day before, was going overseas, and suddenly, he was not but my father was. This usually did not happen. So he decided to try and find out how he had been "switched."

He wrote a letter to an off-base name as high in the Army hierarchy as he could find. He explained the mysterious switch and waited. He wanted to know how and why his name had been switched with some other guy. He was twenty-two and away from familiar surroundings for the first time and was panicked and in fear. He prayed.

After some time, my dad was summoned to the office of his camp head honcho who told him: "I'm not sure who you are or who you know, but I am holding orders to personally transfer you to any place you want to go in the Continental United States for the duration of the war."

My father said, "Florida."

His military record was skeletal at best.

I decided to find out where he was and when.

That is the story of this book.