THE TEST THAT TOLD
“Mrs. Hobby’s Horses.” Betty laughed. “That’s really no great secret.
Perhaps you didn’t notice it, but we’ve been sleeping in a stable.”
“A stable!” Norma stared. “A stable with polished floors?”
“Oh, they fixed them up, of course. But the row of buildings to which
this belongs was all stables only a short while ago.”
“For horses?”
“Why not?” Betty laughed again. “Fort Des Moines has always been a
cavalry post.”
“Oh! And I suppose it was from these very stables that cavalry horsemen
rode thundering away to fight the Indians.”
“Absolutely!”
“How romantic!” Norma exclaimed. “But I still don’t see what that’s got
to do with hobby horses.”
“I didn’t say hobby horses. I said they called us Mrs. Hobby’s horses.
Don’t you see?” Betty’s voice dropped. “Mrs. Hobby is director of the
Corps. And they say she’s a wonder. All of us raw recruits must spend a
week in these stables before we go to live in Boom Town. So you see,
they call us Mrs. Hobby’s horses.”
“But Boom Town? Where’s that?” Norma demanded.
“Oh! Come on!” Betty exclaimed. “You want to know too much too soon.
Let’s get our bunks made. We have a lot of things to do this day. One
of them is to eat breakfast. That cold air made me hungry. Let’s get
going.”
A short time later they found themselves caught in a brown stream of
WACs pouring toward a long, low building. Once inside they were greeted
with the glorious odor of frying bacon, brewing coffee, and all that
goes with a big delicious breakfast.
And was it big! In this mess hall twenty-five hundred girls were being
served.
As she joined the long line that moved rapidly forward Norma was all
but overcome by the feeling that she was part of something mammoth and
wonderful.
“It’s big!” she exclaimed.
“Biggest thing in all the world.” Betty pressed her arm. “We’re in the
Army now!”
Yes, they were in the Army. And this was Army food. On their sectional
trays, oatmeal, toast and bacon were piled.
Their cups were a marvel to behold. Half an inch thick, big as a pint
jar, and entirely void of handles, they presented a real problem. But
Norma mastered the art of an Army coffee drinker in one stride. So too
did Millie, the girl from a department store.
“Boy!” Millie giggled, balancing her cup in one hand. “Now let the Japs
come! I’ll get one of them and never even nick this cup! Honest,” she
confided, “I think this is going to be fun.”
“Fun, and lots of work,” was Norma’s reply.
“Oh! Work!” Millie sobered. “Lead me to it! It can’t be worse than
Shield’s Bargain Basement during the Christmas rush. It’s ‘Can you find
me this?’ or ‘Can you give me that?’ and ‘Miss Martin, do this,’ and
‘Miss Martin, do that,’ hours and hours on end. Bad air, cross
customers, bossy floorwalkers. And for what? I ask you? Sixteen dollars
a week!”
“Could you live on that?” Norma asked in surprise.
“No, but I did,” Millie giggled. “But honest, I think this will be a
lot better.”
“It’s not so much a matter of it being better or worse,” Norma replied
soberly, “as it is of what we have to give. This is war, you know. Our
war!”
“Yes, I know.” The little salesgirl, it seems, had a serious side to
her nature. “I’ve thought about that, too. In the city where they
examined us they said I might do library work. I sold books, you know,
and I know an awful lot about them. And I can cook, too,” she added
hopefully.
“They have a cooking and baking school,” Betty encouraged. “They teach
you how to cook in a mess hall and out of doors for a few people and a
great many. Perhaps for a thousand people at a time. And you do it all
in the baggage car of a special train.”
“Ee-magine little me cooking for a thousand people!” Millie wilted like
an unwatered flower. “Honest, girls, I’m just scared stiff! I couldn’t
go back! I just couldn’t! I’d rather die! And today they give us our
special interviews and everything.”
“You’ll make it all right,” Betty assured her. “Just drink the rest of
your coffee. That will pep you up.”
Once again Millie lifted her huge army cup. “Here’s to us all,” she
laughed.
At that they clinked their cups and drank to their day that had just
begun.
Mid-afternoon found Norma sitting at the end of a row of girls, waiting
her turn at a private interview. In twenty-five open booths twenty-five
interviewers sat smilingly asking questions in low tones of twenty-five
new recruits, and carefully writing down the answers. In her row as she
sat waiting her turn Norma saw Lena, the tall, strong girl who
whispered strangely in the night, Rosa, who had flashed a light, Betty,
Millie, and a few others.
As she waited—just waited—she began to be a little afraid. The
interviewers were smiling, but after all, those were serious smiles.
She could not hear the questions. She could guess them. These
interviewers were asking, “What can you do? What would you like most to
do? What else can you do?”
All of a sudden Norma realized that she had never done a real day’s
work in all her life. She had always gone to school. Oh, yes! She could
cook, just a little. But so little!
“I guess,” she thought, “that I’m what they call a typical American
college girl, not a bad student, and not too good, fairly good at
tennis and basketball. I’ve got brown hair and eyes, and I’m not too
tall nor yet too short.” She laughed in spite of herself. “A good
fellow, and all that. But,” she sobered, “what can I do? What do I want
to do? What else can I do?”
She had felt a little sorry for the shopgirl, Millie. Now she envied
her. Millie knew all about books and she could really cook. At this
very moment, smiling with fresh-born confidence, Millie was stepping
into a booth for her trial-by-words. And she, Norma Kent, a college
graduate, sat there shivering in her boots! Surely this was a strange
world.
The booth that Millie had entered was wide open. Norma could see all
but hear nothing of what went on. At first she was interested in
watching the smiles and frowns that played across Millie’s frank and
mobile face. Of a sudden her interest was caught and held by the
examiner. Tall, slim, looking very much the soldier in her neatly
pressed uniform that bore a lieutenant’s bar on its shoulder, this
examiner seemed just what Norma hoped in time to become—a real soldier.
“She’s not too young—perhaps thirty,” the girl told herself. “And she’s
wearing some sort of medal pinned to her breast. Say! That’s strange!”
And indeed it was strange. The Woman’s Army Corps was as yet very
young. Only a few had gone overseas and none, as far as she knew, had
either won honors or returned to America.
“She’s keen,” she whispered to the girl next to her.
“Who?” The girl stared.
“That examiner,” Nonna nodded toward the booth.
“Oh! Oh sure!” The other girl resumed polishing her nails.
“All the same she is,” Norma told herself. “And I’d like to know her.”
As Millie, the shopgirl, at last rose from her place, a happy smile
played about her lips.
“She made it,” Norma said aloud. “And am I glad!” She smiled at Millie
as she passed.
Lena, the “night whisperer” was next to enter the vacated booth. As the
interviewer began her task her body appeared to stiffen.
“On her guard,” Norma thought. “I wonder why.”
On the officer’s face there was still a smile, but somehow it was a
different sort of smile.
And the tall girl? She too seemed rather strange. She appeared always
on her guard. “As if she were speaking a piece and feared she might
forget,” was Norma’s thought.
Still, in the end all must have gone well for, as she passed her on the
way out, the tall girl flashed Norma a look that said plainer than
words. “See? That’s how you do it.”
Whatever may have been Norma’s reactions to this they were quickly
lost, for suddenly she realized that the black eyes of the examining
officer were upon her and that her name was being called. Her time had
come. Swallowing hard, she rose to step into the booth.
“You are Norma Kent,” said the examiner, flashing her a friendly smile.
“And your home is—”
“Greenvale, Illinois,” was the prompt reply. The date of her birth,
when she entered and left grade school, high school, and college, and
other details followed.
“And now,” said the examiner, leaning forward, “what can you do?”
“I—I really don’t know,” the girl faltered. “I’ve never worked at
anything.”
“Ah! So you’ve never worked? Can you cook?”
“Not very well.”
“I see.” The examiner studied Norma’s face.
“How many in your family?”
“Just father and I.”
“And your father? What does he do?”
“He’s with the Telephone Company, in charge of a wide
territory—equipment and all that.”
“Hmm.” The examiner studied her report. “Just two of you. You should be
great pals.”
“Oh—we are!” Norma’s eyes shone. “You see,” she exclaimed, “Dad was in
the other World War. I’ve always loved him for that. He was in France.”
“France,” said the examiner, with a quick intake of breath. Norma did
not at all understand. “What a lovely land to die for.”
“Dad lost his right arm,” Norma stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
“That’s why he can’t go back this time, and—and that’s why he wants me
to go.”
“Would you like to go overseas?” The examiner’s eyes shone with a
strange new light.
“I’d love to!” the girl whispered hoarsely. “But what could I do?”
“Oh! Loads of things.” The examiner made a record on her sheet. “Your
father must have driven about a great deal looking things over in his
present occupation.”
“Of course.”
“Did you ever go with him?”
“Oh! Many, many times!”
“Did you ever assist him?”
“Oh, yes! Of course! It was all great fun. He had big charts showing
every center, every phone. I helped him mark down each new
installation.”
“Ah!” the examiner breathed.
“Yes, and we had a grand little shop in the basement where we worked
things out—lots of new things.” Norma’s eyes shone. “There were many
rural centers where the switchboards were in stores. When a number was
called a light shone on the board. But that wasn’t enough. The
storekeeper couldn’t always see the light.”
“And what did you do about it?”
“We fixed up a new board, just Dad and I. Put a tiny bell on every
line.”
“I see. The light flashed, the bell rang, and then the storekeeper
really knew all about it?”
“Yes. But the light sometimes failed, so we put on bells with different
tones. Each line spoke for itself.” Norma laughed. “We called it the
musical switchboard.”
“And you say you’ve never worked?” The examiner laughed.
“That! Why, that was just fun!”
“Perhaps it was. The best work in the world is the kind we can think of
as fun. All that time you were fitting yourself for two of our most
important departments—Communication and Interceptor Control.”
“Can—can you really use me?” Norma was close to tears.
“Can we? Oh! My child!” The examiner all but embraced her. “We’ll make
a major out of you! See if we don’t!”
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