Mare's War (13 page)

Before lights-out, most of us head for the shower ’cause
it’s never enough time to get all ready in the morning. It tickles me to remember the first time we got to the showers. We all about had a fit ’cause there isn’t nothing but showerheads, all six in a row, and no curtains, no walls for privacy. There ain’t—I mean, isn’t—no privacy in the army, they tell us, so we go in and shower and keep our eyes on the floor. Now we all so tired don’t nobody—nobody cares anymore. You should hear the songs we sing in there, too!

I don’t want to go home, though, not me. Last thing before I go to sleep, I close my eyes and think hard of Feen. I still say my prayers, but Mama always say the Lord doesn’t have no use for girls who can’t act right. Maybe I am one of those girls. Maybe I am uppity to have left Mama and Bay Slough. Maybe I won’t ever have no home. Sometimes I still don’t know if I did right.

It has been raining for ten days straight, and we spend most times wet and cold. The army issues us all long raincoats, but when we have to stand out till they call roll, all those things do is leak. Captain say wear a bath towel up under the collar so at least we don’t get wet all down our backs. That helps some. We march double-time to get to
class and to mess, but we can’t run too hard. We still have to stop and salute. Isn’t that some kind of crazy? We are going to catch our death standing around like fools in the rain, but officers stand there until they get their “courtesies,” and God help you and your demerits if they don’t get them fast enough. Annie broke down and cried this morning ’cause she can’t stand to get up out of bed and get rained on and have to salute and salute all over again. We have all been gigged pretty regularly since the rain began.

It is so cold I can hardly stand it. It didn’t ever get cold like this in Bay Slough, and after lunch we stand in formation doing mail call, shivering so hard we can hardly hear.

“Boylen!”

“Ma’am!” My ears suddenly get clear.

“Letter, Boylen!”

All around me, everybody is looking. I see Gloria Madden rear back like somebody just slapped her, she is so surprised. I turn and give her a
look
.

Ruby grabs my hand and squeezes it. She’s been feeling awful sorry since she gets something from her sisters, her cousins, her mama,
and
her Sunday school class almost every week.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I say when Lieutenant Hundley hands me a letter from … Feen!

I can’t keep my teeth from chattering, even though I have what feels like fire in my stomach.

When we are dismissed, I run back to my bunk. My hands are shaking as I open the envelope.

I can’t hardly stop laughing to start crying or start crying ’cause I’m smiling so hard. I can’t hardly wait to run to mess after that. Peaches and Annie and Ruby look at me with sharp eyes when I sit down, stare at my red eyes and my swollen-up nose. My hands are still shaking when I pick up my fork, but that can’t stop my smile.

Since I was small, Mama always said, “Watch out for your sister,” and I put myself between Feen and the rest of the world to keep her safe. I put my plans on hold to watch over her. I got lost when Mama sent Feen to Philadelphia, but now everything feels all right.

I feel like Sister Dials always says she feels at church, like the glory has come down on my soul. My shoulders feel like something has just slipped down, and off, and fallen on the ground. I want to stand up and shout. It feels like forgiveness. It feels good.

I stop my foolishness, though, when I think about that girl talking about me and a
baby
. The only men around here I see are the ones hollering at us to hurry up and march, and Staff Sergeant Hill’s surely not a man. And I have a thing or two to say to Auntie Shirley about filling Feen’s head with talk about mannish girls. Aunt Shirley had best look to her own business and leave mine and the U.S. Army’s alone.

I’m relieved, the next day, that I
got
Feen’s letter ’cause next morning we fall in and Lieutenant Hundley gives us the order to pack up to move out! All the gossip about going to move somewhere is true—Captain Ferguson’s got our orders. Suddenly all those hush-hush rumors get downright loud. We pack up our gear, and they tell us we better take everything and ship the rest home. I don’t have much civilian stuff, so I send on Mama’s coat, write Feen a quick note that I got her letter and I’ll tell her more when we get where we’re going, and then get on with it.

I’ve got fifty pounds of gear on my back when we climb up into the troop carrier. We bump and jounce over the roads to town, then get on the train.

Peaches marches by with her head up high, but she got her a look on her face.

“What have you heard?” I ask Peaches when we get on the colored car. The lieutenant makes us sit in groups, by squadron. Miss Communications Department Carter has to pass me and sit in the back.

“We’re going to Paris, France,” she hisses at me, and keeps stepping.

“What’d she say?” Annie wants to know. “St. Louis?”

I don’t know nothing about no Paris, France. Annie say they talk English there, but I got a ball of nerves in my gut. We’re going over where them Germans be shooting their gas. We’re supposed to “free a man” to go to the front. What hap-pens if he doesn’t want to go, neither?

What happens if I forget how to use my mask? If I get that gas in my lungs, it will kill me dead. I hear about folk who didn’t duck fast enough when those grenades came in and got their hands and arms and legs blown clean off. I can’t go to France. I can’t go where they’re throwing them grenades. I can’t go and leave Feen. I can’t. I can’t.

“Marey Lee? You feeling all right?” Annie looks my way.

I sit down in my seat and breathe real deep, trying not to let her see me sweat.

“I’m all right,” I say. Isn’t anything a body can do now but wait.

After all them nerves and my stomach twisting like I ate some bad shrimp, I shoulda known Peaches Carter didn’t know no kind of nothing. We shipped out as far as Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia!

Things are different at Fort Oglethorpe’s Extended Field Service Training Center. For one thing, we know a little something when we get here—that we are in for some “training,” for “extended field service.” We going overseas for sure now.

Some folks are not happy about that. Miss Gloria Madden, for one. She was all set up to do specialist training
back at Fort Des Moines. She thinks she wants to be some kind of officer. As for me, I am glad there is no chance of that just yet!

We march off that passenger car in Chattanooga, and they load us up onto more trucks—but this time, we got seats and a tarp over our heads. When we finally get out to the post, they march us over to supply and give us
more
gear. Now we’ve got helmets—like green metal slop buckets with straps—and wool helmet liners. They tell us to sign for snow jackets and liners Annie says folks use when they ski. We sign out wool and twill trousers, wool gloves, high-top lace-up brown shoes, and shoulder bags. We have to wear some of that just to march it back to our new barracks, and it is heavy and warm. We are going someplace pure cold, as I see it.

The barracks here look like somebody just threw them up with a few nails, just little shanties with no niceties. The walls are raw timber, and there’s no paint anywhere. Every-thing smells like pine, and little beads of pitch leak out of the walls, making everything tacky. There are gaps under the doors.

“How are we supposed to keep our uniforms looking good?” Dovey rants, pointing to the gap. “How’re we sup-posed to keep that pine tar off of everything, and the
dust
?”

We complain and mutter, but barracks aren’t the worst thing we see as we fall back in and march through our new digs. As we take in Fort Oglethorpe, we are shocked that it is right-out, loud-and-clear
segregated
.

In little old no-’count Bay Slough, we don’t bother with
segregation. We don’t have Whites Only signs; Bay Slough barely is big enough for one stoplight and a drinking fountain outside the courthouse, not to mention two. Nobody needs signs to say who can be where or do what. We all just know, and what we don’t know, we get told right quick by our mamas, our aunties, the church folk, or just someone passing on the side of the road.

At Fort Des Moines, we were segregated, sure, but not like this. At Fort Oglethorpe, there are signs—Colored Drinking Fountain and White Drinking Fountain; Colored Latrine and White Latrine. Annie and Phillipa march ahead of me in the line, and I see them stiffen right up. Those signs make me feel unwelcome, but we don’t have much time to think about it.

Other than the signs, there ain’t—isn’t—much difference between Fort Des Moines and Fort Oglethorpe except size. We still have classes just like at Fort Des Moines, and our training continues with Staff Sergeant Hill and a man this time, a Staff Sergeant Bothwell, who run us all over the place. In school, they give us pictures to look at so we can identify types of ships and types of enemy aircraft we might see in the sky. We look at guns of all kinds and have to memorize what kinds they are by sight. They show us maps of the whole world, and we look and see where Europe is, just a little bitty bit of land way over there across the Atlantic Ocean.

The first time I looked on the map, I couldn’t hardly tell what it was way out there. Europe didn’t look like much, but
that evil Hitler wants to take it anyway. Hitler also wants Russia, and that’s a big old country, bigger than the States, for sure. Staff Sergeant Bothwell says if we don’t stop him now, Hitler might just bring those Nazis this way.

Not if the Women’s Army Corps has anything to say about it!

Our second week, they teach us the “protocol” in case we get captured. That is a terrifying thought, but they tell us that the Germans know about the Geneva Convention, and they won’t kill us. They tell us what we can say—our name, rank, and serial number—and what we can’t say—nothing else. We won’t tell those Nazis nothing, but mostly ’cause we don’t know nothing
to
tell them.

As the days go on, we run through obstacle courses, climb over huge logs and up walls, and even wriggle around on our stomachs in the dirt under barbed wire. Our drills have something new: guns. The first time we ran our drills with our packs on our backs and I heard those guns go off above my head, I would like to have died. Me and just about every girl in our platoon started hollering and screaming as loud as she could. Ruby screamed, but she kept moving. She says her mama taught her to shoot back home. I screamed, but for a while, couldn’t nobody make me do nothing but put my hands over my head.

Toby. Mama. That night. It is all I could think of.

I didn’t do it anymore after the first time, but it makes me want to die every single time they pop those guns off over our heads. There is smoke and bright flashes, and it’s like we
are out running in the fires of hell. It works my nerves to hear all that noise, but Staff Sergeant Hill says a battle would be much, much worse, so we carry on, and we don’t let her hear us complain. I get used to filth and dust and dirt, sweat and grime and splinters, and I do myself proud, keeping my mouth closed when one of them smoke bombs goes off next to me. Can’t nothing scare me. I got muscles in my arms and legs now something fierce.