A STARTLING ADVENTURE
At Fort Des Moines the WACs are on their own from Saturday noon until
Sunday night. Needless to say, over at the mess hall, in the barracks,
and on the field there was much talk among the new recruits about how
these hours were to be spent.
“What do you do?” Norma asked a tall, slender girl from Massachusetts
who had been in training for three weeks.
“Well,” the girl drawled, “the first week I went dashing off to Des
Moines, rented a room at a nice hotel, ate oysters on the half-shell,
Boston baked beans, brown bread and all the things I wanted, and had a
grand time all by myself. But now,” she added, “I just get some books
from the library, settle down in a big chair at the Service Club and
loaf.”
“But isn’t Des Moines interesting?” Norma asked in surprise.
“Sure it is,” a bright-eyed girl from Texas exclaimed. “Beth is just
lazy, that’s all. Des Moines is a nice big overgrown town, all full of
nice, friendly people. It has the grandest eating spots! Yes, and halls
where you can dance—really nice places.”
“And boys to dance with! Umm!” exclaimed a girl from Indiana. “There
are soldiers and sailors who come in from their camps and all sorts of
college boys.”
“A nice big, overgrown town, all full of nice friendly people.” Norma
recalled these words later. Truth was, she found herself a little
homesick. At that moment she would have loved a good romp with her dog
Spark, and after that a quiet talk with her dad.
“I know what I’ll do!” she thought. “And I won’t tell a soul! They’d
laugh at me.”
Betty, who more than any girl at camp had begun to seem Norma’s chum,
had decided to stay in camp. When the day came, Norma too remained
until four o’clock. Part of the time she spent having her hair washed
and set. It was no accident that she took the chair of the Spanish
hairdresser who served her before.
“I’ll bring up the subject of the Interceptor Control. If she asks
questions I’ll tell her things I read in that little book called ‘The
Battle of Britain.’ Anything that’s been published. Then perhaps I’ll
string her a little.”
The hairdresser fell for the bait. Norma loaded her up with commonly
known facts, then drew pictures from her fertile imagination. In the
end she was hearing planes at unbelievable distances.
“But why are you so interested in all this?” she asked at last.
The girl shot her a swift look. “Oh! Miss Kent!” she exclaimed—there
was a shrill note in her voice—“It is all so very interesting!
Everything you WACs do is thrilling! It is a great organization!”
“Yes,” Norma agreed. “It is one of the big things that has come out of
the war.”
To herself she was recalling Lieutenant Warren’s words:
“These girls worry me a little. Their records have not been checked.”
Then again she remembered how her own record had been checked to the
last detail. “The examiners do not take your word for a thing,” she had
been told. “The F.B.I. questionnaire you filled out is checked and
double-checked by men who know. Even your fingerprints are sent to
Washington.”
All this she knew was true. And yet the girls in the beauty parlor were
not checked. “That tall girl, Lena, could tell this hairdresser
anything—just anything at all. If she became the secretary to a colonel
she could report anything to this hairdresser.”
“But Lena—” it came to her with the force of a blow—“Lena’s record has
been checked. Her fingerprints were sent to Washington.”
“What a silly young fool you are!” she chided herself as a short time
later she took the car to Des Moines. But she was not even sure of that.
Arrived at the heart of the city she looked up a long street to see a
tall, inviting brick hotel standing on a hill.
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[Illustration: _And Yet the Girls in the Beauty Parlor Were Not
Checked_]
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After walking and climbing for fifteen minutes she found herself
entering a long room filled with lounge chairs and lined on two walls
by tall glass cases. The contents of these cases surprised her, for in
them were more kinds of mounted fish than she had ever seen.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Am I in the wrong place? Is this a museum?”
“No, Miss.” the smiling bellboy who took her bag replied. “This hotel
was once owned by a very rich man who collected fish. He’s dead now.”
“But his collection lives on.” She wondered vaguely what would live on
when she was gone.
The first thing she did when she had been shown to a neat and
comfortable room was strange. Opening her bag, she took out a cardboard
folder tied with a ribbon. From this folder she selected a dozen
pictures. These she proceeded to thumbtack, one by one, to the wall
directly under a mellow light.
After that, without further unpacking, she dropped into a chair and sat
for a long time looking at those pictures through moist eyelashes.
The house with the broad lawn and tall shade trees about it was her
home. The tall, distinguished looking man with one empty sleeve was her
dad. The picture done in color was her college chum. And the grinning
young man in the uniform of a private was Bill—just plain Bill.
There were other pictures but these were the ones that counted most.
They had adorned the walls of her room at college for a long time. When
you bunk in a stable—even a glorious, glorified stable—with a hundred
other girls, you don’t thumbtack your pictures to the wall. It isn’t
allowed. Besides, it would be silly.
Norma wanted to see her pictures in their proper setting. Now she was
seeing them.
“Norma, you’re a silly goose,” she told herself aloud. Then she
wondered whether she had spoken the truth. Sometimes one drops into a
new world too hastily. It does one good to take a look back.
It was Bill who had started her thinking of the WACs. She and Bill were
grand good friends, that’s all. No diamond ring—no talk of wedding
bells—just friends.
All the same, when Bill came to the school all togged up in a new
uniform, she had felt a big tug at her heart strings.
“Oh! Bill!” she had cried. “You look like a million!”
“And I feel like a millionaire,” was Bill’s reply. “Army life is the
berries, and regarding the Japs, all I’ve got to say is they’d better
look out!”
“Getting pretty good with a Tommy gun, Bill?” she laughed.
“And how!” was his prompt reply.
They found a log down among the willows at the edge of the campus, and
there Bill, in his big, boisterous way, told her all about the Army.
“Oh, Bill!” she exclaimed when he had finished. “You make it sound so
wonderful! I wish they’d let girls join.”
“They do!” Bill stopped grinning. “Ever heard of the WACs?”
“Yes, I—” she paused. Yes, she had heard of them. That was about all.
“Bill, I’ll really look into this.”
“You’d better. They’re a grand outfit. And boy! Are they going places!”
“I’ll be seein’ you,” she said to Bill as their hands clasped in
farewell.
“In the Army?”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Hot diggity! That’s the stuff!” He gave her hand a big squeeze, and
was gone.
“And now I’m here, Bill,” she said to the picture on the wall. “I’m in
the Army now. But, oh, Bill! I do hope our companies will some time
march in the same parade!”
After an hour with her pictures, Norma felt herself ready for one more
week of drilling, police duty, study, and all that went on from dawn
till dark at old Fort Des Moines.
After a hearty meal eaten in a big bright cafeteria where all the
people seemed carefree and gay, she stepped out to see the lights of
Des Moines at night.
Thrills she had experienced more than once came to her from exploring a
strange city at night. Certainly exploring a city of friendly people,
many of whom smiled at her in a kindly way as she marched along in her
spick-and-span uniform, could not be dangerous.
For an hour she prowled the streets alone. Past dark public buildings
that loomed at her from the night, down narrow dark streets where taxi
drivers and workers sat or stood before narrow lunch counters, she
wandered. And then back to the broad street where lights were bright
and the throngs were gay.
A feeling of utter loneliness drove her once again into the shadows.
And there she met with a startling adventure.
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