Chapter 1. Off to War

Lady Be Good! suddenly streamed down from a band from up above our gangplank’s single line of olive drab female drudges—the 110 nurses and 5 Red Cross workers assigned to the 95^th General Hospital embarking on the Aquitania in early January 1944.  To reach the port, from Camp Kilmer, NJ, on an old railroad track we had to march several blocks loaded with every item we possessed (excluding the footlocker that would be shipped).  We toted unbelievable weight:  we had to wear our warmest wool clothes, plus the GI wool-lined full length raincoat, heavy wool scarf and gloves, 4-buckle rubber galoshes over field boots, our heads topped off with steel helmets and liners, carrying the ditty bags loaded with our travel clothes and personal items on one shoulder and on the other our gas masks in their bags.

“Is this trip necessary?” I wondered for the first time on the adventure (but not the last).  Never, though, did I question my decision to join the war effort except for times of fatigue or extreme physical discomfort.  My Red Cross experience was the most fulfilling work experience of my life.

Volunteering for the Red Cross overseas I had left a well-paying, interesting job in Washington, DC, having advanced rapidly with a public administration MA beyond my BA in political science.  I was working in FPHA which was responsible for providing nationwide emergency housing for wartime workers.

Still in my early 20s I had loved Washington life.  Yet as my peers began signing up for the military I felt downright selfish and unpatriotic; I wanted to be in the middle of the action, not in some indirect effort like housing!  I was accepted as an Ensign in the Navy but learned I’d just work across the Potomac instead of in downtown DC, and for less than current pay.  Except for nurses and for a few women who delivered airplanes to troops, I had learned, only the Red Cross volunteers were allowed in overseas jobs.  At 24 I longed to see the world.  “Who cares about pay or benefits?”

Upon acceptance as a Red Cross worker I had to finish the special training set up at American University by the Red Cross.  There were three categories of Recreation Workers: setting up programs and working with hospital patients, setting up clubs and entertainment for military on leave, and going in “doughnut wagons” close to the actual fighting to provide a moment of “home” for the soldiers.  I chose hospital.

After training in Washington I was sent to an Army Hospital at Hempstead on Long Island for a brief on-the-job period.  And THEN I lolled around for two or three weeks back in Washington in a hotel before my assignment came through.  Maybe that inactivity accounted for my distress walking up that gangplank into the second largest cruise ship afloat at the time to cross the Atlantic alone, without convoy escort.

Chapter 2. North Atlantic

          With luxury long gone, traded for space by the Cunard Line, the Aquitania had been remodeled into a troop ship—and 4 of our 5 Red Cross cadre found ourselves assigned to a tiny space in the hold, with a common bathroom a short walk away.  Our windowless cubby hole of a cabin had an upper and a lower bunk built into each side leaving just enough space to allow one of us at a time to enter and head toward its wash basin.  (Verb chosen carefully because it was a rough winter crossing.)

We 4 were the Assistant Social Worker, 2 Recreation Workers and the Secretary.  Our supervisor, assigned to a different cabin, was the professional Social Worker. Our job would be to try to make life more livable for the GIs.  Red Cross would supply furnishings and equipment and supplies needed to outfit a recreational hall, and such other supplies as razors, soap, toothbrushes, cigarettes and tobacco shipped from the US, or possibly at times from English or French Red Cross headquarters.

We would be expected to facilitate solving any personal problems of the patients and to make life easier for them through setting up recreation facilities and providing recreation activities.  Typically in a General Hospital there would be half ambulatory and half ward-bound patients, 500 each.  We would set up a recreation hall and provide activities, taking supplies to and holding activities in the 10 wards of 100 beds each.  But this Atlantic crossing week, plus a few days, we just tried to keep on our own feet and cheer up each other.

At first we gave no thought to our own safety once landed in England because for some mysterious reason the Germans had not bombed the British Isles for almost a year before we sailed.  By mid-Atlantic, among the high waves, the radio waves brought the unwelcome news that regular bombing and a new buzz bombing had restarted with a vengeance.  There went my chance to see Scotland en route to London where we were to report to our supervising staff at the Red Cross of Great Britain.

We docked in Greenock, Scotland at twilight, gliding into its harbor crusted with sheets of revolting trash.  Overhead the garbage was flying piece by piece into the air in the beaks of thousands of seagulls.  Weighted again in battle dress we boarded the train for London.  In total pitch blackout we spent the crowded night.  Our one stop we mistook for arrival.  Instead we were ushered out into the night where suddenly someone thrust a hot mug of something into my hand.  One sip struck me as the most delicious taste in my life.  “What IS this?” I asked.  An older woman’s voice answered “Tea.”  That sip resulted in my lifetime drinking of teapot-brewed hot tea whitened with evaporated milk and sweetened with sugar.

Grateful for the gift of those older English volunteers to us Americans in the 3 a.m. frigid, damp weather, in the blackout we re-boarded and proceeded to London Town.

Chapter 3. To London

By break of dawn we had eaten breakfast—K Rations, of course.  Nutritious, compact:  crackers and canned meat (Spam), raisins—packed in a cardboard box about the size of the Episcopal Bible typically found in the church pew.  Then, we arrived at Victoria Station.

There we Red Cross Five separated from the military staff of our 95^th General Hospital to taxi into the middle of London to Grosvenor Square and the famous old Grosvenor Hotel.  Delighted with our lodging 3 or the 5 of us sprang into action in our comfortable room, having longed for days to rinse the sea salt from our itching bodies and cardboard hair to launder our underwear.  Aah--

Where to hang the wet clothes?  We managed—travel pins and clotheslines in our ditty bags, as specified by the Washington Red Cross, but THEN, how to move around in the room?  Couldn’t.  Just sleep of course.

Startled by the phone call from the desk in early afternoon our lives plunged into disaster—we had to repack and appear at the lobby with all our belongings within minutes.  We had to move to different lodging.  MOVE?  It was the first we learned that in the European Theatre of Operations, the ETO, transient lodging had been set up for each class and rank of the military but none for Red Cross employees.  So we always had to chance having military personnel show up for whatever US-arranged room we might have been assigned, or had to book into a commercial hotel.  The entire Grosvenor Hotel was part of the pre-arranged military lodging.

SO in our action-ready dress as in our railroad walk to the Aquitania, complete with boots and gas masks and helmets over still wet hair, each of us somehow managed to clutch her heavy load of still wet laundry and appear at the Hotel entrance.  The military transport was not in front, so we had to walk a couple blocks, thus burdened, to find Jeeps in the back.  Off we went we knew not where, away across miles of London it seemed, until we found our next abode.

It was a 5-story oversized white shingled substantial but ancient “lodging and meals looking place.”  Our rooms were in the attic, 5 flights up the impressive old stairway.  Probably we hung our laundry up first, but before going to our rooms we were charged by the woman manager to remember exactly what to do if the bomb sirens went off.  “Descend immediately, warmly dressed; wait at the front door for the warden who will lead you to the shelter under the subway a block or so away.”

Our bedroom was spacious, but SO cold.  There was no hot water and no heat (or minimal heat) in our room.  The English gave up those comforts during the War, we found.  That night, without much discussion we each decided to sleep fully clothed—every outerwear garment we had with us over our outing flannel pjs—except for our shoes.

           Sure enough, off the sirens went in the middle of the night.  From the 5 floors of occupants, guess who was the first one to greet the warden at the door?  I was, 5 flights notwithstanding.  For the hour or two in the shelter we occupants found a space to rest our backs against a concrete wall as we tried to sleep sitting on the cold concrete.  In silence except for an occasional child’s lament that first night in England was the only time I went into a shelter.  Not the only time I was in the bombings though.

Chapter 4. London to Bristol

First night overseas survived!  Something I could write about in the “Red Cross Rover,” a column that The Lamar Daily News, my hometown paper had been publishing since I had joined the Red Cross.  The next day at my persuasion, Mary Kate, Master’s degree in social work and about my age, joined me in journeying by train up to Bristol so I could visit my brother, Dr. Neill McGrath.  Having just received his degree in Internal Medicine, he had been stationed in the Army General Hospital, which was staffed completely with medical personnel from his alma mater, the University of Michigan.  I think it was the 91^st Army General Hospital.

They were beautifully organized and settled in, complete with medical and surgical services and their well-run Red Cross recreation program. 

After a most pleasant day or two we took the evening train back to London, taxied to our old “boarding house,” arriving about bedtime, very hungry.  Eating on the economy was to be avoided if possible because it took food from the mouths of the English.  No food was offered on a commuter train anyway.  But disaster was ahead.

When we opened the blacked out door we learned the shocking news that the boarding house no longer was our home.  The 3 others of our team had been kicked out, bag and OUR baggage and were miles away across London somewhere.  The landlady said she would start trying to get a taxi for us and offered us any food that we could find in the kitchen while we began the long wait for a taxi.  It was a pitch black night: again buzz bombing expected. In the kitchen there were cold boiled Brussels sprouts, some Brussels sprouts soup we might heat up and a small dish of Brussels sprouts salad.  Nothing else.  So we settled on Brussels sprouts.

Finally we heard a car.  It was a new experience to feel our way into a very small back seat of a miniature sedan with only a middle-aged sounding voice for a driver.  We never did see his face!  The tiny slits of the headlights gave so little light it seemed impossible to see the street.  Mary Kate and I gradually moved closer to each other; we went on and on, it seemed for hours.  Soon we picked up each other’s hands, squeezing tighter and tighter.  At one point we sensed rather than saw that we were driving crammed between two inky, blacker than black, walls barely squeezing through a narrow alley.  None of us made a sound. On and on we went.

Mary Kate and I just clung tighter and tighter to each other.  My mind raced to figure out what to do if I really was turned over to the white slave trade, or forced to spy for Germany, all sorts of horrible outcomes. I can’t recall our arrival.  Obviously we arrived safely, somewhere, unloaded and found our baggage and our buddies safe and sound―with blessed light, though low wattage, in a completely blackened out room with its opaque blackout curtains somewhere in London.

Our next stop was Tidworth, a military post south and west of London where we finally joined our hospital personnel and for the first time accompanied the 500 GIs, nurses, and doctors whose names had been drawn to put together the 1000 bed 95^th General Hospital. 

Chapter 5. Final Stop Ringwood

Usual travel for 3 or 4 of us was by GI-driven Jeep; or if joining other riders we sat facing each other on the benches of an Armored Personnel Carrier, sometimes canvas covered, often open.  We drove south and west of London to a staging area about 130 miles, set up on the Salisbury Plain at Tidworth in Wiltshire County.  Unexpectedly my breath was just taken away.  On the roadsides. acres and acres were completely covered with rows of tanks, of Jeeps, of small planes and other olive drab wartime equipment shipped over from the US.  Thousands and thousands of them.

Once at Tidworth we met the General who was the Administrator of the 95^th, and the Colonel, his assistant. We were introduced to the 60 doctors, with the Surgery Lt. Col. from Chicago General Hospital and the Medical Lt. Col. from Massachusetts General Hospital.  The Head Nurse of the 110 nurses was a Major.  The nurses came from many different hospitals from large and small cities in the US.  Our Red Cross team of 3 Recreation workers and Secretary was headed by an experienced social worker, Margaret Stewart, from New York City.

At one of our first huddles, she (and we) decided that we must abide by all rules made by the Head Nurse, even though she had no authority over us, and that we should mingle as much as possible with the nurses, and not nurture our own little clique.

In a few days the 95^th Gen. got orders to move into its quarters in Ringwood, in Hampshire, about 12 miles north of Bournemouth, the resort city on the Southern Coast of England.  So off drove our long line of Jeeps, personnel carriers and ambulances across the Salisbury Plain and through the large city of Salisbury—with its famous and beautiful 13^th century Gothic cathedral.  (I am delighted to recall my first view of Salisbury because I was to learn many years later two romantic bits of knowledge:  first, that the ancient natives chose the city’s location by shooting an arrow and watching where it landed on the Plain and second, that on my father’s side my earliest known English forbears came from Salisbury.)  But the greatest surprise came as our 95^th convoy drove on south not far from the city.

What could that immense broken circle of monolithic stones be doing out in that field on the right side of the road?  Just standing there all alone?  I had never heard of Stonehenge.

Soon we started seeing farmlands with charming hedgerows for fences, and inviting little cottages with thatched roofs and then a storybook village, Ringwood, with lanes guided through rows of trees and possibly a pony cart or two.  A couple miles beyond we reached our new home:  a rundown old WWI Army post built of concrete rectangular buildings, turned into an ammunition dump in the decades between the wars.  All 115 women unloaded into our new hotel—one of the ward-sized rectangles, concrete floors, one separate room for the Major, and 114 army cots with their tumbles of bagged straw for mattresses marching down the length of the room in 4 lines.  Space between the cots was little more that the width of the cot itself.  There were a few windows here and there.  No plumbing.  Separately, about 20 feet away from one side of our “hotel” was our latrine with its line of wash bowls and several flush toilets.

Chapter 6. Ringwood Day by Day

“Home at last”—just a few miles from the south coast of England across from the Channel Isles and the French coast below Calais.  Home in Ringwood but—horrors!  No go.  As the GIs and medical staff worked day and night to gear up for patients, we Red Cross staff were grounded.  None of our Red Cross recreation and office furniture and supplies arrived with the 95^th, supplies as expected.  The Army didn’t have a clue why, so the 3 of us in Recreation decided to write home for help.

How dreadful it would be if we had no personal items for the GI patients, especially at crisis times, like Christmas we speculated.  Soldier patients and the hospital, at such times used soap, toothbrushes, washcloth, shaving supplies and cigarettes, pipes, and tobacco, if possible, bagged in a small ditty bag from the Red Cross.  None had arrived, nor had games, books, craft shop tools, office materials and, worst of all, records and the combination radio and record player.

I wrote family and friends to plead for small boxes of personal items, playing cards, chips, to be mailed to me and the other two co-workers did the same.  My parents put the plea into the Lamar Daily News asking all the readers to send the items.  Our efforts made us feel better.  Later we learned that military rules forbade asking for packages because of limited mailing capacity.  Too late!  We didn’t know that.

We took the train to London to seek help from the British Red Cross.  The compassionate official listened and exclaimed “How LOVELY!”  No help there.  But we were furious at her unconcern.  Much later we learned that in England “How lovely!” is like we say “Damn, hell, spit!”

Finally everything arrived, we set up the recreation hall, complete with a wood and metal workshop, card tables, sofa, chairs, office needs, phonograph and radio combo with many current pop and country music records, and a fairly good selection of classical music too.  There were carrying baskets to take comic books, cards and personal items into the wards.  There were many craft shop supplies:  paints, wool for knitting, some leather, many tools and designs, instructions.

The local Red Cross provided an upright piano and two or three volunteers.  They let us know that they were there to help us any other ways they could.  One, a doctor’s wife from Ringwood, was invaluable in working with me to set up and run the workshop.  Together we learned lots from the GIs—we knew how to countersink screws and everything!

            Ordinarily we had two or three hundred guys in their striped cotton flannel army pajamas and long dark blue robes in the big concrete building at a time.  Probably half were NP patients—neuropsychiatric or now named traumatic distress disorder, TDD.  They were usually distant, hard to talk to, didn’t participate often.  Frequently chaplains from their outfits came by to visit, even one or two from their outfits, sometimes knowing something about a fellow that might suggest how we might draw him out.  Seldom did any of our three psychiatrists assist us—or the patients, as far as I could determine.

The rec. hall was open early in the morning until 9pm each night.  Card tables and small group arrangements were always available for their use and we scheduled large group events as often as possible.  We had sings, games—bingo several times a week at night as well as daytime. Occasionally party times were scheduled with group relays, games, talent programs if some of the GIs (or officers) had singing or other talents.  The loud country music almost never stopped from morning until night.  I’d almost never listened to it before so I found it tiring—so relentless—often the same two or three selections got played over and over again for 10 hours!

We worked literally day and night.  The routine was to have two days off after working 12-hour days for two weeks. Then at separate times each of us five took off separately for a couple days.  I usually stayed in a boarding house outside Salisbury Cathedral Close and spent the day visiting old book stores, antique shops and interesting park areas or just meditating, resting in the beautiful old 14^th Century Gothic nave.  En route sometimes I got off the bus at Stonehenge and strolled over that ancient worship shrine, resting.  Once in a while I’d take a bus into Bournemouth and enjoy that sophisticated city—also staying in a boarding house.

After a few weeks I bought a used bike.  Then I could have a lunch packed and spend the vacation day biking all over the hedge-rowed farm country enjoying the quiet fresh air, often strolling into a tiny church with its Bibles chained to the pews, reading the cemetery carvings—and usually having lunch in the sun on top a stone vault.

Sometimes I drove by an all-Black American army post, a few miles from our outfit.  Several GIs always ran following me inside their fence wanting to chat with me.  Like the English girls I waved and greeted them—but couldn’t stop.  I didn’t dare say anything and give away my secret nationality.  What a treat it must have been for them to feel comfortable greeting a white girl their own ages! 

Chapter 7. Inside the 95th

Up early for breakfast—big, with dried eggs in the mess hall—we now could quickly splash ourselves with cold water nearby in our steel helmets and jump into our clothes.  Such a treat to have a little cold water nearby.  For the first weeks the head nurse had issued the order that day and night, even dashing to the latrine, we had to put on our steel helmets.  This meant that the liner had to be kept in the helmet at all times so we couldn’t wash ourselves or our clothes in the helmets.

Finally she admitted she had misunderstood and that the order held only during periods of air raid warnings.  “Head” was given to hearing things wrong from above.  Earlier she dunned each of us women $2 for a lunch which we could see was worth about 20 cents.  Seems she had thought “2 bits” was the same as “2 bucks.”  We always obeyed the Colonel, but remained “of little faith” whatever she pronounced for the duration.

Day after day we Red Cross workers wore our grey cotton seersucker long-sleeved dresses, tan cotton stockings and black old lady shoes to work.  I could vary the costume however by flaring one of several flowered handkerchiefs I’d brought in the right hand pocket.  Most of the time we used our army issue khaki overcoats, but we also had heavy wool dark grayish-blue winter suits and hats.  For summer we had light grey, light-weight wool suits with matching hats.  If we still had rayon stockings from home, we could wear those.  England had no “silk” stockings by 1944.

For meals we stood in line and ate with whichever doctors and nurses turned up in the officer’s mess. There the conversations helped us keep up with gossip, as did those in the barrack where each of us slept near different nurses.  Lots of battlefront happenings came from the GIs at the rec. hall and in the wards and from the weekly Stars and Stripes, the official military newspaper.  The good old British Broadcasting Co. was probably the best source.  In the rec. hall we often all stood by for the latest information

Back to the mess hall, one of my most vivid memories of war days came from my first lunch in the mess hall.  Mary, the Red Cross secretary, and I sat down with two surgeons.  First thing, one said to the other, “We’ve got a PROBLEM! What are we going to DO with the leg we just cut off?”  Instantly, Mary stood up and screamed “You can’t talk like that!” and stomped out of the building sobbing.  It took just a day or two for the Red Cross to find a new location for Mary—in a recreation program in London where she wouldn’t run into things like this.  And we had been warned at Red Cross training that some of us would find unexpectedly that we would not be able to tolerate some aspect of conditions around us. They had promised trainees that changes were possible under those circumstances.  “How unfortunate that the military is not in a position to make such personnel adjustments,” I used to think as I was at a loss to know how to help the hundreds of NP cases we met.

Our visits to each of the 10 hospital wards were always far too few.  For the wards with l00 of the most recovered guys we often just picked up the games, comic books, puzzles used by GIs who had moved on, and left tobacco and personal supplies that the nurse in charge asked for before sneaking out because wards with the sicker GIs needed us more.

We carried our basket of “games and other goodies” and went from bed to bed in mid-recovery wards, often stopping to visit, leave some craft material or get someone started on a project, write a letter or spot someone needing social worker help.  Sometimes we would engage groups of patients in the ward in a group game—usually bingo!

The Recreation training in Washington had stressed that looking into the eyes of a disfigured or person disabled was absolutely essential.  “Just look straight into his eyes.  See nothing else.”  In the recovery wards they said to remember that the crying and screaming well might be from drugs not yet worn off.  These difficult to execute, but simple rules helped a lot.  So, as heart-breaking as it might be, I found rewarding the difficult ward visits even if it was just saying a “hello” with a smile, holding a hand, or asking a question.

Chapter 8. Outside the 95th

Soldiers unexpectedly sometimes developed problems which required Red Cross help in getting back home.  Many times the serious problem occurred with their family in the States.  In such cases, facilitated by the military, our Social Worker was a life saver.  Because financial help often was needed to help alleviate such problems, each week one of the 5 of us got off half a day to do the necessary banking in Ringwood which was 2 or 4 miles away.  One of my delights was to be asked by the Social Worker to carry out that task.

No Jeep from the hospital motor pool was tapped for this transport.  I rode in the open air beside a rustic little old Englishman pony driver.  Sitting side by side in his tiny box of a pony cart we would clip-clop to the most rustic little ivy-covered bank you ever saw. It was a branch of one of the biggest banks of England.  All the way there and all the way back!

Another foray happened that placed us isolates back into the real world.  That was an occasionally night out in the big resort hotel in Bournemouth. Their lounge, like all bars in England, closed at 10pm.  The only thing we could order was gin and orange juice, warm, which none of us liked.

My most vivid memory is a one-time date I had with one of our psychiatrist doctors.  Just before l0 o’clock, without asking the rest of us, he almost covered the table by ordering extra post-10 drinks.  We were all furious!  Humiliated, I tried not to see or feel the glares from the well-dressed local English around us.  All that “Ugly American” for warm gin and orange!  (Incidentally my brother Neill, a doctor with the military hospital in Bristol, much later told me that their psychiatric department had deported the man.  I guess he wasn’t so dumb—did things like that in order to get discharged.)

Back to Bournemouth, that large city was included in the culture tours that England maintained all during WWII to try to maintain morale of its citizens.  So for the first time ever I got to see ballet, some of the best in the world either in Bournemouth or in London.  It was the Ballet Russe, with Lynn Fontaine, one of the most famous of all ballerinas in the world.  

Another contact with the outer world was the Red Cross of England truck driver who regularly came down from London to replenish our supplies for patients.  We loved learning the complete news from a live person.  The radio was such a great help, but because of the need for secrecy, of course, critical information often was censored out.

In mid-summer l944 I was shocked to see the driver descend looking so exhausted, pale and weary that I said “What’s the matter?”  He said, “A new kind of bomb, many of them come every night and they make no noise.  We never know how close we are to being hit.  No one can sleep—they are much worse than the buzz bombs.”  This was the first we heard of the V bombs.

That news scared me because I had been made the head recreation worker by then and occasionally went to the London Red Cross office on business.  I usually stayed in a big hotel for a night or two—and the only available room was always above the last floor thought to be fairly safe by the hotel, usually the 11^th floor.

One afternoon I had just walked into the room with my ditty bag during an air raid warning.  As recommended I went immediately to open the window (to avoid glass breakage in case of pressure from a nearby explosion).  Instantly a bomb went off a block or two away. Out the window soared my only Red Cross summer hat.

That summer I once or twice biked out in the woods where a Canadian outfit was stationed and they invited me to join them in their daily break for a cup of tea.  This excursion seemed like an adventure, as did socializing with the officers and nurses in our 95^th Officer’s Club.

This concrete rectangle was two or three hundred yards down a gravel road and well worth walking to for a break away from our 12-hour workdays.  I seldom went to enjoy the club but for a night-time party I made a special effort.  At such a gathering in the long summer English twilight one evening the air raid siren went off.  No more party.  We hastened out to go back to our barracks.  Just as we approached a swampy area on our left we realized an enemy plane was coming our way.  Our fast stroll whipped into a run when we heard the whistle of an old-fashioned bomb dropping overhead.  Wham!  We hit the gravel flat on our stomachs.

Seconds later we were covered with mud.  The bomb had landed in a deep marshy mud pond and exploded about 25 yards to our left.  We were safe.

Chapter 9. D-Day

In Ringwood, Hampshire, England

Not often did air raid sirens result in close scares at the 95^th.  We were too far from vital locations I suppose.  In going to and from quarters, to mess or to the recreation center, looking skyward toward the northeast we frequently saw planes alone or in small groups.  Once I saw 2 fighter planes in a fight and then one started plunging toward the earth.  I never could be quite sure when I saw some of the fighters whether they were ours or the enemies.

By late spring our hospital was nearly full day after day with many soldiers brought in from the fighting down in Italy, from forays into Germany and from accidents on posts in England.  Patients injured in fighting typically came to us from a Field Hospital, having proceeded through one or more to Station Hospitals, to 95^th General Hospital.  Some went back to their units healed; some needed care at a different General Hospital with certain specialties or were sent State side for advanced care or for discharge.

Our long workdays made us really appreciate getting out occasionally to other outfits, especially Air Force parties in Dorchester, further west of us on the coast.  Their lifestyle always was a step ahead of ours.  They even had American toilet paper!  After a stretch of working day and night it was sublime to hear your Social Worker boss say, “You have a sleep-in tomorrow until you wake up!”  And so it was, one day in June.

Sometime after 8 o’clock that morning I awoke to a thunderous noise. Startled, I was further frightened that not another soul was in the barracks.  It seemed so dark outside!  What could be wrong?  Rushing to the door I was dumbfounded to see the sky from east to west and overhead from north to south covered with layer after layer of bombers in formation, followed by their fighters in formation.  Some layers were just fighter formations.  Other formations of different fighter groups, different bomber outfits.  Every pilot headed the same direction, toward France.  There were so many planes the sun could barely shine through.  The dawn of D-day and I had missed it, sound asleep!

The 95^th would have been the nearest medical facility to the beach landing in France, I believe.  By the time I got to the rec. hall, the General had told us to take extra Red Cross personal items into the wards—that we would be receiving patients by evening.  Of course General Hospitals ordinarily didn’t receive patients directly from the war scene.  In any case that first system didn’t work very well.

So the General changed the plan: Red Cross workers were to make the first contact with the casualties from the Normandy beaches.  For the next day or two—I should say night or two—as the ambulances arrived, the stretcher bearers with their injured, still outside, would form a single line.  As each patient came past us we were to place a bar of soap, a washcloth, toothbrush, toothpaste and a razor on each stretcher near the head of the injured.  Then the stretcher would be carried into Receiving.  Passing out Red Cross items no longer delayed the medical staff’s handling patients in the wards.  Nurses immediately could start working to clean up the patients so that doctors could work with them.

Imagine how indispensable this made us feel!  But it was tough to go through.  The soldiers were dirty, often bloody, totally fatigued, silent.  And once in a while, we feared, already dead. 

In a short time, possibly 2 days, patients no longer arrived directly from the battle scenes.  Now I can’t remember whether we had just filled up by that time, or whether the military was able that quickly to outfit and regroup the Field to Station to General Hospital system in Normandy.

Chapter 10. Breaking Up

Busy, busy times followed after D-Day for a few more weeks.  We avidly followed the news, especially grabbing the Stars and Stripes for the straight dope.  A larger share of patients were badly injured but had been processed through newly set up medical stations in France.  Others came from the Italian battles.

Meanwhile I had managed to carry on with less pain.  I had suffered an intense pleurisy that the doctors couldn’t diagnose for several weeks:  Intense pain in my chest at every breath and killer pain if I coughed.  A short break in bed didn’t help as I had real misery.  Carrying on, I felt so indispensable.  Nobody had time to sympathize, but at least I had the support of my mother and dad who wrote more frequently.

Imagine my shock recently.  In going through my V-mail and WWII letters which my mother had saved, here was a letter my brother Neill had written home.  Mom accidentally had slipped it in with my stack.  Doctor Neill had died many years before my discovery of his letter.  But I’m still angry at him—typical big brother—always interfering with my life.  (He had spent a whole 8x11 page telling my folks:  “Stop worrying about Nanny—(I hated that name—couldn’t shed it until I went away to college.  Neill as a tot couldn’t say “Jeannette” and said something that ended up “Nanny” and the family thought it was so cute it became my name.)

“Stop worrying about Nanny,” Neill had written.  “She is all right.  I visited her at the time she was sick and at that time she looked better than I had seen her for a long time.”  She complained of a pain in the chest.  All the x-rays were normal and I am sure,” goes on Doctor Neill, “that she had merely sprained a little ligament between the ribs from coughing.  I have seen many of these cases and they are a nuisance for a few weeks but they are not important and they get well no matter what is done.”  On Neill went, “Jimmie Corning, (a young lieutenant friend from Lamar), dropped by here a few days later and said he had seen her and she was working again.” 

Back to Ringwood, in late July, I believe, we got word to pack up—we were to go to France.  Soon we found ourselves in western England in a less than pleasant “parking area” south of Bristol at a makeshift camp at Cannington near the larger town of Bridgwater.  We called it Bilgewater.

Surprisingly much good came of that situation.  I was close enough to see my brother (in my good favor at the time) and to meet his new serious girlfriend whom I liked better than the fiancée he had left in Michigan. He had met the new friend, Kay, on a tennis court.  They took me around to historic places—most memorable the old Roman baths in Bath, England.  And I got to help Neill decide to break up with his fiancée.  A couple years later he did marry Kay from Bristol. 

Bilgewater paid off for me also because Margaret, our Social Worker talked the General into letting us 5 Red Cross Workers off for a week’s stay in Oxford which was holding its annual Shakespeare Festival.  Every day we saw a different Tragedy or Comedy and we had lots of rest and time so we could enjoy the Oxford campus, punt on the Avon or whatever.  Not a bad way to avoid sitting idle as we had to wait to cross the Channel to Normandy!

Chapter 11. Channel Crossing

Finally the day arrived:  orders to dress warmly, pack ditty bag, and board for the crossing.  Our transport was a medium-sized Norwegian cruise ship, quite elegant as built but converted for troop carrying.  I remember being in a walnut-walled lounge having a bridge orgy.  With the same three players all day and into the night we played on a high-legged table sitting up high―maybe on stacked bags that were there in the crowded lounge.

We couldn’t go on deck because that was our GIs’ territory.  They were packed in, standing by day and stretched out to sleep at night as I recall.  The Red Cross gals must have had bunks with the nurses down below decks for our one night aboard the cruiser.  Sometime during the darkness we sailed across the Channel.

In daylight, still out in the Channel, but with land in sight, small groups of us started peeling off into a few landing craft.  Finally it was our turn to be ferried closer to the Normandy Beach.  Vividly I recall sailing toward land and the breathtaking moment that the leading wooden end of our LCD dropped down to a cellar-door slant, whereupon 2 of us at a time sat down dangling our legs over the slant and balancing our packed ditty bags skyward, slid into the water.  It reached up to about 6 inches below my chin.  To my great relief, the water was a comfortable September tepid temperature.

Balance was the word as we carefully strode toward land through the calm water.  It was an emotional moment to reach Omaha Beach and look up at the very sand dunes from which Hitler’s forces mowed down so many of our troops on D-Day.  As we angled off to the right to climb up over the banks we still could see battle-related trash.  And I could not get away from the imagined noise and screams that still lingered on.

We had carried our metal mess kits, cups and cutlery and our water cans, as usual, with our ditty bags.  But that day I’m sure we ate only K-rations as we warmed ourselves and tried to dry our clothes on the grasses and sand atop the dunes.

Just at twilight the GIs set up individual pup tents for each of us.  I still remember how heavenly it seemed to have shelter and a place to rest my weary body.  Dry by then, I hit the sack at the first possible moment and sublimely fell asleep.

Chapter 12. Tenting in an Apple Orchard

Just an hour or two later my heavenly sleep in the pup tent ended when a loud male voice shouted, “Wake up.  Pack up.  Make it fast.  We’re moving on!”  Wow!  Lighted with my trusty flashlight supplied by batteries brought from home, I threw on my clothes, stuffed my ditty bag and stepped out ready for the next move.  It was cold.  Thank heaven for my cozy, now dry, wool Eisenhower-jacketed pantsuit and the ankle length GI issue raincoat.  Unlined—not yet winter, the lining was packed away in my footlocker travelling with the hospital supplies somewhere.

Soon we found ourselves on the road in the dark night.  With other olive-drabbed females we were tightly packed on each of the two side benches which face each other on the open air truck—the Armored Personnel Carrier.

Horrors, a cold drizzle was starting.  We already felt a bit chilly and it was just the early part of the night.  On and on we drove in the black night, sitting straight up, no way to change position.  I don’t recall that anyone said a word the whole night.  Each of us was trying not to increase the misery of the others maybe.

First we shivered and our teeth chattered.  After a while we were aware that our raincoats were soaked and the moisture was creeping in from the outside.  Then the continual drizzle on the face caused a little rivulet to form and flow from the nose, down the neck, between the breasts and on down the center of the body.  A whole night to face in that straitjacket of torture—some 8 or 9 hours of unbearable cold, wondering “Can I survive?”

Finally as dawn started creeping up we saw as well as felt torture.  On either side of the road nothing was whole—rubbish from war damage everywhere.  Dead animals: dogs, cows and calves, horses, other farm animals as well as shattered pieces of building, holes in the road.  Almost no building left standing.  Animals were strewn on the ground here and there, in bushes, on piles of shattered lumber.  One black and white milk cow, still appearing alive and undamaged, had been blown about 2 stories high up in a tree with her belly resting comfortably on a large branch of the tree, legs dangling on each side to balance her perfectly.

In the morning light we entered a city that was obliterated by bombs and each of us knew instantly where we were.  On our left, so often photographed, was the real-time view of the sunlight streaming through the bomb hole in the bell tower of the Saint-Lô Church, the only remaining part of the building.  By then the drizzle had stopped.  The sky, as well as the entire professional staff of the 95^th General Hospital, was colored blue.

Not long after Saint-Lô, we stopped on the main road from Normandy to Paris in what was unmistakably an apple orchard―our dwelling place in the Lison area of Normandy.  Busily scurrying around were our mess GIs preparing an open-air breakfast surrounded by a number of huge tents in the orchard rectangle.  Apparently the GIs had been brought ahead from the beach to prepare for us.

After stumbling out of the Armored Personnel Carriers, we all compared our bluish-purple coloring and the depth of the ridges on our hands, which looked as if we had spent too long in the bath.  We looked less than human!

Our tent city filled about half of the former apple orchard.  Instead of hedgerows of shrubs to mark off an area in England, apple trees in France formed the boundaries of the apple orchards.  The trees inside had been removed in order to grow crops, so our new home was among the weeds and grasses.

          We were so glad that the rain had stopped and the sun came out.  It seemed we had arrived in heaven—sunny, warmer, smell of food and alive!

Chapter 13. Red Ball Sightseeing

How divine it was to be thawing out after our all night wet ride!   Once we females were assigned spaces inside the tent and our loads were dumped on our Army cots, we fished out our aluminum cases containing our steel knife, fork and spoon and our metal drinking cup and rushed out to breakfast in the deliciously warm sunshine.  The bottom part of the tin case covered with heaps of scrambled dried eggs, probably potatoes and maybe even a pancake, we dived in—but not just “we.”  Honeybee after honeybee joined the feast.

None of us realized that between the loaded fork and the mouth there is an un-seeable point.  Two or three diners had their tongues stung, tipping off the rest of us to watch out.  Those bees knew precisely when to land on the bite of food and plagued us constantly in Normandy, and later, in open-air eating.  At most meals some mouths got stung.  It was frustrating to know you’d have your turn any bite. 

That morning, well fed and warm again, we sensed the drama of being in this apple orchard.  Along with other Normandy apple orchards our new grounds seemed almost sacred.  American bodies still were being discovered in the weeded ditches surrounding the orchards so of course we began to imagine that in ours there WAS an unusual odor.  Without discussing it much, usually two by two we wandered around the first couple of days searching the thistles and tall weeds under the tree-hedged perimeter.  We never learned whether or not that apple orchard was the scene of a battle since no evidence was found.

Our latrine was a ditch dug by our GIs.  For privacy there was a chest-high canvas wall surrounding it.  We dressed inside our dark tents but had to go out in the light to comb our hair or put on make-up.  After dressing the hours stretched ahead with nothing whatever to do until the next meal except to watch the big Army supply trucks, each with its brightly painted Red Ball covering its side door, rumble up or down the nearby road.

“What an opportunity,” thought Mary Kate and I and we proceeded to get approval to hitch-hike.  So off we went almost every day thumbing a ride with whatever GI driver came along traveling toward a destination that was new to us. As we entered a town that looked interesting (by noon or before) we would jump out of the front seat, and note how long it had taken to arrive at that village.  We explored the town or village and visited with the few people around but always with our eyes on our watches.  When we had just the amount of time left to get home in time for supper, we walked back to the road and thumbed a ride back to our apple orchard.

We were not far from Bayeux, the home of the famous historic tapestries and we hoped to go there but we never did.  Bayeux must not have been on the main road.  I remember Sainte-Mere Eglise, one of the larger towns.  We seldom knew the names of the villages.  Most were in Normandy but some were in Burgundy, farther west and north. 

Such a lot we learned about the area, its country life, its beauty and its problems.  The people, though surprised to see us, were very friendly and kind.  Mary Kate and I sometimes had to choose a house, swallow our pride and knock on the door to ask to use their toilet facilities.

In town, country and city throughout France there were pissoirs in abundance for the men; however, for women there were absolutely no public toilets to be found.  In Paris in the main subway entrances there were facilities for women but they were pitch black and underground and they were unsafe to enter during the war.  Electricity was in short supply.

Chapter 14. Off to Paris

Except for our explorations with the Red Ball Express trucks, it was boring—that ten days or two weeks parked in the apple orchard.  Every day it was only “eat” or “sleep” in daylight for diversion and evenings seemed never to end.  We were hoarding the last of our flashlight batteries and candles.  It was getting too cold to be outside comfortably and “nursing” talk—heard all around me—had become tiresome indeed.

A few days after we settled into the apple orchard, word had gotten around Normandy that the 95^th had arrived.  Soon a few Air Force guys who had met some of us at their dances in England started dropping around to visit in the evening.  To chat we had to bring out our army blankets for warmth and sit or lie on the cold ground.  Often it was fun to watch the stars come out.  One blanket for yourself and one for the guest if you had someone you knew.  Rolled up in our blankets the whole group had to huddle together to keep warm.

One evening a Pennsylvania Dutch fighter pilot turned up to visit me.  I had met him at a dance in Dorchestershire in England.  I still remember his plane he had proudly taken me out to see.  Each pilot had chosen a sentimental name for his plane.  My friend had had the name big enough to cover his cabin door, I think for his wife.  As was typical it was painted large scale with various bright colors.

That cold evening I remember digging into a small round package of Camembert cheese―that divine treat for kings.  Local farmers had started gifting our troops with their priceless, unmarketable, homemade, elegant, creamy, rich Camembert.  Each night, as we went to bed we were thinking about the latest rumors we’d heard that day about Patton’s progress across France.

Finally one fateful evening we got orders to be ready to board the train for Paris!  For the first time since D-Day the Allies had succeeded in repairing the tracks and train that the Germans had torn up before leaving.  We would be in Paris in the morning—the first outfit to use the train!

By the early hours of the night all of us were aboard.  The women, all 115—had crammed into one rail car.  It must have been a dining car earlier.  At one end of the car was one typical 1940s train toilet.

All the way down an extended central aisle was booth after booth of dining tables, a bench on each side with an overhead shelf.   Each table was built into the wall and about 10 inches above the surface of the table was a large glass window.  By the time all 115 were situated, it was a suffocating scene: 3 or 4 women on each bench, overhead shelves groaning with packed duffel bags and overcoats.

Off our little train started and we settled in for the night dreaming of being in Paris when we awoke.  Some could rest with their head in a corner, others leaned back or forward resting on the table.  About an hour out, “What was that?  Sounded like gun shots.”  Soon it was confirmed!  One of our security GIs came through and warned that the enemy must not have been completely cleared out and we were vulnerable with those big windows.  We must keep our heads on the table or we could get a direct hit.

He regretted having to tell us, but we must keep our heads and our bodies below the bottom level of the windows!  So much for getting to Paris!  Oh well, we’d be there in a couple more hours.

Chapter 15. Paris Much Later

It was a looong night indeed!  Who could sleep, worrying that if you dozed off, you’d lift your head off the table?  Only occasionally did we hear a single gunshot or two, but that was plenty to keep us alert the first night.  With the light of dawn there was no sound of the Boche.  And we weren’t moving!  We must be there!!  But no, we were in the country, farmland and no apple orchards.  Then we learned that the German saboteurs had blown up the tracks a few miles ahead of us and we had taken a detour.

Back to our train car, you can imagine the hubbub and accompanying problems with one toilet and 115 women!  And what was for breakfast?  No sign of food.  By mid-morning, though, and for the rest of our journey, we lived on delicious French bread and red wine.  During daylight hours peasant women came out of the fields with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine which they handed us through our opened up windows whenever we halted.

With the morning light each morning, the warm fall weather allowed us to keep the windows open.  That was a great help in diluting the odor of wine, wine, wine, now added to the aroma in the car.

Much of the time the train stood still, occasionally having reached a small rural train stop.  Then we would start chug-chugging but soon would stop again in the middle of a farm field.  Only the train engineer, I presume, knew where we were.  One full day and night passed, then about mid-day the second day, as I recall, we pulled into a sizeable railroad station where there were stacks of boxes of K-rations which we thought had been destined for Patton.  Apparently our General ordered our GIs to help themselves, so they grabbed enough for each of us in the 95^th to have a K-ration feast that afternoon.

As dawn broke the third day we were in a city!  Must be Paris.  No, it was Chartres.  We could see the two famous unmatched Cathedral towers.  Fairly early that morning we had orders to detrain.  The General had arranged with the Mayor of Chartres that our entire 700 or so 95^th personnel could march through the streets directly to the Cathedral where they would lock the doors.

Clean air to breathe; aching muscles to stretch!  Of course we were overjoyed.  Inside the Cathedral the first sight was disappointing.  The gorgeous blue stained glass windows were completely boarded up; but the less precious ones brought in exquisite light.  I remember only one person in attendance, an elderly maintenance man.  Fortunately he was excited and eager to be a guide that day, able to tell us and show us his beloved wonders throughout the immense cathedral.  We, just a few of us, stuck with him most of the day, barely able to communicate, he in French and we with pantomime and a few recalled French words from French classes.  We talked about the meanings of the different sections of the architecture and stories portrayed by sculptures and glass including in bays, crossing, treasures, about history as told in windows, and in different levels of the building.

Most memorable to me was the very deepest small area we climbed down to see.  It was, he described, a completely bottomless well.  I think we dropped something in.  Sure enough, way, way down we heard a sound that suggested the object hit something, and then no more sound.

The pantomime of the guide suggested that ancient people had been punished by being pushed in, that a village had begun there, fortifications ,defeats and survivals and finally in the Middle Ages the start of the Cathedral on the spot.  Many years later, when I had learned to speak a little French and returned to Chartres Cathedral, I took a tour with an English-speaking guide.  When I asked about that bottomless well he looked at me as if I were totally nuts.  He’d “never heard of such a thing!”

After dark we marched back to our cozy train ride and set off again for Paris.  We were starting the 4^th night to be followed by the 4^th day on a train trip that today takes less than an hour.

Chapter 16. Paris!

Hey!  Where are we?  Big station!  Paris?  It’s Paris!  So we uploaded all our gear and gleefully got out of the smelly railroad car.  Standing around what probably was a northeast railroad station we awaited orders.  Then the Sergeant brought us the word.  No connections were running yet from the station into the center or the city, so we would have to walk.  Off we strode.

Not for long as I recall.  A farmer with a team of horses pulling a hay wagon caught up with us women walking at the back of the lines.  With relief we piled our baggage into the empty middle of the wagon bed and over the edges we dangled our legs.  Triumphantly we rode into town. 

As our horse-drawn limousine drew closer to the more populous areas, Parisians started running into the streets to greet us.  Soon there were welcomes with great emotion—hugs and kisses as we would jump off the wagon bed.  It’s my understanding that we were the first American military women they had seen. 

In the orchard our sophisticated social worker had explained to us that one of the “musts” in Paris was to sit in the square in front of the Paris Opera House.  Always you could expect a friend to show up.  So we were hoping for that destination in the city center.

And believe it or not, we did arrive at Opera Square.  I’m sure it wasn’t at that time, but a few days later I did sit to people-watch at Café de la Pais in the Square.  And who should wander in but the Pennsylvania Dutch fighter pilot I had met in England?  (A year or so later I learned from a patient from the same fighter outfit that my friend had been shot down.)

While we were in Paris, we 5 Red Cross workers were separated from the rest of the 95^th, I presume by arrangement with the French Croix Rouge.  I don’t remember anything about our first night there except taking a bath—and a unique one it was.  We were in a big old building which must have been modernized by placing an old footed porcelain bathtub high up in an unfinished attic, which otherwise appeared empty.  Unfinished boards with a light tint of red made a spacious, unfinished ceilinged, rectangular bathroom in the emptiness of the attic.

Ah, my turn to bathe.  I walked up several flights of stairs to find, like the rest of the building (I’d forgotten) no heat, of course.  Oh well, a hot bath!  But oh no!  Frigid ice-cold water only!  I don’t remember whether or not we had soap at that time; nevertheless it was so divine to wash off those last three days and four nights!

We were free to roam as we wished for 2 or 3 days.  I remember particularly spending time among the stands and shops on the Left Bank of the Seine.  I bought a number of old etchings and lithographs.  At a big department store I bought a beautiful handmade white batiste baby dress that I planned some day to use at my daughter’s christening (and then never had a daughter).  And I fell in love with and bought a lovely pale blue georgette nightgown with satiny floral appliqué.  (Never ever wore it because I was too shy.)

For myself I also bought a supply of tiny tortoise-shell eyebrow combs (never knew they existed).  Those I did use for many years after the War until I lost them all.  They solved the problem of my bushy dark eyebrows.

Chapter 17. Patton too Slow

Early September must have been one of the times Patton and his 3^rd Army ran into unexpected delays advancing from Paris into Germany.  Scheduled to follow Patton, apparently, the 95^th was held up in Paris for a week or 10 days. Away from our outfit, we five Red Cross workers had a few days on our own right in the center of the city.

Ballet and musical events continued at the Paris Opera House and I got to see one or two ballets.  It was amazing how completely the Parisian ballet differed from the highly structured Ballet Russe of London.  Rather than looking automated and worrying about each dancer keeping a uniform movement of the arm in height and angle and timing—extremely unlike the NY Rockettes—each French dancer seemed to strive for the intense individual emotional expression called for at that moment.

A vivid memory from those early days in Paris has been my getting lost in the bowels of the Paris Opera House.  At intermission I was looking for a restroom.  I couldn’t find one and couldn’t figure out how to get back.  Miles of different floors and hallways later I finally heard voices and saw human beings.  It really was terrorizing for me.

In the heart of Paris I had another agonizing experience, “enjoying” a Chinese pedicure.  This was a must according to Margaret, our social worker.  She, as a student at Radcliffe, had spent a year On the Tour in Europe so knew all the experiences a well-bred person should have.  Of course I didn’t want to miss a thing.  So at the appointed time I arrived in a nondescript looking street somewhere and found an even less imposing entry door with a drawn curtain across the one big window just beyond the door.

Upon entering I found no one at the small reception table and I couldn’t hear a sound.  I could see a solid line of housedress-like cotton print curtains drawn across each of four or five small rooms at the right side of a narrow hallway.

Soon a little Chinese man shrouded in a white robe appeared and motioned me to follow.  He drew a curtain and we entered a throned cubby hole of a room perhaps 9 feet long and 7 feet wide.  This malicious looking foreigner, with whom no English person could communicate through speech, motioned for me to sit on the throne.

Then he turned his back and weighed carefully which of the brightly highlighted dozens of viciously shiny steel, sharp-pointed, shovel-like, or scraper-shaped weapons to draw from the wall opposite me for his first attack.  Each different shaped tool was emphasized, showing off its variable sizes, marching across its set from tiny to extra large.  The wall itself was a sparkling, artfully arranged still life picture, depending on your viewpoint.

But that was only the beginning.  The instant the Angel of Death in White picked up my bare foot I realized I was out of my mind to have come.  All my life I’ve suffered from being unusually ticklish, especially in my feet.  The utter torture went on for several hours (not really, of course).  Two things I learned.  Do my own pedicures—I’ve never had another pedicure—yet.  And never count on fainting!  Even though I tried to slump in a faint to avoid the situation, I couldn’t.  And I never have been able to, yet.

Chapter 18. German Leftovers

No more free roaming in Paris.  Our Red Cross team was needed at the large American hospital in the outskirts of the city.  Off we went, pleased to be needed.  We wondered how we could manage with only our ditty bags, no uniforms—and limited changes of clothes.

At the hospital we found the uncomfortable lack of heating so cold that each morning we wore as many garments as possible.  As we worked, for the week or so we were there, the flannel pajamas we slept in we layered under our heavy wool pantsuits.  The wards were full of GIs badly injured and were there for specialized care before returning state side for continuing care.

The hospital was very modern with lots of light, halls that were shiny, long and clattery as we rushed along.  One afternoon I was startled when someone touched my right arm from behind.  I turned and immediately looked squarely into the mutilated face of a GI in a wheelchair.  His eyes were bright but below them, his entire face was missing.  Clearly he had raced his wheelchair to catch up with me and chat.  Somehow I managed to look straight only into his eyes as we had been taught.  I grabbed his hand and held it and I survived that unexpected visit.

Again the 95^th was pulled back together, this time reassembling in the small village of Revigny.  This was a heart of Calvados country—I think the drink is homemade plum wine, perhaps distilled or otherwise fortified.  It tasted dreadful and was extremely potent.

Revigny must have been chosen by the occupying Germans to house a barracks.  They probably had commandeered several community facilities and some apartments in order to set up there.  In a vacant store we found mess tables enough to seat 50 or 60 Krauts. On the tables were half-finished plates of food—clearly, there had been an unexpected hasty exit.  The food remained tasty-looking and inviting.

An unmercifully cold spell for mid-September took over.  It was a boring time for our stand-by outfit—nothing to read, nothing going on, just waiting.  Memorable for me is the night 5 or 6 of us Red Cross gals and officers braved leaving our warm quarters to chat in a small apartment abandoned by Hitler’s officers.  There was a small built-in fireplace and nothing else in the room but a beautifully designed, small, hardwood, hand-carved chest with two drawers.

As we visited and joked, sitting with our backs against the walls we got colder and colder.  Then we began noticing each other glancing at the chest.  (We had learned to deplore the way in which the Germans in France had confiscated the precious objects they found in lovely homes from which they had forced owners in order to obtain quarters for themselves.)

The cold was so penetrating that we could hardly talk because of our teeth chattering.  Someone shyly wondered what would happen to that chest when we left.  Options began to creep into the conversation.  Wasn’t it absurd, with the future so unpredictable?  Oh no, we’d never do a thing like that.  And yet—

We stomped the drawers apart, tore off the legs.  Someone had a match, and we stayed up probably until 9:30 p.m. in glowing warmth.

With shame but understanding, I think that I have always remembered what I learned that night.  I will never say, “No. I would never do that.”