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and was already taller than his newly widowed mother, but he would never forget the way she’d cut him down to size. Now here he stood, a grown man, with her blistering lecture about treating girls with respect still ringing in his ears.
    “Something tells me I’m not the only one who performs bed check,” she surmised.
    He grimaced. “I had a battalion commander in California who believed that two weeks on KP was the cure for breaking curfew.”
    “And was it?”
    “If I never peel another potato, it’ll be too soon.”
    She laughed softly. “Three cheers for Uncle Sam.”
    Mike grinned, flashing the Scanlon dimple which, along with his height, he’d inherited from his father. He didn’t just love his mother. He liked her. A lot. She knew when to push and when to pull back. When to punish and when to praise. More important yet, she’d managed to keep her family together after her milkman husband succumbed to pneumonia.
    Following the funeral, he’d offered to quit school and go to work full time to help make ends meet, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. Neither one of his parents had graduated from high school and they had both been determined that their children would go to college. It was his father’s dying wish that he complete his education, she’d argued—using guilt when all else failed—and it was his duty to fulfill that wish.
    So Mike set a goal of a law degree and, after graduating from high school, got a job as a pipe fitter’s apprentice to save money toward college. To augment his income, he also joined a field artillery regiment of the National Guard. Six months later, his unit was mobilized and he was inducted into the Army of the United States.
    Like the majority of servicemen who’d grown up during the Depression, he came from a family that was too poor to take vacations. Which meant that his exposure to America’s mountains and oceans and monuments was limited to what he’d studied in school. But thanks to Uncle Sam, he’d seen more of the country in these last three years than most hoboes.
    Mike started his tour of duty at Camp Robinson, Arkansas. There, he spent part of the time building sidewalks for the new recruits who would soon be arriving and the rest on maneuvers in Louisiana, slogging through the swamps with a broomstick for a gun. When he learned that his first leave was scheduled for Christmas, he wrote his mother to start looking—and cooking!—for him.
    The attack on Pearl Harbor put the kibosh on his holiday plans. His battalion entrained for California, where he ate his Christmas dinner out of a mess kit. After sitting in several different gun emplacements above the coast to guard against the possibility of a Japanese invasion of the United States, he applied for and was accepted to Officer Candidate School at the Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Artillery School of Fire.
    If war was hell, he quickly discovered that OCS was purgatory. For three months he worked day and night in both classroom and field. His diligence paid off in a commission, and Mike could honestly say that the proudest moment of his life—surpassing even the winning touchdown pass he’d thrown to John in the city highschool championship game—was having those gold bars pinned on his epaulets.
    His first assignment as an officer was to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He’d spent half his time putting men through obstacle courses and the other half serving as defense counsel for the Court Martial Board. From there, he’d reported to Camp Butner for a refresher course and to do his duty in the field as a forward artillery observer.
    Now his next stop, Mike guessed glumly, was Merry Olde England.
    “I have something for you,” Millie said.
    That lifted his spirits. “What is it?”
    Smiling, his mother reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a small wrapped package. “A belated Christmas present.”
    “I thought I opened everything last Sunday.”  Mike had come home to a hero’s welcome and to his