by Amy Stewart
Fleurette has left for another tour with May Ward. I don’t suppose she’s written to you. I’m lucky to get a postcard myself. I know she writes to Helen—I run into her sometimes in Paterson, and she’s always had a letter from Fleurette when I have not. I suspect Helen knows quite a bit more about what she’s up to than I do.
I know you consider it frivolous for her to sing and dance her way through the war, but a little entertainment does lift the spirits of the men getting ready to go overseas.
What you might not see from your vantage point is that the waiting is absolutely miserable for the men in training. On one hand, they’re desperately eager to join the others in France, and to get in the middle of the action. On the other hand, they’re terrified of going and wonder if they’ll ever touch American soil again. If a night of entertainment relieves their cares for a few hours, that’s a useful service—as useful as sewing uniforms and rolling bandages, which is what she’d be doing otherwise.
And there’s no shortage of Army camps. She seems determined to visit every one of them and will have seen more of the country by the time the war ends than we ever will. She recently sent a panoramic postcard of Camp Cody, in New Mexico, where thirty thousand men live in the most desolate sand-strewn landscape. Imagine an endless run of white pyramid-shaped tents—so many that they vanish into the horizon—punctuated all too infrequently by water towers that couldn’t possibly satisfy the thirst of so many men. The rows of long, low wooden barracks likewise march so far into the distance that they disappear. Where they found the lumber to build them I can’t guess, because there isn’t a tree to be seen anywhere.
In addition to sandstorms and scorpions, the men contend with the occasional German, sneaking up from Mexico by way of El Paso to have a look at the enemy. Our agents down there have a nice collection of them now, all stewing in a military jail and refusing to say a word against the Kaiser.
Speaking of our agents, and the Germans—a munitions plant in Syracuse was almost entirely destroyed in an explosion recently. Fifty men died and of course all those explosives—just waiting to be sent overseas—went up in flames. It’s a horrible tragedy and a massive blow to our side. I’m told they manufactured a quarter of the dynamite we ship to France.
Because it’s in the papers, I’m at liberty to tell you that Mr. Bielaski sent me, along with a few other agents, up to Syracuse for a few days to investigate. There’s no evidence so far of German meddling. It only takes one spark, and a building goes up. That can happen by accident no matter how much care they take. Nonetheless, the mood at the Bureau has grown tense over it. We saw so many attacks of this sort carried out by the Germans on our soil last year, and we were always too late to stop it. Now we’re in the highest state of alarm over the possibility that they’ve rebuilt their network and resumed their attacks. Every fire, every train derailment, every outbreak of smallpox or anthrax is treated with suspicion and investigated as a possible act of sabotage.
We’re so eager to hear from you again, so send us a word when you can. Bessie’s been wanting to bake a treat for you, but fears it wouldn’t survive an ocean voyage. There’s something called a trench cake made with raisins, brown sugar, and a stick of something-or-other that we’re meant to believe takes the place of butter and eggs. They seem to make it to France all right, according to the girls in the parlor. Could you use one of those?
We’re always told to send more durable foodstuffs overseas—hard candy, for instance, or coffee, along with tobacco and razors. I doubt razors and tobacco hold much appeal to you, except for bartering purposes. Please know that we’re happy to send anything at all that might be of use, however trivial—you have only to ask.
Give our best to Aggie, and the birds.
Yours—
Constance
Constance to Fleurette
July 20, 1918
F—
Would you look at this! Apparently the way to get a letter from Norma is to order her to write one and to assign a topic. I could do with a little less architecture and French history and a bit more in the way of current events, but I’ll take it. At least I’ve shamed her into writing longer letters.
Can you imagine Norma in a place like that? I can only assume that she holds the entire village in a state of terror, and that the Army has been made to regret its association with her.
Regardless, this is the most correspondence we’ve had in months. I believe this roommate of hers is a good influence. As long as we hear from one or the other of them, I’m satisfied.
I hope this finds you well. I’m building quite a collection of postcards of the Army camps, so do keep sending them. It’s amazing how they all look the same. I didn’t know we had such vast, flat, treeless spaces in America, all conveniently situated along rail lines, but apparently there are several dozen at least, and you’ll see them all before the war’s over.
Yours,
C.
Fleurette to Constance
July 25, 1918
C—
For your collection, a postcard from Camp Travis, in Texas. Horrified to learn that Norma now keeps written records to help her win arguments with her superiors. Is there any chance of her leaving that habit in France? I suppose we ought to have warned the Army about her—I can only imagine her issuing orders to a general. She wouldn’t do that, would she?
And is it really a fort, in the sense of an ancient stone edifice with a moat around it in the countryside? I can’t quite picture such a thing, but I suppose if I had to, Norma would be patrolling it like an alligator, snapping at invaders.
Yours,
F.
Fleurette
Camp Pike, Little Rock, Arkansas
Constance to Fleurette
July 28, 1918
F—
Such a celebration over Soissons! Did they ring the bells in San Antonio? It was bedlam here, with the factory whistles going all at once, the fire station sounding its alarms, the church bells ringing, motor cars honking their horns, street-car bells jangling, and even a little music from a marching band. There are a few naysayers who insist that Pershing reclaiming that bit of territory and taking four thousand prisoners should not be interpreted as a sign of victory to come, but we can’t help but cheer and ring our bells, we’re all so desperate for encouraging news. People were crying and kissing in the streets—can you imagine how it must’ve been in Paris?
I’ll be away for a few days, owing to some trouble with a brewery in Pennsylvania. The brewers are all German, and as such the War Department loves to listen in. I’m to ingratiate myself to the wives and keep one ear attuned to the men’s conversations. For once, Mr. Bielaski doesn’t want me to change my name or pretend I don’t know what they’re saying. The idea is that I’ll present myself as a nice German lady this time, and see how far I get.
Bessie had me over for Sunday dinner on a Friday, because I’ll be gone over the week-end. There was no dessert, as just last week she put everything she had into a cake for Norma and Aggie. It was her own version of a pineapple upside-down cake, made with fruit that she very cleverly dried and candied before our own days of rationing. She’s been hoarding the coconut as well (how she manages to keep her hands out of it, day after day, is beyond me—I would’ve eaten it on cereal if I’d had it in my pantry), and found that it worked as a sweetener.
It was otherwise, she claims, “just a plain cake” made with an assortment of what passes for flour these days, and a good portion of Sav-An-Eg, which is meant to take the place of eggs in a recipe, although no one would ever mistake it for the real thing. Regardless, you know that Bessie works a wonder with what she has. This was her first time with this recipe, and she’s anxious to know how it travels. She hopes the extra lemon juice preserves it. We might not know for a month or two, as the mail is just crawling over from France these days.
Bessie wants to know if they’re feeding you anything more than Army rations. If it wasn’t for her, I’d waste away on boarding-ho
use fare.
Yours,
C.
Fleurette to Constance
August 5, 1918
C—
Your letter landed just before we left Camp Travis. I’m off to Little Rock next. The food at the camps is dreadful but at least there’s plenty of it. Tell Bessie I expect her to feed me every day for a week when I’m home next.
There’s nothing new to report here. Camp is muddy. We trudge around in boots now, and carry our slippers. Our costumes are twice as dirty, and we spend our days on laundry and the scrubbing out of stains. Isn’t it glamorous?
Yours,
F.
Fleurette to Helen Stewart
August 7, 1918
Dearest Helen,
It was our rotten luck to be held over in San Antonio for two more nights, the trains out of town being too crowded for Mrs. Ward’s liking. The consolation prize for waiting around so long was the last-minute arrival of not one, but two of your letters! That’s one advantage to staying put for a week. You and I might have something like a proper conversation via the mails for once.
Mrs. Ward’s objection to the crowded trains, by the way, was not entirely unreasonable. We would’ve had to stand the whole way, or take the seats the boys offer us and be gracious about it, but even then, we end up crammed together, our bags in our laps and our feet getting trampled, and nothing to look at but the belt-loops of the men crushed in all around us. Truly, you can hardly breathe. Usually the men are jolly and beg us to sing a song, but sometimes they’re awfully somber and we feel like fools, riding along to the next camp to put on another silly show, while they prepare to face the enemy.
It’s generous of you to imagine that I’m out serving my country. It hardly feels that way to me. You, my darling, are making a far greater sacrifice by taking charge of all those little brothers of yours while your father toils away in some surgery in France. They never would’ve let him go otherwise—a widower with dependent children would’ve been strictly unwelcome in our Army, even if he is a doctor. You remember how desperately my brother wanted to go, but at the first hint of a wife and children (not to mention his advanced age—43! The Army would require a geriatric ward!), they sent him straight back to Hawthorne.
What I’m doing doesn’t amount to anything. The camps are not exactly starved for entertainment. Every orchestra, every circus act, every comedic troupe—they are all gainfully employed in trotting from camp to camp, singing and dancing and high-stepping in front of the largest audiences most of them have ever seen. There are never any worries about selling tickets: the men are practically required to attend. If only Broadway worked the same, every mediocre act from Poughkeepsie would be guaranteed a full house.
I’m just not sure that by putting on our little show, we do a thing to lighten their burdens or relieve their cares. So many of these boys are marking time—another evening in the auditorium, another day, another week, another month—and then they’re off to France, to live in a water-logged trench and shoot at Germans. We’re marking time also—four nights in Arkansas, then a day to get to Kansas, then another week down the road somewhere, and what does it add up to?
If I sound like I’m complaining of the tedium, it’s not that, exactly. It’s the feeling that something enormous and consequential is happening Over There—and we are here, shuffling from place to place, singing our ditties while the fighting goes on.
* * *
I STARTED THIS letter from the train station back in San Antonio. It being impossible to write on the train, I put it away until evening. We’re settled now at Camp Pike, just outside Little Rock. I’ll be here for only four days, so there’s not much use in writing to me, but I enclose the address anyway.
May Ward has thrown another fit and refuses to stay at the YWCA’s Hostess House. She’s hopelessly attached to the way things used to be and can’t give up her old habits. She likes a good downtown hotel, a room with a telephone (and a man on the other end of the line who brings up a tray of drinks whenever she calls for it), and a hot bath at any time of the day or night. Oh, and she doesn’t mind a crowded lobby, where she might appear in an evening dress and act surprised when someone chases after her for an autograph.
Nothing of the sort is on offer at the Hostess House. You can imagine exactly what species of place it is: a hastily knocked-together rooming house, with a great central room for cards, games, and a library of moldering old donated books. Bedrooms the size of a closet, fitted with two bunks each, and a bathroom down the hall that’s always occupied. Breakfast cheerfully served at six, tea and bits of something dry and stale at three, etc.
At the Hostess House we are chaperoned, but not in the hardened “I know what you’re up to” style of Mrs. Ironsides, that lady hired to tour with us in the old days. She was at least a worthy adversary. Here we’re looked after in the far more irritating “I shall shower you with motherly affection and watchfulness” of a Mrs. Brady (or whatever she’s called, there’s one of her at every camp). There’s something quite deliberate and self-conscious in the way they carry out their matronly duties, almost as if they’re auditioning for a part.
What galls me about Mrs. Brady—and again, I refer generally to all the Mrs. Bradys, not only this one in particular—is her earnest belief that we girls are just as anxious to be sheltered from the menace posed by five thousand khaki-clad men living in tents as she is to shelter us from it. She’s forever reassuring us that we are as protected and looked after as we ever were at home—as if any of us want looking after any more.
Here was the scene when we arrived:
Mrs. Brady came bustling out to the porch and called, “Ladies! Welcome. You’ll want to take the afternoon to get settled.”
There wasn’t much settling for us to do as there was no room in which to do it. For porters we had three weary old men who’d found new occupations for themselves in the shuttling of visitors from train station to camp and back. They had already dragged and kicked our trunks down the hall and pushed them into the aforementioned closet-sized rooms. There was no hope of having anything pressed or blocked or even hung decently on a hanger, so we saw no need to unpack.
“Oh, we’re quite settled. I believe we’re at our liberty,” Eliza proposed. She tries this gambit at every camp, and it has never once won us the least bit of liberty.
It wasn’t going to work on Mrs. Brady, either. “Oh, then you’ll want to write your letters home, and tell them where you’ve landed. We put out writing-paper at two, and the postman comes at three, and then you girls can help me with the tea, and . . .”
That was when May Ward rebelled. You would’ve thought she was covered in fleas, the way she jerked about and itched at the very idea of letters and tea. She’d had only the tiniest brandy and soda before we left for the train station that morning, which put her roughly three brandies and sodas behind schedule.
As Mrs. Brady was unlikely to put out a seltzer-bottle and sliced lemons on a tray any time soon, May ventured to ask, “Mightn’t I take a glass of ice cubes off to my room, and a lump of sugar, if you can spare one?”
The sugar, added to the afternoon’s drinks, comprises Mrs. Ward’s only nourishment until her after-theater supper.
Mrs. Brady—suspecting nothing, as near as I could tell—said breezily, “We do without the conveniences of ice and such things, just as the boys will in France, but sit down right here and let me fetch you a glass of water. I believe you’re to share a room with our Gwennie—”
At that May slumped into a chair, as if overcome, and said faintly, “But we wired ahead and requested a single room.”
Mrs. Brady, already on her way to the kitchen for a glass of clear and untainted water, didn’t even bother to turn around.
“We’re full to the rafters tonight,” she called, “and you’ll adore Gwennie. She’s a water-colorist, if you can imagine that. Ask to see her sketches!”
May looked perfectly stricken at the idea. She collected her hat, tucked her pocke
tbook under her arm, and smiled weakly at all of us. She didn’t have to tell us where she was going. Some man lingering outside with an automobile (there’s always a man lingering about with an auto when the great May Ward needs one, don’t ask me how she does it) would spirit her off to the nearest hotel, which is probably an hour away. Once tucked into a comfortable suite, she’ll get caught up on her brandies and sodas and make tearful, unimaginably expensive telephone calls home to Freeman, after which she’ll be an hour late for her thirty-minute call, if she turns up at all.
I, on the other hand, write my letters, and Mrs. Brady approves. Give those little red-headed boys a kiss from me, and here’s one for you, too.
Affectionately,
Fleurette
Fleurette to Helen
August 8, 1918
Dearest Helen,
I’m writing to you at the end of what I can only hope is the most disastrous twenty-four hours of my so-called war-time service. It ended with one of us being released from “girl jail” with a case of cooties to remember it by, another one of us banned indefinitely from the stage, and the remaining six so scared of meeting the same fate that they’re considering running off to the nearest convent.
