Chapter 130
AROUND THIS TIME, Paul came home with his orders. We’d been expecting them for weeks, but I was still surprised when he got in the car at the pier one afternoon and handed me a single sheet of paper.
“This is them?” I asked, slightly terrified.
He was grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh my God. You got it? Submarine Officer Advanced Course?”
“I did,” he said, and started to do a drumroll on the dashboard. “We’re going to New London, baby!”
I scanned the form, printed on yellow paper, which read PERMANENT CHANGE OF STATION ORDER—MILITARY along the top.
The word permanent kind of got me.
Someone—maybe his detailer—had typed LT ARCHER, PAUL in the first box.
A little farther down the page were two boxes, one labeled Unit from Which Relieved and the other Unit to Which Assigned.
Under the first was the FPO address of the U.S.S.
Gilmore. Under the second was the address of the Naval Submarine School at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut.
“There it is,” he said. “In black and white.”
“Wow,” I whispered, reading and rereading the words in those two boxes.
There was something about seeing La Maddalena on one side of the page and Groton on the other that made me realize my time in Italy really was almost up.
I’d worked so hard to make La Maddalena feel like home, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that one of these days, I was going to board the ferry to Palau for the last time.
“This is so great,” I forced myself to say. “Are you thrilled? What’d Joe say?”
“Said I deserved it. And that if I finish the course in December, there’s a department head job with my name on it on the U.S.S. Pintado.”
“Where’s home port?”
“San Diego,” said Paul, wagging his eyebrows at me.
“Oh man.”
“You can learn to surf. Maybe take some classes at UCSD?”
I appreciated the suggestion, which showed he was thinking about me. “I’m proud of you,” I said, and I meant it. If I took myself out of the equation for a minute, I could be happy for him. He had wanted this for a long time and had worked hard to get it.
“Thanks,” he said, and pointed to a field a little farther down the page. It read Report to Comdr., New Assignment, and underneath those words, Paul’s detailer had typed a date: 1 JULY 1976.
“That’s when we’re leaving?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
“No, babe,” said Paul. “That’s when SOAC starts.”
“Oh, so we leave earlier?”
He nodded. “Probably a week or two before that.”
“It’s so soon,” I said, as I tried to quell the panic rising in my chest.
Paul gave me a funny look. “Did you think we were going to stay here forever?”
I didn’t say anything to that, just let loose an awkward laugh. Because in spite of all the talk, there was a small part of me that had been fooled into thinking I could stay in La Maddalena for as long as I liked.