Collected Short Stories

Download or read book Collected Short Stories written by Jerome Konsker and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the age of nineteen, I left college at New York University after deciding that I did not want to be an electrical engineer and that I would not make the varsity basketball team. That meant two years in the army. It was an exciting test of my ability to function away from home. This was very late 1952. There was a war on in the Far East. My Uncle Sam decided that, being tall and strong, I would make good rifleman. After making me what he had proposed, he sent me to Korea to test my skills. They were sufficient to stay alive during the last few months leading to the truce. It was signed on July 27, 1953. I was sent to division headquarters on a mission that eludes my memory. But I did remember that I wanted to get out of the infantry company. The division newspaper beckoned, and the noncom in charge decided that I wrote well enough to join his staff. Besides, he needed someone with frontline experience. I became a cub reporter and, later, an official US Army correspondent. I began to read voraciously, starting with Ernie Pyle and Hemingway. I found my passion. The GI Bill allowed me to study, then give up journalism in favor of literature and the theater as a playwright and director. Circumstances in 1958 caused me to stop my pursuit of theater and to make a living for a family. I’ve never regretted that decision. A vacation visit to the Korean War Memorial in the year 2000 in Washington, D.C., awakened my desire to pick up the pen again. It started with minor poetry, one-act plays, short stories, and this novella. My protagonists are often soldiers, past , present, or future. However, I don’t write war stories. I only know how war can effect the minds of those who experienced it.