Who said what?
“Uncle Frank turned to us, shocked, heroic, taking in all our frozen faces looking to him for leadership. He put a hand over his heart (a few of the hicks in our congregation took off their baseball hats, including their men, like Uncle Frank was going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance or something; appropriately, it turned out, for the promise he was about to utter). He cried with a voice that quivered ever so slightly, ‘I shall return!’”
The allusion here is to General Douglas MacArthur's famous quote after being ordered to leave the Philippines. Despite not knowing whether the United States would ever be able to return there, or even to strategically plan to do so, MacArthur uttered his famous phrase. Or, at least, the first half of it. The second half came two and a half years later when he strode ashore at Leyte. Readers can find that allusion in Chapter 6: Normandy.