Camp Follower: We Girls; Sometimes Life Was Wonderful

by BARBARA KLAW

10

WHEN I first came to Gladwyn, the USO club — open for only three months at that time — already had a program planned for Army wives. Three months later, this program had mushroomed into a round-the-clock schedule of events.

This multiplication was due, it was generally conceded, to the appointment of two new Y.W.C.A. workers to the club. One of the women, Miss Gretchen Stoakes, was a small, energet ic brunette, who quickly learned not to allow the Salvation Army Major in charge to badger her plans out of existence. With Miss Stoakes leading them, the Camp Hickory wives were soon as much the business of the club as the soldiers themselves.

Never very excited about organized women’s activities, I didn’t attend any of the USO’s clubs and classes for my first few weeks in Gladwyn. Finally I was dragged to Wives’ Club, the central event of the wives’ week, by a friend, Pat Jacobs.

Pat was older than most of the Army wives. She was a Southern girl who had lived in New York for a long time. Delicate, slim, tall, and dark-haired, Pat was friendly, practical, and salty.

“Come on,” she said. “You’ve got to go. The officials will decide you’re living in sin if you don’t.”

The meeting of the Wives’ Club was held in the music room, where the victrola had been turned off, the bridge game temporarily disbanded, and all the chairs pushed to the sides of the room to make a wide circle.

When the room was full, Martha Graham, a pleasant, meek girl who was the club’s president, stood up and smiled apologetically while waiting for silence.

“Now, girls,” she said, when the racket had subsided, “let’s introduce ourselves all around for the benefit of the newcomers.” The girl at her right called out her name, telling where she came from, and the self-introductions swept around the circle, the eyes of the group taking in each cot ton dress or pair of slacks as the owner announced herself. Five girls in one corner of the room went through a little act of saying their names in unison.

“ Brooklyn,” Pat told me aside before they stated it.

Martha Graham laughed politely and started to say something, but the introductions had traveled on around the circle. The girls giggled in triumph.

“Now we’ll have the business meeting, girls,” Martha said. “Mrs. Brookhart has something to tell us today. Mrs. Brookhart is in charge of the handicraft class, as most of you know.”

What Mrs. Brookhart had to say was that we should all come to handicraft class. “You don’t have to be an artist to make lovely things,” she concluded.

“Now, shall we have the hospital committee’s report?” Martha said, when Mrs. Brookhart sat down. “As most of you know, a volunteer committee from the Wives’ Club visits Army wives in the hospital each week.” She looked around for the committee. A small, pretty Southern girl spoke timidly from one corner of the room.

“ I guess I was the hospital committee last week,” she drawled.

“Will you tell us about it?” Martha prompted.

“Well, I went to the hospital on Saturday,” the hospital committee said, “and found that there was only one soldier’s wife there. I bought her a potted plant and took it over to her Monday morning, but she had already gone when I got there.” The group chortled and the hospital committee blushed. “ I know it sounds funny,” the girl said, embarrassed, “but what am I going to do with the plant?”

“Why don’t you just keep it? ” Martha said kindly. “I’m sure it’ll look very pretty in your room. Now shall we have volunteers for next week?”

Volunteering was slow; and muttering that someone had to do the jobs, Pat gave both her name and mine for two things — food committee for the weekly luncheon, and hospital committee.

“What are you signing me up for?” I asked.

“Cooking, honey,” she said. “It’s fun. I don’t know about the hospital committee. I’ve never been on that, but I’d certainly like a potted plant for my room.”

The business meeting dragged along, few girls paying any attention. Martha was having a difficult time, and at one point Miss Farnsworth, Miss Stoakes’s assistant, stood up and held out her hand for silence.

“Now, girls,” she said, including us all in a watery smile, “let’s be a little quieter so that we can all hear Martha. With my great big old voice I can shout right over you, but Martha has a little voice, and we have to be quiet to hear her.” (Miss Farnsworth, I learned later, had come to the Y.W.C.A. via a public school, where she had taught the first grade.) Pat shuddered visibly.

“I guess that clears up the business,” Martha said finally. “And I’m going to turn the meeting over to Miss Farnsworth, who’s planned the program for today.” Martha sat down, obviously glad to be done with her official duties.

“Well, girls,” Miss Farnsworth said, rising and wagging her head coyly at us, “we aren’t going to be educational today. We’re just going to have a rousing good time. The program for today is a good old-fashioned sing. We’ll have to go into the ballroom, girls, to be near the piano, but first let’s give Martha a nice big hand.”

The clapping was thin, as girls gathered up their purses and put out their cigarettes. One of the Brooklyn girls trilled up and down the scale with elaborate operatic gestures.

Radiating enthusiasm, Miss Farnsworth bounced ahead into the ballroom; and signaling us to gather around the piano, she passed out songbooks.

“Now, girls, I know there’s lots of talent in this group,” she said. “So I expect some fine harmonizing.”

The singing sounded weak in the vast room, many of the girls talking right through the songs.

“Let’s have a nice rousing one now, girls,” Miss Farnsworth said brightly. “Something that all those nice husbands at camp might be singing at this very moment.”

“My nice husband is a complete monotone,” Pat observed aside to me.

When we had finished “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” the sing was apparently over, for Miss Farnsworth led us back into the music room, where the hard-working refreshment committee served iced tea and cookies, and the meeting broke up. Going out the door, I heard two of the clique from Brooklyn talking ahead of me.

“Tie up your pigtails, Gertie,” one of them said. “Sunday school’s over.”

“Wives’ Club!” said the other. “It’s all I can do to keep from throwing spitballs in there.”

I felt unaccountably depressed by the meeting, but not so scornful as the two Brooklyn girls. Those two, I decided, had had their fill of women’s activities.

But to my surprise, they were on hand for the weekly wives’ luncheon on Friday, well at the head of the line which formed in front of the serving table. I noticed them frankly appraising the food, and heard them discussing which of two plates had more cottage cheese on it.

11

AS Pat had predicted, I enjoyed being on the food committee for the wives’ luncheon. It was exciting to plan and buy food, to have a stove and a sink and an icebox to work with.

We met early Friday morning at the Safeway — the town’s largest grocery store — to do the marketing for the meal. We carried our tremendous bags of groceries up the hill, and worked hard for two hours chopping eggs for the salad, washing lettuce, peeling innumerable tomatoes. We had the dainty sandwiches and substantial salad ready long before the girls arrived.

“Why, girls, you’re just the most efficient bunch I’ve ever seen,” Miss Farnsworth said, poking her head into the kitchen. “Why, everything looks just lovely.”

At twelve o’clock, we set the luncheon plates on a serving table in front of the snack bar, and the wives filed past, led by the Brooklyn girls. They selected their food and wandered into the ballroom, stopping to pay their twenty-five cents at the door. We had planned for a maximum of fifty, and sixtythree girls came. We scurried around patching together extra servings, passing plates of sandwiches in the ballroom, lugging heavy pitchers of iced tea.

I didn’t hear any of the program which followed the luncheon, as I was busily engaged in washing dishes. However, I had a play-by-play description from Pat as she hurried back and forth, bringing the dirty dishes to the kitchen.

“Well, the festivities are starting,” she reported, as she arrived with the first tray of glasses. “They’re introducing themselves.”

We heard strains of singing for a while, with occasional sectional songs, like “The Sidewalks of New York,” coming out strong. There was complete silence after that, and I questioned Pat on her next trip.

“What’s happening now?”

“A speech,” she said. “The town librarian telling about the foundation and growth of Gladwyn.” She shook her head ruefully.

Another speech followed that one, Pat reported as she dumped a load of silver into the sink.

“Is it good? Who’s speaking?” I asked.

“A Mrs. Potter from the Red Cross,” Pat said. “I don’t know if it’s good, but she calls us ‘Camp Hickory wives’ instead of ‘girls.’ It’s kind of refreshing.”

When we finally joined the party, the speeches were over and the girls were chatting at their tables. Miss Farnsworth beckoned us over.

“It was a lovely luncheon, girls, just lovely,” she told us. She stood up and held up her hand.

“I’ve just been telling these hard-working girls what a lovely luncheon it was,” she said, using her great big old voice to quiet the scattered audience in the ballroom. “And I know all you girls will want to tell them how much you enjoyed it, too.” I felt distinctly embarrassed by the clapping.

When Miss Farnsworth had shaken hands with the speakers and called for one last round of applause to thank everyone for everything, the meeting broke u p.

(This particular luncheon, I found out later while doing some volunteer typing for the club, had been “a great success.” The program was reported to USO headquarters as “an outstanding example of bringing the townspeople and the Army wives into a state of closer understanding.”)

Our next job was the hospital committee. Pat and I, unlike the Southern girl the week before, found several sick Army wives — four of them — and we hurried out to buy them presents before they could recover and check out of the hospital.

“All maternity cases,” the nurse told us. “Three babies and a mis.” (It took me a moment to figure out that the nurse meant a miscarriage and not an unmarried mother.)

We bought three pairs of baby booties and had them carefully wrapped in the appropriate colors. It was harder thinking of something for the mis.

“Nothing that will remind her of babies, now,” Pat said. “Something cheerful and normal.” We went to the florist to buy flowers, and settled for the only thing he had, the inevitable potted plant.

“Go and see Mrs. Markowitz last, will you, girls?” the nurse said when we got back to the hospital. “She came out of the delivery room just twenty minutes ago, and she had a hard time.”

“Oh, I don’t imagine we ought to bother her, should we?” I said nervously. I could think of nothing I’d want less under the same circumstances than a couple of strange women making small talk.

“Oh, you can see her all right,” the nurse said casually. “They like company.”

We went to see the girl who had had the miscarriage first.

“That’ll be kind of grim,” Pat said.

The girl, vague and pale, was trying to sit up when we found her room down at the end of a long, badly lighted corridor. There was no one there to help her, and we arranged the pillows for her, and stood uneasily in the cell-like little room, trying to chat normally. The girl’s head swayed loosely from side to side as she answered our questions.

“My, what a pretty plant! I certainly appreciate it.” She rolled her head toward the bare dresser where we had set it. Her thin shoulders and neck showed no muscle structure as she moved. Her breasts, showing through the bright pink rayon and lace of her nightgown, were limp and loose.

“Well, we’ve got some other calls to make,” Pat said after a while. “We certainly hope you’re up and around soon.” She spoke warmly and simply.

“Oh, please stay a little,” the girl said quickly. “I enjoy talking to you so much. Stay and have a cigarette.” She reached for a mashed package, but Pat was quicker.

We lit cigarettes, emptied the girl’s overflowing ash tray, and stayed to talk. Pat sat on the bed, and I leaned against a wall. Finally, after half an hour, the girl was obviously tired and we left.

“Lord,” Pat said. “The poor kid!”

One of the three Army mothers was apparently nursing her child, for a nurse told us we couldn’t come in. The second one was sitting up in bed, calmly reading a mystery story.

“Gee,” she said when we had introduced ourselves. “You girls mustn’t let on that I’ve taken a book from the club. I know they’re not supposed to leave the building, but my husband brought this down last night. He was sure they wouldn’t care if I returned it when I’m well.”

We, too, were sure they wouldn’t care, and told her so. She seemed strong and cheerful, and we didn’t stay very long.

Mrs. Markowitz was lying in complete darkness, and we wouldn’t have disturbed her, except that she heard us through the open door, and urged us to turn on the light and come in.

Her hospital nightgown was damp and mussed, and perspiration wet her forehead and cheeks. She looked quite ill, and limp with fatigue, but she was shyly happy about her experience, and pleased to see us. We noticed a large bunch of wilting peonies thrown carelessly on her bed.

“I thought it might be my husband when I heard you outside the door,” she said. Pat said humbly that she wished it had been.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that,” the girl said quickly. “I think it’s wonderful of you to come. But you see, when I went into the delivery room, the doctor thought I was going to have a hard time, and he called out to camp for my husband to come in. I guess his C.O. wouldn’t let him, though.”

Her gentleness made me squirm with anger at the Army’s stupid, needless cruelties. Men could be taken away from their training schools for work details, but their time couldn’t be spared to help a wife in the agony of a dangerous birth.

“My husband told me last night,” Mrs. Markowitz went on, “that if I was far away he’d probably get an emergency furlough to come home while I had the baby, but being right here, he said his C.O. would figure that coming in at night as usual would be plenty.”

I realized that the palms of my hands were sweating, and when I spoke I had to control my voice. It was no time to say what I thought of the Army.

“These are lovely flowers,” Pat said softly, picking up the peonies. “Shall I get the nurse to put them in water for you?”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Markowitz said. “The lady where I’m living brought them to me. I was still half asleep when she came, and she just put them on the bed, I guess. The nurse is so busy, I hated to bother her.”

Pat found an empty pitcher in the next room, filled it with water, and untied the heavy twine that held the blossoms. The flowers looked a little top-heavy in their clumsy vase.

Mrs. Markowitz hadn’t seen her child yet, and at her request we tried to get a look at him in the nursery. But the stiffly starched matron waved us away from the little peephole into the room.

Mrs. Markowitz was the last of the Army wives on our calling list, and we left her to sleep and walked out of the hospital.

“I’ve been in a lot of hospitals,” Pat said as we walked down the street, “ but never one like that.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s gruesome.”

“It’s those girls,” Pat said. “They’re so damned alone. No husbands, no families. Except for Mrs. Markowitz, not even any flowers. It makes me sick at my stomach.”

We made the regular hospital committee report to the Wives’ Club the next week. We made it brief and somehow meaningless. It fitted perfectly into the whole monotonous procedure.

12

I WENT to a few more wives’ events with Pat, who seemed to go doggedly to all of them. We attended exercise class one morning — “guaranteed to put weight on you if you’re thin, and take it off if you’re overweight.” The overweights predominated, and when the class was over they flocked to the snack bar to replenish themselves with ice cream.

I attended one volunteer hostess meeting, designed to straighten out the working schedule at the reception desk, but so little was accomplished that I didn’t go again. I never went to sewing class, or the “Better Halves” weekly pingpong tournament, or the bowling club, or the class where an “Arthur Murray instructor” was teaching the girls to conga, and I never joined the large handicraft class.

One day Miss Stoakes called me into her office.

“I hear you wrote that nice little piece for the paper the other day,” she said. She was referring to some publicity I had done for the Travelers Aid.

“I thought it was so clever,” she said. “I want to ask your advice on a short story writing class we’re thinking of starting. Don’t you think that would be fun?”

I felt a brief urge to question the word “fun,” not only in connection with writing short stories, but in relation to all the wives’ activities to which the club officials applied it. Questions tumbled into my mind. Was it to provide fun for Army wives that people donated money to the USO? Were the girls having fun at the women’s activities, and did they want fun? But Miss Stoakes was smiling at me expectantly, and I didn’t know how to question the good intentions of this woman who made her living planning things for us to do.

“Has there been much demand for a short story writing class?” I asked.

“No, no one’s suggested it specifically,” she said vaguely. “ But I’m sure lots of the girls would come.” I wanted to shout that we weren’t potential juvenile delinquents who must be kept off the streets: that we were women intimately engaged in a war. I wanted to ask her why the club didn’t offer us war work to do, why some of the energy spent entertaining us couldn’t be turned toward organizing us for something useful.

Why didn’t we ourselves insist on programs that we could respect, that we needn’t jeer at? Why did we encourage the childish activities by going to them? Why did I go? Why did a hundred other grown women go? Why did Pat — sophisticated, sensitive Pat — persist in attending these pointless clubs and classes? I felt suddenly and urgently that I must ask her.

“Well, think it over, Bobby,” Miss Stoakes was saying. “We haven’t got anything on the schedule for Monday morning, and we’ve got to think of something.” I said that I would, and hurriedly excused myself.

“Where’s Pat?” I asked the girl at the desk.

“I think she went to Newcomers’ Club,” the girl said. “It’ll be over in a few minutes.”

In a few minutes Pat came out of the music room and sat down beside me.

“What in the world were you doing at Newcomers’ Club?” I asked bluntly. “I thought it was for wives who’ve just come to town.”

“I guess it is,” Pat said, stretching languidly. “But I never went when I was a newcomer, and I wanted to see if I had missed anything.”

“Had you?”

“No,” Pat said.

“Look, Pat,” I said. “Do you like all these little affairs at the club?”

“ I like the girls,” Pat said.

“Sure,” I persisted, “ but do you like the events?”

“Not particularly,” Pat said. She wasn’t paying much attention to me.

“Why do you go, then?”

Pat realized I was serious. “I hadn’t thought about it much,” she said slowly, and considered for a moment. “Have you ever seen my room, Bobby?” she asked suddenly. I said I hadn’t.

“Well, it has four walls and one window and striped yellow wallpaper.” She laughed self-consciously. “I sat in there so much at first that the damn wallpaper started getting on my nerves. So now I spend my time up here instead.”

Suddenly she grinned. “I wouldn’t say that it was very invigorating,” she said. “But it takes up a lot of time. Look at that.” She pointed to a clock on the wall. “ It’s four o’clock. That makes it two hours since I’ve looked at my watch. Come on, honey,” she said. “Stop brooding. Let’s go for a walk.”

We got up and walked across the floor, past the girls writing letters, past a pair playing checkers, past four girls sipping cokes, past the girl at the reception desk. We walked out of the club and down the hill, away from the dozens and dozens of wives waiting patiently for the daytime void to end.

13

ONE Friday when Spencer told me that he had drawn KP the next Monday, I was disappointed, for that Monday would be our second wedding anniversary.

“Then you won’t be able to get in to town at all? ” I asked glumly. I couldn’t help thinking of our last anniversary. Four days in the country, and not a uniform in sight.

“Probably not,” Spence said. “But what the hell, honey, we’ll celebrate Saturday night.”

Our Saturday nights were treasured occasions. No ten o’clock bus to catch, no reveille the next morning. We always took off our wrist watches on those nights, and refused so much as to consider what time it was.

We decided that we’d go to Itaska for our premature anniversary party, and arranged to meet on the Itaska bus to save the t ime it would take Spence to come to the house. He told me that I had better cash a check.

“And Bobby,” he said, “wear your white dress, will you?” I laughed and mentally congratulated myself for having washed and ironed it the day before. When Spencer likes a dress he likes it completely, and with predictable consistency he wants me to wear it on every occasion. This dress had headed the request list for the past seven Saturdays.

Saturday was a day of preparation in Gladwyn. At the club and throughout the town, the wives and the townspeople girded themselves for the weekend. The town’s beauty parlor was mobbed. Lines of girls waited to use the ironing board and sewing machine at the club. The shops and restaurants opened late in preparation for an all-night trade. Soldiers started trickling into town about noon, quiet and businesslike at that time, shy at having invaded before the regular evening invasion hour. Queues of them which reached out into the street waited at every cleaning establishment, trying to retrieve long-promised uniforms.

Our house, unusually enough, was empty, and I stood out on the back porch where the ironing board was set up, armed with ice water and cigarettes, and pressed uniforms according to GI regulations — pant creases running all the way up to the waistband, and the mandatory Signal Corps creases in the body of the shirt, one down through each pocket, and three down the back. Ironing shirts and pants was a skill I had acquired since coming to Gladwyn and I was proud and particular about doing them right.

As I was stopping to sew a button on a pair of undershorts, the phone rang. It was Spencer.

“Look, honey,” he said. “This is a hell of an unsatisfactory way to do this, but will you stop by the florist’s on your way to the bus station and pick up your flowers. They won’t deliver. You’ll have to pay for them, too,” he added ruefully.

Pleased that he had thought of flowers, I laughed at his embarrassment. I was used to paying for things, to doing the errands. I thanked him excitedly.

“Why aren’t you at drill, Spence?” I asked.

“Well, I should be,” Spence said. “And I’d better get out of this PX before someone starts checking up.”

I finished the ironing, washed my hair and bathed, put on my white dress and spectator pumps — on stockingless feet. On my way to the bus station, I picked up my corsage — luscious, deep red gladioli blossoms fastened with white ribbon.

“I hope this is what your husband wanted,” the florist said doubtfully. “He insisted on white ribbon, though I prefer the silver myself.” I said it was lovely, and pinned it on, enormously pleased with Spencer. He had remembered that I hated silver tinsel on corsages.

It was about 6.30 when I got to the bus station, and already uneven lines of men had formed, waiting for various buses. Some were headed for Itaska, some for places as far away as Tulsa, determined to get out of camp and away from Gladwyn for the week-end. They were gay, mildly rough-tongued, and polite to the girls in the crowd.

Forming themselves into lines was just habit, and actually in this case did little good. For the buses rolling around the corner parked anywhere they could find space, and the first person aboard was usually the one who could run fastest. The soldiers didn’t care whether there was room for them in the buses or not. They just wanted to get on, and only by firmly closing the doors could the drivers stop the onrush.

One small, dark, surly-looking private got angry when the door of a bus closed in his face, and he pounded on the glass, arguing with the driver that there was plenty of room. The driver paid no attention, and the men inside leaned out to taunt him.

“See your chaplain, soldier,” one yelled, and the advice was taken up like a chant by others.

“See your chaplain, fella! Get a T.S. slip, soldier! Tell it to General Millikin!” The bus pulled out, leaving the angry soldier on the curb.

By this time, I was up at the head of my line, but bus after bus came in without Spencer. I searched them carefully, walking back and forth along the outside to be sure I wasn’t missing him, to the amusement of the soldiers inside.

A curly-haired boy leaned out of one bus.

“Hey,” he said as I passed. “Won’t I do?” I grinned at him, and shook my head.

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “there’s no accounting for taste.”

I finally spot ted Spencer on a completely jammed bus — a bus that seemed to be carrying all Itaska passengers, since only one man got off at Gladwyn. I was afraid I shouldn’t be able to get on it, but a soldier summed up the situation quickly and tapped the man ahead of me on the shoulder.

“Hey, soldier,” he said. “This girl’s meeting someone on that bus. How about it?”

“Oh, sure, sure,” the soldier said cheerfully, and with a playful politeness he bowed me into the bus ahead of him. I worked my way down the aisle, disturbing soldiers who were sitting on the floor, on camp chairs, and on the arms of seats. The soldier next to Spencer rose to give me his place, paying no attention to our protests. Something about the uniform seems to make soldiers as courteous to wives as they are fresh to unattached females. A girl by herself in Gladwyn was fair game and was cheerfully and hopefully accosted on every street corner, but a girl with a soldier was definitely private property, and was given the utmost respect.

With the unconcern for crowds that we had learned from seldom being anywhere else, we kissed each other and settled down to talk. I thanked Spencer for the flowers, and we admired them together.

“I’ve got a surprise,” Spence said. I could tell by the way he spoke that he was excited. “I was going to hold it till we got to the restaurant, but I can’t do it.” He paused, and then all in one breath said, “I’ve got permission to live off the Post.”

I was so surprised I couldn’t speak. After months of longing for this permission, of angling for it in every way Spence knew, it had suddenly dropped in his lap. It meant no more clock-watching in the evenings. It meant no more going to bed and waking up by myself. It meant being able to lie in bed and read together. It meant being able to smoke a good-night cigarette together in the dark privacy of our bedroom again. After months of missing these things, to me it meant being married again.

(The End)