Stage Door Canteen (26 page)

“Don’t go without kissing me.” She threw her arms around his neck. “Brad I love you so much. I don’t think I can bear this!”

“I’ll come back Jen, I promise. Remember, I’m lucky, I’m not going into combat.” He kissed her on the mouth, hurriedly, then pulled away when she would have held onto him. “I love you darling—write to me.”

At his elbow, Captain Brownlee said, “Brad, the brass went through the gate about two minutes ago.”

He stepped back. “Jen, I’ve got to go.”

The two men turned and broke into a run. The engine had been left running in Brownlee’s car; they jumped in, slamming the doors. Then it pulled onto the road and headed for Bolling Air Force Base.

Sgt. Pilaro said, “Mrs. Haller, I’ll drive you back into Washington. After that I have to return the lieutenant’s car to the garage.”

Jenny leaned against the fender of Malcolm Sandover’s Chevy, watching the line of traffic going toward the base. He’s gone, she told herself. She supposed it would be more real after a few hours. After a few days.

“Any time you’re ready,” he reminded her.

She looked at him.

“Captain Brownlee said you’d probably want to go to the train station,” he said. “Or you could go back to Silver Springs, if you want to spend the night there.”

Jenny hadn’t thought about it. Not the house in Silver Springs, she told herself. “Yes, the train station, Sergeant, thank you. I might as well start back to New York.” She reached into her purse and handed him the house keys. “I’ll write Corporal Hawes and thank her, will you tell her that?” She suddenly remembered something. “Oh, my God! We forgot the thermostat!”

He held the door open for her as she got inside the car.

“Someone will have to go back to the house and turn it off. Sergeant Pilaro, I’m so sorry! But the furnace will use up a lot of fuel oil heating an empty house. It’s just that we were in such a hurry.”

He smiled, understandingly. “I’ll take care of it, Mrs. Haller, don’t worry.”

“And my hat!” She groaned. “I can’t believe it, I just realized I left my hat on the kitchen counter.”

He started the engine, and pulled the car onto the road to Washington. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Haller, I’ll get it and have Corporal Hawes mail it to you.”

They drove, without much conversation, through darkened streets still wet with rain. Sgt. Pilaro was from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and had two brothers in the Navy. All three had enlisted a few days after Pearl Harbor, when they had seen the battleships and cruisers bombed out and burning at dockside in the newsreels. He was very approving of Major Haller. There was not a better organized office in the system. Major Haller saw that ISPD ran with outstanding efficiency.

At Union Station Sgt. Pilaro wanted to park the Chevy and carry Jenny’ suitcase inside and wait to see if she could get a ticket for a night train for New York. But she explained that she had a round trip ticket and was bound to catch a train eventually. Besides, it was after one a.m. and she knew Sgt. Pilaro still had to take care of Lt. Sandover’s car and get back to quarters.

In spite of the daunting line in front of the ticket windows she was able to get a coach seat. Not on the Washington-New York-Boston train, but on The Southerner coming up from Atlanta, arriving at four a.m. She carried her suitcase into the marble expanses of the women’s restroom to wash her face and hands and put on some lipstick. She still felt sleepy. Her face, in the bank of mirrors over the washbasins looked pale and slightly greenish. The restroom was filled with weary-looking young women herding small children in and out of the toilets. Two washbasins down a woman, stripped to her brassiere, took a sponge bath. A number of the bowls were clogged. Jenny picked up her suitcase and went outside to look for a seat in the terminal.

Under the arching dome of Washington’s Union Station a steady stream of traffic flowed between the Travelers’ Aid booth, the newsstands, the restrooms and the stairs to the train platforms. People filled the polished oak benches in the waiting rooms and spilled over onto the marble floor: sailors with feet sprawled out, white caps pulled down over their eyes; piles of children draped over their mothers’ laps and each other; soldiers sleeping on duffel bags.

Jenny found a space against the wall and sat down on her suitcase. She hadn’t taken time in the restroom to comb her hair, and she missed her John Fredericks grey velour slouch hat left in Silver Springs. The train station at least was warm. For the first time she realized she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, in New York. She didn’t feel hungry. She took off her coat and put it in her lap. The forgotten corsage, surrounded by its loops of silver ribbon, was crushed and blackened. With a sigh, she pulled out the pearl-headed pins and lifted it from the lapel. She leaned back against the wall holding what was left of the purple orchid in her hand. Knowing she should get up and carry it to the metal trash can just a few feet away. But she couldn’t move. She closed her eyes. Somewhere, echoing in the vaulted spaces of Union Station, a baby wailed.

FOURTEEN

“Sorry ladies,” Charlie Hanrahan said, “I can’t let you in.” The canteen doorman peered at their uniforms, which seemed to be those of WAAC officers. But he was not quite sure. A line of soldiers waiting with dog tag IDs in hand filled the stairway behind them. “Uh—what is that insignia? Are you captains?”

“You could say that,” the other woman said.

Charlie shook his head. “The Stage Door Canteen,” he told them, lifting his voice over the sounds of the special event for the evening, live music with the famous Benny Goodman and his band, “is open to enlisted personnel only. We don’t admit officers except with a written pass signed by the Canteen Board of Governors. I can’t help it, ladies, it’s Canteen rules.”

“We’re not ladies, sweetie,” the tall, striking blonde smiled, “we’re war correspondents. I’m Ruth McGowan of Associated Press, and this is Inez Robb of INS, International News Service.” She flashed Charlie a bright red lipsticked-grin at the same time she pulled her khaki musette bag from her shoulder, opened it and dug around inside. “Here’s my AGO card from the Adjutant General’s Office. I can’t go anywhere without it or they’ll put me, you know, in jail. Here’s my AP identification,” she said, putting another card in his hand, “and here’s the permission to admit us to the canteen signed by Mr. George Abbott, the producer, who’s on the canteen board. He’s a friend of Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who asked him to do this for us.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt? You know Mrs. Roosevelt?” Charlie studied the small pasteboard card. Even the GIs crowded on the stairs behind them were listening.

“Yeah, you could say I know her. I used to be the Houston Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Went to the White House all the time.”

The permission she tendered to enter the canteen was signed by George Abbott, the Broadway producer who indeed was a member of the board, and undoubtedly a friend of the wife of the president.

“See, here’s our war correspondent patch,” Inez Robb said, turning slightly so he could see the letter C on her left arm. “We’re civilians, but the Army decided they’d better give all of us uniforms, so if the enemy found us they wouldn’t hang us as spies.” She reached out and lifted her ID cards from his hand. “We’re looking for WAACs. Are any of them here tonight?”

“WAACS? We’ve had a few, but not tonight,” Charlie said, waving them inside. “Maybe some will come in, who knows? Ladies—captains—enjoy yourselves, and let any of the hostesses know if there’s anything you want.”

“Thanks,” Ruth McGowan told him. “We will.”

She made her way through the crowd toward the dance floor, while Inez Robb left to go off to introduce herself to a table of Marines. Inez’ stories for the International News Service were light and breezy, and featured the “human interest” side of the war. She knew Inez would probably work up a story by asking the Marines what things they had found to do while on leave in New York. Had they been to the Statue of Liberty? What did they think of Times Square? Folks back home ate that up.

Ruth was looking for something quite different. It had been a long struggle to get an overseas assignment, and even now she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be that close to the war. But on Sunday, December 7th, almost a year ago, she’d been one of the few AP reporters in Washington, lucky enough to be on the spot to cover the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and how it affected the nation’s capital. A few months later she’d reported on the newly-formed Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, following the WAACs all the way through their historic basic training. Women in the service had turned out to be a very big issue. Everybody wanted to read about it. In the fall, hearing that the WAACs were going overseas, presumably to England, Ruth had applied to accompany them. The AP, for once, was willing. The War Department, miracle of miracles, gave her clearance in spite of its large prejudice against women reporters overseas. Or women anywhere, for that matter.

The formation of the WAACs had apparently changed War Department attitudes. Especially when the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, asked that a WAAC contingent be sent to SHAEF headquarters in London as soon as possible. Ruth had been assigned to follow them.

Now, as she stood at the back of the canteen’s basement room and listened to Peggy Lee sing Why Don’t You Do Right?, watching the close-packed crowd swaying to the song, Ruth felt she was onto something even bigger.

She got the first small clue as to what might be going on when her WAAC uniforms were delivered to her hotel. She’d been issued, she discovered, two officer jackets, two skirts, pants, half a dozen shirts and ties, and a raincoat. But curiously, no clothing warm enough for England in midwinter. Things had gotten even stranger when she found she was also issued a helmet, a musette bag, a fatigue outfit, insect powder and sunglasses, canteen, gas mask—and mosquito netting.

Mosquito netting? And insect powder? Her reporter’s instincts told her she had to check it out.

A story had come in over the teletype just a few days before that five WAACs had been torpedoed off the coast of Africa. You didn’t have to be a georgraphy major to know the coast of Africa was hardly the usual route to take to get to England. The newspapers had already reported that General Eisenhower, from his headquarters in Algiers, had requested a second WAAC detachment. She was pretty sure the next WAACs were going to be assigned to North Africa. And that she was going with them.

Someone touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, captain.” A master sergeant with Signal Corps insignia. “Wanna dance?”

Ruth grinned at him. “Sure why, not?”

As they spun into a slow Lindy Hop he asked, “How did they let you in here, captain? The canteen is supposed to be for GIs only, right?”

“Well, I’m not really a WAAC captain,” Ruth explained, “I’m a civilian, a war correspondent. The War department gave us uniforms so that if we ever got captured the Germans wouldn’t shoot us as spies.”

The master sergeant looped her arm over her head and spun her gently into a sudden, bigger space on the dance floor. “No kidding,” he said.

The Canteen restroom was crowded with junior hostess taking a ten o’clock break. Elise Ginsberg had been in the kitchen cutting up chicken to make chicken salad sandwiches, and was at the sink scrubbing the grease from her hands. Annmarie van Troup and one of her friends were at the mirror discussing Brenda Frasier, the debutante of the year, and the money her family had spent on her debut. Brenda, of the perfect 1940’s look with her pale oval face and shoulder-length dark hair, was in every magazine and newspaper society section, and now reined as the current princess of what the gossip columnists had dubbed Café Society. There was some considerable criticism that money spent on extravagant coming out parties was tasteless and out of place now that the country was at war.

Annmarie’s debutante friend said, leaning into the mirror, “Well it is tacky, spending a lot on a big debut. My mother said it would be better if the Frasiers donated all that money to War Relief and then had pictures of Brenda handing out doughnuts to servicemen in Grand Central Station, or something patriotic like that.”

A junior hostess they knew as Jane came out of a booth, pulling down the edges of her girdle through her dress. “My goodness, there’s a crowd of soldiers out there,” she told them. “They say it’s because of the war in North Africa. They’re all from Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. I haven’t even seen the Aussies all week.”

“I love the Australians, they’re so crazy,” another girl said. “Have you heard them sing that song? Waltzing Matilda?”

“Jane, don’t let Ann Bennett or Carmen Thompson hear you say North Africa. The canteen is very strict about that.”

Elise said, “Do you know Brenda Frasier, Julie?”

“Well, I can’t say that I really know her. We went to Miss Hewitt’s Classes, but she was a year behind me. It is true, her family really did spend wads of money launching her. Maybe they’re hoping she’ll get a movie contract or something like that.”

Annmarie van Troup put down her lipstick. “Does Brenda Frasier want to be in the movies? I hadn’t heard that.”

The other laughed. “Hey, doesn’t just everybody?”

Two more junior hostesses squeezed into the restroom. “That is the most groovy band,” one of them enthused, “I can’t believe we’re really having Benny Goodman here. You can hardly get on the dance floor because everybody wants to dance. The band doesn’t fit on that little bitty stage, either. Peggy Lee has to climb over the drummer to get to the mike to sing.”