(3 of 3)
A little marine in blue, looking very much like a boy in costume, stepped up to shake Mitch's hand. Mitch whirled, grabbed the boy by the shoulders and all but kissed him. The two stood smiling—grinning into each other's faces. The boy was Mitch's machine gunner. A photographer rushed up: "Throw your arms around him, like you're glad to see him.
Don't be bashful." Mitch and the machine-gunner just kept smiling at each other, saying nothing, ignoring the photographer.
Through the night the train puffed through the Alleghenies. In the morning, Corporal Harold Cyr, 23, of Hartford, Conn., explained why he hadn't slept: "I just lay there all night grinning."
The men were up early, shining their shoes, polishing their buttons. As the train pulled into Baltimore at 6:30 a.m. there was a shout: "Bring on the brass band." There was no band nor any people, and the homecoming marines got off and walked through the silent station.
Home. The final run began.
"Your wife know you're coming?"
"Sure, I wired her from Chicago."
"It's been a long time. . . ."
"Damn right, it's been 27 months. . . ."
At Philadelphia, there was just a string of taxicabs, at Jersey City, just the ferry to Manhattan. The marines silently looked at the New York skyline. Lieut. Camille Tamucci, the tough guy in charge, who had been dreaming of mounds of spaghetti, began brooding about his stomach. "It's all tied in knots," he said.
The bus from the ferry took the marines to the Pennsylvania Hotel. Now most of them were home; others were recognizably close to home. Guadalcanal and all that was more than 9,000 miles away. That was over and done with. For all their 27 months of battle, these marines' average age was only 21.
One marine shouted: "See you in the next war." There was no answer. The marines shouldered their sea bags and walked away.
* Into the Valley, Guadalcanal Diary, Battle for the Solomons, etc.
* Copyrighted 1943, PAULL-PIONEER MUSIC CORP.