Captain Lucy in the Home Sector

The Home Sector,—that was what Larry Eaton called it, a little irony beneath his irrepressible cheerfulness, when he had been ordered to Coblenz with the American Army of Occupation. He had called it so with his eyes on the Stars and Stripes already floating over the general’s headquarters in the old German city, and after a sidelong glance at Lucy Gordon’s sober face. “It’s the first step on the way home, Lucy,” he said, as the two walked along the grassy banks of the river, the pale December sunlight shining on the water and, at their left, on the low houses at the outskirts of Coblenz. “Don’t look so downhearted, old pal.”