My Own Two Feet Part 7

Then there was the year Quail was offered a large discount on five hundred copies of Margaret Wise Brown's Little Fur Family, a tiny book with a jacket made of fur packaged in a box with a hole in the center that gave the Fur Child pictured on the lid a real fur stomach. Mr. Kahn, the owner of the store, bet us a box of candy that we could not sell five hundred copies by Christmas. We sold all five hundred, explaining five hundred times that the fur jacket was made from the pelts of kangaroos, varmints in Australia, and that no good American rabbits had been sacrificed. Mr. Kahn paid up.

Of my four years as Christmas help, that first year, when Quail and I were the only employees in the children's department, remains most vivid of all. One Sunday afternoon, Clarence and I were listening to The Mikado on the radio when the broadcast was interrupted by a bulletin: Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the j.a.panese. "I'll be d.a.m.ned!" said Clarence.

"Where's Pearl Harbor?" I asked.

We stayed by the radio the rest of the day, and the next morning went to work as usual. That week the store, with almost no customers, was in a state of nervous confusion. Quail, who had a brother who was a naval officer stationed at Pearl Harbor, was on the verge of tears, hoping for a telephone call with news from him. As we all waited with her, we pa.s.sed the time catching up on stock work and counting catalogs in what seemed like slow motion while we talked of blackout curtains and bombings. Then Mrs. Herbert paid us a visit to keep us on our toes. "Girls," she said, "we must sell even though we are at war." As we were wondering to whom, she turned to Quail and said, "Darlin', we do not accept personal calls at work." When Quail finally heard over the store telephone that her brother was safe, the sales staff rejoiced for her.

After work, Clarence and I nailed layers of newspapers over our kitchen windows in place of blackout curtains, listened to President Roosevelt's "date which will live in infamy" speech, and prepared hasty dinners. At night, when air raid sirens sounded, we leaned on the bedroom windowsill, looked out into the black night, and listened to the drone of circling planes. Dogs, upset by sirens, airplanes, and darkness, barked until the all clear was sounded and lights came on again.

Gradually customers trickled back to the bookstore. Children should not be disappointed, they said, and one indignantly added, "I do think the j.a.panese might have waited until after Christmas."

Quail came down with flu, and I was left to face the department alone. When she returned, Mrs. Herbert, a kind woman in her own way, took me aside and whispered, "Darlin', we don't discuss our salaries, but I am so pleased with your work I am raising your pay from eighteen to nineteen dollars a week." This was the same woman who wrote the date on every light bulb installed so the store could be reimbursed if bulbs did not live up to their guarantees. She also required us to show her a very short pencil stub before she would issue us a new pencil. Money was still tight in 1941.

After Christmas, still unscathed by bombs, I returned to being a full-time housewife. I stood in line at the meat market, but when my turn came, all the butcher had left to sell was pig tails.

Gas rationing ended my driving lessons. From our kitchen window I watched the j.a.panese family, laden with bundles and suitcases, quietly leave their home and climb into a taxi on their way to the Relocation Center. It was a sad scene; they were such gentle, courteous people. Our landlady gave us a plot in the backyard for a Victory garden, which I enjoyed, remembering, as I had been taught in grammar school in Portland, to rotate our crops and to plant legumes to replenish nitrogen in the soil.

College friends married, had babies, were called into service, returned to their homes, or disappeared, leaving us to wonder where they had gone. Someone sent a newspaper picture of the Upshot who had been eager to see the inside of an airplane. He was sitting in a BT-14 training plane at Randolph Field. In spite of his high draft number, we were not sure how long Clarence would remain a civilian, and we did not feel it was time to start a family. I had no intention of going back to Portland to live with my parents. We finally decided it would be best if I were settled in a job. Now all I had to do was find one.

I Meet the Army.

Like the younger sons in folktales I had told in Yakima, I set forth to seek my fortune, beginning with the Oakland Public Library. I flunked the physical examination because the doctor said I was too nervous to meet the public. I did not let him discourage me.

My next stop was the Department of Employment, where I half expected to be sent to a s.h.i.+pyard to become another Rosie the Riveter. Instead I was sent to apply for a library opening at Camp John T. Knight, which turned out to be a compound of barracks, a chapel, and one-story white s...o...b..x buildings in the Oakland Army Base on the edge of San Francis...o...b..y. There I learned that another librarian, older than I, had been sent from the San Francisco Department of Employment. She was given the t.i.tle of Post Librarian, but since librarians were in short supply, Xenophon P. Smith, Chief Librarian of the 9th Service Command, did not want to let one slip through his fingers. Would I consider sharing the position with the t.i.tle of Junior Hostess? A Junior Hostess would normally work in a service club, but since there was none at Camp Knight, funds were available. Why not? I was amused by my t.i.tle, which reminded me of the song "Ten Cents a Dance." This time I pa.s.sed the physical examination with the army doctor's gentle comment "Why, you're frightened." I met the Special Service Officer, who was responsible for library and recreation services. He introduced me to Colonel Alfonte, an Old Army Commanding Officer, who told me that listening to the men talk was more important than library work, but I must never ask questions. I had a feeling that life in the Yakima boardinghouse full of men had been basic training for my new army life.

And so I went to work at raw, windy, bleak Camp Knight. Even sunny days began with cold fog pressing down on white buildings, gray sidewalks, and mud. When the sun did come out, the men whistled tunes from Oklahoma!, and the camp often had a sickly-sweet smell of coconut as copra from the South Pacific was unloaded on its way to becoming soap. At one end of the block-long street, s.h.i.+ps loading explosives flew red flags. On one side of the library a railroad track of flatcars was loaded with tanks, guns, explosives, landing craft, Jeeps, the machines of war. In daylight the cars stood motionless, but during the night their loads disappeared, and by the time we came to work, another trainload awaited its voyage to the South Pacific. Camp Knight was not a place to lift the spirits.

The post librarian and I worked in a small room in a building designed to be a mess hall but temporarily used as a day room, the army term for recreation room. As I listened to the men, new words, which Clarence defined for me, were added to my vocabulary. I did not use them. Pool b.a.l.l.s clicked, Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s, as James Thurber was to say, gnip-gnopped, and the jukebox played over and over the men's two favorite songs, something about "Why don't you do right and get me some money, too?" and a burlesque song that contained the line "'Take it off, take it off,' cries a voice from the rear." The children's room of the Yakima Public Library seemed a long, long way away.

In a few weeks book-filled shelves lined the walls. The pool table, Ping-Pong table, and jukebox were moved out and replaced with long tables and pewlike benches. When we remarked to the colonel's wife that we thought a library needed some comfortable chairs, Mrs. Alfonte, loyal to the Old Army, said indignantly, "Some of the finest generals in the army have sat on those benches." Perhaps that explained why West Point officers were always so erect. Slumping was impossible on those straight-backed benches.

Then our Special Service uniforms arrived. They were blue gabardine suits with shoulder patches that looked like the end of an open book with pages of different colors representing branches of the service. "The Rainbow Division," the men called us. I was lucky enough to find a pair of British Walker shoes that buckled on the side and were appropriate with a uniform. The camp was so muddy that polis.h.i.+ng them seemed a waste of time, but I did s.h.i.+ne them once in a while. My shoes must have bothered the men, who were required to keep their shoes polished at all times. One of them presented me with a can of Kiwi polish. After that I treated myself to professional s.h.i.+nes, and my shoes gleamed and pa.s.sed the men's inspection, which my stockings did not.

My one remaining pair of nylons had to last the Duration. For work I found some handsome, I thought, cotton mesh stockings imported from England, where they were probably worn for hiking on the moors but were suitable to wear with my British Walkers. I wore them until the men began to ask, "Do you have to wear those stockings?" I did not care to paint my legs as some women did, so my next choice was rayon stockings, presentable if worn wrong side out so they didn't s.h.i.+ne, but with feet so badly shaped that pulling them on was like putting my feet into paper bags. They did not dry overnight, and all through the war our shower rod was draped with damp rayon stockings. The men said no more.

The white s.h.i.+rts we were required to wear with our uniforms were also a problem. They were difficult to find and were usually rayon, sure to disintegrate in a short time if sent to a commercial laundry, which in wartime could not promise when they would be returned. Even though housekeeping was simplified by a lack of furniture, I resented ironing s.h.i.+rts in my limited free time until I discovered I could cut the work in half by wearing s.h.i.+rts wrong side out on the second day and keeping my jacket b.u.t.toned. No one noticed. Then overcoats arrived. They were made of such coa.r.s.e stiff woolen fabric ("shoddy," Mother would have called it) that when I sat down on the A train, the overcoat did not sit with me. The collar rose above my ears.

On the mornings when I opened the library, no matter how cold and bl.u.s.tery the weather, men, both black and white, were waiting to use the c.o.ke machine. At that time the army was segregated, but our library was not. Rank and race made no difference to us.

The men of the United States, uprooted from their lives by lottery and thrust into the Quarter-master Corps or Military Police, were a revelation more enlightening than travel. I was astounded at the variety of men who found themselves at Camp Knight. A furrier from Marshall Fields in Chicago remarked, "Humph, split skins," when a corporal's wife walked in wearing a fur coat. A professional gambler from Georgia confided that payday gambling with young soldiers was "jest like rakin' in the leaves" and asked for our help in filling out applications for postal money orders so he could send his winnings home, where he was buying an apartment house. A bootlegger explained how to smuggle liquor into the dry state of Kansas. Several law school graduates from City University of New York hoped somehow to get onto the Judge Advocate General's staff. A man whose job in civilian life had been dyeing the marbleized edges of dictionaries explained how it was done. Another man had done a stretch for robbing a Chicago hotel. Men from crowded cities reminisced about their lives in the "C's," as they called the Civilian Conservation Corps.

The men seemed equally amazed by one another. I overheard a black man telephoning his wife on the library's pay telephone say, "They sez they's Creoles. What the h.e.l.l is Creoles?" Men from big cities spoke contemptuously of "those farmers" and looked down on fresh-faced small-town boys from the Midwest who saw war as adventure. This did not sit well with me, once a farmer's daughter, and I finally snapped at one man, "You eat, don't you?" After a moment of startled silence, he said apologetically, "I never thought of it that way."

The language of the army fascinated me. Once when I was hurrying to the Post Exchange to buy a sandwich before the only sort left was potato salad on white bread, a private caught up with me and said, "Jeez, you shoulda been in the infantry, the way you pick 'em up and lay 'em down."

Our feet grew cold on the cement floor as men showed us pictures of their families and confided, in their various accents, plans for the days when the war, which had only begun, would end and they could return home. When one man who had been promoted from corporal to sergeant asked if I knew where he could get his new stripes sewn on his blouse, I volunteered to do it for him. After that I sewed on new stripes several times a week. Private First Cla.s.s stripes were the most difficult because they tended to stretch or bend while I was sewing.

Companies were moved out of camp and replaced by others. Often men from the East came straight to the library to ask, "How far is it to Hollywood?" When told it was about four hundred miles to the south, they asked in disbelief, "In the same state?" When we said that California extended about the same distance to the north, they often said "Jeez" in disbelief.

Once the camp had for a brief time a detachment of men who censored mail for the Army Post Office. They were ordered to skim through letters going to men overseas but not really read them. "You can't help reading them," one man said. "You get so you watch for certain letters." Another said, "It seems like some women have no shame."

I felt sorry for the men, most of whom worked in s.h.i.+fts around the clock loading and guarding s.h.i.+ps. Many men had no consideration for those who had to sleep in the daytime and did not lower their voices. Radios played night and day. One man told me he became so angry he picked up a radio, held it over his head, and dropped it on the floor. We did not disturb exhausted men who came to the library and fell asleep on the new couches. These couches had mysteriously arrived to replace the pewlike benches, leaving us to wonder what became of those benches. Were they s.h.i.+pped to the South Pacific so men would sit up straight in the jungle?

This seemed as reasonable as some of the army's orders. When an order came from Post Headquarters-"The men will attend the movie, and the men will enjoy themselves"-the men laughed about it. When a man imprisoned in the guard house, probably for the usual offense of swearing at an officer, requested a book on mathematics, we sent him one. A sergeant returned it. The Bible was the only reading material permitted in the guard house.

Then one day it was announced that the camp was to have a gas mask drill. Everyone would be issued a mask and be required to walk through a building filled with gas. The day came, but the library staff had not been given masks. "What about us?" we asked, only to be told we were not included in the drill because we were paid from different funds.

Life on the home front was difficult. When we worked a five-day week, I could sometimes go to Mill Valley to visit pregnant Jane, whose army officer husband was in Italy, but when the government decreed that we must work six days a week, I no longer had time for the trip or any other recreation. Going to work meant either waiting for an unreliable bus or walking thirteen blocks to an A train, where pa.s.sengers were curious about my uniform with its jaunty hat, which also bore the rainbow insignia. "What kind of uniform is that?" I was often asked. One woman wanted to know, "Just who do you think you are in that getup?" Another asked what I was all togged out for. At the army base I had a choice of walking a cold, windy mile to the library or riding in a truck. Going home was easier. Clarence, concerned about my traveling through an unsafe West Oakland neighborhood on the nights I worked until nine o'clock, applied to the ration board for extra gasoline so he could pick me up after work. He was granted enough to come for me every day. We often stopped to eat at one of the several small restaurants on the way home.

When I worked nights I packed a spartan meal, usually a Spam sandwich and a piece of fruit. According to Army Regulation 210-70, librarians and hostesses were the equivalent of captains. This should have ent.i.tled us to get meals in the officers' mess across the street, but we were denied this right, a decision apparently made by a Red Cross volunteer who impressed officers with her wealth. She always carried five hundred dollars in cash so she could lend money to any man in need. That we could have complained by way of our library officer to Colonel Alfonte did not occur to us, and today I wonder why a volunteer was allowed to a.s.sume so much power. It was she who insisted the men wear uniforms instead of fatigues to the library because being in uniform would make them "feel better." We felt men should be ent.i.tled to use the library no matter how they were dressed.

Although I enjoyed listening to the men, I did not find Camp Knight a pleasant place in which to work. Almost no one wanted to be there except a few officers who had never had it so good. Enlisted men resented their officers and disliked their work on the docks. As one man told me, "When you stand guard all night, it seems like you hate the whole world."

One event lifted spirits. Not long after the library opened and Colonel Alfonte was transferred or retired, one of his successors was court-martialed for "making improper advances to the wives of younger officers." This was a great morale booster for enlisted men because it showed them officers were not always given preferential treatment.

Still, the library was an uncomfortable place. The post librarian understandably resented having to share her position with a junior hostess. I was doubtful about her abilities as a librarian because she disliked selecting books and left their choice to me, work I enjoyed. She also refused to catalog books. I did not mind taking over because I used a simplified system and used the authors' names on t.i.tle pages. Mark Twain was Mark Twain. She spoke of "her" library, which irritated me after Miss Remsberg's lecture on no part of a library belonging to any one staff member.

The a.s.sistants were usually engrossed in personal problems and did not stay long. I missed the calm kindness I was used to from Miss Remsberg in Yakima, the friendly cooperation of the Yakima staff, and the companions.h.i.+p of Sather Gate Book Shop. Poor food, erratic transportation, irregular hours were beginning to wear me down. I was well paid by the standards of the times, but I had little need for money. In wartime, stores spread their merchandise thin or left shelves bare, and wearing a uniform six days a week, I had no need for more clothes. We could have used more furniture, if we could find any, but I would only have to dust it, and a rug would lead to a vacuum cleaner that would have to be run. A dust mop was faster. I had nothing to do with my checks but deposit them in the bank. Did I really need this job?

Then, after a bad case of flu, when I was about to give up, I received a call from Xenophon P. Smith telling me the Hotel Oakland was being converted into an area station hospital. He suggested I look the place over, and if I wanted the position of post librarian, it was mine. A job only a twenty-minute streetcar ride from home with no transfers-of course I wanted it, but when I went to the hospital, I found myself involved in the strangest interview that any librarian I have ever known has had. I was shown into the office of the commanding officer, who was leaning back in his chair. He misunderstood the situation and thought he was interviewing me. A huge man, tall and heavyset, he sat up, reached out, pulled me toward him so I was standing between his knees, gave me two pats on my bottom, and said, "So you're a librarian. You can have the job anytime you want it."

I stepped back and stared at him. All the men I had met at Camp Knight had been friendly, courteous, and proper. No one had ever touched me. I thought fast. By this time I had seen enough of the army to know that officers did not stay long in one post. I would take a chance.

The C.O., a.s.suming the matter was settled because he said so, released my hand, sprang to his feet, and said, "Follow me. I'll show you where the library is going to be," and left the room with long strides.

"Run!" cried the secretary in the outer office. "Run, or you'll lose him."

I ran. This giant of a man led me down the hall and into the ballroom where I had danced when I was a student at Cal. Thus began a relations.h.i.+p of post librarian vs. commanding officer. He waved his hands and explained how the ballroom was to be divided, with Red Cross recreation offices at one end, a stage in the center, and the library and Special Service office behind the stage. "And the Dutch door to the library will go here," he said, pointing.

A divided door in which the top and bottom halves opened separately? "Why a Dutch door?" I asked.

"So the men can come to the door and ask for their books," he said. "We can't have them going into the library and getting the books out of order."

I was speechless. Then I thought of the rallying cry of the Office of Librarians.h.i.+p of the 9th Service Command: "Make adversity work for you." A rich opportunity of adversity lay ahead, if I could make it work.

My War with the Army.

Traveling to work at the Oakland Area Station Hospital was much easier and much more interesting than my journey to Camp Knight. I walked two blocks to the number 14 streetcar, run by a very old motorman named w.i.l.l.y, who had been called out of retirement to serve during the war. w.i.l.l.y, glad to be back at work, took wicked pleasure in speed, and piloted his car over the uneven roadbed as if he were in a race. We bucketed around Lake Merritt, past the Hanrahan, Wadsworth, Pine, and Borba Funeral Home and a place that manufactured "The Laminated s.h.i.+m That Pe-e-els for Adjustment," whatever that was, to stop directly in front of the hospital.

I was given a desk in medical supply, down the hall from the morgue, where I could make out book orders while the ballroom was being converted. The administration correctly a.s.sumed that a librarian was ent.i.tled to eat in the officers' mess, a real treat after so many Spam sandwiches. The food was good, and we were often served steak. In wartime! I savored every bite of those meals even though surgeons came into the mess in their blood-smeared "scrubs." Enlisted men, suspicious of officers, often asked what I had to eat "in there" and were rea.s.sured to learn that officers and enlisted men were served the same food with one exception. Officers had salad.

I quickly revived from life at Camp Knight. My first obstacle was the Red Cross, which objected to my starting a library when its workers already circulated books from a small collection of donations. When I pointed out that the army provided both librarians and ample funds for books, the woman in charge of recreation told me I could have the medical library, but the Red Cross would continue to supply reading material to patients. I quoted AR 210-70 to the library officer, who consulted the C.O., who p.r.o.nounced, "There will be one library in this hospital, and Mrs. Cleary will run it."

When part.i.tions were in place, I moved from medical supply to the most poorly designed library I have ever seen. It was T-shaped, with the stage in the recreation room in one angle, the medical library locked in one arm of the T, and the circulation desk and the Dutch door in the other arm. Over the part.i.tion, in the long part of the T, was the Special Service office. The main part of the library made a detour around a thick pillar. Light came from two windows and a crystal chandelier suspended from a very high ceiling.

With the help of a sergeant who had been wounded on Attu and was on limited service, we opened the library with books piled on the floor. We solved the Dutch door problem by leaving both halves open, an act of disobedience the C.O. apparently never noticed, probably because he was so busy changing specifications for library shelves, which I had sent him and which he said would waste lumber in wartime. When his six-foot-long shelves arrived, they sagged under the weight of books. The C.O. humphed and snorted and ordered them rebuilt. But did he follow specifications? Of course not. He was the C.O., wasn't he? This time he had the shelves made the right length but so high we could not reach the top shelves. Most of them remained empty, wasting lumber all through the war.

Once the books were shelved, the sergeant was a.s.signed to other duties, and a civilian a.s.sistant was hired, a pretty girl named Judy with curly red hair who often said, "This is the best job I have ever had. I just love working in the library." Even though she was worried about a brother serving in the navy in the Pacific, she was always willing and cheerful. The Red Cross, now friendly and cooperative, gave its book carts to the library and a.s.signed Gray Ladies to help in the wards. Most of these volunteers had sons or husbands in the service and were enthusiastic workers. Without their loyal help, the library could not have efficiently covered the wards in a six-story building designed to be a hotel.

The library was not the only part of the recreational facility badly designed. The stage had only one dressing room, the size of a closet, which was inadequate for USO shows. Since the library was closed evenings because ambulatory patients had little to do during the daytime but select books, we allowed the library to be used as a dressing room. I did not mind picking up bits of hula skirt when I came to work, but I did mind an unantic.i.p.ated problem with the Dutch door. The lock was in the top half, and the Red Cross worker in charge of the evening's entertainment invariably went home with the key instead of leaving it with the sergeant at the entrance to the hospital. The bottom half could be opened without a key, and so, until the Red Cross worker with the key could be located, everyone had to bend low to enter the library. When the entire door was open, the library was so noisy that at night I went to bed with the click of billiard b.a.l.l.s, the gnip-gnop of Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s, and "Cow-cow Boogie" pounded out on the piano still running through my head.

As the days grew shorter, the library grew darker. One high chandelier designed to flatter ballroom dancers was inadequate. I brought my college desk lamp from home for use on the circulation desk, but the patients could barely see the shelves. I complained to the library officer, who pa.s.sed my complaint on to the C.O., who came to see for himself, humphed, and left. Before long, fluorescent lights, twice as many as needed, were installed and produced light so bright one man said, "When I come in here I feel like I am about to be beaten with a rubber hose."

Then one day inspectors from the Fire Department arrived. Ignoring me, they stood in the narrow s.p.a.ce in front of the circulation desk, where one man pointed to the shelves opposite and said with authority, "A door can be cut through these shelves here, and steps built down here."

Steps in front of the circulation desk for patients to trip over? And what about book carts and men on crutches? They couldn't get past steps. I interrupted. "Why is the door needed?" I asked.

"Fire Department regulations require two exits from a stage," the inspector said. "There is none on this side."

This suddenly struck me as funny. "But doesn't the front of the stage count as an exit?" I asked. "In case of fire, couldn't performers simply jump off the stage?" The men looked thoughtful, departed, and that was the end of that project.

One day an enlisted man came in and picked up the ancient Woodstock typewriter, which probably had been mothballed since World War I, and started out the door with it. When I protested, he said, "Sorry. There aren't enough typewriters to go around. I have orders to take this one."

Finally there came a time when I had to start a letter through channels to the commanding officer of the 9th Service Command on some minor matter. Because librarians were not allowed to write official letters in their own names, letters always began, "On behalf of the Commanding Officer..." and were signed by the post librarian and the library officer before being pa.s.sed on to the C.O. Here was my chance. I wrote the letter in my neatest longhand, signed it, and turned it over to the library officer. "Why isn't this typed?" he demanded.

"Because the army took away my typewriter," I said.

He signed the letter and, with a hint of a smile, sent it off to the C.O. Before long I was called into the adjutant's office. "What is the meaning of this?" the major demanded, holding up the letter. "You can't send a handwritten letter through channels."

"They took away the library's typewriter, sir," I answered.

He handed the letter back to me. The typewriter was returned.

Next we faced the problem of dust in the army. The post library at Camp Knight had been "cleaned" by sullen prisoners from the guard house while an armed M.P. stood over them. With wide brooms the prisoners pushed the dust and grit from one end of the library to the other and then pushed it back again. We dusted the tables ourselves with dustcloths brought from home. No one worried about dust on books. The whole camp was dusty, and n.o.body cared.

Dust in a hospital was different. During weekly inspections the officer in charge looked for dust and found it. When I explained that dust on library books was inevitable, the officer went peacefully on his way until the day the C.O. conducted the inspection himself. Ah-ha! Dust on library books! The accompanying officer recorded our dust on his clipboard. The next day half a dozen cleaning women arrived to remove the books, dust them, and return them to clean shelves. The library was busy and the women were almost finished before I noticed they were shelving the books at random. When I pointed out that books should be shelved in order, they seemed bewildered. Then I understood-they could not read. Reshelving several thousand books was a daunting task, but fortunately sympathetic patients offered to help.

The C.O. not only wanted a dust-free station hospital, but wanted to command a dust-free regional hospital. "Keep the bed census up" was a remark often heard. On the C.O.'s orders, the bed census was kept up, and eventually he won out and became the commander of the Oakland Regional Hospital.

Before long, as I had antic.i.p.ated, the C.O. was transferred. His last order to me was "Buy me a couple of Thorne Smith books out of library funds." I didn't do it.

The next C.O. was Colonel Harry Dale, a tall, thin, bald officer whose erect bearing indicated a West Point background. The first time he entered the library, the men sat as if frozen. Colonel Dale looked around and said we should have a proper circulation desk instead of the beat-up old office desk we were using. "Go ahead and order one," he told me and added, "Is there anything else you would like to have?" I could scarcely believe what I was hearing.

There certainly was something I would like to have: a door that was not a Dutch door. The next day, carpenters arrived, measurements were taken, and a new door was installed, a perfect door that did not divide in the middle, a door divided into gla.s.s panes that diminished the noise from the recreation room and at the same time allowed men to see that the library was open. I thought loving thoughts about Colonel Dale every time I opened that door.

Another kindness of Colonel Dale that I particularly appreciated was his asking me, when the Special Service officer who was also library officer was about to be transferred, "What do you think is the chief duty of a library officer?"

After a moment's thought, I answered, "To say yes to whatever the librarian asks."

Colonel Dale laughed and asked me to choose any officer I would like to have. I selected a mild-mannered lieutenant who worked in the mess office. The moment a new library officer realized with horror that he had to sign for the entire library and was held responsible for all the books was always an interesting moment until I quoted AR 210-70 and a.s.sured him that all he had to do was sign papers. I took care of everything else.

Working on what the chaplain's a.s.sistant called the lunatic fringe of the army was fascinating, a view of the joys and tragedies of life. Babies were born, patients' bodies were mended, men died. One handsome young man requested a book on mathematics, and when I took it to him, we talked a few minutes. The next day I was shocked to learn he had died. When an army wife who had been hospitalized with high blood pressure gave birth to stillborn twins, her young husband sat in the library with his head in his hands for hours.

The case that caused the most excitement was an army wife who at dusk had backed into a spinning airplane propeller, which sliced off three pounds of her b.u.t.tocks, shattered her elbows, and fractured her skull. Her husband, barely out of his teens, came every afternoon for weeks to read Western stories to her as she lay facedown. Everyone followed her progress with concern, and the staff was proud of its work when she was finally able to walk out of the hospital.

Italian cobelligerents, men who had been taken prisoner but were unsympathetic to Italy's part in the war and had volunteered to work for the United States, sometimes became patients. This irritated the men who fought in the Italian campaign. "We fought those guys," they said. The Italians were very much aware of their unpopularity. I went to a North Beach bookshop in San Francisco and persuaded the owner to sell the army about fifty paperback books in Italian, which the men were happy to find on the book cart. One homesick Italian admitted for an ordinary appendectomy looked so sad that the chaplain felt sorry for him and called on an Italian priest to come and visit with the man in his own language. Instead of being cheered, the poor patient went into shock. In his town in Italy a visit to a sickbed by a priest meant the patient was going to die.

A young gunner with the British Merchant Marine turned up at the hospital for several weeks. He was a handsome young man who admired the quality of American uniforms compared to his own. He was popular with girls, including Judy, but he soon married another American girl. He then learned, when his orders arrived, that he was being sent to Australia by sailing vessel. "Eyety dyes to Austrylia," he moaned. Almost as soon as he left, his American bride sought a divorce, which upset his family in England, who did not take divorce lightly and who somehow wrote to Judy about it. She was saddened by the letter and wasn't sure how she should answer. I suspected she was in love with him herself.

Almost every day enlisted men asked for the key to the medical library, and when we explained that it was for the use of medical officers only, the men usually grumbled, "What's the matter? Are they afraid we'll know more than they do?" I tried several times to persuade Colonel Dale to move the medical library, pointing out that according to AR 210-70, using my time to take care of it was a misappropriation of funds. Adversity did not work this time.

An army chaplain requested a book on flower arranging, a subject I had not expected to interest the army. I bought the most beautiful book I could find, and when I handed it to him, he remarked, "We teach little children to wors.h.i.+p in beauty and then send them to Sunday school in church bas.e.m.e.nts." How well I remembered. To my surprise, a number of men borrowed that book.

Men sometimes asked what prices were like "on the outside," as if the army were a prison. I telephoned Montgomery Ward and asked for a catalog, which we kept in the library. Someone was always studying it, and some men compiled lists from it as they dreamed of the future when they could return home.

And then there was the first lieutenant in the Engineering Corps. I shall call him Jimmy. Once Jimmy asked if we could think of a holiday that he could use as an excuse for sending his wife a gift. We consulted reference books and found that grouse-shooting season was about to open in Scotland. "Great," Jimmy said with a grin, and left, presumably to send his wife a gift appropriate for grouse shooting. Jimmy was full of fun. We made a game of quoting poetry to see if the other could identify it. I wondered if he had been required to memorize as much poetry in high school as I had. One day Jimmy said he was bored. Wasn't there some work he could do in the library? There was. To our surprise Jimmy shelved books, not only that day, but every day.

Several enlisted men said, when Jimmy was not around, "I don't get it. A first lieutenant shelving books." We didn't get it either; we were just thankful. We wondered what he was being treated for, but of course we could not ask. Then one day Jimmy did not appear. As we shelved books ourselves, we missed his help and his good humor. When Colonel Dale came in, I remarked that we missed Jimmy. The colonel said the entire hospital staff had been amused because the librarians were the only people in the hospital who could do anything with Jimmy. I was astonished, unaware we had been doing anything with him. The colonel explained that Jimmy had been held prisoner in the hospital because there wasn't much he hadn't done, from attempted rape to cas.h.i.+ng bad checks. His wife had not heard from him for months. He had been given a dishonorable discharge and sent on his way. The next day he telephoned Colonel Dale to say he was broke and had no way of getting home to the East Coast. The colonel told him to start walking.

Most doctors, I soon learned, read history, biography, and mysteries. Men who broke their legs riding motorcycles always wanted Western stories. The psychiatrist requested books by Arthur Koestler. A man who said in civilian life he "sold jewels to rich old women" shared my pleasure in James Thurber. After the war I saw him doing just that, selling jewels to rich old women in I. Magnin. Enlisted men often asked for books by Donald Henderson Clark, an author I had never heard of. The 9th Service Command's library philosophy was "Give the men what they want." I ordered The Impatient Virgin, Tawny, and other Clark t.i.tles, which the men pounced on, usually saying, "I didn't think you would have these."

Best-sellers were in demand, most of all Forever Amber, by Kathleen Winsor. When I saw the author's picture on the book jacket, I recognized a Cal student with whom I had shared Professor Lehman's course in The Novel and who had surprised the student body by marrying the captain of the football team. That book, written by a cla.s.smate, was a nagging reminder every time it crossed our new circulation desk that I, too, wanted to write-if the war would ever end, and I could find time.

That was one question I did ask Colonel Dale: "When is this war going to end?"

He answered, "The same time all wars end. When people get tired." It seemed to me everyone was tired. Men asked for the prophecies of Nostradamus to search for clues to the end of the war. There was no longer any need to look at pins on the maps posted in the hospital lobby. I could tell how the war was going by the faces of the men. Clarence's draft number was coming closer. He was called to the Berkeley High School gym for what enlisted men called "short-arm inspection." The navy had him deferred, and I dreaded long franked envelopes in the mailbox. Would they contain a draft notice or another deferment? Mother, whose letters grew more depressed, wrote asking if it wasn't time for Clarence to go. Judy's brother was killed in a naval battle. His C.O. wrote the family, "Nathan was a fine boy." His name was Aaron.

If Colonel Dale's prediction was correct, the war could not go on much longer. Although Clarence and I had no time for recreation, we were glad to turn our living room couch into a bed for transient relatives. Atlee, now a trim and handsome navy flier too tall for our couch, slept on it anyway. He could not tell us at the time, but we learned years later that his aircraft carrier had been kamikaze'd and was being repaired. His sister, Virginia, also turned up to sleep on our couch. She was married to a young man in the navy who was stationed on Treasure Island.

Then my grandmother died, my dear, gentle grandmother, who taught me to sew when I was five years old. Mother stopped to spend a night or two on our couch on her way to visit Verna, as well as her own oldest brother, who lived in Arizona. Seven years of caring for her mother had aged her. Her s.p.u.n.k was gone. I felt sad for Mother, who, although she had always been strict with me, had also been fun-loving until the circ.u.mstances of her life had eroded her sense of fun. The visit was peaceful, but I was careful to watch every word I said. Mother did not ask how much longer Clarence's civilian status would last.

Then, in 1945, on April 12, which happened to be my birthday, a patient came into the library and said softly, "Excuse me, Mrs. Cleary, but did you know President Roosevelt died?" I didn't. A terrible gloom settled over the hospital. "Now we'll never get out," the men said. Radios broadcast only cla.s.sical music. No one played "Cow-cow Boogie." Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s did not gnip-gnop.

Late in the afternoon of that terrible day, a big fat sergeant carrying a bouquet of red roses walked into the library. "Are you Beverly Cleary?" he angrily demanded. I confessed. "Jee-zus Christ," he snarled, and thrust the roses at me. "We thought these were for a patient and just about tore the hospital apart trying to find her." Clarence had remembered my birthday.

On May 7, Germany surrendered to the Allies, a morale-lifting day in the hospital. The men felt they were closer to going home-unless they were sent to the Pacific. Patients were discharged more quickly than usual, and their places filled with men with eerie greenish skins, the result of taking Atabrine in the tropics to prevent malaria. Others, who had picked up skin fungus in the jungles, looked like mummies. One man described to me his problems soaking his socks off his feet, infected with jungle rot. Another, a civilian whose eyesight was failing from starvation on the Bataan death march, told me of the death of his wife and child from dysentery. All this could mean only one thing: Hospitals in the South Pacific were preparing for a major battle.

Then the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiros.h.i.+ma. Stunned silence fell over the hospital. Colonel Dale came into the library as if nothing unusual had happened and returned his books.

"A whole city wiped out with one bomb," I said. "I think that is horrifying."

"No," answered the colonel calmly. "It will bring about the end of the war and save the lives of thousands of our men." It still seemed a terrible thing and a long way from the small atom-smas.h.i.+ng cyclotron in the shack on the Cal campus that the Commonwealth Fellows had shown with such pride one evening only eight years before.

j.a.pan surrendered. Sirens sounded, whistles blew. Patients whooped, hollered, and threw their toilet paper out the windows. Everyone left the library except the Chief of Medical Services, who calmly selected books as if nothing unusual were going on. When he finally left, I locked the door, went home, and fell into bed as exhausted as if I had been in a battle myself.

Men were quickly discharged except for a few very young newly enlisted men who wanted to read dog stories. Then they, too, disappeared, and the hospital was turned over to the Veterans Administration. I was asked to stay on, but when I went for a tour with the new C.O., watched him sc.r.a.pe the floor with a fifty-cent piece to show how slovenly the army had been in waxing over dirt, and saw him wave his arm around the library I had worked so hard on and say, "We'll get rid of most of this junk," I felt as if I were back with my original hospital C.O. I also knew that I was through with government library service. Later, when I met the librarian who took over for the Veterans Administration, she told me what a pleasure it was to inherit a professionally selected library. Junk, indeed!