The Final Service

by Gary W. Moore

  Advance Praise for The Final Service

  “Gary W. Moore has a knack for telling our stories. Whether it’s a dream interrupted in Playing with the Enemy or a personal journey of discovery in Hey Buddy, Moore tells us about ourselves while writing about others. Never is that more true than in The Final Service, where a father’s misunderstood love nearly tears his daughter apart. Love doesn’t always come in the shape we expect. If we’re lucky, we realize that before it’s too late.”

  — Steve Bertrand, WGN Radio, host of Steve Bertrand on Books

  “A poignant story of redemption, the power of forgiveness, and the wisdom that comes later in life when we see our parents as they really are.”

  — Regine Schlesinger, WBBM Radio, Chicago

  “The Final Service is a song of pain and grief and life and death. Author Gary W. Moore highlights the impact of war not only on the combatants themselves but on their families. Decades of sorrow, loss, and guilt erode human connections, but loyalty, understanding, and memory are the magical ties that reach beyond the grave. The parable of Sandy and her father Tom celebrates the complexities of love. Bravo to Gary for touching my crusty old heart.”

  — Joyce Faulkner, the award-winning author of In the Shadow of Suribachi and Windshift, and former President of Military Writers of America

  “A compelling and endearing story about what matters most in a time when it matters most of all.”

  — James Riordan, author of Break on Through:

  The Life and Death of Jim Morrison

  “The Final Service is an engaging read! As the son of a disabled World War Two vet, I readily related to some of Shadow’s issues. My dad was my first hero, despite the limitations that came with a wooden leg, and like Shadow, my dad was also taken way too soon. I was glad she found the answers she’d been unknowingly seeking.”

  — Steve Rondinaro, former TV news anchor and longtime on-air host of Drum Corps International World Championship

  “The Final Service, with love, compassion, and forgiveness at its core, is a poignant and emotionally powerful story that will touch your heart and your soul.”

  — Pamela Powell, Film Critic, www.reelhonestreviews.com

  “How do you evaluate your parents? When we are children, we know nothing (or not enough to deal with it rationally) of the adult world. Whatever slights come our way can be magnified ten-fold. Do we remember the 100 trips to Little League games, or the one game when dad failed to show? Gary W. Moore’s The Final Service also pays homage to our veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder, and our understanding of how to treat it. I read The Final Service in a single evening and did not want it to end. It is thoroughly satisfying with a wonderful message everyone should read and understand.”

  — Phil Angelo, Kankakee Daily Journal

  “In The Final Service, Gary W. Moore reminds us why he’s methodically laying claim to the designation of ‘America’s Storyteller.’ Life, in Moore’s various works, is never easy, but it’s the journey that makes life worthwhile. He celebrates our foibles and our indiscretions through his characters by turning the mirror on ourselves so we better realize our own traits as we witness them in others. The Final Service is about all of us. We just don’t realize that until we finish the last page.”

  — Michael Boo, Staff Writer, Drum Corps International

  Author Gary W. Moore

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  On Twitter @GaryWMoore721

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  Gary is available for books signings and discussions, as well as motivational and inspirational speaking engagements

  Contact Gary at gary@garywmoore.com

  or his publisher at sales@savasbeatie.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Gary W. Moore

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Moore, Gary W. (Gary Warren), 1954- author.

  Title: The final service / by Gary W. Moore.

  Description: First edition. | El Dorado Hills, California: Savas Beatie LLC, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016001854| ISBN 9781611212945 (hardcover: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781611212952 (ebk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Middle-aged women—-Fiction. | Grief—Fiction. | Self-realization in women—Fiction. | Self-actualization (Psychology) in women—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.O5574 F56 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001854

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  For Caleb and Noah

  Contents

  Prologue: June 6, 1944

  The Final Service

  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

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Splooie!

  and for Sandy

  Go Big Red!

  Prologue

  June 6, 1944

  “I’m not dying here and neither are you!”

  The tall and lanky GI with closely cropped coal black hair turned his head to fix his amber eyes on his buddy standing to his right. “Got it?” he continued. He finished readjusting the chin strap of his helmet and put it back on his head. “Cover me. I’ll cover you. We get off that beach fast. We’ll make it through this day. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “Get ready! Three minutes!” boomed a voice behind them.

  “There’s no glory in this, Duke,” replied Agno. “Only killing and dying…”

  Agno’s gentle reply almost passed unheard, suffocated mid-sentence by a cold salty wave of green seawater that broke over the bow of their landing craft to soak its occupants. The bow had dipped once more into yet another undulating foamy green valley of water before plowing its way up again as it headed toward a beach none of its occupants could see.

  A man of few words, Duke shook the spray from his face without reply. What most men might blurt out in response, he simply kept to himself.

  “ … I’ve always hated boats,” finished Agno as he wiped the spray a
way from his eyes.

  By this time, so did most of the other nearly three-dozen seasick men in the Higgins Boat. The landing craft was only thirty-six feet long by eleven feet wide, powered by a 225-horsepower diesel engine that barely made ten knots under ideal circumstances. The choppy English Channel that early morning played on the vessel’s tendency to sway and saw side to side. Most of the GIs were puking in their helmets or on the deck within minutes of climbing off the cargo net draped down the side of their troop transport ship. Because it had a flat bottom, the craft could run onto a flat shoreline. Once there, the steel ramp that doubled as a door at the bow would open to disgorge its human cargo to its fate. The invasion of Fortress Europe was underway.

  “One minute!”

  Duke gripped his M-1 Garand rifle and stared straight ahead. Soon enough, the hull would crunch across the shallow bottom, the ramp would drop with a hard thud into the sand, and they would have to scramble off that boat as fast as possible directly toward a determined enemy dug in on the bluffs just beyond. His jaw tightened at the thought. Another wave, this one bigger than the last, soaked the suffering men. The smell and taste of salt water filled Duke’s nostrils. He wiped the corners of his eyes with his fingertips, spread his feet a bit farther apart for better balance, and waited.

  Agno, an equally tall and strikingly handsome twenty-seven year-old Italian from New York, elbowed Duke’s side. A sickly half-smile spread across Agno’s face. “We’re not dying here, huh? In other words, you want me to save your butt. Again.”

  “Thirty seconds! Get ready, men! When that door goes down Hell is going to break loose. Move inland. Do not stop!”

  The landing craft had to hit the beach hard and fast, so none of the dozens of boats closing in on the shore slowed down during the final seconds of approach.

  “Sure, you can save my butt again,” replied Duke. “But you heard the lieutenant. When this door drops, we’re going to catch Hell! Just keep moving and stay with me. We are going to kill a lot of Krauts today.”

  “Here we go!” yelled the man standing in front of Agno when the bottom of their landing craft began dragging across the gravelly Normandy bottom. Every man in the boat performed his own final ritual. Some said a Hail Mary, and others crossed themselves. A few prayed aloud, asking for salvation. The rest remained defiantly silent, absorbed in their thoughts. Metallic pings filled their ears as enemy bullets found the front of the boat.

  A loud whistle blew when the boat finally ground to a halt and the steel door ten feet in front of Duke and Agno cranked open and dropped away, turning itself from a protective barrier into a ramp within seconds. As if as one, all three-dozen men moved simultaneously, the men in front spilling down the ramp into chest-deep water with the others pressing closely behind.

  Duke and Agno were about to hit the ramp together when one of the men in front stumbled, cried out something indistinguishable, and fell in a bloody heap. Within a split second two other soldiers who had just left the ramp and were wading toward the sand staggered and slipped beneath it. The water churning around them turned from the gray reflective color of the overcast sky to a sickly pink.

  Duke instinctively grabbed his friend by the arm and shoved him in the opposite direction, off the ramp to the right and into a chin-deep sea.

  Bullets whizzed past their exposed heads and smacked into the plywood sides of the landing craft. A shorter soldier who had followed them off the right side of the ramp was unable to keep his head above water. Duke looked on helplessly as the man waved his hands wildly in the air before finally withdrawing them out of sight. It was as if they were all trapped in a slow motion nightmare, but instead of trying to escape the danger, Duke and his friend were moving into the lethal hail. The weight of their equipment and the depth of the water made for a miserably slow move onto the beach.

  Once they managed to wade the last few yards to shore, Duke and Agno staggered a handful of yards before falling to the sand behind several freshly killed men. With one hand holding his helmet in place, Duke slowly lifted his head and peered up and down the beach. Chaos reigned in every direction. Scores of soldiers were frantically funneling themselves out of their own landing crafts to push through the water toward nonexistent cover. The giant bomb craters the navy had promised to scoop out of the flat beach were no where in sight. Instead the scenic landscape was carpeted with the dead and the dying, all of whom composed the first wave to hit the beach. Something was going terribly wrong.

  The roar of the pounding surf combined with the throbbing engines and his own nerves to mute the gunfire crisscrossing Omaha Beach from more directions than Duke could count. Willing himself to look ahead, Duke focused his eyes on the bluffs about 100 yards distant. Twinkles of light representing machine gun and rifle fire blinked without respite, kicking up globs of sand from the beach and hunks of flesh from the men. Slowly, with each ticking second, the cacophony of fire increased until the thousands of individual rounds combined into one long, thunderous roar.

  When he and Agno finally made it to the shoreline, their pace quickened. They focused on the rocks that separated the beach from the rocky incline, but their legs couldn’t move as fast as their fear required.

  “We can’t stay here!” yelled Duke, who used his hand to point the direction. “Head to the right, Agno, toward the rocks!”

  Agno nodded his understanding. Both men staggered to their feet and, hunched over as if moving into a stiff wind, set out for a rocky incline that offered at least some protection from the sheets of metal cutting the air all around them. They were halfway there when Agno stopped and straightened. Duke was preparing to shove his friend forward when he spotted a crimson stain spreading across the upper part of the back of his uniform.

  Agno turned his head to meet Duke’s stare. A surprised look crossed the dying man’s face. “I’m hit,” he murmured.

  Duke dropped his M-1 and caught his friend as Agno’s knees buckled. Cradling him under the arm pits, Duke dragged Agno the final few steps to the gravelly incline. With his back to the enemy, Duke pulled Agno’s head onto his lap and tilted his friend’s helmet back to look into his eyes. The entire front of Agno’s uniform was bloody, and a red bubbly froth oozed from his pale lips.

  “Don’t leave me. Look at me, buddy! Say something! Stay awake! Stay awake!” screamed Duke. His heart begged Agno to speak, but his mind knew his frien was already gone.

  April 13, 1995

  Chapter 1

  Sandy Richards looked at the face staring back at her from the bathroom mirror. She had dreaded the arrival of this day for months, and now it was here. Turning forty wasn’t the end of her world. At least, that is what she had been telling herself for months.

  Dressed in a gray VanderCook College of Music T-shirt over green plaid pajama bottoms, she leaned closer to the mirror and touched her left temple. Was she imagining it, or were the lines around her eyes more pronounced? She took a step backward and studied herself. She was still thin and shapely where it counted, but not what anyone would call skinny. Her hair was now a washed-out blonde, a semi-successful effort to mask the gray that had begun lacing through her hair the previous year. Her youthful appearance had always been important to her. She wasn’t vain. At least, she didn’t think she was.

  She stepped closer until her tummy once again touched the sink. Through the eyes of a child, people forty and older seemed ancient. Even her own mother looked elderly when she turned the big 4-0. A quiet chuckle caught in her throat when her thoughts turned to her music students at Walton Center Middle School. She probably reminded them of an old schoolmarm, the kind she used to watch in old Western movies. Had the inevitable occurred? Had she become old?

  Her gaze dropped down to the yellow note stuck in the lower right corner of the mirror and froze there. Her father had just been admitted into Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee for testing, and she had an appointment to meet with the doctor later that afternoon to go over the results. She wasn’t expecting anything to
o serious. Her dad was more fatigued lately than usual, and, when pressed by her mother, admitted he didn’t feel like his normal antagonistic self. And he was coughing a lot.

  She rolled her eyes, sighed deeply, and looked back into the mirror. Her left index finger traced the line running from the bottom corner of her nose to the end of her lip. She had never noticed how pronounced it had become. Her father’s face had the same line on either side of his nose. Great, she thought. Just what I need. To look like him.

  Sandy turned away from her reflection to begin the morning ritual of showering, applying make-up, dressing, and heading out to bring the joys of music to her students. Every morning she sang while getting ready for school.

  On this morning, she did not.

  “How’s your dad, Sandy?” asked Rodger Jones. The Walton Center Middle School’s assistant principal was standing at the front desk reading the morning sports page when she pulled open the door and walked into the office.

  “Stubborn as ever, Rodger,” she said with her lips stretched thin. She walked around her colleague to the wall of cubbyholes that doubled as mail slots. Hers was jammed with announcements, most of them useless. “Why do you ask?”

  Rodger folded the paper and waited until Sandy looked over at him. “I heard he was at Riverside for tests. I’m praying for good results.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, glancing down and pretending to study papers and envelopes clutched in her hand. “Have a nice morning,” she concluded as she pushed open the door and stepped quickly down the hallway toward the band room. “Small towns,” she muttered to herself.

  Walton Center was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone—and all the details. The lack of privacy was bad enough, but no one was shy about asking the sorts of questions requiring answers most people didn’t want others to know anything about.