No better time, p.1
No Better Time, page 1
Dedication
In honor and memory of the women who served with the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion in World War II.
They had a job to do and they did it.
For Bruce.
Epigraph
May there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
john O’donohue, “beannacht”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
A Fine Mess
Out of the Cocoon
Dorothy Eugenia Is Bored
One Question
Of Infinite Variety
I Wanted to See Another Side of Life
Uncle Sam (Doesn’t) Want You
Furlough
The Good Life
Inspection
Ft. Des Moines
Mud, Mud, and More Mud
Thou Shalt Not Volunteer
Female Problems
Dead or Alive
The Battalion
Furlough Two
The Letter V
Down the Pub
No Mail, Low Morale
Flaubert’s Bed
Spam Primavera
Verboten
Cousin Dorothy
S’il Vous Plaît
Winged Victory
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Sheila Williams
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Fine Mess
February 1945
On deck
Aboard the RMS Queen Mary
Somewhere in the North Atlantic
“Thom, you look green.”
Leila Branch was standing only a few feet away but her voice sounded like an echo, hollow and distorted as if it was coming out of a cave.
Dorothy Thom’s grip tightened on the railing and she closed her eyes, going against the oft-quoted advice not to close one’s eyes. The ship rose, then fell. Her stomach rose and fell. She inhaled, then exhaled. Both were painful.
“I’m too dark to be green,” she said to her friend in a raspy voice. Opening her eyes, she glanced at Leila, then smiled—or intended to smile. Her stomach didn’t want her to cooperate. “Now, you look green . . . split-pea-soup green.”
Leila swallowed hard.
“Thank you for that.” She coughed. Oh, no . . .
“I’m with you,” Dorothy murmured. She exhaled again. Not helpful.
The two women locked eyes for a moment. Remembering the pointers given to them by their sergeant before boarding the dull-gray (“the better the U-boats won’t see us”) ship with trepidation, they turned their gazes toward the horizon. A horizon that Sergeant Layne had assured them would be flat and unmoving. It wasn’t. As a matter of fact, the instructive Sergeant Layne was at this very moment below deck in her bunk moaning from seasickness.
“So much for her advice,” growled Leila. She inhaled deeply again. Okay, that wasn’t bad. Blinking, she scanned the horizon. “Remind me . . .”
“Remind me . . .” Dorothy parroted. “Remind you of what?”
“Why did we sign up for this?”
Despite the desperate feeling in her stomach, Dorothy managed a chuckle.
“There’s no ‘we’ here, Branch,” she said, using Leila’s surname in the way that the sergeant did. “We aren’t Laurel and Hardy. It’s not my fault that . . .”
“We’re in another fine mess?” Leila interjected. She nodded toward the sea. “It was your suggestion.”
Dorothy chuckled again, then tapped her mate on the shoulder.
“There will be a mess if you don’t lean over that railing more.”
Leila took Dorothy’s advice, then closed her eyes and turned her pale, crab apple–green face toward a sliver of sunlight that had just emerged from behind sullen, light-gray clouds.
“I know why you signed up,” she said, finally. “You said that you wanted an adventure.”
Dorothy coughed, then swallowed.
“Uh. Oh. Did I say that?”
Now it was Leila’s turn to smile, although Dorothy thought her expression was more like a grimace.
“You did, Private, Miss Spelman 1938. You wanted to go abroad. So here you are, almost abroad. There are two ways to get there, and your rank isn’t high enough for one of them. So . . .” Leila gestured toward the formidable-looking Atlantic.
“So,” Dorothy said with misery in her voice. “While you . . .”
Leila shook her head slowly, remembering the bitter exchange of words she’d had with her mother after she told her that she’d enlisted. “While I”—she stopped and cleared her throat—“I didn’t want an adventure. I just wanted the chance to be something more than Pearl Branch’s girl down the street who got herself knocked up . . .”
“In the family way,” Dorothy interrupted.
Leila gave herself permission to grin, hoping that she wouldn’t regret it.
“That too. Without a husband anywhere in sight, hardly enough schooling to count for much, and only a maid’s job to keep her. Oh, and no prospects of doing better or getting more for herself and her boy.”
Now it was Dorothy’s turn to grin and hoot with laughter.
“Well, aren’t we a pair?” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. “I’m feeling a little better. What about you?”
Leila shrugged. Strangely enough, she, too, was feeling more human.
“Yes, I am. Should be able to fall in and pass review without throwing up on Sergeant’s shoes.”
“Ha! Assuming she’s feeling well enough to show up herself!”
The women laughed and began to straighten their coats and smooth the fabric of their rough khaki work uniforms.
“Uh-huh. Anyway, the ocean seems a bit calmer,” Dorothy remarked.
But when the gods wish to punish you, they shatter your assumptions. A swell paid a visit and nudged the hull of the former-luxury-liner-turned-troop-transport-vessel RMS Queen Mary as it parted the waters.
Leila ran toward the railing.
“No, it’s not!”
Dorothy sighed and handed her friend a handkerchief. Leila studied it briefly before extending her hand.
“It’s clean,” Dorothy said through clenched teeth. “I always keep two in my pockets.”
“Whose fault is this again?” Leila groaned, her voice sounding pitiful.
Dorothy rolled her eyes. Bad idea. All of a sudden, she was feeling miserable again.
“Roosevelt,” she said. It was the first name that came to mind.
Leila nodded.
“That’s right. Let’s blame Roosevelt.”
Out of the Cocoon
December 8, 1941
12:25 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Spelman College Library
Atlanta, Georgia
Dorothy Thom was an experienced teacher. She adored children, and they adored her. She was revered like a fairy godmother by the third graders she taught at Margaret M. Washington Primary School in Miami, Florida. She led the mischievous little ones from skinned knees to arithmetic and reading without them realizing that they were learning something important. Her colleagues enjoyed her company; her principal considered her a gem and wished that all of his teachers were as accomplished. Her salary—though not as high as those paid to white teachers in town—was at least enough to keep her in smart clothes and high heels, a necessity for Dorothy, who stood five feet and one-half inches in bare feet. She would add an extra half inch; it boosted her confidence.
And yet she had never been happier than when she left her teaching job in Florida to become the librarian in the freshman reading room of Atlanta’s Spelman College. Her father, Dr. Thom, a professor of theology, was disappointed. He preferred that Dorothy stay in Florida so that he could keep an eye on her. But her mother, Eva, now living in Cleveland, thought it was a good move—Atlanta was a vibrant town, and vibrancy was something that Eva appreciated. Atlanta was cosmopolitan. And the Spelman Library, unlike the underpopulated library at the local normal school in St. Augustine, Florida, maintained a collection of works in French, books that fed Dorothy’s obsession. She borrowed her favorites, anything by Flaubert or Dumas, so often and kept them for so long that the librarian issued a warning citation.
She’d taken her degree from Spelman with a double major in English literature and French. Now, on her break, she sat in a quiet reading nook, elbow bent, chin in palm, her mind a thousand miles away, contemplating the moral dilemma of Madame Emma Bovary. En français, of course.
But it wasn’t only Emma’s mental landscape that Dorothy contemplated. Flaubert had transported her to the French countryside, verdant and fresh after spring rains, fragrant with the perfume of lilac. The late afternoon sun warmed deep-blue and aubergine grapes while, in the distance, orioles were in flight, performing pirouettes in a final ballet before taking their exit southward to Italy . . .
“Miss Thom! Miss Thom!”
The calling of her name and quickstep click of heels on the hardwood floor cut through the sublime aura of the moment like the grinding of a locomotive’s wheels against a track.
“Yes? What is it?”
The student was gasping for breath as if she’d just finished a relay race.
“Miss Patterson says come. Come now! To the break room. The president is about to speak. On the radio!”
N o need to say which president; there had only been the one for the past eight years. And no need to say what the news would be. The nation had anticipated an announcement for weeks. Everyone knew that the United States was edging toward a war with Germany.
Dorothy closed the book carefully, slipping a piece of paper inside to save her place, and quickly left her seat, following the girl who was running down the aisle toward the back of the library. As Dorothy approached, she heard static emanating from the large brown box as Dr. Read, the college president, adjusted the dials in an attempt to get a clearer signal. There was tension and excitement in the room. Both had been building for several years on the Spelman campus, in Atlanta, and across the United States and the world. The stories were everywhere on the radio and in the papers: the bombing of Britain, haunting images of London, and the odd, static-tinged voice of Churchill, which was now familiar to American ears. Murmurs about the Japanese in the east. Disturbing reports about military campaigns and atrocities in Germany and in Poland, where an animated, mustached man raised his arm and spoke of glory and a superior race. No need to say which race he considered superior: the Negro press had covered the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Jesse Owens was a hero to his people at home, but the mustached man had other opinions.
Dorothy’s stomach was in knots as she maneuvered herself into the break room and found a seat on the edge of a desk. War meant soldiers. And Dorothy had two brothers, several cousins, and many friends of fighting age. The women whispered loudly among themselves. Dr. Read put one finger to her lips and the room quieted. The radio sputtered, then a familiar voice broke through the static.
“Mr. Vice President, and Mr. Speaker, and Members of the Senate and House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
From that moment, Dorothy added a new word to her vocabulary, one that she had rarely used before: casualties.
* * *
December 8, 1941
12:35 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
Pearl Branch’s Boardinghouse
Dayton, Ohio
“Leila? Leila! Get the baby!”
Pearl Branch poked her head out of the parlor door, her attention split between the earthshaking news coming across the radio and the sound of a screaming baby. One ear was trained on President Roosevelt’s voice, her other on the squalling. Pearl frowned and yelled again, “Leila! The baby’s cryin’! Loud enough to wake the dead. Where are you?”
“Comin’, Momma!”
“Goodness gracious, hurry up. I can’t hear the president.”
Leila had been sleeping. Napping, really. There’d been no such thing as sleep since Paris was born. Naps were all she got, and they were always too short. When Paris slept, Leila napped. Or at least she closed her eyes. Rest was for the weary. Was that from the Bible? If so, why didn’t Leila get any rest? She was surely weary. The baby hiccuped, inhaled, then screamed again. Leila felt the front of her blouse. Darn.
“Leila! The baby’s hungry! Stick your titty in his mouth and shut him up! Before he wakes Mr. Shaw! He’s working third this week! ’Sides, I can’t hear the radio! The president’s . . .”
Oh, well, if it’s the president.
Leila rolled her eyes, glad that she was in her room and that her mother couldn’t see her. Being pregnant had been bad enough. Having a baby—and not a husband—was worse. But sticking your boob into the mouth of a screaming infant was horrible. Paris took a moment to catch his breath, then latched onto the nipple. Leila cringed. Breastfeeding was disgusting.
There was a knock at the door that coincided with Pearl’s entrance into the room.
“Well, it ’bout time! Gracious!” She walked over to the bed and stroked her grandson’s head. “He’s a sweetie pie, but Lord, that boy is loud. I just hope I don’t lose any boarders.”
Leila adjusted her son to settle him more comfortably into the crook of her arm.
“What’s he talking about?”
“Shhh!”
Pearl’s lip settled into a line as she clicked on the radio setting on the night table next to Leila’s bed.
President Roosevelt’s voice filled the room.
“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger . . .”
Leila Branch sat straight in the chair, her eyes and attention riveted to the small ivory-colored box, oblivious to her nursing son. “Defend ourselves . . . Hostilities . . .” Born after the First World War, Leila had rarely heard these words either in conversation or over the airwaves. What did they mean? How did one defend oneself against “hostilities”? When she’d bothered to listen, which wasn’t often, the teenage Leila had heard the old folks droning on about the “WWI” and what may or may not have taken place (and by whom) as the Rough Riders ascended a mound called San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American conflict. The voices of her uncles merged with those of any male lodger in the good graces of her mother (and current on rent payments) to debate the merits of this strategy or the folly of that one. What colored soldiers did and didn’t get credit for and the danger involved. The history went in one of Leila’s ears and out the other. What did any of it have to do with her? She’d smiled, said good morning or good evening to whichever gentleman spoke, then disappeared quickly into her mother’s kitchen to escape.
But now? With a small son nestled against her chest, Leila was at attention. War. She had a son. Yes, he was only a baby, but these things could drag on. Hostilities. She knew enough about the German man, ferocious in his speaking, and the ominous rumors emerging from the other side of the world to know that this was serious. She felt an unfamiliar emotion: fear. It was all too real now, what people meant when they said “life or death.” Sons went to war. Men died or were maimed. Or, like her uncle Berkeley, were gassed and never the same again. This war, whatever it was really about and wherever it took place, was too close. With Paris’s birth, it had become personal. Leila’s breath caught in her throat as she listened.
* * *
Five hundred miles away in an alcove that served as the break room of the Spelman College library, perched on the edge of a desk, Dorothy Thom was as still as a marble statue, but her heart was racing. Unblinkingly, she listened to the president’s address as it gathered the steam needed to inform the nation that it was at war.
War. War? War!
Dorothy’s stomach quivered with excitement. Born in 1915, she hadn’t been old enough to process the events surrounding the last war, what some called the “Great War.” But she’d heard about it from her uncles and older male cousins, from a family friend who’d been gassed in France. From her father who had registered but whose poor vision had not allowed him to serve militarily and who had been a chaplain. She’d heard about the 369th Infantry known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” men pulled from the cities and plains of the United States to serve in the trenches of France, earning the highest praise and awarded military honors, including la Croix de Guerre. And in the back of her mind, she thought of an old lady who went to Aunt Denie’s church in Atlanta, oh, what was her name? Mrs. Something, small and fair with bright light-brown eyes, a marvelous storyteller who had served in the Red Cross nursing corps in France. The stories Mrs. What’s-Her-Name had told were mesmerizing. Even more mesmerizing because she spoke of the various kinds of work that had to be done to support the fighting men. Women’s work. It wasn’t all battlefields and guns. The hospital corps. The supply lines. Quartermaster’s duties. Transportation. Red tape and paperwork. There were other jobs to be done besides load, aim, and pull a trigger. Dorothy wondered. Could she do that work?
“With the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”
