The War Librarian, page 23
We continued past the chateau, the wooden barracks, and the overflow tents to U.S. Military Cemetery #6. Each grave was marked with a white stone cross, a sobering reminder of the lives we couldn’t save at the hospitals.
Several groups were already clustered about, for there were six other men being buried today. Nellie told me that four had died of the Spanish influenza or related pneumonia, one during surgery, and one due to tuberculosis. Only Perlie had died of sepsis related to a wound.
Perlie’s mourners climbed from the car. I stood between Nellie and Nicholas, hoping I could absorb their strength and share my own. Not that it felt like I had any.
The chaplain listed all six men’s names: Private John S. Graham, Private First Class Eugene C. Taylor, Private Francis J. Schuyler, Captain Richard J. Roos, Private First Class King L. Larkin. And Lieutenant Perlie R. Little.
I shook my head. That couldn’t be right. Perlie hadn’t been a lieutenant. Officers had their own ward with private rooms, and Perlie had been in a tent.
I glanced at Nicholas, whose eyebrows were drawn together. He was as confused as I was—no. His lips were hardened in a flat line. He wasn’t confused. He was angry.
Then I realized my naïveté. Perlie had been an officer; he’d just been barred from the officers’ ward—with its private rooms and around-the-clock care—because of his color.
I couldn’t focus on the priest’s Latin sermon. Perlie probably would have survived had he been in the officers’ ward with better heating, better care, and less exposure to other illnesses.
Tears froze in my eyes. Monday, I had cried of grief; today, I cried at the unfairness of it all.
When the short ceremony ended, we took our leave. We didn’t want to watch the gravediggers, all of them colored men who had been conscripted, bury the coffins. Each coffin had the forty-eight-star American flag folded over it, and I gazed at Perlie’s with a complicated mixture of pride and shame. Perlie had fought for our country, died for it. But so many Americans wouldn’t do the same for him.
The men piled into the back of the motorcar, and I took my spot in the front next to Nellie. She sat stock-still in the driver’s seat.
“Nellie?”
For once, Nellie didn’t say anything. She didn’t shift the car into gear or even twist the key in the ignition.
I glanced back for help, but the men in the back of the car were oblivious as they talked among themselves.
“Nellie,” I said again. “What is it?”
She turned to me with a blank expression. “He’s really dead.” And then her tears started to flow, her shoulders shaking so violently that her curls bounced up and down.
I turned and tapped Nicholas’s shoulder. “Tell the others Nellie and I have to check the tires.” When he nodded, I scrambled from the car and opened Nellie’s door. She climbed out after me, and I wrapped her in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that no one I was close to ever died before.” She pulled back, aghast. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have said that when you’ve lost both your parents. I’m lucky, I know that, that I’ve never had to—”
“Shh.”
Nellie let out a deep, shuddering breath. “It sounds silly. I’ve been at the front forever, and it isn’t as if I haven’t seen death. But I’m a driver. I never knew any of the other soldiers. Perlie . . . Perlie was more than a name. He was a person. Even a friend. And it’s so different.” She let out a deep, shuddering sob. “Of course I knew he was dead. But I didn’t really understand it. Not until they lowered the coffin into the ground, and then . . .” She dissolved into tears again.
I wanted to cry too at the sight of my indomitable friend in pieces. But she’d calmed me down before, and it was time for me to do the same for her.
“I know,” I soothed. “And there will be times again when it doesn’t feel real, and then you’ll remember it is. But it gets less and less frequent. You’ll stop crying every time you think of him and start smiling—at the way he loved his kids, at the gentle way he talked, at the kindness he showed everyone even when it wasn’t reciprocated.”
I felt Nellie nod against my chest. “I guess.” Her voice was still thick with tears. “But it’s so wrong. So much death all around us, and now one that could have been prevented?” She looked up at me. “Did you hear? He was an officer. They could have avoided it all.”
I nodded and glanced past Nellie at the car for fear I would break down if I met her eyes. Joshua was gazing out the window with his eyebrows up as if to ask what was going on, and I couldn’t blame him. These men needed to get back to their nurses and their cots.
I swallowed. “Nellie. Why don’t you go ahead and get in my seat?”
She looked up at me, eyes shining. “Really?”
I wanted to say no. I felt far from comfortable driving such a packed car, especially if Nellie wasn’t in any condition to help me. But this woman had so quickly become my best friend, my surrogate big sister. And she needed me.
“Of course,” I said.
I helped Nellie into the passenger seat and then slid stiffly into the driver’s. I turned the car on and shifted it into gear.
I was too afraid to drive any faster than a crawl, but no one seemed to mind. Though I expected silence on the way back across the river—it was how I grieved, after all—these boys had seen death too many times to let it crush them. They kept their chins up, telling stories and sharing memories of Perlie the whole way back to our base.
No one mentioned Josephine or their daughters. But I couldn’t imagine what grief Josephine would feel when she learned of her husband’s death. And, if she found out the circumstances, what fury.
* * *
—
That night, I dreamed over and over again of Nicholas and Nellie dying.
Nellie was encircled by fire, unable to turn the motorcar before the flames that had swallowed the Argonne swallowed her, too. Nicholas was struck by artillery as I stood by, helpless, and watched the shrapnel shred his side like scissors through fabric.
Nellie was ambushed by the Germans. Nicholas was feverish, but the doctors didn’t hear his cries.
Nellie’s car slammed into a tree. Nicholas climbed over bodies in the trenches, a German gun waiting for him on the other side.
I heard the insistent buzzing of a German plane. The bomb siren. It didn’t stop, and I slowly became aware of my body in its bed and the ceiling above me.
This wasn’t a nightmare anymore; it was real.
I opened my eyes, nightgown soaked through with sweat, and watched as the lights switched on and off four times before plunging into darkness.
A real bomb threat, then. That was the sign.
I threw a coat over my nightgown and staggered outside with my helmet and my gas mask. I’d never put the latter on before, and I had to wrestle it onto my face. My neck lurched forward with my head. I felt like a great blinking owl with the wide eyepieces, but I didn’t feel safe.
Suddenly panicked, I clawed at the mask and ripped it off. I threw my head back and gazed at the sky. There was the plane, louder than it had been just moments before. Figures began to dot the desolate landscape: officers from the administration building, a mortician, the men in the wards on either side of me. All of them tipped their faces up to the sky so their bodies were shrouded in darkness and their foreheads and cheeks shone with moonlight. They looked like ghosts, like specters. I wondered if that was what we would all be, soon.
The Russian Orthodox faith considered a person’s final resting place their home in the afterlife. Would I live here in the mud for all eternity? Would Nicholas? No one would be here to throw juniper behind my coffin or bake the koliva that symbolized life, death, and renewal. My loved ones wouldn’t circle my body with kisses. Would I even have a body, or would the bombs destroy every last trace of my earthly form? Maybe I’d be completely obliterated, nothing left of me to visit on the third day or the ninth or the fortieth.
I knew too well the prayer for the departing of the soul, having repeated it for my mother and my father both. I began to whisper it now. “O Lord and Master and Governor of all, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desirest not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live . . .”
I kept my eyes closed as I went through the prayer, arriving at the end with a trembling voice. “Receive in peace the soul of Emmaline and give her rest in Thy eternal dwelling with all Thy saints, by the grace of Thine only Son our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ, with Whom Thou are blessed together with Thine all-holy, gracious, and life-giving Spirit now and forever and unto ages of ages.”
I opened my eyes to cross myself and utter the final Amen, and only then did I become aware of the silence. The buzzing of planes had ceased, and as I spun in a slow circle, I saw that the others in the hospital had retreated back into their wards and their offices.
I was on the ground before I fully realized I was safe. How did the soldiers in the trenches face death every day and overcome it? I didn’t feel as if I could move from this spot. I’d been calm as the plane flew overhead, the words of the prayer giving me something to focus on, but now the tears began to flow. I was surprised I had any left after all the crying I’d done for Perlie. But I did, and the tears kept coming now. I rocked back and forth in the mud until they stopped. This war, this damned war.
Chapter 24
Kathleen Carre
July 1976
I came to flat on my back, blinking at an array of white ceiling tiles. I pushed up on my elbows, immediately anxious. What time was it? Did the officers know where I was? Had I missed check-in?
The academy doctor appeared at my side. “Lie down, now.”
I ignored him. “What time is it?”
“I’ll tell you when you lie down.”
I huffed but complied.
“It’s 1345.”
One forty-five p.m., and I’d started running just after noon.
“Do you remember what—”
I interrupted, offended that he’d suggest I didn’t remember. “I went for a run. I hadn’t eaten in a few hours or had any water. I went too far, too fast.”
The doctor nodded, his face creased in concern. “An upper-class midshipman found you and brought you to my office.”
Well, that was mortifying. But I smiled. “How kind of him. May I go now?” I’d passed out, for God’s sake, not suffered a heart attack.
“I’m afraid not.” The doctor gestured to my arm, and I startled to see a needle inserted into the soft flesh of my inner elbow. Even in my surprise, I noted the boniness of the joint. Did a few days really make such a marked difference?
“I hardly think I need an IV,” I said.
“Just a precaution. You’ll also need to eat.” He handed me a container, and I peeked inside. Cashews and almonds.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” But the doctor didn’t go away. I looked into the container again, and the thick smell of cashews hit me hard.
“I’m sorry,” I tried. “I’m really not hungry right now.”
“Eat.”
I closed my eyes and fished out an almond. The feeling of it on my lips turned my stomach, but I bit half of it off and chewed. I felt like I was moving wood splinters around in my mouth, and I tried to keep from making a face.
I ate the second half of the almond and swallowed. As soon as I did, my stomach cramped. “Oh!” I gasped. I was starving.
I tore into the cashews and almonds with vigor, feeling beginning to return to my arms and legs.
The doctor watched approvingly, gave me a stern lecture on being sure to eat enough going forward, and discharged me. My room when I returned was empty, but a note in Susan’s bold, slanted hand waited on my desk.
We’re at the women’s meeting in Mitscher Hall if you change your mind and want to join.
—Susan and Linda
I stared at the note for a moment. I’d said no before, but now? Sitting in my room with gauze taped over the spot where I’d received my IV, I thought of Mabel’s words. Sharing your story is never a weakness, Kathleen. When we realize we aren’t alone, we grow so much stronger.
God knew I needed strength, and facing these demons alone wasn’t working. So I grabbed a packet of trail mix from Mabel’s package and chopped off: through Bancroft’s dizzying maze of corridors, through King Hall, and into Mitscher. I checked the auditorium first, but the girls weren’t there, so I ran through the passageways checking each conference room until I found them in one. A few dozen girls were spread around the space, and I recognized a few of them: Linda, Susan, the woman who’d raised her hand and asked about feminine hygiene that first week, the two girls I’d seen in the bathroom after Hang it up, bitch had been spray-painted on the stall door.
One of the women in the front of the room rose to shake my hand. “Janice Buxbaum. Midshipman Tyrell and I organized this meeting.”
The other woman stood. “Marsha. Marsha Tyrell.”
“I’m Kathleen Carre.”
I joined Susan and Linda in the back, and the girls resumed their sharing. Linda and Susan filled me in on what I’d missed: women who’d found dead rats in their mailboxes like threats, and one woman who’d found slut carved into the door of her room. The rest of it, I was as familiar with as the rest of them: shaving cream bombs, obscene taunts in the passageways after hours, threats from officers that they could drive us out.
But as I listened, the stories grew more harrowing.
“Maria has a story to share,” one girl said, raising her hand. “Go on, Maria.” She turned to the girl beside her.
“I can’t,” Maria hissed back. “What if—?”
The first girl interrupted. “No one will think it was your fault. Go on. Tell them.”
Maria took a deep breath. “I was asleep last week. I heard a sound, felt something, and I opened my eyes.” She paused there, and her friend gave her an encouraging nod. “There was a man in my bed.”
A collective gasp rose around the room.
“He was masked.” Maria’s voice grew stronger, like our horror had emboldened her. “So I don’t know who it was. I screamed, of course, and my roommates woke up. We chased him out.” She flashed a grateful smile at the woman who’d made her tell the story. “But . . .” Her voice broke. “I don’t know who it was. So I’m terrified of every single man here. Every single one.”
“Thirteen hundred men,” her roommate added. “It’s a constant state of fear.”
That, I could understand. And so could the other women, it seemed. One nodded as she opened her mouth. “That’s the worst bit,” she said. “The fear. I can deal with the pranks—the dead rats, the insults, the shaving cream. But this constant fear—it’s like there’s a bird living inside my stomach, tearing at me with its beak and its claws, trying to fly away. But it can’t. It’s always there. And it’s killing me.”
Several women murmured their assent, and Susan nudged me. “You should tell them what happened to you.”
For a moment, I was frozen. How did she know? And then I realized—she meant the wet sheets and the note.
Again, Mabel’s words echoed in my mind. Sharing your story is never a weakness, Kathleen. When we realize we aren’t alone, we grow so much stronger.
It was true. Already, having heard these women talk about their fear had made me feel so much less alone. Now I could do the same for them.
I raised my hand. “I had my room ransacked. They stripped the sheets from my bed and soaked them in the shower, knocked over my chair, scattered everything from my desk across the deck.” I glanced to Susan and Linda, who—like Maria’s roommate moments ago—nodded. “And they left a note,” I said. “They left a note that said it was better I didn’t sleep at all than to sleep with a . . . a Black man, though their language was different. And it was only because they’d seen me talk to him, once.”
Janice was about to respond to my story when the officer of the deck appeared in the doorway. “Midshipman Buxbaum! Midshipman Tyrell!” His voice thundered throughout the space.
“Sir, yes, sir!” Both women leapt to standing.
“You were warned that a meeting of this scale, without an officer and flag present, would be considered a mutiny.”
The rest of us stared, aghast.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“And yet you decided to go through with it anyway?”
“No excuse, sir.”
“Ladies.”
I winced at his language. These “ladies” were plebes, midshipmen.
“You will come with me to the commandant’s office. The rest of you”—the officer raised his voice—“disperse. I expect that this will not happen again.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” our voices chorused back, and then we stood and fled. I for one was afraid even to look at the other women, and I didn’t make eye contact with Maria as she hurried past me despite our similar experiences. Our one chance at coming together, as spread across squadrons as we were, and now it had been ruined. I doubted we’d get the chance again.
Susan and Linda and I hurried together back to the fifth deck of Bancroft and slammed our door behind us like we were being chased.
