BOB ROGERS IS an IBM manager for thirty-three years, is president of Global Medical Data in Charlotte, NC. He is a former army captain, Vietnam War veteran, and a charter member of Baltimore, MD’s 9th and 10th (Horse) Cavalry Association chapter. His alma mater is South Carolina State University. Bob is an avid baseball fan and lives in Charlotte.
Early in 1943, Hirohito, Hitler, and Mussolini are near the apex of their powers. The three Axis powers are successfully ruling most of the countries of Europe, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. In the same year, Will, a lumberjack and amateur baseball player, and Dena, a beautiful and head-strong co-ed, fall in love.
While a world war rages, their dreams are threatened, first by Dena’s mother’s classism. Dena’s mother declares Will is “not good enough” for her daughter and orders Dena to stop seeing him. Dena vows never to give up her love for Will and won’t have anything to do with the suitor, a young teacher, her mother chooses for her.
Meanwhile, a group of powerful businessmen have designs to exploit Will’s extraordinary baseball skills for their financial gain. A member of the business cartel is a county judge and former professional baseball player who leads the drive to have Will make the baseball team in their small North Carolina town into a major attraction and moneymaker.
The carefully laid baseball business scheme fails when the Ku Klux Klan attacks Will’s family. Dena and Will are forced to separate as he flees for his life. As he departs, Dena provides Will writings of Langston Hughes. Hughes’ poems and columns become central to Will’s determination to survive all hardships and reunite with Dena.
Will finds refuge in the US Army’s 366th Infantry Regiment and the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division fighting Hitler’s Wehrmacht in Italy. He bonds with three members of his infantry platoon. Their leader calls them the “Four Musketeers.” They are of the generation that becomes known as America’s greatest.
Together, the friends become a tight-knit family, at times fighting among themselves, and at other times, uniting to take on all-comers – other American servicemen, perverse use of courts-martial, and the Wehrmacht. They pool their skills to make the best of army life while continuously evolving their own unique reasons as to why they should fight the Germans. They discover a second enemy – their American commanding general who tells them, “I will see to it that you suffer your share of the casualties.” The “Musketeers” meet and embrace Italian Partisans in their homes and side by side on the battlefield. Together with the Partisans, they fight against the Germans during the harsh winter of 1944-1945 in Italy’s Tuscany.
In the face of hardships and certain death in both North Carolina and Italy that threaten to keep the lovers apart, Will meets challenge after challenge on the path to living the life he and Dena dream of having together
Contact Bob:
P.O. Box 620064
Charlotte, NC 28262
United States of America
and visit
http://www.bobrogers.biz