by Amy Stewart
I am trying to learn my French phrases, so I will close with
Tendrement—
Aggie
Norma to General Murray
June 18, 1918
Dear General Murray,
Yours of June 5 received last night. It was the first letter I’ve had by military courier. I’ve seen the man go by, but he’s never stopped at the women’s billet before. Do you know that he carries his letters in a sinkable pouch? We will leave no military correspondence for the Germans—if the ship is attacked, our letters go to the bottom of the ocean.
I was glad to hear that you’ve kept up your training duties at Fort Monmouth, but disappointed to learn that the hearing loss is worse. I still maintain that it was no reason to sideline you from the war. Half the men returning from the front complain of such ringing in their ears that we wonder if they’ll ever hear properly again. They manage, and so could you. But as you say, the Army ordains and we obey.
As to your request that I report back on the troubles we’re having with the pigeon program, I wouldn’t mind at all. I appreciate that it’s beyond your powers to intervene, and I wouldn’t ask it of you. But you’re right that the pigeon unit will continue beyond this war and (I shudder to think it) into the next. With that in mind, there is value in learning from our mistakes—and the mistakes are many, as you will see. A first-hand account, put down in the moment and not influenced by afterthoughts and second-guessing, could in fact be of use someday.
To begin, I’ll tell you this: When I arrived, I was horrified to see that our unit had set things up entirely backwards and had no idea how to proceed. The trainees were on the verge of adopting the British method, which would’ve been a disaster, or, worse, the French method, which would’ve sunk the entire enterprise. You can be sure that I told them so on my first day on duty. Would you believe that not a single one of them seemed to hear a word I said, after I’d come all this way to say it?
Worse still, they took such great satisfaction in reciting back to me the orders they’d been given, in spite of the fact that those orders have led to any number of horrors: rotten and contaminated feed, a fungal outbreak, cankers, lice, and (predictably, as a result of all this) feather-picking. We wouldn’t send a man to the front in that condition, and we can’t send a pigeon, either.
If the men had been told nothing at all, I wouldn’t blame them for the situation. As it is, they were given the wrong orders, carried them out with blind loyalty, and ignored the appalling results in front of them. For that I do place blame. I’d send them all home and run the place myself if it were within my power to do so.
But I’m not in command, Captain Buscall is. It would be a gross violation of protocol for me to give my unvarnished opinion of him, but it is strictly accurate to say that the man had never so much as fed a bread crumb to a pigeon before he took charge of our unit.
I hope that gives a general picture. More detailed reports will be forthcoming.
Yours in service,
Norma C. Kopp
Aggie to Constance
June 25, 1918
Dear Constance,
I hope you don’t mind if I continue to write to you. I know how eager you are to hear something of Norma’s work, and even she concedes that this is a story that shouldn’t bother the censor. It has very little to do with war-work, but might tell you something of how the villagers adapt to suddenly having to live among thousands of foreign soldiers. I did try to persuade Norma to write it out herself, but her version of events made no sense whatsoever and I took over the pen.
Your sister works in tight quarters, at an ancient stone fort that the French have not entirely relinquished to the Americans. I’ve not seen it myself, but it sounds like a frightful old medieval shambles of a place, with wooden beams either half-rotted or half-burned, or both, carved with the names of soldiers who have occupied it over the centuries. In some of the old stone rooms—dungeons, really, are what they sound like—men stationed there eons ago made little marks to count the days as they passed. It’s even surrounded by a moat and drawbridge. Honestly, it sounds horrible, but for some reason the French are quite proud of it and insisted on occupying it themselves as soon as the Americans expressed an interest.
Did the Americans leave politely, and find themselves another old ruin to inhabit? No, they did not. The Army simply took over the grounds surrounding the fort, built wooden barracks for the troops, and started constructing dovecotes and pigeon transport carts and all the other equipment required for the training program that Norma was sent here to put into place. This upset the French a great deal, as the fort’s old stone buildings had been cleverly hidden from view through years of building up mounds around them and letting vines cover the roofs. Now the new barracks stand in plain sight, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. Anyone flying over this town would see barracks everywhere. We’ve built an entire avenue of them just outside the old Roman gate. You should see it—it’s practically a second village.
Back to the fort: At any given time, there are a hundred or so soldiers assigned to the pigeon unit. Most consider it light duty and complain that their time is wasted on bird-keeping. Nonetheless, everyone is expected to finish a ten-day rotation, and some are assigned to stay longer to do general maintenance and chores. That means that two or three times a month, Norma is presented with a new class of bored and listless Signal Corps trainees who want nothing more than to return to town, where they might enjoy a late-night beer, paved streets to walk, and nurses with whom to keep company.
A requirement of the course is to load a cart with pigeons and to hitch it up to a weary-looking old horse conscripted from a nearby farm. Half the men are told to take the cart ten miles out into the countryside to release the pigeons, with messages tied to their legs, while the other half remain at the fort to receive the messages.
As Norma believes that those receiving the birds need more instruction than those releasing them, she generally stays behind. However, she recently learned that her students were not riding ten miles away as instructed. They were instead traveling only a mile, to a village even smaller than the one we occupy. It’s not even a village, really—just a cluster of buildings where two roads converge, with a half-dozen farmhouses beyond.
Here’s what was happening, in this most uncosmopolitan setting: The enterprising daughter of a pig farmer started running an impromptu café out of her father’s barn, offering cigarettes and home-made wine to any American who happened by. She could see Norma’s students coming, in their high-sided pigeon cart, from a good distance away, along the little lane that descends into the village. By the time they arrived, she’d have put out chairs and tables, a little glass cup of cigarettes, and a bottle of her father’s wine. Her father, away in the fields all day, never saw the café society his daughter had formed, but the neighbors knew.
Word reached the girl’s father soon enough. Yesterday he presented himself at the gates of the fort, with a hefty package of bacon wrapped in brown paper as a peace offering, and a polite but terse request that the soldiers find another porcher’s daughter to visit.
Apparently the commanders of Norma’s unit were not particularly bothered by it and in fact proposed a walk down to this particular village themselves, to investigate the situation and perhaps gain a fuller understanding of the farmer’s daughter who can turn a pig barn into a café.
Norma, however, was furious. It can’t be easy for her, as the only woman. As you can imagine, the men don’t see why they should take orders from her. I do know what that’s like. At the hospital, we have male orderlies who won’t listen to a nurse, even though she has medical training and he does not! It’s endlessly frustrating and causes needless delays and unnecessary errors. In Norma’s case, she feels like they’re making a mockery of a program that she has, in one way or another, worked a lifetime to perfect.
Now, as a consequence of this latest mishap, she accompanies all of her students on their pigeon runs, whether they like it or
not (and they don’t). She punished the offenders by requiring them to clean the dovecotes, and to undertake the endless repairs to the lofts that are necessary to keep out the very determined French rats, who adore the pigeons’ grain and have nothing better to do than to spend their nights gnawing through the wooden walls to get to it. The repairs are only temporary buttresses against the rats, but with metal in short supply, there is nothing to do but to constantly replace the chewed-up boards. It gives her great pleasure to inflict this chore on her errant students.
I must confess some sympathy for the soldiers. If a pig barn is to be their only entertainment, I say to let them have it. More than that, though, I admire the pluck of the farmer’s daughter, who contrived to bring a spark of life to what must otherwise be, for her, a lonely existence.
Every one of these young men has lost friends and brothers already, and none of them can say with certainty that they’ll ever see home again. Perhaps they deserve their merriment—but not on Norma’s watch!
Tendrement—
Aggie
P.S. As you can see, we have blue envelopes now for letters home, with the idea that they are not inspected as closely. I hope this one goes through.
Norma to General Murray
June 28, 1918
Dear General Murray,
I’m writing with news of a rather alarming meeting I just had with Captain Buscall. You may form your own assessment of him from my notes of our discussion, held in advance of the arrival of Colonel Hartman, who will be here next month to inspect and review our operation.
About these notes: When I first arrived at Fort de la Bonnelle, Captain Buscall mistook me for his secretary and asked me to take minutes of his meetings. You can be sure I corrected him without delay. I do nonetheless keep my own records of my meetings with him. This he objects to, for reasons I cannot fathom, as he was the one who wanted me taking notes in the first place.
Nonetheless, I will copy below my transcript of this week’s meeting. Disregard the business about the pig farmer’s daughter. It was an error in trainee oversight on my part that won’t be repeated.
buscall: Miss Kopp! I see you’ve been out with the boys to call on the pig farmer’s daughter. Did you send her my regards?
kopp: We send our trainees on a northern route now, toward Chaumont.
buscall: That girl’s going to get lonely.
kopp: You asked to see me, sir?
buscall: Yes. The pigeons aren’t working out at the front.
kopp: Beg pardon?
buscall: I can’t even begin to name all the problems we’ve had with them out there. I think we ought to—
kopp: If you wouldn’t mind naming them anyway, the rest of us might not know what they are.
buscall (after much unnecessary sighing and shuffling of papers): Very well, here it is. Only half the pigeons released at the front returned to their loft. The rest, for all we know, were intercepted by the Germans and their messages read.
kopp: The messages are in code, so the Germans don’t matter. Were they fed according to the schedule?
buscall: The Germans or the pigeons?
kopp: (Question appeared to be frivolous in nature, not answered.)
buscall: It really isn’t necessary to write down every word. This is what even the Army would consider an informal discussion.
kopp: The pigeons must be kept hungry if they are to return to their loft under difficult conditions. That is why, as you recall, we went to the trouble to test seven different feeding schedules and choose the one with the best results.
buscall (looking at ceiling, appearing not to recall the feeding schedules, in spite of numerous briefings, recorded on previous pages of this very log-book): It’s possible that you worked on that project on your own, Miss Kopp.
kopp: And then I typed out the correct schedule and had it printed for distribution. Are the men at the front capable of reading instructions, or shall we resort to drawing pictures?
buscall: That wasn’t the only problem.
kopp: It’s also possible that they released the males and females together.
buscall: What?
kopp: Didn’t you think to ask?
(Buscall shifts around in his chair but makes no reply.)
kopp: A male and female, released together, will not return to the loft but will go off to mate. They must be starved for both food and companionship if they are to return faithfully home.
buscall: I’ve been starved for food and companionship since I left Fort Monmouth, but nobody’s letting me return home.
kopp: (This, too, seemed a frivolous remark and not in need of a reply.)
buscall: You definitely don’t have to write down every word.
kopp: Then we’ll assume they ignored my instructions on that point as well. I believe this explains the problem of birds failing to return. What are the other complaints?
buscall: Do there have to be any others?
kopp: You said the problems were numerous, but you’ve only enumerated one, that of the pigeons failing to return. If you’ve been given a list, I’d like to hear it.
buscall(more sighing and sifting of papers): Let’s see. Pigeons dropped from aeroplanes were stripped of feathers.
kopp: As we have no aviation school nearby, we were unable to make adequate tests under my supervision. I’m sure you’ll recall that we wrote away to Issoudun, and the pilots there ran tests for us. The results were unambiguous.
(Kopp waits for Buscall to recall the results. He does not.)
kopp: Seventy miles per hour. The planes must be slowed to seventy miles per hour for a successful pigeon drop. Did they slow the planes?
(Kopp awaits response but receives none.)
kopp: I suppose no one knows or has bothered to inquire about the speed of the planes. Are there any other complaints, or do the too-numerous problems stop at two?
buscall: It says here that the rats ate the pigeons’ rations.
kopp: In the trenches?
buscall: Beg pardon?
kopp: The rats eating the rations. Is it happening in the trenches, or back at the loft?
buscall: In the trenches, miss. You just can’t imagine what it’s like out there.
kopp: I shouldn’t have to imagine, if you’d send me to the front so I could see for myself.
buscall (shrugs): Orders, miss.
kopp: Is that all?
buscall: Colonel Hartman’s had enough. He wants the program shut down. You can go over to Chaumont and work a switchboard if you like, but we’re getting out of the bird business.
kopp: I’ve already solved every problem you named, which is why I was sent here. The men simply aren’t following instructions. I’ll explain it to Colonel Hartman when he’s here next month.
buscall: Colonels don’t generally want things explained to them.
kopp: He can tell me that himself.
(end of meeting)
General Murray, you can see for yourself what I’m up against. If I had any sort of authority at all, I’d have all of this turned around and running the way you and I intended.
As it is, Colonel Hartman is due here in a month. I only hope he’s a man who can listen to reason. That would make him a rarity around this place.
Yours in service,
Norma C. Kopp
Norma to General Murray
July 2, 1918
Dear General Murray,
I have further evidence regarding the improper and inadequate deployment of pigeons to the front. My source is a reliable one: a soldier just in from the trenches.
This morning I stopped at the hospital where my bunk-mate, Aggie, works, to deliver one of her record-books. (She has charge of supplies and medicines at the hospital.) She’d left the book in our room after sitting up half the night to go over her sums and make sure nothing was amiss before the auditor began his review of her work. I knew she’d be frantic when she realized it was missing, but wouldn’t be allowed to run home and retrieve it.
The hospital, by the way, is nothing like what you might picture from your vantage point in New Jersey. By the time the Americans arrived here last fall, the only buildings left for us to commandeer for a hospital were the école maternelle and, next door, the école de filles. (The children have been sent home and nobody’s having babies right now anyway, so it’s just as well.) But imagine using a children’s school for a hospital! It’s entirely inadequate. The British have taken all the good buildings. This is our punishment for delaying so long in going into the war. I certainly hope President Wilson has been made to see the error in his decision.
Nonetheless, what we have for a hospital is a pair of two-story stone buildings, put up only ten or fifteen years ago but in the traditional style, with the local stone, a slate mansard roof, and carved scrollwork around the entrance. On the second floor are tall windows, where I often see a flock of pigeons gathered on the ledges. Aggie tells me that when she opens the shutters on a warm day, the birds venture inside for a taste of an infirm soldier’s lunch. They (the pigeons) seem to be descended from old French military stock from the last century. They’re far too sociable and inquisitive to make good messengers, so I haven’t bothered to capture one.
The hospital is guarded by a pair of young men from Wisconsin who serve no purpose, as they allow anyone inside. When I arrived this morning, I was permitted to walk right in, as they tend to assume that any woman in uniform is a nurse. There are too many uniforms to keep track of here, between the Army nurses, the YMCA and YWCA canteen workers, the Red Cross, and the British, Canadian, and Australian counterparts of all of these. Anyone with an armband and insignia might plausibly work for one or another of them.
My next obstacle was Betty Sanger, one of our Signal Corps operators, who is also billeted at my hotel. She runs the hospital switchboard and has been put in the untenable position of serving as a kind of informal greeter, which is wholly unsuited to her talents and training, but the Army puts us where it wants us and we don’t say a word about it, do we?
