“Will . . .” Emmie stared down at the dim shape on the stretcher. It seemed such a cruel trick to not even be able to see him, to see his face before they were parted again.
“I’m sorry,” said Kate. “I’m so sorry.”
Behind them, Emmie could hear people bustling about, stretchers being lifted, men moaning, Dr. Clare protesting about something.
Will squeezed her hand, and then, very deliberately, let it go.
“Go,” he said. “Be safe. I’ll find you, wherever you are. Remember? The compass.”
“The points always come together again.” Emmie leaned over and kissed him, one last time, not caring who saw, knowing Kate would understand. “When the war ends, come find me at Grécourt.”
Epilogue
May 1919
Grécourt, France
Dear Everyone at Home,
We’ve been busy as clams since we got back to Grécourt in January. Or do I mean happy as clams? We’ve been working pretty much dawn to dusk getting everything up and running again. You should have seen the havoc those Boche wreaked on our poor old barracks—it’s as if they didn’t think they did the job properly the first time! But this time, at least, we have plenty of supplies and men to help us. All those French soldiers home from the war, and the men and women who were away avec les Boches have been filtering back home, and they’ve been building and plowing just as hard as they can—we’ve even got a bunch of German prisoners of war working for us, which is a little unnerving, although they’re sweet as lambs, most of them. I kept thinking they’d have spikes growing out of their heads and teeth like the wolf in Red Riding Hood, but they’re pretty much normal boys and bewildered as can be.
Kate claims she still can’t get used to being called director, which is nonsense, since she was pretty much director anyway, even when she wasn’t. Mrs. Barrett sends love and packages from home. Her husband was sent back home to the States after the armistice in November, so she felt she had to resign and go back with him, but she says she’ll always be with us in spirit and as long as the mails keep delivering. There are only four of us Old Contemptibles left—Florence Lewes is having a ball with chickens and cows, Emmie Van Alden is in charge of social work, Julia Pruyn is our medical department, and you’d laugh to see me in charge of the store, peddling away like anything. I’ve been setting up shops in all the villages and helping the locals to stock them.
The new girls are a good lot, even if they do keep asking us to tell stories about the early days at Grécourt and what it was like to be here under fire, which makes me feel like the Ancient Someone-or-Other from that poem.
We’ve had a rash of romances. Alice Patton—from the old crew—wrote that she’s married one of the engineers! The Unit sent her a silver dish as a wedding present. There’s an aviator from the Lafayette Escadrille who’s been calling on Kate—he shows off flying around in circles—although Kate claims he’s just a “friend of the Unit” （ha!）。 Oh, and you’ll never imagine who came riding in on a farm cart last week, with eight boxes of chocolates, five rosebushes, and a luxury assortment of DeWitt’s biscuits? None other than DeWitt’s Biscuits himself. （Although Emmie has asked us to please stop calling him Captain Biscuit; for some reason, she doesn’t find that the least bit funny.） He was demobbed in April, and they’re to be married next month from St. George’s Anglican Church in Paris, with Kate as maid of honor, and Florence Lewes, Julia Pruyn, the groom’s sister, and yours truly as bridesmaids. The dresses were a problem, with rationing, but in the end we decided we’d just wear our uniforms and brighten them up a bit with some flowers, of which there’s no shortage right now. We’ve got enough growing wild on the lawn to stock a shop. That little French girl Zélie is going to be flower girl and toss rose petals.
We were worried about losing Emmie, but she’s promised to stay on with her captain until we get the work done enough to hand off to the French, so we think of it not so much as losing a Unit member as gaining a source of biscuits.
Oh dear—Minerva’s got into the wash again and Marie is throwing a fit and threatening to have her turned into stew. At least, I think that’s what she’s saying. It’s in French and there are still some phrases I haven’t picked up yet. . . . More later.
With love,
Liza
— Miss Liza Shaw, ’09, to Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Shaw Jr.
June 1919