For two weeks and more we anxiously awaited the anticipated arrival of our trucks, which were meant to be forwarded by the YMCA from the port. When it became evident that they were too busy to attend to the matter, I decided to go myself with chauffeurs to bring the cars to Paris. . . . We at once located the crates containing the two Ford trucks and the White truck, also the sixty sections of the six portable houses, severally, some on a quay, some on a freight car, and some stacked in the freight yard. The cars had been exposed to sea air and were frightfully rusty.
To get the cases together, uncrate and put together the cars, and put them in running condition took four days’ very hard work. . . . Our chauffeurs worked tirelessly and cheerfully.
Many more American uniforms are to be seen in the streets than French. We were delighted to see the “Sammies” and they to see us. Miss Englund found a brother.
—Mrs. Ambrose Rutherford (née Betsy Hayes), ’96, Director, to the members of the committee
September 1917
Saint-Nazaire, France
Liza stuck a grease-stained hand out from under the truck. “Could anyone hand me that cup of grease?”
“I’ll get it.” Kate set down her hammer, stretched her sore muscles, and shoved a small cup of grease into Liza’s hand.
“Marvelous!” Hand and grease cup disappeared together under the truck, and Kate took a step back and stared at their handiwork.
It looked like a truck.
Which was, in itself, nothing short of amazing. When they’d gotten to Saint-Nazaire, woozy from sleeplessness after a night standing up on a packed train, they’d found their trucks on the docks, not in one piece, but in boxes.
Kate hadn’t even been aware trucks could come in boxes. She had assumed, if she had thought about it at all, that someone had driven the truck into the ship’s hold and left it there. It had never occurred to her that it might have come from the factory in parts or that they would be expected to put it together.
“Well, of course you can,” Mrs. Rutherford had said, and handed Kate a toolbox, no doubt cadged from their unsuspecting innkeeper, who had had no idea that his yard was about to turn into a garage. She had given Kate an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “It’s hardly alchemy. You just follow the instructions and put the pieces together. If a man can do it, so can we.”
By “we,” she meant them. Kate had been left holding a hammer and wondering what on earth she was to do with it.
It was a commonplace at home that Kate was too educated to do anything useful. “Don’t let Katie near the stove” was the family mantra. “She’ll burn the bread while her nose is in a book.”
Which was a little ridiculous given that her mother didn’t bake her own bread; she bought it from Losher’s bread factory, day old, at a discount.
Kate had always accepted that she was singularly useless, accepted it because they all seemed to believe it—but now, three days later, she was standing here with a sore back and sore fingers and a truck that had a top because she had hammered it on. She’d screwed on the supports and hammered on the cab and realized it was backward and cursed and pried it all out again but she’d done it and no one had mocked her for slowness or made fun of her for hitting her own fingers.
Kate stretched her arms up over her head. Liza was still under the truck, applying grease—they’d all had way too much to do with grease over the past three days, and she’d probably still be sanding rust in her sleep for weeks to come—but it was only the finishing touches now. The truck was together. It was done. It might even go. She wished she could take a picture of it to send to her mother and stepfather and brothers to show them that this was something she had done with her own hands, something which had nothing to do with putting words on paper or being clever in an examination.
“Almost done!” came Liza’s voice from under the cab.
Liza trailing around after Maud, Kate found deeply wearisome. Liza wearing an old slicker and squashy felt hat, covered with grease, was a surprisingly good companion, especially when one was flat on one’s back under a car and not saying much more than “Could you pass that whatchamacallit, please?” Liza never seemed to tire and had a cheerful obliviousness to sarcasm, possibly as a defense against a decade of friendship with Maud. Whatever the cause, Kate found it strangely restful.
“No hurry,” said Kate, and wandered over to see how Alice Patton and Frances Englund were getting on with the Ford truck.
That had been a revelation too. Not Fran Englund—she was just as she had always been, levelheaded and even-tempered and with a wonderfully dry sense of humor that came out under adversity—but Alice Patton, who, it turned out, beneath the flutters and the giggles and the doubtful taste in haberdashery, had a positive genius for anything mechanical.
Kate had been amazed to find herself—well, not enjoying herself precisely. Or maybe she was. It was good to be out in the early September air, in the sun and the wind and the salt of the sea, doing something with her hands and seeing it actually work, in the company of people who didn’t ask more of her than to pass the nearest wrench.
Unlike Emmie, who was wonderful and good and kind, but always seemed to need something from Kate, if Kate could only figure out what it was, or if she had it to give.
“I can’t believe that came out of all those boxes,” Kate said, staring at the massively long Ford truck, off of which Alice Patton was sanding the final bits of rust.
“I do,” said Fran Englund, wrestling with the crank. “I had to pry open every one of them and I’m not sure my back will ever forgive me. I think this crank is possessed. Or is, at the very least, a German agent. It just won’t go.”
“Have you tried putting more grease on it?”
“It’s bathing in grease,” said Fran.
“Elbow grease,” said Alice with a giggle.
“I’m not sure my elbows have any left,” said Fran, shaking out her wrists and examining the offending appendages.
“We’ll grease them with a glass of burgundy at dinner tonight,” suggested Kate.
“I’ll drink to that.” Fran came back around the car to stand next to Kate. “It does look impressive, doesn’t it?”
“For something that came out of a box four days ago? Absolutely,” agreed Kate.
“Now we actually have to drive them,” said Alice, putting down her rag and coming to join them. “Who’s the French saint for inexperienced drivers?”
“I thought you knew how to drive,” said Kate, twisting her neck to look at her.
Alice fiddled with her earring. “Gil—I mean, my sister’s husband, took me out a time or two and let me turn the wheel. I said I could drive so the Unit would take me. And I think I can. Maybe.”
“I haven’t driven for six years,” confessed Kate.
“I’m a very good driver,” said Fran Englund, and for some reason that struck them all as hysterically funny, and that was how Mrs. Rutherford found them, clinging to each other’s shoulders, howling with laughter.
“Did I miss a joke?” Mrs. Rutherford asked.
Kate managed to choke in her breath, tears streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them back with a grease-stained hand.
“N-nothing worth noting,” she managed, exchanging a glance with Alice Patton, who was choking into her own handkerchief.
“Well done, ladies! And ahead of schedule, no less,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “No one would ever guess you aren’t seasoned engineers.”
That almost set them off again.
“I don’t think she’ll think we’re quite so wondrous when we run her off the road,” giggled Alice Patton.
“You’ll be fine,” said Fran Englund. “But I think I’ll let you go ahead. . . .”
And they were fine. Mostly. One of the Fords was extra long, which was quite useful for piling on the giant pieces of prefabricated building materials that Mrs. Rutherford insisted would turn magically into living quarters and schoolhouses, but also meant that there was a great deal of truck they couldn’t quite keep track of.
The man whose stall they knocked over was very nice about it, especially after they bought all his onions.
“What are we to do with these?” asked Alice Patton, holding up a string of onions and staring at it blankly. Fifteen similar strings adorned the cab behind her.
“Make soup?” suggested Kate, and ducked as Fran lobbed an onion at her.
They’d barely made it ten blocks, the long Ford seizing up and having to be re-cranked twice, before they got held up behind a series of very official-looking cars outside a large building flying an American flag. There was a group of soldiers milling about, very excited and surprised to see a convoy of American women driving three trucks.
One of the Sammies, a tall man with brown hair and an open, windburned face, began waving frantically at them. “Fran!”
“Freddie! It’s my brother—excuse me.” Fran Englund slid down from the cab of the Ford.
Kate, who was sharing the White with Margaret Cooper, tried to remember how to put it into park.
“I think it’s this lever,” said Margaret, pulling it for her. Margaret, Kate had learned, was an excellent driver, although she said very little about it. She still apologized periodically for fainting on Kate, which Kate found awkward for both of them.
“Thanks,” said Kate, and slid down from the truck, which wasn’t white at all, but simply made by the White Motor Company.
They found themselves in a mob of American soldiers, all tremendously excited to find women who spoke English, ready to be friends with anyone who knew Fred Englund’s sister, anxious for news from home, and all extremely disappointed that none of the women could tell them anything about the baseball season.
Margaret Cooper immediately found someone who had a sister who was her year at Smith. Kate was left to talk to two others and, in want of something to say, gestured to the house behind them, the one flying the American flag.
“That building—is it the American consulate?”
“It’s—er, a sort of clubhouse,” said one of the men, exchanging a look with another.
“They mean it’s a bawdy house,” said Fran Englund calmly as they went back to their abandoned trucks. She climbed back up into the Ford, sitting down on the board over the gasoline tank that served as a seat. “My brother told me. He said when our troops first landed there was a line that went down three blocks.”
“That’s dreadful. Don’t their commanders do anything about it?” demanded Liza. Her eyes looked even more like glass dolls’ eyes than usual, round as a cartoon in the Sunday papers.
“Sure they do,” said Fran. “They demand the first spots in line.”
Kate coughed to cover a snicker.
“It’s not funny,” said Liza earnestly, holding on to the side of the truck. “I’ve heard it’s all a German plot. They’re getting French loose women to seduce our troops to undermine the health of the American army.”
“I’m sure our boys would never think of visiting a French bawdy house otherwise,” said Fran, straight-faced.
Liza looked from Fran to Kate, wounded. “It’s true! I heard it from a woman at the YMCA.”
“Who I’m sure heard it from the Germans?” guessed Kate.
“Well, no—but someone reliable. Maud says it’s dreadful and it’s every American woman’s job to keep our boys on the straight and narrow.”
“Does Maud’s fiancé know that?” whispered Fran to Kate as Kate passed by on her way back to the White truck.
“Maybe he’s her own special reclamation project,” Kate whispered back, and went to join Margaret Cooper in the White.
It was like college again—college with the threat of impending destruction, that was. She felt like she was playing a theatre role: college Kate, the Kate who bantered and laughed and pretended to be just like everyone else.
The difference was, in college, she had really thought she was just like everyone else, that being secretary of the literary society and volunteering with the dramatic society washed out all the differences, made her one of them. She’d always had an ear for languages; it had been easy to snuff out any lingering traces of a Brooklyn accent, until she didn’t even have to think about it anymore, her voice had changed, just as she had changed.
It was so easy, with Fran and Alice, who didn’t know her, who knew only that she was another Smith girl and a member of the Relief Unit, to pretend to be that person again. To actually be that person again. They didn’t look at her and see a charity girl; they didn’t know she was a charity girl. She was just Kate, who had done her fair share putting together the White truck.
But they were going back to Paris. Where Emmie never meant to make her feel less, but always did.
Not to mention that Julia would be sure to put her in her place given the chance.
No, it wouldn’t do to get too comfortable. They’d only find her out eventually. Kate winced at the memory of Maud on the boat, assuming her mother was her nanny. She’d meant to tell her, she really had.
Or maybe she hadn’t.
“Watch out for the—”
“Oh, bother.” Kate bit her tongue hard as the truck hit a large pothole. “Would you like to drive for a bit, Margaret? You’re better at it than I am.”
The rain started just after lunch, hardening from a mist into a persistent drizzle, turning the roads to sucking pools of mud, soaking their hair under their hats, and dripping down the backs of their slickers.
The long Ford’s crank seized; the White got a puncture. One minute it was rolling along—well, maybe not precisely rolling. One minute it was slogging slowly but fairly steadily through the mud, and the next it was listing to one side and Kate was clinging to the doorframe to keep from falling out and Margaret was in her lap.
The extra-long Ford behind them skidded and fishtailed, but mercifully Fran was driving. She managed merely to knock down part of a fence rather than hitting them, which Kate greatly appreciated.
Ahead of them, oblivious, the Ford jitney, holding Liza and Mrs. Rutherford, grew smaller and smaller in the distance through the gusting rain.
“Bother!” said Kate, slithering down. “Bother, bother, bother. Can we patch it?”
It was sluicing down now; she had to shout to be heard over the wind.
“Too far gone,” said Fran, struggling over in her slicker, her boots squelching in the dark mud. “We’ll need the spare.”
Their cars were half-on, half-off the road. An army truck, going just a bit too fast, honked angrily at them.
“Maybe one of these nice men will help us!” hollered Liza, waving her arms over her head hopefully, but the army truck blazed obliviously past, coating them with mud in the process.
“They pr-probably don’t r-realize we’re female,” gasped Alice, slipping in the mud and just managing not to fall. “Just l-look at us.”
Fran spat mud. “What the fashionable chauffeur is wearing this season,” she said, and got the jack out of the back of the White.
“Mmmph mmmph,” said Alice, dancing around behind them. “Mmmph mmmpph mmpphh mmpph.”
“WHAT?” screamed Kate.
“FIVE INCHES!” yelled Alice, who had read all the manuals. “You need to get it up five inches to get the wheel off!”
It might as well have been five feet. It took them an hour, working in pairs, to get the White up high enough to take off the wheel, and nearly as long to pump up the spare tire by hand and fasten it into place, which would have gone faster if their wet and muddy fingers hadn’t kept slipping off the nut.
“We’ll get better at it with practice,” said Margaret Cooper, her hat dripping rain all around her face.
“I hope not,” muttered Kate. “I’m not sure I could take any more practice.”
Fran grinned wearily at her. “We’ll all be strong like bulls by the time we’re done.”
“Or mad like bulls,” offered Alice.
It was full dark by the time they made it as far as Nantes, having managed, in the course of a day, to go all of forty miles. They found the other Ford parked neatly in front of an inn and Mrs. Rutherford and Liza sitting down to soup and war bread.
“Only two hundred and sixty miles left to go,” said Kate, slumping into a chair. They had paused only to scrub at the worst of the mud with the two inches of cold water allotted them by the innkeeper. The result was, at best, mixed. It was a blessing the lighting wasn’t good; the mud just looked like shadows. It also disguised what was in the soup.
“It’s going to take us a week to get back to Paris at this rate,” said Alice, dragging her spoon through her soup.
“It’s going to take a week to get to the next town at this rate,” said Kate.
“I wonder why no one has invented puncture-free tires?” mused Liza, who hadn’t spent the day wrestling with one.
“Because then the tire companies would be out of business,” said Fran, dunking her war bread in her soup to soften it.
“Do you think they dropped the nails on the road?” asked Kate.
“No, that was probably the Germans,” said Fran, straight-faced, and Liza nodded eagerly in reply.
“They think of everything,” said Kate, and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so just gave up and ate soup instead.
It was only nine o’clock when they finished their meal, but it felt like midnight. Outside, the rain continued to sluice down. As she left the table, Kate found Mrs. Rutherford sitting in a tiny circle of light in the sitting room of the inn, surrounded by papers.
“I’m working out schedules,” she said. “We’ve so much to do that we’ll accomplish it best if we’re all divided into committees.”
“I had thought committees were a sure way to ensure nothing actually got done,” said Kate, too tired to mind her words.
Mrs. Rutherford didn’t look up from her charts. “That depends on the committee. Of bored society women, yes. Here, it simply means that those who can will. It’s much more effective than one woman trying to oversee everything, especially when we’re undertaking so much, so quickly.”
There were six categories on the page: House, Social Services, Nursing, Supplies & Stores, Motor, Children.
“But none of us are nurses,” Kate said. “How can we have a nursing committee?”
“None of you were trained mechanics either,” said Mrs. Rutherford imperturbably. “And yet our trucks still run.”
“When they run.”
“A puncture is an act of God—or of the French roads, which is much the same thing,” said Mrs. Rutherford, writing busily. “You can’t blame yourself for it. You aren’t responsible for everything, Miss Moran.”
Based on the list, Kate wasn’t responsible for much. She had been put down to serve on two committees: Motor and House. That was good, she told herself. She wouldn’t know how to do any of the rest of it. She supposed she should count herself lucky there wasn’t a separate category for instruction in the French language.
There also wasn’t a category for farm labor. She thought of Emmie’s earnest study of chickens. “But what about the farm animals? There’s no category for agricultural endeavor.”
“That comes under Supplies and Stores,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “You didn’t think we’d be caring for the animals ourselves, did you?”
“I’m not sure what we’re meant to be doing,” said Kate honestly. She wouldn’t ordinarily have admitted as much, but she was so tired, and the little circle of lamplight felt like an island in the middle of stormy seas, a space out of time.
Mrs. Rutherford looked up from her work, surprised. “I’d thought I’d explained. It’s really very simple. What we’re trying to do for them is give them the means to rebuild for themselves. We don’t want to beggar them or make them feel the objects of charity. What we do is give them the materials to work: rags for braiding, yarn for knitting, straw for weaving. We’ll run a store with food and supplies below cost—but not for free. Pride can be as important as bread. They’ve lost so much, these villagers. Many of them were once prosperous farmers, storekeepers, innkeepers, and now they’re living in holes in the ground, sharing one sheet. We need to leave them their pride.”
Pride. Kate remembered being six, and the well-meaning social worker who had singled her out at school. That had been during the lean years, when her mother had done her best, but that best hadn’t extended to new coats or shoes. And Kate had grown so terribly fast.
“That poor child,” the woman had said. “Doesn’t her family care?”
She’d worn those new shoes, but she could feel them burning on her feet still. She would rather have gone bare.
It was odd to be on the other end of it. Playing Lady Bountiful, her mother called it. Good enough for some. “Won’t they mind that we’re selling below cost, then?”
Mrs. Rutherford smiled up at her. “No. They’ll just feel glad they got a bargain. It’s no shame to put one over on the Americans—they’ll think we don’t understand their money yet and enjoy shaking their heads over our naivete. Good night, Miss Moran.”
“Good night,” said Kate, and went slowly upstairs, feeling like Mrs. Rutherford’s plans might be somewhat less mad than she had previously supposed.
The rain continued to persecute them. Margaret was right; they did get better at changing punctures, although it didn’t get any more pleasant with practice. Whether it was the Germans or just French cart horses with loose shoes, the roads from Nantes to Paris appeared to be positively strewn with nails, all of which aimed straight at their tires. They ate their lunch as they went to save time, shoving down cheese and crackers and gulping coffee from a thermos, taking turns driving. Kate began to accept being wet through as an inevitable law of nature.
And then, just north of Chartres, the sun came out.
“What is that great yellow ball in the sky?” asked Fran.
“That’s the sun,” explained Liza helpfully.
Kate squinted up at the sky. “Unless we’re hallucinating and it’s just a mirage. It might be a mirage.”
Fran put her hand up, palm out. “My hand is dry. It’s real.”
It was amazing what a difference a bit of sunshine made. They didn’t even mind when they drove into Versailles, the home of kings, and promptly blew a tire right in front of the mayor’s house, which looked like a miniature palace itself, and very French.
This time, they collected a crowd of interested citizens, all wanting to know who these shabby American women were and what they were doing charging about on three trucks loaded with building materials and the remains of fifteen strings of onions, now rather soggy.
While a few helpful soldiers debated the best way to jack the Ford (which apparently involved getting a petit blanc from the nearest café and discussing the meaning of life), an elderly woman in deep mourning, holding a little girl by the hand, approached Kate, wanting to know who they were and what they were doing.
“We’re members of the Smith College Relief Unit—er, Collégiennes Américaines.” Kate’s brain felt addled by days of driving. “We’re here to offer aid to the former occupied zones near a town called Grécourt. Those are bits of houses we’re bringing to build—for a mairie and a schoolhouse and whatever else is needed.”
“Do you have relatives here?” the woman asked.
“None at all,” said Kate, feeling a little silly. “I’m not even French. My family is mostly Irish.”
No need to mention that her father was Bohemian. It was a little too close to German. To be Irish was bad enough, but at least not Boche.
To her surprise, the woman put a hand on her shoulder. “You are a good girl. One moment. Marie, wait with the lady.”
Kate and the little girl were left regarding each other. The girl couldn’t have been more than six, and Kate had no idea what to do with her.
“Do you live here?” asked Kate.
“Yes, now.” The girl took her thumb from her mouth. “I used to live somewhere else, but then I came on a train with Madame Lepensier. How far away is America? Did you come on a train?”
Mercifully, at that point the grandmother returned, her arms laden with packages. “For you,” she said, shoving half a chicken, a basket of peaches, and a whole cheese into Kate’s arms.
Kate, surprised, grappled with it to keep it all from falling. “But this is—there was no need—”
The old woman rescued a peach and pushed it firmly back into Kate’s hands. “My granddaughter—she was evacuated from the occupied zone last year, when the Germans let some go. If she had stayed . . .” She shrugged, a Gallic gesture indicative of all manner of ills. “She was one of the lucky ones. What you do—it is good. Que le Bon Dieu vous bénisse, maintenant et à l’avenir.”
“What did she say?” Liza, drawn by the lure of food, came up as the woman was departing, leaving Kate, dazed, cradling a roast chicken, probably the woman’s supper for the week.
“She said—” Kate’s voice felt husky. She cleared it and tried again. “She said, may the good Lord bless you, now and in the future.”
“That’s so kind of her! Oh, is that cheese?”
While the soldiers debated the best methods of tire maintenance, the girls fell on the food, plunking down on the steps of the mairie and tearing into the chicken and cheese.
“My mother would be appalled.” Alice Patton tried to wipe the chicken grease off her shirtfront. “She says a lady never eats in public.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks as long as there’s more of this cheese in the world,” said Liza. “I’m surprised they’re being so nice to us. Maud says the French are pretty down on us for not coming in before and feeding the Germans through neutrals. You can see how it would make them bitter to see all these strong men in new uniforms coming in tooting around in big cars all the time. Dr. Foster, you know the Red Cross man, said there was a pretty serious mutiny in the French army this spring, and that all that kept them from throwing the towel in was our coming in, but that we probably left it too late.”
Fran grimaced at Kate behind Liza’s back. Liza’s news bulletins, they called her rambling digests of intelligence gleaned from Maud, some of which were contradictory and most of which had Germany victorious within the month.
Kate craned her head, looking back in the direction the woman had come. She wished she could thank her. She wished she could pay her. With rationing and meatless days, and the lean days of winter so close, that was a ridiculous amount of bounty to press on a stranger.
You are a good girl, the woman had said. And she’d given her chicken.
All because Kate had said they were bringing supplies to the formerly occupied zone.
“—that our troops won’t be ready to go in until spring, and the French are just holding on by sheer nerve—”
“Excuse me,” said Kate to the others, and pushed up off the steps, to where Mrs. Rutherford was sitting on the side of the Ford, meditatively munching a chicken wing.
“Why did she do that, that woman? Why did she give all this to us?”
“When the soldiers marched off to war,” said Mrs. Rutherford, “the women lined the streets, handing out bread and wine. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have much to give.”
“But we’re not soldiers.” Kate pressed her fingers to her temples. They smelled like ripe cheese. It made her feel vaguely queasy. “I don’t understand. We haven’t done anything yet.”
“You’re here,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “That’s doing something.”
She said it so matter-of-factly.
Kate looked at her askance.
Mrs. Rutherford wiped her greasy fingers daintily on her handkerchief. “It is, you know. It’s not all grand gestures. Just the fact that you came overseas.”
On the steps of the mairie, the other members of the Motor Committee were merrily eating peaches and basking in the sunshine. Kate looked back at Mrs. Rutherford. “What if we make a mess of it? What if we leave them worse off than they were before?”
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” said Mrs. Rutherford. “Most of them are living in roofless cellars—and those are the lucky ones. But I tell you, to know you are there among them, living with them, bringing aid from a world they thought forgot them—that means almost as much as the physical goods we bring them. You don’t need to do anything or even say anything. You just need to be there.”
“But we are going to do something.”
“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Rutherford. She chomped down on a peach with obvious relish. “It would be madness to come all this way and just stand there.”
Kate, contrary to instructions, just stood there.
She hadn’t been entirely honest with Emmie back in Paris. Maud had tried to recruit her for the coup, not on her own behalf, but on Emmie’s. “If you could use your influence with your friend . . .” had been the phrase used. Kate had disclaimed any influence and generally avoided committing herself.
Don’t get involved, keep your head down. Those were the rules she had learned over the years.
The truth was, she hadn’t been sure Maud was wrong. Now . . . she wondered if Emmie was right, if they ought to tell Mrs. Rutherford.
But what would be the point? They had their trucks. All their plans were in hand. It would only be making trouble. It was probably all a tempest in a teapot. For all she knew, Maud had never even written those letters.
It is good, the old woman had told her. You are a good girl.
Mrs. Rutherford thrust a chicken leg into her hand.
“Here. Keep your strength up. Eat your chicken and let’s get back on the road. If we make Paris tonight, we can collect the others, pack up our parcels, and be on our way to Grécourt by Monday.”