Basic Training of the Heart

by Jaycie Morrison

  “Teresa Owens,” she abruptly shuddered forth, almost surprising herself. “But everyone j-just calls me Tee, c-c-cause that’s usually all I c-c-can get out.” Then she added, “I volunteered b-b-because…” She trailed off, trying to catch her breath again. “Because we lost the farm and…if I’m not r-running the plow, I’m just another m-mouth to feed. No one in town would hire m-me and there warn’t nowhere else for me t-to go.”

  Some of the other girls were looking at the ground, embarrassed, but Bett saw Tee relax a bit when Rains gave an encouraging nod. Then the sergeant turned to her with a questioning look as the rest of the group waited anxiously.

  “Oklahoma,” Smythe said with some certainty, thankful that the stutter had not covered up the twanging vowels of the southwest. “Perhaps near Tulsa?”

  Owens’s eyes opened wider. “She’s right!” A cheer went up and Bett breathed a sigh of relief.

  The third recruit was a pleasant looking auburn-haired woman in her late thirties. “Barbara Ferguson,” she said clearly, “but you can call me Barb.” Her face turned solemn. “My husband got called up last month. He’s going into the Air Force and I thought there must be some way I could do my part, too. I know we all wanna do whatever we can to get our men home soon as possible.”

  While the others nodded sympathetically, Bett smiled. Barb’s broad a’s and dropped r’s could only mean one thing. “Massachusetts. Boston, or perhaps Cape Cod,” she announced and the group cheered again as Barb smiled.

  “Boston, Hyde Park,” she confirmed.

  The thin girl gave her name as Helen Tucker. Still unwilling to look up, she mumbled angrily into the ground, her shoulders slumping. “My daddy was a miner. He got killed last month. My brother’s already in the Army so there wasn’t no one else to work for us. My auntie says the Army’s givin’ three meals and a bed, along with money each month. So I figure I need to learn me a trade.” Her head turned toward Tee and her voice seemed to strengthen. “Maybe just ’cause we’re girls don’t mean we hafta always be dependin’ on somebody else. Maybe not anymore.” Tee managed a small grateful smile, drawing in another shuddering breath.

  A few of the other girls murmured in agreement and everyone seemed to stand a little straighter. The sergeant’s expression softened. “My brother is in the Army too, Private,” she said, her voice low. “That means our brothers are brothers, as we will be sisters.”

  Helen’s head came up slowly. Her light green eyes met the sergeant’s dark ones defiantly for several seconds. What passed between them, Smythe couldn’t see, but when Rains offered no reprimand, Helen’s gaze finally shifted into the distance. In the silence, Smythe cleared her throat. “Kentucky. Western Kentucky.”

  By then, Helen herself had straightened almost to attention. “Damn right,” she said, startling the line into a laughing applause.

  Waiting for the enthusiasm to die down, Rains turned to study Smythe. She was surprised to see Smythe looking directly at her, although when their eyes met, Smythe dropped hers at once. Sensing some kind of discomfiture, Rains turned back to the group.

  “Now, ladies.” Her tone was sterner now. “Tell me the truth and we will stop this now with no laps to run. Did you make this up as a prank on the train on the way here?”

  Rains listened closely for signs of deceit, but the group denials were instantaneous and sincere.

  “No way.”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The tough-looking dark-haired girl standing to the right of Smythe joined in, jerking her thumb in Smythe’s direction as she spoke. “Queenie here wasn’t even on the train with us, Sarge. She got in the truck from some big fancy car. I saw it.”

  When one or two of the others began nodding in agreement, Rains jumped in quickly. “You’re out of line, Private.”

  “Yeah, but, I’m just tryin’ to explain how this couldn’t be no setup, see?” insisted the speaker, turning back to Smythe. “Go on, Queenie, do your magic. Jo Archer. Here to defend the good ole US of A. From…?”

  Getting the slightest affirmative motion from Rains, Bett finished in a fair imitation of Jo’s strong accent. “New York, New York.” More laughter and cheers followed as Archer shook her fists triumphantly, and Bett thought she might have seen the corners of Rains’s severe mouth turn up just a bit.

  After Norwegian-looking Phyllis Kendrick, who had a nephew in the Navy and wanted to do something positive while waiting for a teaching job to open up, was correctly identified as being from Minnesota, the brown-haired, brown-eyed girl on Bett’s left introduced herself as Maria Rangel who was following the example of her cousin, a nurse who was already stationed in the Pacific. “Texas,” Smythe said after a few seconds’ thought. “South Texas?”

  “No,” Maria said, a bit sadly. “I live in New Mexico.” A chorus of groans cut off when Rangel brightened as she added, “But I was born in Texas.”

  Private Smythe turned to her sergeant. “Once a Texan, always a Texan?” she tried, her eyebrows raised persuasively. Rains folded her arms across her chest and responded with a kind of grunt that everyone seemed to take as a yes, and the cheering resumed.

  In the entire row, Bett’s only miss came on Irene Dodd, a tired-looking older woman who rejected Bett’s guess of Illinois as incorrect but declined to give a specific right answer, only saying, “I’m from all over. We moved a lot.”

  “And why are you here?” asked Rains, over the girls’ sighs of disappointment. Dodd had not volunteered this information either.

  “I don’t know,” Dodd replied, almost disinterestedly. “Some guy give me a paper to sign outside the grocery where I worked. Said it would help end the war faster. A couple of weeks later, I get a notice in the mail to report here.”

  There were a few seconds of silence, as if no one knew how to respond to this.

  “Okay, Queenie, it’s your turn, anyway,” crowed Jo, flushed with their success. “And I’ll do the guessing,” she added with certainty, puffing her chest a bit.

  “Well, my name is Elizabeth Frances Pratt…Smythe,” she began, her clipped British accent bringing the group to a courteous silence. “My friends at boarding school used to call me Pratt, because it sounds so much like brat, I think.” The group laughed easily. “But my family calls me Bett. My mother wanted it to be Beth, you know, from Elizabeth, but my little sister couldn’t say the h, so she called me Bett, and it just stuck.” She looked imploring at Jo and then took in the rest of the group. “But please, not Queenie. I admire Her Majesty, of course, but in spite of my accent I am an American—a proud American.”

  Her patriotic assertion was met with scattered applause and some ragged cheers. “And your reason for being here?” prodded Rains.

  Pushing her wavy blond hair back behind her ears, Smythe replied, “I had just left England when the war broke out there. I still have many friends and colleagues who are suffering through this terrible struggle.” She sobered as she added, “My father sent me away to school so I would learn to think for myself. When I came back to the US five years ago and begin doing just that, he was horrified. I was briefly employed as a teaching assistant at a local college, but enrollment dropped so dramatically once we entered the war that I was let go. So my father began trying to introduce me to polite society through endless boring parties, but I was able to dodge most of that drudgery, partly by volunteering in at the Red Cross and with the USO.” She looked down for a moment, and her voice softened. “I—I actually know…knew…someone who was killed recently in one of those horrible rocket attacks on London, so the war has become more than just news to me.” There were some sympathetic murmurs and nodding of heads. Her voice strengthened. “Shortly after that news I was taking a different route to the USO, trying to avoid a terrible traffic jam, and I saw the WAC recruiting office. It just seemed to call to me. I guess my family still thinks I’ve lost my mind, but there it is. And here I am,” she added, with the slighte
st curtsey.

  Most of the group was smiling as they turned to Jo for her assessment, but Jo looked completely lost. “How do you do this again?” she asked Bett, who only smiled and put a finger to her lips. Jo turned to the rest of the company. “I give up. Youse guys go figure it.”

  Names of numerous cities were suggested, but to each Bett only shook her head. “Why don’t you guess, Sarge?” Jo asked, when the calls had died out.

  Rains shook her head slightly at Jo. “Here is one important thing for you to understand, Private Archer. Your sergeant will never guess. Your sergeant will always know. Los Angeles, California.”

  She shifted her eyes to Smythe, whose expression had turned to one of complete surprise, and the group applauded at her reaction. Before the blonde could recover, Rains spoke again. “All right ladies, it’s time to get your gear and get you settled into your barracks. Let’s move.”

  Rains formed them into two columns and began leading them across the compound at a brisk walk. Trying to keep her mind off the effort of breathing in the heat, Smythe focused on the sergeant’s lean form ahead of her. She walked with a graceful stride, but her long legs covered ground almost as if she were at a run. Bett had already seen that the sergeant had very black hair by the almost too-long bangs that draped above her eyes. From the back, a thin line of straight hair barely covered her neck. Bett was glad that she’d gone to her own beauty salon for a new shorter hairdo after she’d enlisted. She had no intention of letting some Army barber create some severe style with her hair as they seemed to have done to Sergeant Rains.

  Bett heard the soft vowels of the Kentucky accent—Helen, wasn’t it?—whispering behind her. “Look at this place, Tee. It’s really somethin’. We’re gonna have us a time here!” She supposed that Tee, with her stutter, wouldn’t make much of a response, but she thought she heard a soft “uh-huh.” She took a quick glance at her new surroundings and was pleasantly surprised. The stately buildings on either side of the roadway stretched ahead almost as far as she could see. An intersecting street not far away stretched out to her left and right, with more of the deep red-brick and white-trimmed structures on either side. The Fort Des Moines grounds were much larger than she had expected and much more attractive. With its large shade trees and expanses of well-maintained grassy areas and numerous buildings in a pleasant neoclassical style, it almost resembled a college campus or even the business district of a town. Lines of women marched smartly in one of the fields; in another area, small groups were gathered in circles for what looked like some kind of instruction. The distant strains of a military band drifted across the warm air. She glanced to her right where Barb was wiping the perspiration off her brow.

  “This place could use a visit from one of our nor’easters,” she whispered to Bett, who nodded agreeably.

  Sergeant Rains halted at a large, low building and the squad fell in behind her, most of them breathing hard and wiping their faces. Dozens of other young women were in lines or milling about. “This is where you will get your gear and be directed to your barracks,” she called over the noise. Bett joined the group clustered tightly around their sergeant, wondering if her expression was as apprehensive as some of the other squad members’. Sergeant Rains looked over the scene around her and nodded thoughtfully, as if seeing it through their eyes. She raised one arm to shoulder height, almost as if safeguarding them from the surrounding chaos and gestured with her other hand, palm up. “Don’t be concerned about this process. The people inside have done it thousands of times and they will walk you through each step. We all want you to be the best soldier you can be, and this is just the beginning. I will meet you at your barracks when you are finished.” Bett felt herself relax at the clear confidence in Rains’s tone, and she exchanged quick smiles with Barb and Jo who were closest to her.

  As the new recruits began to press up the stairs and into the building, the sergeant positioned herself near Bett. “A word please, Private.” They stepped into a shady spot on the side of the building. “Very impressive magic back there,” Rains began, not unkindly.

  Bett tilted her head up to meet the officer’s eyes, wishing for her sunglasses. “Really, Sergeant, I’m sure you’re aware it was not magic at all. It was years of study, hours and hours of recordings, poring over US maps. It was my university degree, after all. And the girls gave me marvelous clues with their explanations of why they joined.”

  “Hmm.” Rains made her little grunting sound again and looked away, across the compound. In the silence Bett felt compelled to go on. “But I would never have even thought of attempting such a thing if it hadn’t been for that horrible Sergeant Moore, screaming at little Teresa. What a brute.”

  “Sergeant Moore was in the first officers’ class ever here at Fort Des Moines, back when we were the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps and not eligible for protections or benefit of the regular Army,” answered Rains, sounding somewhat defensive as she focused on a stand of trees in the distance. “She has guided hundreds of women through this program, including me.” She hesitated. “But she’s tired. And I believe she recently got some bad news from home.”

  “That may be, Sergeant, but being a bully will not make things better for her,” Bett replied, determined to make her point.

  “This is not what I wanted to speak to you about.” Sergeant Rains tried to begin again. She turned her eyes back to Private Smythe. “I know who you are. Details of your enlistment were discussed in the meeting I had at headquarters today.”

  “Oh,” Bett said and shifted her train of thought. She smiled approvingly. “So that’s how you knew where I was from.”

  “It was my understanding that you were to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to yourself,” Rains continued, with a slight accusation in her voice. “If this is your idea of how to accomplish that—”

  Bett cut her off. “No, of course not. But you didn’t hear how awfully Sergeant Moore was talking to everyone.”

  “I heard.”

  “And were you not going to do anything about it?” Bett demanded, an accusation of her own.

  Rains crossed her arms. “Hasn’t anyone told you that you are not supposed to argue with your sergeant?”

  Bett duplicated her gesture. “Hasn’t anyone told you that changing the subject does not win an argument?”

  The two women stared at each other for a few seconds. Bett had the thought that she had never seen eyes as bottomlessly black as Rains’s. Finally, she thought that ghost of a smile might have flitted across the sergeant’s mouth again.

  “Get your gear, Private. And try to keep in mind that is what you now are,” she said, turning sharply and striding away.

  Bett almost called out a sarcastic, “Thank you for the advice,” before remembering that this was a place where she was probably not going to have the last word. At least not with Sergeant Rains.

  *

  By the time she got into the building, the crush of bodies had thinned out a bit, and the girls from her squad were being combined with three other newly arrived squads into what would become their platoon. This group was separated into two lines—those whose hairstyle already fit the Army’s requirements, and those who would have to have their hair cut. Bett was able to move into the line where she was issued her supplies: two skirts, one olive and one khaki, with a matching hip-length jacket for each, five shirts, or waists, as the WACs called them, two neckties, service and athletic shoes as well as overshoes, cotton and wool hose—no silk was available, as “there’s a war on, you know,” a purse, gloves, underclothes, an exercise suit, pajamas and a bathrobe, a raincoat, a winter coat, a toothbrush, comb, a hat, and the Pallas Athena insignia of the Women’s Army Corps. They had also been told that certain supplies could be brought from home, so naturally Bett had brought all of those as well: her grooming and personal supplies, along with a sewing kit, pen and pencil and stationery, a bathing suit, a mirror, several selected pieces of her jewelry and, of course, her books. When they reached the barracks and
she saw the small wall unit and footlocker in which her possessions were to be stored, Bett wondered if she had the spatial skills to organize everything. She began making some progress, but quite a few items were still piled on her bunk when Jo Archer interrupted her sorting process.

  “Better get dressed, Queenie,” she said with a grin, modeling her uniform. “You can’t be out of that uniform for the next seven weeks, except at bedtime.” She held up her plain cotton WAC pajamas and added, “And even then, we’re all Army now.”

  Ten minutes later, Elizabeth Smythe examined herself in the mirror and sighed. What have I gotten myself into? Army khaki wasn’t exactly the type of fabric she was accustomed to wearing, and although the various measurements that had been taken ensured that the uniform fit her fairly well, it wasn’t anything that anyone she knew would consider stylish. And the shoes were even worse. She opened her mouth to complain to the person next to her, but before she made a sound she saw that it was Helen, the girl from Kentucky. Helen was looking at herself in the mirror also, but her expression was one of pride and great satisfaction. I wonder how long it’s been since she’s had a new outfit of any kind, Bett thought, and instead of complaining, she smiled. “You look very nice, Helen.”

  Helen’s smile was just a bit shy as she took a breath. “Uh, Bett, I got some room in my footlocker if you need a place to put some of your things.” Bett realized that her packing dilemma must have been obvious to everyone. I guess most everything in our lives will be common knowledge for the next few weeks. It also occurred to her that Helen had room to offer because she probably hadn’t been able to bring as many items from home.

  “Thank you, Helen,” she responded gratefully. “And do let me know if you need anything.” She gestured at her suitcase. “As you can see, I always seem to overpack, so—”

  Bett’s offer was interrupted as those who had gotten their new Army haircuts began to trickle in, some making faces and moaning and some jostling for position among the remaining narrow bunks. Among them was Tee, the girl with the stutter. Bett was pleased to note that Helen had saved the little Oklahoman a space on the bunk next to hers. Helen whistled playfully at Tee’s new haircut, making Tee blush. The company had pretty much finished unpacking their bags and making their beds when Sergeant Rains entered the barracks.