Mare's War (17 page)

Annie cries in her sleep, and I don’t hear nothing from Peaches. I sniff some, but I got to be strong. If I start up, then we are all gonna start hollering in here and ain’t nobody’s mama coming to hush us up and say it’s all right.

I tell God if He let me get back to Feen, I will get back to church a little more often. I promise Him if it’s not right, I will put down my cards for good. I promise Him I might be
sweet to Gloria Madden and her uppity self. I promise everything except that I will go home and work for Miss Ida again. I can’t do that. It strikes me that I would rather die than go back to Bay Slough, Alabama, especially now that Feen’s not there.

I promise God I will be better and make things right with everybody … if He just doesn’t let this storm or the U-boats kill us now.

God must have turned it over in His mind for a while to see if I was serious. We rolled and ran from those Germans for forty-five long minutes, and then we dodged winter squalls and furious seas for five days more.

Eleven days we are on that ship, tied down to our bunks, strapped into helmets, and carrying our life jackets. Eleven days of holding on to railings, sliding on our behinds, wading to the latrine in smelly boots, and bringing up what little we eat. The evening of the eleventh day, the brass says we are coming to land. I am too sick of that tub to care where we are, but when we muster out, march down that gangplank into the dark, the captain says we are in Glasgow, Scotland.

Tired as I am, I have got to smile. I know Peaches must be some furious. She was so sure we were going to Paris!

The Third Platoon stands there looking like we forgot how to stand up straight, leaning on each other like a herd of drunks. The word “Scotland” has no kind of effect on me. Don’t know where it is, and I don’t care. All I can do is stand
there feeling the sick rise up out of my gut. The ground seems like it’s still moving.

Lieutenant Hundley look at us like she worried, then she start hollering about get our helmets on, and
atten
-shun! Some Red Cross ladies come by with carts of coffee and doughnuts for us, and the coffee at least makes my head stop spinning. In time, Hundley calls out orders, and we hike up our packs, do a slow march out from the shipyard on to a train station.

It’s a good thing we got a train. Peaches says she won’t be going on a boat never again. Guess they’ve got to bridge over the great Atlantic to get that girl home.

As we get on board, we can hardly march in step, but it feels good to be moving. Hundley says the train is taking us on to England. Annie nudges me and gives me a nod. She’s still too sick to grin, but she sure likes to let me know she knew something I didn’t. Hmph. I know she just guessed we were going to England. She doesn’t know nothing more than I do.

When we get to quarters, they say we are in Birmingham, where we will stay. We barely got time to set down our packs when we get our assignments. We, the 6888th Battalion, are now Company C, under First Lieutenant Scott. Lieutenant Scott explains to us that our job is to process the mail from home for the soldiers. But first, they tell us we have three days to get our uniforms in order, our laundry done, our shoes polished, and ourselves healthy. During those three days, we’ll march and drill every spare minute we can, ’cause they tell us after that, we’ve got to march in a parade.

A parade! And we’ll hardly have had our gear unpacked, and some of us are still sick and banged up from rolling around on that ship! Still, we’ll do our best to do the company proud. Since three days is what we have, three days is what we’ll take.

This place doesn’t look like any kind of barracks I have ever seen. There are none of those nice brick buildings like we had at Fort Des Moines. There are not even the WAC shacks oozing pine tar like we had at Oglethorpe. These are just tall old buildings with little windows at the top and a sign that says King Edward School. Can’t see a reviewing stand nor parade yard, but no playground, either. This is where they tell us to set up, though, so we do. A GI will make do with what she’s got.

The day of the parade comes too soon. I pin up Dovey’s hair in a twist, and she does mine. We get into our gear—dress uniform, double-breasted wool coats, wool stockings, and leather gloves. Our ears are cold, but that is too bad. We put on socks over our stockings, then sturdy brown loafers, and fall in, stomping to stay warm.

Our company has about two hundred girls lined up from here to there, and we form up in turn, by squadron. Finally, the call comes.

“Forwaaaard, march!”

The echoes of our footsteps bounce off the buildings up and down the street. We march through Birmingham to the field where we will parade. It tickles me that we are marching down the street in Birmingham,
England
, not Birmingham, Alabama. I can’t wait to write Feen and tell her
that
one.

It is a strange parade. We are dog-tired, but we are as crisp and perfect as we know how to be, trying to do the U.S. Women’s Army proud. The English folk look at us with their mouths wide open, as if they’d like to catch flies, as if they ain’t—haven’t—never seen no girls marching before. Or maybe it is that they don’t see many colored. They gawk and look, and then they start talking. One little missy with her hair scraped back into plaits sticking out from under her hat say right out, loud as you please, “Mum! Lookit all the
black
gels.”

Black!
The word comes out her mouth like something she spit. Black! What she talking about
black
?! My skin is as brown as pecan shells; it isn’t black. They don’t even know to say “Negro” round here, and the little ones got no better sense than to stare. The girl point her fingers till her mama swats down her hands. She say, “But,
Mum
…!”

Least
that
much is the same between here and home. Mama would smack me one good, pointing like that.

We stare past their heads, eyes straight, fingers lined up with our seams, till we strut by the reviewing stand and snap our eyes to the right and salute. Lieutenant Scott say we have to observe military courtesy, so we don’t stare at those English folks just now, but I plan to get a good look so I can write to Feen. “Black,” she says, when we are standing here as brown as we can be! Feen will get some laughs out of that.

When they call the company to halt, we stand at attention with the crowd standing all around us. The band plays, and the flags flap in the wind, and then they come and
inspect us. We stand only blinking, trying to keep from freezing to death and falling over in the wind.

The English people respect the military police, and the MPs make some effort to keep folks back, but nobody tries to stop them once we’re dismissed. We fall out, and Lieutenant Scott says to make it back to base in one hour. We’ve got time to look around town, but most of us head straight back, stumbling over the rocky street.

Annie is walking with me and Ina White. Ina is talking about the “cobblestones” on the ground that would mess up her good shoes. Annie says they have real nice paving stones in the big cities, stones that are more even than this. We don’t know we’ve got company till Annie chances to look behind us.

“What?” Ina says, looking around.

“Nothing but some kids,” Annie says, and she rolls her eyes.

It is more than just a few. Most of them are trying to hide behind each other, all staring at us with big, wide eyes. One of them, about eight, don’t even have the shame to blush once I turn around and stare her in the face.

“Military courtesy,” Lieutenant Scott say; we got to be courteous, so I don’t ask that little twig where her mama is and didn’t anybody gave her any home training. I just nod and say, “Good afternoon, miss.”

Then
she turns around and runs.

Ha. Guess she didn’t know no “black gels” could talk.

Ruby, Dovey, me, and some of the others go to the post office warehouse to report for duty the first day, dressed in our field jackets and wool slacks under our utilities. The room they have the mail in used to be the gymnasium for the school, and it is cold, cold, cold under that big, high ceiling. That is not the worst. The mail is stacked up over our heads, almost touching the ceiling. Must be a hundred million letters just sitting there, and the troops moving somewhere new almost every day. The group of us just stare.

Before we get started, our CO give us a speech. She say that stealing the mail is a federal crime. I have to shake my head. Much as I like getting mail, I can’t see trying to read up on everyone else’s! And there is so much! Too much. They say we have got six airplane hangars full of what didn’t get sent out at Christmas. We have got
work
to do, and nobody has any idea how.

But once we get our orders, we set to it. Lieutenant Scott says we need to get in and make it right in a hurry. Everybody is worrying about the soldiers’ morale.

We hear that word “morale” all the time and how we have got to keep it up in the soldiers. They got to hear from home, or they get to feeling low. I know all about feeling low. It is raining and foggy all the time and cold so deep it settles into the bones. I haven’t ever been so cold in all my life. We get on shift wearing our coats and our hats and drinking coffee to stay warm. Seem to me somebody should see about our morale, too. Folks from the Third Platoon all look run-down and terrible. Peaches got a cold as soon as she got here, and
she’s been snottin’ and sniffling all day. Ruby’s still got a scar on account of being popped upside the head that day on the ship, and Dovey doesn’t hardly want to even be inside without her hat since her hair looks so bad. Even Gloria Madden, with her high-and-mighty ways, is looking downright sorrowful now that she’s wrapped up in wool all the time. I expect things will get better, but right now we’re working like dogs to get through the mail. Lieutenant Scott says we’ve got to work round the clock, three eight-hour shifts, seven days a week, till we get a handle on things. They say, “No mail, low morale,” and we’ve got to fix that or the Nazis might take advantage.

At the army post office, we get mail that gets sent back and try and find where the soldier is now. We’ve got index cards all typed up with each soldier’s orders, and we try for thirty days to get a soldier his mail. Peaches works the typewriter, makin’ up changes, ’cause even though every soldier is supposed to fill in a change-of-address form, sometimes they don’t. The army has got forms for everything, but we can’t help folks if they don’t fill ’em out. There are six hundred of us in the Six-triple-eight, and we have got seven million folks to get mail to. Lieutenant Scott is right—we have our job cut out for us.

Now that we are here in Birmingham, there are new army letters to learn. Lieutenant Scott says we are in the
ETO
, which is the European theater of operations. We are also in the
UK
, which is the United Kingdom. They’ve got a King George here, and he’s got a palace like a kingdom in
one of them fairy tales. I know Feen will get a kick out of that. These UK folks have got fancy words for everything, including the latrine. Here the door says
WC
for “water closet.” Even the smallest house has got the tub and the commode in separate rooms. I bet they never even heard of an outhouse!

After a while, we get a little more used to the cold and the wet and working our shifts. We get to laughing and singing while we work sometimes, and the Red Cross folks have always got coffee, and some days we drink tea like the English folks. At the end of my shift, my head feels likely to split. It is too dark in that mail warehouse, but it is good to keep busy. When we got too much free time, I get to thinking about home and about what is going on in the States.

I didn’t ever take myself to be someone patriotic—but I haven’t ever been away from home, neither. When I see that old red, white, and blue flag of ours, I just stand up straight and remember being at school, where they had us lay hands on our hearts. When I see it, I think, There’s a little something from home.

I guess it is strange to these Birmingham folk to see so many strangers and colored girls all in one place. They don’t exactly
say
nothing, but they get quiet, and they watch us. We sure enough watch them back, and Lieutenant Scott tell us to look folks in the eye and say, “Good morning,” but it gets us nervous, especially Ruby, to have them following us around when we march. Nobody goes anywhere alone, not even Gloria Madden, who thinks she know something about foreigners and “the British.”

Now and then, some folk get a bit too curious, and once or twice, we have had men try to come into our base at the school. We have guards at the gate, just like at Oglethorpe and Fort Des Moines—two WAC MPs on shift at all times—but a couple of males tried to sneak in here to see what we were doing. At home, the white folks don’t pay nobody colored any mind. But here—!