• 45 •

THE NEWS ARRIVED a few days later, not in the form of a newspaper, but in the form of a wagon loaded with soldiers, come to dismantle the camp. Although Hack and Clarence had not been expecting the men, they met them at the gate and received the news with whoops and cheers that could be heard all over camp.

“We’re going to France, girls!” Hack called, tossing a bundle of daily newspapers at Norma as he went whistling by. “Pack your things.”

Not realizing, at first, that soldiers had arrived to close the camp, Constance assumed he meant for her to pack her things for France, which she thought he meant as a joke. She ignored him and sat down next to Norma to read the news.

“The war resolution was adopted by Congress,” Norma said. “Miss Rankin voted against it. One account says she cried, one says she trembled, and another says she fainted.”

“Then I’ll assume she did none of that, and simply cast her vote in a business-like manner,” said Constance, who had some experience with reporters claiming that a woman fainted after conducting the ordinary duties of her position.

Norma read on. “Yes, according to the spectators in the gallery, she merely stood and said, ‘I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.’ There were forty-nine others who voted against, but I don’t see any articles about them.”

“What happens next?” Constance asked. “Do we have ships sailing for France?”

Norma paged through the other papers, peering at them through the wire-rimmed spectacles that she now required. “What happens next is that we argue over money.”

“I’m sure they’ll appreciate that in Paris,” Constance said. By then she could hear the sound of tent canvas flapping in the wind, and the commotion around camp as the news spread. She stepped outside and saw the newly arrived soldiers pulling down one of the classroom tents, to the loud protests of the campers.

“I’m the matron of this camp,” she called, marching over to a man who appeared to be in charge of the others. “We’ve two more weeks of classes in that tent.”

“Sergeant Galt at your service,” the man said. “Your classes are over, miss. We’ll need this land for an Army camp. Orders are to tear everything down and set it up military style.”

“This is the military style! We’re a National Service School, training just like the men do.”

His expression only hardened at that, as if he were suppressing some remark. “I know you girls like your camp, but the games are over. We have serious work to do here.”

Constance bristled at that. “This has not been a game.”

“Pardon me, miss, but we’re the ones going to war.”

Now she was furious. She loomed over him — that always set men back on their heels — and said, practically shouting, “Do you suppose, when you go, that you’d like your wounds bandaged, or shall we leave you to rot in the fields? Do you want a stitch of clothing to wear? How would you like a meal, or do you plan to go to France and starve?”

Sergeant Galt looked ready for a fight. He still didn’t realize he was outmatched. “Listen, lady. I’m under orders —”

“Don’t think we won’t be driving ambulances, too, and running the telephones. You have no idea what we’ve been doing at this camp.”

“In my unit,” Sergeant Galt said, “we give a demerit to a man who talks to his commander like you just did.”

“You’re not my commander. I run this camp. If it’s to be torn down, the orders had better come to me directly from Washington. Meanwhile, I certainly hope you’re prepared to carry each and every girl back to her home, because if you take down the tents they’re living in, they can’t exactly walk from here.”

Now she had his attention. He looked around at the camp and all the girls running back and forth between the tents, abuzz with talk of the war. “How many of them are there?”

“Two hundred, plus instructors, and they come from as far away as Texas.”

“And how were they going to get home?”

“Their families come for them in two weeks’ time. Some arrived by taxicab from the train station and will go back the same way.”

He spat on the ground and lifted his hat to wipe his forehead. “Somebody bungled these orders,” he mumbled.

“I hope this isn’t the sort of operation you plan to run in France,” Constance said. “Your men are welcome to camp for the night until we sort this out. I can put an extra girl in each tent and that would leave a few empty for you. Pitch them out along the perimeter, away from my girls.”

“You don’t tell me where to pitch my tents,” Sergeant Galt said, but it was only a half-hearted effort. For the rest of the afternoon, the camp was most decidedly back in Constance’s hands, and the soldiers went where she ordered them to go.

The arrival of the men and the news of war made for an unsettling evening in the mess hall. It was true that Constance hadn’t bothered to keep up much of a semblance of military order during the evening meal — it seemed to serve no real purpose, as the campers were, on the whole, orderly and well-mannered, and tired by nightfall, besides — but with a dozen or so soldiers as an audience, they reverted to the old methods that Mrs. Nash had insisted upon during their first few days at camp. Everyone lined up and filled the tables in succession, starting nearest the door, rather than rushing to the back and saving seats for friends. They stood at their table until ordered to sit, the dishes were brought out swiftly and in the proper sequence, and every girl remained seated until the last table was served and cleared.

“It’s just like Plattsburg,” Constance heard one of the soldiers say, “except these ladies take it seriously.”

The talk during dinner was more solemn, and more subdued. Everyone had a brother, a neighbor, or a betrothed back home who would be readying for war. Most of the campers had, by now, a decided opinion about what they might do next: some intended to volunteer at the Red Cross or for a church’s relief project. Many of them lived along the East Coast and thought they might find work at an Army hospital. A few girls of the working class intended to go into factories. “There won’t be as many men to build the ships,” one of them said. “They’ll have to teach us how to do it.”

Sarah was notably quiet, and pushed her food around on her plate. That night, back in their tent (with only Constance, Sarah, Norma, and Fleurette present, as Beulah remained with Nurse Cartwright), Sarah said, “I only wish we’d finished our training.”

Fleurette groaned. “I finished our training ages ago. If I have to sit through one more class on how to cuff a pair of trousers, I might expire of boredom.”

She’d learned that word, expire, from Tizzy Spotwood, with whom Fleurette had taken up since Beulah moved into the infirmary. Fleurette still hadn’t been told of Beulah’s true identity: both Norma and Constance agreed that the risk of an accidental slip was too high.

“I’m talking about the other training,” Sarah said. “I’d like to put another round of bullets into those targets, and to show what else we can do.”

“You’re not going off into the woods now,” Norma said. “We have a dozen more men guarding the camp, and I believe Hack sleeps on top of those guns.”

“You know enough to be prepared,” Constance said. “I hope you’ll never need to use it.”

Sarah wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. “I only wish those soldiers could see how far we’ve come. It’s awful, what Sergeant Galt said to you. He has no idea what we’ve been up to at night out there in the woods. Hack and Clarence know, but they’ll never tell, and they might not be believed if they did.”

It was nine o’clock by then. Taps was played by a more expert bugler than Clarence. It came across the camp in soft and mournful waves, like a blanket coming to rest on top of them. As Constance went out for her nightly patrol of the campground, she thought for the first time that she would miss this camp, and these girls, and what they had tried to do together.

Every one of their lives was about to be forever altered. Constance wished she could keep them all in place, while they were still fine and young and trying to take hold of their dreams. If she could, she’d preserve them forever, right here, in the final moments of their lives before the war.