by Amy Stewart
I didn’t want to hand over the record-book and risk it going astray. Betty promised to track down Aggie for me, but just then, a train-load of wounded men were carried in, still encrusted in filth from the trenches and wearing the most ghastly bandages from the field hospital. I’d never seen such a mess. She quite naturally had to see to them. I was made to wait.
I tucked myself into a seat in the corner with a book—I always bring a book, if I might have to wait, and as you know, so much of war-work involves waiting—but soon found myself face-to-face with an American private, laid out on a stretcher parked directly in front of me. He introduced himself as Forrest Pike.
“Good day, sir,” I said to him.
“I’m no sir, I’m a private. Call me Forrest, nurse.”
“I’m no nurse,” I told him, but didn’t offer my name. It’s best not to strike up an acquaintanceship with a wounded soldier. They expect you to visit, and then you do, and one day you turn up and they’ve gone gangrenous and there’s nothing to say after that.
Forrest held up a bandaged hand. “Lost a finger,” he announced, grinning. “Care to guess which one?”
“Not particularly,” I told him, and leaned around his stretcher to see if Betty had found Aggie. She had not.
“Well, you don’t need to worry,” Forrest said. “It’s only a pinky. I can handle Emma Gee without it. They’ll fix me up and send me back to the front.”
“As they should,” I said. “We’re expected to give our all, not just our pinkies.”
He liked that. “That’s just what my sergeant said to me. They should make you a sergeant, miss.”
“I hold the rank of lieutenant, but not the title.” I never miss an opportunity to remind anyone associated with the military of this fact, even a private.
“Is that right? Do they have lady captains here, and lady majors?”
I looked around again for Betty, but she remained occupied with the wounded coming in. The injured are packed into rail-cars, practically stacked like cord-wood, and it’s no small feat to ferry them up the hill from the station and into the hospital. There’s a funicular, but it is both too compact and too leisurely for war-time duty.
With nothing else to do but wait, I told Private Pike about the pigeon program and our training school just outside of town.
He grew quite excited at that and said, “Is that right? Do you mean to say that you’re the one who sent those birds out to us?”
Betty returned at that moment and waved me over, but I didn’t move. This was just the information I’d been looking for. “How many have you had?”
Forrest lay back and held up his bandaged hand, as if to count, which I suppose he meant in jest but it’s impossible to know.
“A dozen or so. There was a white one in the last batch—he was especially friendly, like he’d been raised by hand—”
That was King, one of mine. “He had been,” I told him. “Did he have a little scar on top of his head?”
“Now, how did you know that?”
That poor bird had been pecked by the others and left for dead, but I don’t like to tell a wounded soldier a story like that. “Doesn’t matter. How did they do?”
“Do? Well, I wanted to keep that white feller for a pet, he was so friendly and knew so many tricks—”
“He would shake your hand,” I said.
“Yes! Did you teach him that?”
Now, General Murray, you have probably already guessed at what happened here. I raised this one myself, after the others pecked at him. The wound on his head was wide open, as big as the end of your thumb. It’s a wonder he survived. For two weeks he lived in my room at night, sleeping in a little box right next to me in bed, under the covers, because he needed the warmth if he was to survive. I carried him through the streets of the village and out to the fort with me every day, and back home again at night, until he was well.
By the time he recovered, he’d developed this little trick of shaking hands. He liked to reach out with one leg and wrap his splayed toes around a finger as if in greeting. I didn’t teach it to him—you know I don’t go in for tricks and entertainments—but it is the custom of the men in this village to shake hands when they met, even if only passing briefly in the street. A man can’t run an errand without giving a dozen handshakes along the way. I suppose King saw the men doing it and took to it.
I didn’t tell Forrest Pike any of that. I just let him talk.
He said, “Well, I liked him, but the fellas wouldn’t let me keep him. They found a lady in the village who said she’d need an even dozen to make a pie. The French do have a way with birds.”
He said it with such appreciation! Reverence, even!
Well, I told him in no uncertain terms that the bird in question could have saved his life, had he not baked it into a pie.
“How’s that, nurse? Lieutenant, I mean. You never did give me your name. Most of the girls give their name and an address where I can write.”
It hardly need be said that I’m not about to carry on a correspondence with a soldier, particularly one who ate a military asset for dinner.
“The next time you receive a shipment of pigeons at the front, read the instructions,” I told him.
“Instructions?” Forrest asked. “There wasn’t so much as a card enclosed. We didn’t know who to thank.”
Well, there you have it. My birds were sent to the front with no orders at all. Imagine the men in the trenches, receiving a basket of birds like a package from home! It’s no wonder they ate them.
Colonel Hartman is due any day now. I expect he’ll put a stop to this nonsense and get our program back on track, the way it was meant to be.
As ever,
Norma
Norma to Constance
July 8, 1918
Dear Constance,
The war moves at double time, but our letters travel at a crawl. As I sit to write this, I’m guessing that the letter I sent you a month ago has only just sailed into New York Harbor.
You might accuse me of being maddeningly vague in what I am about to say, but if I put down too much more it would only get struck out by the censor, to whom I send my greetings and commendations. At least someone can be counted upon to do his job properly.
The most I can tell you is that things are unraveling. Nothing about my program has gone the way I expected it to. Everything we so painstakingly built in New Jersey has been taken apart. There seems to be little I can do about it, for as you know, I have no real authority and am being treated like a member of the Ladies Auxiliary. This in spite of the fact that I wear the uniform, am subject to a chain of command, and, most important, am not free to leave—even if I wanted to, and I don’t.
What bothers me is not my own position but that of our program. It’s treated as a frivolity, as a nineteenth-century relic, put here to appease the old generals like our friend Gen. Murray back in New Jersey, but having no relevance in today’s war. Nothing could be further from the truth—but the young men running things over here have never been to war and have no appreciation for the tried and true. If it’s new and electric-powered, they believe it will defeat the Germans through its sheer novelty. If that were the case, we could show them a moving picture and be done with it.
And I hardly need tell you that when compared to the machines, guns, and aeroplanes, my program costs almost nothing. If it saved only one life, it would be worth it. But what if it saves millions?
Aggie would want me to write more of our everyday lives, the village, the countryside . . . but I’m in no mood tonight. Meals are adequate, bed is clean, and so on. Send socks at any opportunity.
As ever,
Norma
Norma to General Murray
July 15, 1918
Dear General Murray,
I hardly know how to begin.
What follows is an account of my meeting with Colonel Hartman, which took place this morning. The minutes are incomplete due to the meeting having already commenced wh
en I arrived, in spite of my turning up fifteen minutes early.
I don’t know what was discussed before I walked in, but it was obvious that a decision had already been made and I was merely to be told of it and sent on my way.
I’ll put my records here and you can judge for yourself.
buscall: Oh, here she is. I was just telling Bob—Colonel Hartman here—about that business with the pig farmer’s daughter.
kopp: It’s been taken care of, and the offenders punished.
hartman: Well, don’t punish them too much. It’s not exactly Gay Par-ee out here.
kopp: I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.
buscall (clears throat): Colonel Hartman, Miss Kopp here was recruited by General Murray back in New Jersey to work on our pigeon program in Fort Monmouth. Then they shipped her over here like all the other birds.
hartman (slaps Captain Buscall on the back): You mean she didn’t fly?
kopp: I traveled in standard accommodations. The birds went in steerage.
hartman: Of course you did. And how do you find France, Miss Kopp? Have you picked up a word of French since you’ve been here? I hear the ladies do better with languages than the fellows do. I can’t make out a word they’re saying.
kopp: Je parle très bien français car ma mère et ma grand-mère le parlaient à la maison.
hartman: Oh—well, you do all right then, don’t you?
kopp: (No reply as none seemed necessary.)
buscall: Miss Kopp likes to record our meetings in her note-book. I’ve told her it’s only an informal discussion, but she puts it all down anyway, every word.
hartman: My wife keeps a diary. Locks it in a drawer, as if an Army colonel has time to go snooping through a lady’s things.
kopp: I understand there have been some difficulties with the deployment of pigeons at the front, owing to the fact that the men weren’t given proper instructions, in spite of our having printed a manual for this very purpose.
hartman: An Army manual, published out of this fort? That would take months to get approved, and I haven’t even seen it yet.
kopp: Captain Buscall has had it for months.
buscall: I’m a busy man, Miss Kopp. Do you see all the papers on this desk? If we could bury the Huns in paperwork, we’d have won the war by now.
hartman: What you need is a secretary. We should get a girl in here to sort you out. Say, I wonder if Miss Kopp would like to—
kopp: Nonetheless, the pigeon manual is written, and it’s a substantial improvement over the British manual, which the Army was on the verge of adopting word for word, to say nothing of the belles-lettres the French tried to pass off as some sort of instructional text.
hartman: That’s just fine, Miss Kopp, but the pigeons are too much damn trouble, if you’ll pardon my language. It takes a week to acclimate them to a new loft. We don’t have a week at the front. They can only fly by day, and even then only if there’s no fog or gas. Speaking of gas, it’s enough of a chore for my men to carry their own gas masks, much less those damned rubber contraptions to cover the pigeon baskets. We simply cannot be thinking about a basket of birds during a gas attack.
kopp: I’ve already designed a better—
hartman (interrupting): It’s not just the gas. They get muddy in the trenches and then they can’t fly. You’ve no idea what the trenches are like, Miss Kopp.
kopp: No, because I’m not allowed—
hartman (interrupting again): You’re damned right you’re not allowed. The trenches are no place for a lady, or a bunch of birds in a cage. You’ve seen what the men look like when they come in. Covered in mud from head to toe, trench foot so bad they can’t walk, and eaten up with cooties besides. No, it’s a mess out there, and the birds are only making it worse.
kopp: But without any telephone wires in the trenches—
hartman (interrupting again): Without any telephone wires, we send runners.
kopp: A runner could be killed, and they can travel only a few miles per hour, while a bird—
hartman (interrupting yet again): A runner could be killed, and they are. That’s war.
kopp: And it’s far more trouble to keep a runner fed and looked after in the trenches, as compared to a pigeon.
hartman (pushing back his chair, requiring all to rise): Here’s my order. Carry on with the program, but don’t send us another bird. I’m not shipping any of you home. I’d never get Pershing to allow an able-bodied man to leave in the middle of this mess. I can’t reassign all of you, either. I’d have to write too many damn reports. So you’re to proceed as usual. Raise your birds, train them, whatever else you do here. Just don’t send any out.
kopp: Why would we bother if they’re not going to be of any use?
hartman: It’s been fifteen months since President Wilson ordered us into this war, but the offensive has only just begun. Do you know why? Because General Pershing wanted us to be ready. Entirely ready. He didn’t want to send a hundred men at a time with no decisive path to victory. He figured that the Brits and the French could hold off the Huns for another year while we got ready, and that’s what happened—except for this pigeon nonsense. You had a year to get it operational, and it isn’t. It’s too late now. Everything’s moving too quickly. Pershing intends to be home for Christmas. We’re moving on.
kopp: But what if we—
hartman (interrupting again): Keep this program operational, and I mean fully operational. If Pershing orders a cart-load of pigeons a month from now, then by God you’d better have a cart ready to ship.
kopp: We have a dozen carts ready to ship today, and a manual to go with them.
buscall: The meeting’s concluded, Miss Kopp. You may finish your notes outside.
(end of meeting)
There you have it. I don’t suppose word of this decision will reach you through any other channel, as it appears to be something that both Captain Buscall and Colonel Hartman intend to keep quiet. We’re to pretend to carry on a military mission when in fact we’re doing nothing but raising birds for our own amusement. I could’ve stayed home and done that, had I wished to. Instead, I thought I’d come all this way to serve a useful role in a vital Army communications program. That it could be so carelessly tossed away is unfathomable.
As you might imagine, I cannot countenance sending our men into battle without the communication equipment they require. The meeting may be concluded, but our program is not.
I trust you will keep this in confidence and await my next report. Must close as I have a great deal of work to do in light of these developments.
Yours in service,
Norma C. Kopp
Constance to Norma
July 18, 1918
Dear Norma,
It was so good to have a letter from you at last, and from Aggie! The mail’s been exceptionally slow lately. None of the girls in the parlor have had a letter in weeks. It’s torture for some of them, wondering what’s become of their brothers and beaus. They do take comfort in the fact that news of a death seems to reach our shores much faster than a note from a soldier who is alive and well. As long as they hear nothing, they believe their men to be safe.
I had been telling myself all along that you wouldn’t be allowed near the trenches, and as such I shouldn’t worry—although now that I think about it, maybe they should send you to the front. One good scolding from you and the Germans would surrender. Nonetheless, do continue to write at any opportunity, and reassure me that you’re well away from the shelling and the gas.
I worry also over these hints of problems with your program. It can’t be easy, keeping everything running the way you’d like in the chaos of war. The Army must have its own way of doing things, and I suspect that isn’t always in perfect alignment with how you’d want it done. I wish you could tell me all about it, but I know you can’t. Still, say as much as you can, and let me guess at the rest.
As for my own work—Mr. Bielaski keeps me busy, but there simply isn’t as
much life-and-death, chase-them-down-and-arrest-them-in-the-nick-of-time investigative work left for the Bureau to do any more. The more competent German saboteurs—the ones setting fires at munition plants and sinking ships—seem to have fled the country once we entered the war. Our best guess is that they feared execution as enemy spies. Whatever the reason, they’re mostly operating in Mexico now, where we can’t get to them.
If you read the American papers, you might have some idea of the work I and my fellow agents are doing. Slacker raids, of course, although I’ve yet to meet a man who wants to avoid military service. They’re all too eager to go. We are also obliged to investigate propagandist publications, a job that consists entirely of reading newspapers. You’d be perfect for it.
But mostly, I’ve been assigned to exactly the sort of anti-unionist espionage that I find distasteful. The factory owners are convinced that if their workers strike, it undermines the war effort. They’ve managed to bring the War Department around to this way of thinking, and have convinced them to dispatch government agents like me to quell uprisings. So I spend my days lurking around factories and listening for rumblings of union organizing among the women.
But, Norma, they are entirely right to organize! You wouldn’t believe the filth and noise in some of these places, and the way every little mistake is deducted from a worker’s paycheck, until she takes home hardly anything at all. To the extent that the girls complain about their employers, they’re entirely justified. For instance, they prefer clean toilets, and an opportunity to use them, but they get neither. I was sent in last week to spy on a fuse line, and the place was so filthy and noisy that I nearly led a riot myself.
You asked about the farm. I have been out to take a look around. You needn’t worry about the house. You’re right that the girls are running the dairy now. They’re bringing the cows over to graze in our fields, they’re in and out of our barn every day, and they eat their lunches on our front porch. I think they enjoy getting away from their mothers and having a little piece of the business that they can manage on their own. Don’t worry—if they noticed even a cracked pane of glass, they’d tell me. They did say that they missed seeing your pigeons around and didn’t believe me when I said they’d been deployed to France.
