Now the deck was filling with people as the ship started docking. I began to feel the war coming out to meet me. Bordeaux was teaming with uniforms, French and American, crowding the docks and spilling into the adjoining streets. The wharf was crowded with bales, crates and boxes. Huge winches and cranes were hauling more off the ships every moment to the background noise of police whistles and sirens.
I had tried to convince Rosie to come up on deck with me, but she had rolled over and put the blanket over her head. “Go away, Valerie. I have no intention of getting up at this awful hour.” Now looking sleepy and dragging her musette bag, she finally joined me on deck. We were the last pair to march off our Noah’s Ark into our yet as unknown future.
As we trudged down the gangway, Rosie suddenly came to life as a company of men marched by us. “Look, American soldiers.” She waved enthusiastically. Recognizing her as a fellow American one of them shouted. “Vive les Etats Unis!” The cry was taken up by the others and then by French voices challenging it with “Vive la France! A bas les Boches!” The company marched off leaving happy confusion behind them, and us to face Miss Ford who glowered for a long moment at a blithely uncaring Rosie.
As my feet touched firm ground, I could hardly believe that I was here in uniform standing on the shores of France. The suffragette march had changed something in me, and I had returned home with a renewed determination to do something with my life. Papa became more distant from us all, often having his dinner brought to the music room leaving James and me to eat in solitary splendor in the dining room. I knew James hated that room as much as I did, and he was out with friends as often as he was at the table with me. When he was there, I tried to connect with this brother who now seemed lost to me. He seemed to be angry with the world and most particularly with Papa. He dismissed any of my feelings with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and would often comment, “You’re just a girl, you wouldn’t understand.” One night looking at his unhappy, cold, handsome face I thought he could have been one of the men pushing at me on the streets of Washington.
But then he had come alive again once he had enlisted, and was once again the brother I remembered who dreamed of knights and explorers. He smiled, teased Josie, went into the kitchen to compliment Emma on the dinner, and really talked to me. But I could not tell him of the cry that was always at the back of my mind, ‘But what about me?’
But that question was answered a few months after James’s departure. I was examining the morning paper as usual for the latest war news from Europe, when I saw a small article at the bottom corner of the front page. A Mr. Endicott Brown, Chief of Red Cross Personnel for the Chicago area, was announcing the formation of canteen units to send to the front in Europe. They would be composed of women who would do the cooking and running of canteens to feed American servicemen. The units were to be all volunteers, the first one leaving in a few weeks and the second one a month later.
I read the article and then read it again. Was this it? My way of getting involved in the world outside my door? I rushed around the playroom looking for a pencil and paper. I carefully copied down Mr. Brown’s name, and then hurried to the telephone book to look up the address of the Red Cross in Chicago. What should I do now? Should I call for an appointment? No, it would be better to arrive unannounced. I could be too easily dismissed by telephone
I dressed with great deliberation, realizing I had never cared so much what I looked like. Not for any dance or any party. But then none of those things had been really important to me. Yet even now I did not want to look beautiful, only capable.
A taxi took me to the Red Cross offices, and I found Mr. Brown’s office with ease. A secretary greeted me brightly. “May I help you?”
“Yes,” I said, handing her my card imitating Mamma’s most regal manner. “I wish to see Mr. Brown.”
“And what is the nature of your business?”
“Personal,” I said firmly with what I hoped was an assured and confident smile. I was not going to give away anything, not until I stood before Mr. Brown himself.
“He’s very busy. Perhaps” --- she looked at the card – “Miss Winthrop, you could come back another day or call for an appointment.” Her bright smile had turned to an irritated frown.
“I don’t mind waiting. I have all day. I’ll just sit here and wait, and whenever he has a few moments to spare I would be glad to see him.” I kept a smile on my face and sat in the nearest chair with what I hoped was all the ladylikeness that Nanny had drilled into us.
I could see my empty day did not make Mr. Brown’s secretary very happy and she just shrugged her shoulders and went back to work making no move to take my card anywhere near Mr. Brown, whom I assumed was enthroned behind the door to her left. An hour passed in which my determination began to fade, although I sat just as straight in my chair hoping I did not look as deflated as I was beginning to feel. Finally, when I was beginning to think I was defeated, the secretary with one resigned glance in my direction picked up my card and disappeared through the magic door. She was out of the door in a matter of minutes, her demeanor changed from irritation to reluctant respect. “Mr. Brown will see you right now, Miss Winthrop. Please follow me.”
It did not take much imagination to know what had happened. I had been recognized through my card as either Arthur Winthrop’s daughter or, more compelling, as James Winthrop’s granddaughter, and Mr. Brown was not taking the chance of offending either one. If the only way I could get in that door was as someone’s relative, so be it. My family was at last going to get me something I really wanted.
Mr. Brown rose as I entered the room indicating a chair across from his desk. “Please sit-down Miss Winthrop.”
I was seated so quickly, that I left him standing. He slowly sat down behind the barrier of his desk and cleared his throat.
“To what do I owe the hon ---“
“I’ve come to you, Mr. Brown, because you have the power to give me what I hope for.” He attempted to interrupt me, but I rushed on.
“I have read about the canteen units you are planning to send overseas. I want, more than anything in the world, to be included in one --- the first, if possible.”
“Yes, the first unit sails shortly. It is already formed. The second will be ready next month. After that we shall see.”
“Mr. Brown, will you include me in the second unit then?”
He forced a small laugh, leaning back in his chair. “One might think, Miss Winthrop that you were a highly experienced cook. Are you?”
“I have never cooked anything in my life.”
“Ah, you see. That’s what canteeners do. They cook, Miss Winthrop. You probably have in mind an executive position with authority attached. I can imagine that you have managed a large establishment, the training of numerous servants.”
“I have always lived in a large house with servants to do the work. I am now mistress of that house, but I have never trained or managed anyone. That was done a long time ago.”
He raised an eyebrow. “No doubt you have other qualifications?”
“I speak French and German.”
“That might be useful, of course, but it won’t feed the boys, I’m afraid.”
I leaned forward, my hands clenched in my lap as I made my case. “I have always studied with teachers and often on my own. I seem to learn easily.” I felt my face flush. “I’m sure I could learn to cook. I could learn quickly, I’m sure.”
“Our field personnel are few and must be highly competent. There is more work to do than hands to do it, and no one would have time to instruct a novice.”
“No one would need to teach me. I can teach myself by watching.”
“You couldn’t be included in a unit merely to watch others work. If you have nothing to offer…”
My chance was slipping away. My desperation drove me on. “But I have. I have a lot of things you need. I’m strong, stronger than most girls. I’m not afraid of anything. I’m never tired either. I could go without sleep, and I don’t care where I live or how. All I want is work. Useful work.” I looked into his doubting face, leaning forward in my urgency. “Please Mr. Brown, while I’m watching the others learning to cook, I can do all the other things – scrubbing, carrying loads, washing dishes, anything – anything at all. Please give me my chance.”
I sank back into my chair, hands clutching the arms. I saw Mr. Brown hesitate. What was he thinking? Probably weighing my presence here against the social status of Papa and more particularly, Grandpapa. Was I here with their blessing? He would not want to alienate either one. Finally with a resigned sigh he said, “Well, Miss Winthrop, I guess we’ll have to let you try.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” my voice small after my bold plea. I found my wobbling legs and started to get up, but Mr. Brown stopped me.
“One moment.” I sat back down in my chair. Had he changed his mind? “You know, of course, that on this assignment you go as a volunteer. We arrange for your transportation and military protection and direct your movements. But you pay your own expenses, including transportation overseas, maintenance and uniforms. I realize that this is not the problem for you it would be for most, but I want you to understand.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I answered hurriedly trying to cover the sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Leave your address with my secretary as you go out. You will receive your instructions shortly. Bear in mind Miss Winthrop, that, from the moment you enter the service, you may be required to perform any task.”
I could hear the skepticism in his voice, but I did not care. I had won a place on the ship that left in one month, and I had all the months after that to prove myself. But, while elated with my success, I now faced one final hurdle before I could execute my plan. I knew Mr. Brown had probably read about the glittering social events held in my grandparents’ large mansion on the lake, but he could not know that their wealth did not mean that I too had money. I might live in a huge house, have servants who waited on me, and cleaned up after me, but I had no money beyond a little pin money for what Papa called “female extravagances.” Any large sum would have to come from him, and it took little imagination to picture his reaction to my latest scheme, and the satisfaction with which he would deny me any funds. My mind darted this way and that all the way home. Whatever I did had to be done quickly, before I could announce my plans to Papa. I could not be sure, in the end, that Mr. Brown might not take the precaution of contacting Miss Winthrop’s parent, just to make sure her request met with family approval.
I knew what I wanted to do, but not how. I raced into the house, flinging my coat onto a hook in the coatroom, and heading for Nanny’s special apartment at the back of the third floor. As a child this had been forbidden territory for us Winthrop children. For us she had always inhabited our lives in our special parts of the house: our rooms and the playroom. I think we had no sense of her outside of our particular domain or lives. But as I had grown up our relationship had changed, more particularly after my mother’s death.
As a child it had been Nanny and Mamma who were on the far side of the large gulf that separated us children from the world we were being trained to enter. Now, although she was still the same upright figure in black, she was no longer the arbitrator of my life. Often, after dinner in the big, silent dining room I found myself up in her cozy apartments stretching my feet out to her fire, her dinner tray at the door waiting to be picked up by Josie. Yet, there was still a separation between us. No matter now closely wound up in our lives she had been, she had been on the outside looking in at all the passions and secret longings that had governed life in this house. Yet, I felt she always understood more than she was willing to tell.
Now as I took the stairs up to her room in most unladylike haste and knocked impatiently at her door, I was not sure how she would react to my latest escapade. She listened with her usual quiet attention to my somewhat garbled outpouring and said the words that I knew would make everything all right. “I will help you, Valerie.” Then she looked straight at me and said, “My fate is sealed up in this house. I will spend the rest of my days here. Your mother made provision for me in her will, as there is really nowhere else for me to go.” She paused, her eyes boring into mine. “But you must get out and stay out.”
My heart contracted. In all my longings to go somewhere, anywhere, I had never given any real thought to Nanny and her life. She had just always been there, and even as an adult I had accepted that fact without examining it. She took one look at my face and patted me softly on the arm. “Do not feel sorry for me. It is not the same for me as it is for you. I can live here and not be consumed.” She paused for a moment and then said quietly, “But I shall miss you.” At that, all the anxiety and emotion of the day welled up in me, and I threw myself at Nanny’s feet, burying my face in her lap and crying as I had only once before in my life.
But this time I cried for the woman who had been such a part of my life, and who I had never even considered as a real person in her own right. In all my strivings to throw off the yoke of my family, I had not considered what the life of this quiet, faithful, ever-present person had been. She had known all of us better than we had known ourselves and had been caught between her intimate knowledge of the family and the position she held in the house. I was learning that the more I pulled away from home, the more I realized that I was a product of that home and all that implied.
The next day Nanny and I spent going about town driven by a stiff-backed, disapproving John. How Nanny had known where to go and what to do I never knew, but at the end of the day I had disposed of most of my jewelry and all of my furs.
I walked into the house at six, my purse comfortably filled with bills, and marched right in to see Papa. It was the hour before dinner in which he was not to be disturbed, but with a certain sense of recklessness I knocked on the music room door. He was going to be upset, no matter what the hour.
I waded right in without preamble. “I have made an important decision Papa.”
He looked up from the sheet of music he was studying and said only, “Later Valerie.”
I pretended as if I had not heard him. “Yesterday, I was accepted for service in an American Red Cross canteen unit going overseas.”
Papa let his pen drop and sat back in his chair, an uncomprehending look on his face. “Are you asking to go away?” he finally said.
“No, I am telling. I have made all the arrangements, and I will be going overseas next month with a canteen unit.”
“Preposterous. A young girl alone in the war zone of some foreign country. Do you think for a moment that just because you have, so to speak, reached the age of legality, you can take matters into your own hands?”
“I already have. I am going.”
“Do you think that’s a proper way to speak to a parent?”
“I don’t want to be impolite or cruel, but I must have a life of my own.”
“You don’t know anything about life. If you did, you wouldn’t even suggest putting yourself in such a position. A young, unsophisticated, impulsive girl alone among millions of males – all kinds too. Assorted male humanity. It’s unthinkable. Everyone knows what soldiers are …” Papa looked down at his desk and tapped his fingers restlessly.
“My inexperience isn’t something to be proud of, either for you or me. If Trixie had understood….If I had only understood,” I broke off as memories surged over me. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. I’m starting my life right here and now.”
Papa sat unmoving for a moment, and then raised his eyes to mine, a look of triumph stealing across his face. “What on? I take it the Red Cross is not paying you a salary.”
“No. I’m a volunteer.”
“Volunteers need money. They have to dress and eat and do all the things you take for granted. How will you pay your way?”
“I have the money.”
“How would you have it?”
“I sold my things.”
“Things. What things?”
“Jewelry that Mamma left me and my furs.”
Papa half came out of his chair. “What right had you to sell those things?”
“They were mine. I traded them for something I want even more.”
“Selling clothes like, like …. Where on earth did you go to do this?”
“No Papa, you can’t buy them back, and you need not worry than anyone knew who I was. I was very discrete.”
“You don’t begin to know what I can do. I have friends with influence. Your brother thought he could do just as he wished. He fancied himself an officer in brass buttons, a lieutenant going overseas to glory with an infantry unit. But I fixed that. He may be wearing a uniform, but he will not be going to France. That unit sailed without him, and he was transferred to the Quartermaster Corps for duty in Washington.”
Suddenly, the lack of letters from James was explained. I thought he had been too busy with his new life to write. He could not have known that it was Papa’s manipulating hand that had reached all the way from Chicago to his training camp. What had James felt at being pulled out of his unit just before it sailed? He had always been my big brother, older and off in a masculine world to which Trixie and I were strangers. But I had learned over the years how fragile he really was. That revolt on his fifteenth birthday had been his one rebellion against the prison into which Arthur’s death had placed him. He had never dared confront the family again and had duly taken his place in the family business upon graduating from college. The dreamy young boy had turned into a sullen and joyless man. But becoming an officer and heading off to war had brought back once again the youth who dreamed of adventure. Now, Papa had grabbed that chance from him, and he would never know whose hand it was that had thwarted his ambition. He would feel diminished, and my heart broke for him. But at least I was forewarned about what Papa might do.
I took a deep breath and I lifted my eyes to meet my father’s, “In my case Papa, it will be useless to use your influential friends. If you do force the Red Cross to drop me, it won’t make any difference. I won’t give up. If you cut me off this way, I’ll find another way and it might be a way you like even less…”
I was brought back to the present by the calling of my name as the names of our group were being checked with mechanical thoroughness against a list on Mrs. Ford’s clipboard. She then told us that our train would leave shortly for Paris. “You’ll arrive sometime in the evening, early or late depending upon the luck you have on the way. French trains are unpredictable. In any case you will be met. Since there is no diner on the train, we’ll get a meal before you leave.”
Going through customs, getting the meal, and being hauled to the station consumed the next three hours, and I saw no more of the city than could be seen through a truck’s dusty back window. But I had seen enough on the docks and out of that dusty window to realize how immature and sheltered that girl in the third-floor playroom had been, who had placed inanimate colored pins on a map of Europe. This was war, not some game to be charted out on a map in the comfort of a well-appointed home. One of the ships in the harbor that morning had been loading a grim cargo that had riveted my attention as I stood on deck waiting for Rosie. Stretcher after stretcher had filled the gangplank, with the line winding its way along the wharf like some albino serpent. The white had been splotched with the brown residue of dried blood and the bright red of fresh blood. Another line had been a sluggishly moving column of men on crutches or limping with bandages wound around legs, arms and heads -- uniforms filthy and often torn. And those uniforms were all British, the faces of the men reflecting the grim realities of years of grinding combat. They looked nothing like the well-fed, cheerful American soldiers that Rosie had greeted. While I and my country had lived our lives shielded by the cold blue of the Atlantic, Europe had been bleeding to death.
I went mechanically from wharf to dinner to train station my mind a whirl. My purpose in taking this job suddenly seemed very shallow. I was no different from Rosie. I had not joined with service to others in mind any more than she had but had used the job to get away from a situation I thought intolerable. What was really intolerable was that line of broken and damaged men. I promised myself that if I, by serving even a one single cup of coffee, could alleviate some of that suffering then I would. My life on Ellis Avenue with all its unhappiness and constrictions suddenly seemed very small and insignificant compared to this world I was now entering. But even with this new knowledge, I still had no idea of what I was entering.