“A boarding school?” Grace exclaimed when she saw the sign on the building. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Classes had been suspended, as many British parents had whisked their children off to the safety of the English countryside or even as far away as Canada. The now empty campus would be their home and workplace until . . . well, until whenever they were ordered to move on to somewhere else.
But for now, this was their new home.
The school itself dated back to the 1500s. There was quite a lot of stonework and hardwood floors in the buildings that would serve as the enlisted women’s barracks and the officers’ quarters and the classrooms that would serve as their workspaces. Not much in materials that would provide natural insulation. Grace wrapped her winter overcoat tighter around herself as they were given a tour of the place.
But the biggest shock was yet to come. Ever since they left Scotland, most everyone had been pretty vocal about their desire to bathe in some form or fashion as soon as they were settled.
“I just need five minutes to wash this travel stink off me,” one private said wistfully once the enlisted women had been allowed to select their bunks. “And if there’s a bathtub somewhere, I might just die and go to heaven.”
“There’s no bathtub. There’s barely even what I’d call a proper shower,” another woman said. “I can’t even describe it. You have to see it for yourselves.”
The shower “room” turned out to be an open courtyard with water spigots along the wall.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Grace’s breath came out of her mouth in visible white bursts as they stood in the open-air cold. “I expected that we wouldn’t have any privacy stalls. But no roof? It’s the middle of February!”
Another girl turned on one of the spigots, then pulled her fingers out of her gloves. “The water’s cold too. And there’s only one knob.”
Grace shivered at this unexpected reality for her troops. Charity, however, gave the girls a reassuring smile. “I know it’s in no way ideal. But we’ll learn to make the best of it somehow.”
Later, when the officers finally had a chance to get settled in their own quarters, Grace was relieved to find that their shower was located indoors. But they too had only cold water in which to bathe.
“How much longer until it gets warmer here?”
Eliza shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess we’re about to find out.”
There was no time to spare on complaining over the less-than-modern accommodations. They now had only two days to get ready to impress an unimpressible general.
Chapter 24
Birmingham, England
February 1945
MAJOR ADAMS INFORMED them that their mission here in England was to get the mail moving to and from the troops in the European theater again. Every able-bodied man had been yanked into combat duty to support the Normandy invasion the past summer. In the six months that had passed since then, the incoming mail had been piling up at the nearby U.S. Army airfield. Grace almost fainted when they were escorted there to inspect the six airplane hangars filled with the accumulated mail. And she wasn’t the only one.
“Filled” didn’t begin to describe the mess that stood before them. All six of the hangars were stuffed from floor to domed ceiling, wall to wall, front and back. Even in the cold weather, the stagnant air reeked of wet, rotting paper and decomposing baked goods sent in what must have been Christmas packages from over two months ago.
One of the mailbags began squirming. Out of the corner of her eye, Grace saw some of her girls’ eyes bulging as a rat gnawed through the fabric sack and scampered away, its jaw still chewing on some goody. It skittered too close to one girl as it ran past, and she actually fainted.
“At ease. Somebody help her.” Grace had had her company standing at attention. But after what they had been shown, everyone needed a break.
When the girl had been revived and was able to stand on her own power, Major Adams continued. “As I was saying, this is our assignment. We have six months to get these hangars cleared out. But in the meantime, General Lee will be here in two days. We will be marching in a review parade for his inspection. Anything less than perfection is unacceptable. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Major,” they all replied in unison.
“It is my understanding that most of you are still dealing with sea legs. With that in mind, we will be splitting you all up into three eight-hour shifts. Starting tomorrow. You ladies need to get settled and get some sleep. Off to the barracks you go.”
GRACE WOKE THAT next morning at five in pitch-blackness, disoriented. Normally, she was pretty good about waking up on her own on time. However, with the time zone and latitudinal changes, her body was not cooperating with her now. She attempted to stand. But she still wasn’t used to being back on land and nearly tripped over her own feet.
“Dammit.”
“Are you okay?” Eliza’s groggy voice called out.
“Yeah. I could just use a whole day in bed.”
“Couldn’t we all?” Grace heard Eliza’s sheets rustle and then it was quiet again. That girl had the nerve to roll over and go back to sleep. Grace padded her way to the footlocker where she had stored her toiletries. She wound up stubbing her toe on . . . something in the process.
The rest of the morning didn’t go any better. Thankfully, everyone in her company reported to drill practice on time. But the sharp precision they’d had back when they were boarding the ship in New York was gone. The women were tired, unbalanced on their feet, and freezing cold despite their winter clothes.
After lunch, everyone was a little bit more awake for their crash course in sorting and processing the mail. There were information cards kept in filing boxes for each of the several million U.S. servicemen who had been deployed to fight in Europe. That was in addition to the U.S. government employees and Red Cross workers who were also on the Continent. It would be one team’s job to organize and maintain these cards as daily reports of personnel movement came in. It would be another team’s job to match each piece of mail with its intended addressee’s information card to find out where that letter should go.
One girl lost her cool during her practice sort. “This letter is addressed to ‘Johnny in the Army.’ There’s, like, ten of them like that in this bin. What are we supposed to do with these?”
Grace pinched the bridge of her nose. “How many more impossible tasks can they throw our way?” Grace didn’t miss the private’s frown. She quickly clarified. “My irritation isn’t with you. Put those letters in their own bin. We’ll just have to form another squad to handle the ones that require a little more digging to match up with the right information card.”
It was turning out to be a very long day.
By the time they showed up at the mess hall at eight o’clock for a late dinner, Grace and everyone else in her company were nodding off into their plates. They had literally worked themselves, as the old folks would say, from “can’t see to can’t see.” That night, Grace was asleep before her head hit her pillow.
All too soon, it was the morning of General John Lee’s review. A trumpet blaring reveille yanked Grace and everyone else from their well-earned slumber. It was pitch-black in her room. Now more acclimated to her new surroundings, she fumbled to pull the cord on her tableside lamp.
She found Eliza’s watch beside the lamp. It was 4:00 A.M. Damn.
Grace fumbled out of her sheets. Momentarily forgetting where she was, she pulled her legs out of the bed and dropped them down onto the ice-cold ancient wooden floor. She hissed a curse, then slapped a hand over her mouth. But then she remembered one of the perks of being an officer was that she shared a room with only three other women, unlike the enlisted members of the unit who had to sleep twelve to a room. They had arranged their quarters so that each room had a member of each of the three different work shifts, so that they could have some semblance of privacy, peace, and quiet at some point in the day.
Grace had become less of th
e stiff, strictly by the books type she had been in her early days as a WAC. However, the new, more relaxed Grace was going to have to step down to her old stiff, no-nonsense, über-orderly self for the day. The reversion back to the old Grace started before she arrived at the mess hall. When she dressed in her uniform, she made sure every crease was straight, every stray thread was tucked away, and everything pinned was on securely. She examined every woman under her command with the same eagle-eyed precision.
“Browne, stop slouching. Sit up!”
“Young, your hair looks a mess. Fix it.”
“Lewis, you look like you’re about to drop dead asleep into your eggs. I need you awake!”
The word must have spread with a quickness that Captain Steele was not the one to be messed with that morning, because the majority of her company made a beeline in the opposite direction whenever she came near for the rest of chow time.
“Report down to the parade grounds by oh eight hundred hours sharp, private. Spread the word. That’s an order.”
“What is, ma’am—the oh-eight-hundred part or the spreading-the-word part?”
“Both.” Grace didn’t yell at the private, but her firm reply came out in a way that let her know that no further questions would be tolerated. Grace wasn’t especially interested in making or maintaining any friendships on this particular morning. She didn’t have time for that.
She got up and carried her tray toward the front to discard her mostly untouched breakfast. In the few days since their arrival, the cooks in the battalion had proved themselves to be more than competent in the kitchen. Quite honestly, their food tasted like a gourmet feast in comparison to the typical Army chow back in the States.
Her stomach growled as she fastened the buttons on her heavy double-breasted winter coat. But she only trusted herself to keep down some buttered toast—mm, real butter—this morning. Charity had confided in her officers the day before that she had bragged to the general that her girls were perfection in motion when they drilled. Grace’s shoulders had been a mass of tight muscles ever since. She slipped on her gloves and tucked her scarf into her coat.
She tapped out the opening phrases of Moonlight Sonata on her thigh. First, the traditional way, followed by a little bit jazzier rearrangement of her own design. Grace felt her nerves melt away. Now she was ready to head out to her company’s designated staging area.
The wind blew right through her the second she cleared the school’s main building. She tugged her scarf tighter around her neck as she approached the staging area. The “parade grounds” were actually an open sports field adjacent to the school buildings. Had it been in the United States, there would have been football goal posts at either end or a baseball diamond carved into the grass with one corner framed by dugouts on either side. But this one was just a huge empty field encircled by a wooden fence. Grace could see brick residential homes on the other side of the fence. As more enlisted women came outside, faces peered out the windows.
Ever since they had arrived two days prior, the locals had been eyeing them with curiosity. Charity had told her officers that she and Noel had been receiving stares everywhere they went since their own arrival in England almost three weeks ago. Grace had yet to see a person of color in the city who wasn’t a part of their battalion. But some of the guys at the airfield had mentioned that they had seen a handful of men from the Caribbean the last time they were on leave in London. Hearing this gave Grace a touch of homesickness, as she remembered the strong West Indian presence back in Harlem. And the American drivers of the trucks that had brought them into town from the train station had been Negroes. But she hadn’t seen any of them since that first day.
“Good morning, Captain.” Major Charity Adams strode toward Grace with a confident smile. There was a sparkle in her eye, but Grace didn’t miss the way she clenched her fist at her side. It looked like the major was a bag of nerves too. “Are we ready?”
Grace stopped to stand at attention and salute her. “Ready to get out there and show ’em what we got, ma’am.”
“That’s what I like to hear. At ease.”
Grace relaxed. She started walking again, stepping into pace alongside the major.
“Now tell me the truth: Do you think our girls are ready? I know you all have only been here two days . . . a hectic two days, at that. The last thing I want is to lose face in front of the general. Of all the people, he’s the one we need to look out for. As you can see, he’s the type to stick us in a bind just so he can see us fail.”
“Mm-hmm. Yes, I know the type.”
“In this case, I think you already know that failure is not an option.” Her mouth curved into a slick half smile.
“No, ma’am. It’s not. That’s why I’ve instructed the girls in my company to march like their lives depended on it.”
“That’s what I like to hear, Captain.” Major Adams then excused herself as her second-in-command, Captain Noel Campbell, alerted her that General Lee’s staff had arrived.
Soon the rest of Grace’s company had assembled at the parade staging area. They quickly lined up in review formation as word came down the line: “Heads-up! Major Adams is coming back!”
“Attention!” Grace barked the order. All her soldiers stiffened, their arms at their sides, and looked straight ahead. “Remember, ladies, soft knees! You will not embarrass me today by passing out. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Captain,” her company spoke as one.
“Good.” Grace took her place in the front.
A moment later, Major Adams approached with Captain Campbell following a step behind her. “Nice. Exactly what I like to see. Looking good, soldier!” Major Adams all but hollered in one private’s face. Grace clenched her fists tighter. But, thankfully, the private did not flinch.
Major Adams’s face broke out into a wicked grin. “Yes! That’s what I’m talking about! You all are not just the battalion. You are my battalion. And my battalion has got to look good.”
Major Adams stopped when she got to where Grace stood. She was still grinning. With a nod, she said, “This is it, Captain Steele. What we’ve been preparing for since we first met on that train to Des Moines. Let’s go show the Army brass over here how it’s done.”
Grace grinned right back at her commanding officer and friend. “Yes, Major. It would be my pleasure.”
The battalion spent the next hour marching through Birmingham. The parade route took them along the city streets. Now Grace and the other soldiers were able to get a sense of their new home for the time being. Since the purpose of this particular parade was for the general’s review, the city residents had not been formally invited to come watch. But the locals lined the roads on both sides, nonetheless. They cheered and waved at the women as they marched by. For Grace, it was a little disconcerting at first to receive such a rousing welcome from so many people who looked so different from her and to hear her native language spoken in a way that was different from what she was used to. But their friendliness was infectious, and quite frankly, she had to catch herself several times to keep from breaking rank and waving back.
But on the inside, she was beside herself. She had finally made it to Europe against the odds. Who knew? Maybe she’d even get the chance to see Paris one day in the near future.
Soon enough, their procession was filing back onto the parade grounds adjacent to the King Edward School. The ceremony ended. General John C. H. Lee was pleased.
Now it was time for the women of the newly designated 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion to get to work.
Chapter 25
Birmingham, England
March 1945
BY THE TIME the second half of the battalion arrived in Birmingham a few weeks later, the now formally commissioned 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion had organized itself into a fully operational twenty-four-hour machine. With three eight-hour shifts working continuously one after the other, the backlog that had filled six airplane hangars when they had arrived had
been cut in half.
On the tail end of the morning shift, Grace retrieved another bundle of letters from one of the mail bins. There was an hour left in her company’s mail-sorting shift. Her fingers danced through the stack as she muttered each of the names to herself. “Bobby. Robbie. Bob. Rob-O. Ro-Ro . . .”
Not one had a last name attached to it. Grace had been astounded by the number of mailed items that came through like these when her company had first been assigned to sort all the letters addressed to “Robert,” or what they jokingly called the “Bob Job.” Now, a month later, matching each letter to one of the several thousand Roberts currently deployed in Europe was just another day at the office.
“How many do you think we can knock out before quitting time, Captain?”
Grace looked up as Private Mary Barlow grabbed a bundle of her own from the bin. She returned the greeting with a nod. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Grace watched Mary walk back to her workstation.
Grace held up a parcel that had burst open on one end. It looked like something inside it had melted.
Mary pointed at the honey-colored goo that had leaked onto Grace’s hand. “What a mess. What do you think it was?”
Grace sniffed her hand. A mix of menthol, peach, and petroleum jelly assaulted her now wrinkled nose. “I’m going with hair pomade and chewing gum.”
She grabbed the rag that she kept on her desk for instances like this. When she finished wiping off her hand, the rag looked like it was on its last leg. Grace sighed as she dropped it into the trash basket beside her desk. It had been her last one, and her fingers still had a thin layer of residue on them.
“I’ll get you some more.” Mary got up from her workstation again. She went out into the hall where the laundry unit set out a stack of rags for them each day.
Meanwhile, Grace studied the outer packaging for clues that would help her figure out who the intended recipient was. It had been addressed to “Robert G., U.S. Army, Somewhere in Europe.”
“Great,” she muttered to herself. Grace carefully pulled out the contents of the package. She smiled when a small, now empty jar of Dixie Peach Pomade fell onto her desk. However, the letter inside was not so easy to remove. It turned out that the chewing gum that Grace had also correctly guessed was in there had melted, causing the paper to adhere to the packaging.
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