Soldier Boy

L. Singer Jeffrey

Description

Soldier Boy details the epic story of an immigrant family's journey from Russia to America, arriving in the early twentieth century. Born in 1932, Ben is raised on the tough streets of Philadelphia, surrounded by a motley collection of WWI veterans, gangsters, refugees, and his large extended family. After graduating high school, Ben leaves home to pursue a life of promise and adventure in the US Navy, attending universities in the South via the Reserve Officer Training Corps. He witnesses racism and religious intolerance, along with Elvis Presley's doomed concert in Atlanta. Operations take him to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean, where he parties in Havana on New Year's Eve as Castro takes over the island nation. Stationed in the Panama Canal Zone, Ben leads the South American end of the Finance Aviation Office for the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet. Directed by President Eisenhower, he and his superiors employ clandestine techniques to support actions against Communists in South America. The Kameradenwerk, an organization that protects and finances Nazi/German businesses in Argentina, eventually fund these operations as US financial contributions cease. He receives special combat training and is personally involved in many top-secret missions. As Ben advances from Midshipman to Lieutenant Commander, he gradually realizes that what is asked of him threatens to destroy all he really cares about, his family and his morals. He refuses to participate in further assignments after innocent victims are killed, becomes mentally distraught, and is transferred to Washington DC. After his discharge, he joins the MLK Freedom March, listening to the famous speech on August 28, 1963. His search for inner peace finally begins.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645368205
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

About The Author
Dr. Jeffrey L. Singer is an Australian-based anesthesiologist with an interest in creative writing.
Soldier Boy
Jeffrey L. Singer and David A. Singer
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-11-29
Soldier Boy About The Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgements Disclaimer Introduction Esther Remembers Kremenets Goldena Medena The Barber Joseph Part One Chapter One The Captain A Short History Lesson The Captain The Two Joes Chapter Two The Professor Christmas The Girl Chapter Three Secret Friends Sunday The Priest Chapter Four Soldier Boy If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them West Oak Lane First Day of Work Chapter Five Max Shultz Uncle Ike Father Huffman The Bundists Milky T Chapter Six The Summer of 1942 Cee Cee Green Haven The Fourth Chapter Seven Crabby Real Money Pabst Blue Ribbon Crazy Lady Pigeon Man Rainy Days Home Chapter Eight Atlantic City The Shore The Ocean Pigeon Man, Part Two The Others Chapter Nine The Bad and the Good The Bad Sloppy The Good Chapter Ten Midshipman New Recruit The Flying Asshole Commander Levy The Detail Man NROTC Chapter Eleven Dipper Boy Summer Job Farewell Chapter Twelve Southern Hospitality Chapel Hill Mr. De Rueter Chapter Thirteen New Home The Search Begins Fish-Town Chapter Fourteen Drummer Boy Parade Dress Betty The Master Part Two Chapter Fifteen Georgia Tech USS Putnam Harriet Tony Chapter Sixteen R Fuck You Jack Polio Combat Elvis Shelby Chapter Seventeen USS Aldebaran Replenishment at Sea Chapter Eighteen Valencia Arrival Naples Back to Valencia Liberty Christmas Chapter Nineteen Helen The Caribbean Chapter Twenty USS Howard D. Crow , DE 252 An Unship Shape Ship Taking Over Better Days Are Coming Tommy Chapter Twenty-One Adventures Brooklyn Shakedown Free, Free at Last Guantanamo Santiago Happy Hour Tourist A New Beginning Chapter Twenty-Two North Atlantic Tromso Visiting Murmansk Without an Invitation Dunkirk Chapter Twenty-Three Caribbean Jupiter Nose Cone Recovery Helen, Again Back to Cuba Chapter Twenty-Four Accounting Norfolk Sometimes It’s Best Not to Ask Cleaning Up Chapter Twenty-Five Do I Really Want to Be a Hero? The Zone Chapter Twenty-Six The Special Group Introductions The Apartment Chapter Twenty-Seven First Day at the Office Naval Headquarters Swenson The Commander Santa Cruz and Brown Army and Navy Officers Club Chapter Twenty-Eight Making Latin America Safe for Democracy Latin America Welcome Aboard Chapter Twenty-Nine Rio Hato Chapter Thirty The Seed Chapter Thirty-One Playing with the Big Boys 1330 Hours, MARCH 15, 1961, Headquarters, 15 th Naval District, Fort Amador, Panama Canal Chapter Thirty-Two The Mission 2125, 16 th March 1961 Trip to Panama City Howard AFB Guayaquil by Night A Mass Aloft All’s Well That Ends Well Chapter Thirty-Three Next Mission April 1961, Club Gato Negro, Malecon, Guayaquil, Ecuador Chapter Thirty-Four No Way Out With Helen for Sanity’s Sake Brazil Washington DC Epilogue David’s (Ben’s) Reflection on His Naval Career Family Notes David’s Reflection on His Last Name
Dedication
Many years ago, my father asked for my help writing his fictional novel. Since then, I have received hundreds of emails with truncated prose. The entire manuscript has been rewritten numerous times. The main character is based on his recollections. I am pleased to honor my father’s legacy as a consummate storyteller while learning to appreciate an important part of our family history.
I hope you enjoy reading Soldier Boy .
Copyright Information ©
Jeffrey L. Singer and David A. Singer (2019)
Cover Design Art
The Soldier Boy bookends featured on the cover were given to David from Yetta in 1935 when he enrolled in preschool. They currently adorn Jeffrey’s library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Singer, Jeffrey L. and Singer, David A.
Soldier Boy
ISBN 9781643785684 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781643785691 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645368205 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019910942
The main category of the book — FICTION / Historical
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 28 th Floor
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge my father who provided the bulk of ideas for this book, as well as other family members who reviewed portions of it.
I am grateful to the editors at Austin Macauley Publishers, who were essential in bringing this idea to fruition.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Introduction

Esther Remembers

Kremenets
During my mother’s last trip north, she reminisced at length about her parents, her childhood, and remembered family history. Over the years she’d told many of these stories which, like many children, I ignored or forgot as coming from a time before mine and therefore irrelevant.
Esther’s parents, Shrule and Haya Feyga, were born in Kremenets, Western Ukraine. Shrule Lazarov Bishbein was born on April 5, 1875, while Haya Feyga Schmulevna Barshap was born in 1878. The town was almost wiped out in the mid-1600s by the combination of the Chmielnicki massacres and the Russian-Swedish wars. It prospered from the 1850s through World War I.
Haya Feyga’s mother, Etta, was a kindly person taking in her nephew, Shrule, when his widowed father married a younger woman, kicking him out of the house at the age of thirteen. It was at this age when his mother died in her thirties. Shrule was his mother’s seventh and only surviving child. She doted upon him. His stepmother made things difficult and his position changed from favorite to unwanted reminder of the first wife. Etta took him in until he left for Odessa at age sixteen to learn the hotel business.
Odessa was a wild seaport, where police walked in pairs for protection and gangsters were more feared than the Governor. Religious people described Odessa as so evil that God himself wouldn’t come within 100 versts (66 miles). It was also a hot bed of revolutionary ferment; the Russian Revolution of 1905 started there, sparked by the famous mutiny on the Russian Battleship Potemkin .
During visits home, Shrule stayed with Haya Feyga’s family. The two were engaged in 1897 and married in the summer of the next year during Shrule’s annual vacation. Haya Feyga became pregnant immediately. He visited home a few times during her pregnancy but wasn’t sure he could get home in time for the birth; he arrived the day before with gifts for all. Yetta (Judith) was born April 25, 1899. He returned to Odessa with his small family six weeks later; he managed the hotel while she managed the kitchen.
A rich English financer, Sir Moses Montefiore, helped the Russian Government issue bonds on the world market in exchange for easing settlement restrictions. One measure was opening Bessarabia to Jewish immigrants. In 1902, Shrule decided to move to Kishinev and obtained a license to operate an Inn & Trading Post. The Russian internal passport issued for the trip lists a twenty-four-year-old wife and two daughters, Yetta and Elka (Helen), born April 9, 1901.
They were successful in the newly industrialized town of Kishinev. Others from the “Pale of Settlement” crowded into town, processing and trading leather produce and other provincial riches. Kishinev was a “cow-town,” with country folk bringing wares to market and looking for excitement. Their Inn catered to traders, attracted by Haya Feyga’s unique cooking style. She learned to cook Romanian dishes that had a Middle Eastern flair using fresh salads and eggplant prepared in various ways, foods previously unknown in the Polish and Russian shtetls.
In the Inn, Shrule chatted with customers, including frequent “card sharks,” losing quite a bit of money. When Haya Feyga found out that he was hiding his loses, she gave an ultimatum. Thereafter, cards were banned from the house.
Shrule did some of his own trading, sending products to Odessa and Kremenets.
A family story relates that during one cold winter night, “footsteps” were heard in the attic. Upon investigating, it was discovered that rats were pushing the drying apples, bouncing them down the steps.
They were awakened by the sound of an explosion on a calm spring night; bits of splintered wood drifted over the tables and chairs in the dining room. A baseball-sized iron cannonball had crashed through the closed wooden shutters of the Inn. It was Easter 1905; they were in the midst of a pogrom. During three days of rioting, without intervention from the police or army, reportedly fifty people were murdered and ten times that were injured. A patch of hair on Shrule’s beard supposedly turned white from fright when he clasped his hand to his cheek witnessing the carnage. It was time to get out of town.

Goldena Medena
They sold all in September 1905, starting their journey to America via Germany. The cannonball was brought along, put on the mantelpiece as a reminder of the “Old Country.” It was point