Later, when they did meet under circumstances not very different from March’s joking suggestion, it was Scoot who remembered what his friend had said back in the station in Hampton, Ohio.
But at the time it was nothing but banter, the kind of talk made to cover up real thoughts that are too deep to be expressed easily. And in another moment the train came thundering down the track. There was a last hurried round of goodbyes and March was on the train, waving and smiling from the car platform as it pulled away from his home.
Because the train was crowded, March had been busy trying to find a place to sit. His suitcase on the same platform was the seat he finally chose, until they pulled into Pittsburgh and he found a more comfortable seat.
The ride had been dirty and uninteresting and March felt himself getting depressed long before they reached New York. There he had to rush to get the train for New London, and now he stood on that windy, rainy corner waiting for a bus, feeling sorry that he had ever won the chance to get into submarine work.
Then he remembered the one thing that had made him feel good since he had left Hampton, and he glanced down at the cuff of his sleeve. Yes—there it was—the extra stripe that had been added when he became a Lieutenant instead of the lowest of commissioned officers, an Ensign.
The promotion had come to them when they were in Hampton on leave—for both Scoot and March. They had quickly added the new stripes to cuffs, to shoulder boards, and had got the gold bars to wear on their work uniform shirts. March felt very proud and pleased, for the promotion had come quickly for such young men in the Navy. Going to the submarine school as a Lieutenant, even if only j.g., or junior grade, was much better than walking in as an Ensign.
He was staring at the stripes on his cuff and smiling so that he didn’t notice the salute of the three men who approached him. Only when the first man spoke did he look up.
“Going to the sub base, sir?”
March saw a sailor with the insigne of a petty officer, third class, on his sleeve, a sturdy, smiling young man with his seabag over his shoulder. Behind him appeared three more men of the same rank. The first, March noticed, was a radioman, two of the others fire controlmen, and the last a pharmacist.
“Yes, waiting for the bus,” March answered with a smile. “Is this the place to wait for it?”