Witness the Impact of Culture Shock in the Army: Follow the journey of a strait-laced young lady who enters an Army world where Southern Comfort, not milk, is the drink of choice, and late-night parties are the norm. Her struggle to fit in and reconcile her big ideas for helping patients with strict Army regulations and her supervisor’s rules will captivate you.
I’m thrilled to share a sneak peek from Chapter 1 of Girls in a World at War, titled "Basic Training." This chapter sets the stage for Kathy’s journey, giving you a glimpse into her first encounters with the challenges that will shape her character and story. I hope this excerpt captures your imagination and draws you into Kathy’s world, where every decision carries the weight of the war around her.
CHAPTER 1
BASIC TRAINING
Kathy opened her alligator-skin purse. No young girl could join the Army without first combing her hair. It was not proper to comb her hair in public, but neither could she walk the length of the car full of soldiers to the washroom. No civilians, no other women, just Kathy and twenty-four soldiers.
The train was due in Camp McCoy, and still she saw only the backwoods of Wisconsin. She combed her short brown hair. She powdered her generous nose the dark shade of powder to minimize its size. Carefully, with modest touches of lipstick, she outlined her very ordinary mouth. Her thickly lashed eyes were her only good feature. What she lacked in beauty she would make up for with her caring personality. She’d be an angel.
The train slowed in the thick woods. Kathy stood up to get her overnight case from the baggage rack. This case held the few things that could be brought from home into the Army. She was short, so she stepped up onto the green plush seat, hurrying to grab the case down before one of the watching soldiers might offer to help.
When the train lurched around a curve, she lost her balance. She grasped at the hanging strap and was able find her footing. A soldier whistled, and another and another, until she was surrounded by wolf whistles. She clutched her bag and sunk down onto the seat. She could not keep a smile from twitching on the corners of her mouth. After all, she was single and hoping for romance.
Maybe the soldiers could tell how she felt about them. These soldiers so bravely fighting for their country. She must serve their sick and wounded. She would bring food to the starved prisoners of war. She would carry nourishing hot meals to heal wounds and knit bones. She would make Spam taste good.
Kathy didn’t dare look at the GIs’ faces, as a smile might encourage more whistles. When the train stopped, Kathy waited. If she got off behind the soldiers, they would not all be looking at her.
As the last one off, she paused at the door, wondering where to go. A small clearing had been bulldozed out of the woods with a three-walled open shelter in the middle. A narrow gravel road was the only opening through the trees. A large green Army bus drove up the road and stopped. Dozens of soldiers from the train moved toward the bus. That must be the Camp McCoy bus.
Kathy started down the train steps. A red-nosed soldier in an unbuttoned jacket with a single stripe on his sleeve reached up for her suitcase, saying, “I’ll take that for you.”
Kathy hesitated. She did not want to hurt his feelings. Officers were not supposed to be too friendly with enlisted men. Yet how could he know that just yesterday she had been sworn into the Army as an officer, a Second Lieutenant, for she still wore her tailor-made black traveling suit. Would it be proper to let him carry her case? She just didn’t know.
The soldier did not wait for an answer. He grabbed her suitcase and rushed off, away from the bus, toward the dark woods. Kathy decided she did not want him carrying her case, certainly not in the wrong direction. She would take it back. She started after him, walking as rapidly as a Second Lieutenant’s dignity and inch-high heels on rough ground would permit.
She noticed he was teetering. All thoughts of rank and dignity vanished. Kathy ran after him as best she could, till the soldier neared the wall of trees and bushes. Nothing in the suitcase was worth following him through that wall. She stopped, a little girl, small and helpless, only five feet, one inch tall, 115 pounds, in an Army of big men.
A long-legged, broad-shouldered soldier strode past her. “I’ll take that, Private!” he commanded. The thief dropped the suitcase, and vanished into the woods. The hero picked up the case, and returned it to Kathy. He smiled down at her with friendly blue eyes. His jacket, with two stripes on his sleeve, was neatly buttoned.
She looked up to him. “Thanks! What would have happened without you?”
“If I hadn’t, any one of these men would have helped you.” He waved his arm toward the men clustered near the bus. That’s why most of us are in the Army, to protect women and children.”
He offered Kathy his arm. Almost skipping to keep up with his long legs, they made their way towards the bus. The group of soldiers separated, making a lane to the bus door. As they boarded the bus, the sun shone gloriously. Even bands playing and flags waving could not have made a more magnificent welcome into the Army for Kathy.
Seated next to her on the bus, her rescuer told her his name was George. He was a Corporal, marched in the infantry, spoke five languages, and had a master’s degree in International Relations. Never again would Kathy be concerned about rank. Men were men, and women were women; even the Army could not change that with stripes and bars.
A soldier with a white-helmet with an “MP” painted on it walked down the aisle, checking papers. George said, “‘MP’ means Military Police. He’s checking for passes.”
The MP stretched out his hand to Kathy. “Your pass?”
“I don’t have a pass, just my orders. Will they do?” She handed him her mimeographed paper. He read it, nodded, and returned it. He glanced at George’s pass, and went on to the next seat.
Kathy handed her orders to George. “Maybe you can help me again. Where do I go? This just says to report to my commanding officer at Camp McCoy. It doesn’t say who he is nor where he is.”
George read the paper. “You are a dietitian? You’d probably report to the hospital. I’ll show you where to go.” He returned the paper. “It takes hours to sign in. Would you like to eat lunch with me first?”
Kathy accepted with pleasure.
The bus emerged from the woods and stopped at a gate flanked by two guard houses. White-helmeted soldiers with pistols on their belts and rifles on their shoulders stood guard. Jeeps full of soldiers drove by. Troops of soldiers marched along the road and in the fields. “Hup, two, three, four.”
In the distance, four tanks lumbered and thundered powerfully. Behind them ran soldiers with their rifles leveled. In the field opposite were straight rows of olive-drab green tents and small white-walled buildings. It could have been a movie set.
When the bus stopped at a large brick building. George said, “This is the hospital. We can eat in their PX, or Postal Exchange.”
The PX was a large room arranged much like a small-town drug store. It was filled with patients in wine-red pajamas, white-uniformed nurses, and uniformed men. Patients with no signs of illness other than the wearing of pajamas sat on stools at the soda fountain. Thumping on a walking cast to a juke box, a patient inserted a dime to play “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” Two patients in wheelchairs raced to the door, one ramming the other. Kathy chose a table in a corner, and sat facing the room so she could observe. “It’s not what I expected,” she said.
“Patients in the Army stay in the hospital until ready for active service. They must be able to hike 25 miles,” said George.
“I’d ask you to dinner but I cannot date you. You are an officer. I am an enlisted man.
“I’d accept if you asked.”
“Even if you wanted to break regulations, there would be no place we could go. You couldn’t go to the enlisted men’s club and I can’t go to the officers’ club,” George shrugged.
After lunch, he took her to the hospital door. He said, “Good bye, good luck,” and left.
Kathy pushed against the brass rail on the heavy glass front door and entered the hospital. In the green-tiled front hall, she asked both a young nurse and a Captain where to find the head dietitian. Neither knew. She walked down the hall and looked at white signs hanging over office doors. Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, Chief Nurse. None said Dietitian.
Kathy asked a Corporal with a tray of blood pipettes and slides. He didn’t know. She asked a nurse carrying an armload of charts. She gestured, “I can tell you where they eat—that is their mess—and it’s right around the corner, together with the kitchen.”
The mess with gleaming stainless steel serving counters and long tables with piles of white china plates looked even cleaner than Chicago’s newest civilian hospital. Evidently there was not an acute shortage of help in the Army. When she saw the shining modern mixers in the kitchen, she knew why Chicago’s Cook County Hospital had been unable to get any new equipment. It was all going to the Army. This kitchen was a delight.
The white-uniformed dietitians, one with silver bars and the other with gold bars on her shoulders, were in a glass-walled office in a corner. They smiled cheerfully to welcome Kathy. Both were so charmingly feminine that the men working in the mess must have been wanting to please them rather than grudgingly obeying orders.
“I’m a new dietitian reporting for basic training,” said Kathy, presenting her orders. “Might one of you be my commanding officer?”
The girl with silver bars shook her white-capped head. “Not me. I know of no basic training for dietitians. I’ve been here for six months without it and haven’t missed it.” She read Kathy’s orders. “They do specify basic training. You might take it with the nurses.”
They took Kathy to the nurses’ office in the small wooden building next door. The nurse Captain finally accepted her because she didn’t know where else to send her.
She asked Kathy to fill out several forms. On the first she wrote out her name, her Army serial number: R1340, and birthdate and age, 23. The next blanks were for corps, unit, regiment, and division.
“What corps am I in?” she asked the nurses.
One nurse answered, “You’re not in the nurse corps.” Another said, “I don’t know.” A third answered, “Dietitians do not have a corps. You’re just in the Army.”
“What regiment? Division?”
“None. You are just in the Army.”
“I don’t belong to anything? How can I get an esprit de corps without a corps?”
“You are in the sixth service command. You can wear our shoulder patch.”
“Who gives me my orders?”
“The chief dietitian in Washington. She’s a Major.”
When Kathy finished the payroll forms, insurance policy, will, and other required forms, Lieutenant Perkins offered to show her to her barracks.
Outside, a Captain stepped in front of them on the sidewalk and saluted Lieutenant Perkins, which surprised Kathy. After he passed, she asked, “Shouldn’t you salute him, a Captain?”
“Femininity outranks his Captain’s bars here,” she explained to Kathy. “Nurses here are treated with respect. When the shooting starts, nurses are put on pedestals. Just in case any wild soldier wants to knock one off her pedestal, nurses are well guarded. MPs are assigned at all nurses’ doors and in every situation.” As they entered the barracks, Lieutenant Perkins returned the salutes of the alert MPs at the door.
Inside, Lieutenant Perkins introduced Kathy to a girl with smooth and rosy cheeks and starry eyes. “Lieutenant Darlene Robins, meet your roommate, Lieutenant Kathryn Collens, hospital dietitian.”
Darlene was turning in front of the mirror that hung over the chest of drawers, looking at herself. “Glad to meet you. Don’t you just love it? Our uniform. Imagine me, Darlene Robins, in a Schiaparelli suit! She designed the most gorgeous uniforms in the world! I don’t look like a cowgirl.” She turned to face Kathy. “I’m a lady in a Schiaparelli suit!”
“Pretty as a recruiting poster!” said Kathy. “I’m a country girl too. From Libertyville, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.”
“I’m from Cheyenne, Wyoming!”
Lieutenant Perkins stood in the doorway. “That’s the spirit. Stay proud of our uniform. Look sharp! Lieutenant Robins, please show Lieutenant Collens to the officers’ mess at 1700 and explain the schedule. You both report to the quartermaster at 0900 tomorrow.” She saluted Kathy. “Glad to have you with us,” she said and left.
“I’m glad the Army has dietitians now. The food is wonderful, not at all the awful food the books say.” Darlene looked at herself in the mirror again. “Do you have any mascara? With a Schiaparelli uniform, I must have mascara!”
Kathy put her suitcase on the upper bunk and opened it.
“No, I have no need to wear mascara. Your lashes are long and dark enough by themselves. I’ve tried. Boys just ask where I bought my lashes.”
“Why did you join the Army, Kathy?”
“I joined the Army because, well, because one night I visited Eddie, the boy who gave me my first kiss. I was home from my internship that weekend and went to a friend’s house. Eddie was there with a brace on his back and neck. He couldn’t move. He was a Seabee in the South Pacific. He was shot, and he’ll wear that brace for years, maybe all his life. He may not walk again. He said, ‘Kathy, if there’s anything you can do for the poor devils who get shot, do it.’ I could not sleep that night. I knew I could never sleep until I was doing what I could. So, the next morning I volunteered.”
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Kathy’s world in Girls in a World at War. If you’re as captivated by her journey as I am, I invite you to dive deeper into the story. You can read more by picking up the book—thank you for joining me on this adventure!
コメント