The Lonely by Paul Gallico

it was the way it had always been—the creamy linen, the soft sheen of old silver, the gloss of the old wood reflecting the tapers, the sigh of the swinging door, and the quiet footfalls of Reston.
    Jerry toyed with his food and tried to answer politely his father’s enquiries about the war, the life he led, his missions, his decorations, his ship, and his crew. At any other time he would have spilled over, for part of his long-cherished homecoming dream was the telling of tales and the bragging about his gang and his airplane. But he was deeply hurt and bitterly disillusioned with his father because of what he had told him, the story of the little French girl.
    He had trusted his father, had exposed his innermost feelings to him because he had believed somehow that the older man had understood him and what he felt about Patches. And all that had happened was that his father had managed to dirty it up. To confide in him an escapade of his own youth that was supposed to parallel what had happened between Patches and himself. A pick-up in a restaurant and a week in a hotel. “In Paris after the armistice . . . You know those French girls . . .” My God, it was like one of those stories you heard in a smoking-car, or when the gang was gathering around after a mission was scrubbed or after chow and cutting loose on Topic A!
    He felt more lonely now and cut off than he ever had before, and the ashes of disappointment in his father were bitter in his mouth. He knew now that he could never make him understand that Patches was more than a girl he had grown to love; she was a brother in arms who wore the uniform of her country and had buried her dead, and that too made all the difference in the world. She belonged; she was as much a fighter, valiant and unconquerable, as any of them.
    He had heard of the gulf between those at home and the men who had been overseas and in combat. Now he was facing his father and realized that not even the generation who had fought the last war knew about this one, what it was like and what it did to people, how you got to feel when you lived in a country that had been fighting with its back to the wall for four years, where streets and homes were in the front lines and never a day went by but somebody died from bombs, or shells, or fire, or bullets from the air.
    Maybe they were Enghsh and had queer ways that weren’t like your ways, but they were soldiers, every one of them; they wouldn’t quit; they had guts, and you loved them like brothers and sisters.
    “You know those French girls . . . I guess you might say she was a stunner . . . It was really a wonderful experience for a kid like me who’d never been around much . . .” His father’s words still echoed. And brave, tender, gallant Patches, with her soft smile and warm understanding . . . What was the use of talking? . . .
    The two men had been sitting over their coffee, cigars, and brandy. Jerry looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock. Harman noticed Jerry’s gesture and said: “Well, son, have you decided what you want to do?”
    Jerry said: “I’d better call Catharine before I go over there. It’s going to be tough . . .”
    He got up heavily for one so young and moved slowly towards the telephone extension beneath the sideboard. It was the way you felt when you had a rotten mission ahead of you, where the whole atmosphere of the briefing had been heavy with coming disaster and loss, where you shut off your mind from all thinking and worked with your muscles, moving your arms and legs and hands forward into whatever was to come, to get it over with.
    Harman Wright felt a pang of pity for his son because he knew he was suffering, Jerry was young and game, and a fighter for what he wanted. His father seemed to recognize the kind of people they were in Jerry’s slow, inexorable movement forward into something he must have dreaded with all his soul. The boy was honest. He didn’t ask for pity, and he didn’t shirk. But