Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga, #1)

by James Lee Burke

WHEN I WAS a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the United States Army, about to embark for England in the spring of 1944, I purchased a leather-bound notebook in a stationery store not far from the campus of Columbia University. I suspect I thought I might take on the role of a modern Ishmael, and my notebook would become the keyhole through which others would witness the greatest event in human history. I was vain, certainly, and like most young men of that era, at least those from the heartland, unable to reconcile my vanity and eagerness with my shyness around girls and my discomfort among people who were educated at eastern universities. Maybe my notebook would give me an understanding of myself, I thought, opening the door of the stationery store, within sight of the plazas and green lawns and monarchical buildings of the university where I hoped one day to attend graduate school. Maybe writing in a notebook about things most people could not imagine would make me captain of my soul. I saw myself in a trench, my back against the dirt wall, writing in my notebook while artillery shells whistled out of the heavens and exploded in no-man’s-land. All my fantasy lacked was a recording of “Little Bessie” playing in the background. Like all young men about to go to war, I did not want to hear talk about the grand illusion. If war was so bad, why did those who served in one never indicate that they regretted having done so? Think of the images conjured up by mention of ...