It was a beautiful thing to watch the bride rush back to hug everyone again and again. Even yours truly came in for a hug or two. She was the sort of happy that wants everyone to be happy with her, and it was wonderful to see how delighted the Grécourt crew were for her and how they welcomed her husband （well, roasted him, really, but that’s how they show their affection, these girls）。 When I think what these girls were when they arrived—it warms even my flinty heart to see how they’ve come together, particularly Dr. Pruyn, Miss Moran, and Miss Van Alden, whom I must try to remember to call Mrs. DeWitt now. The way they look after each other is something beautiful to behold. It seems a shame that they’ll be separated once the work is done, but I don’t imagine they’ll let anything keep them apart for long. . . .
Oh, bother. Now I’m getting weepy again and Betsy’s walked off with all my handkerchiefs.
—Dr. Ava Stringfellow, ’96, to her husband, Dr. Lawrence Stringfellow
July 1919
Grécourt, France
Darling Emmie,
Yes, we have everything in hand, and no, you don’t need to come back early! Please do stop writing us and just enjoy your honeymoon. That’s a request as your friend, not an order as your director, but don’t think I won’t pull rank if I have to.
Zélie loves the beads you sent her from Venice. She won’t take them off, which means we can always hear her jingling everywhere she goes. Julia loves the ticket you sent her mother. She’ll never tell you herself, but she’s terribly grateful to you for sending her packing.
There really isn’t anything to say about Lieutenant Nelson, but I promise to tell you whatever there is when you come home.
I won’t say you aren’t missed, because you are, but we want you to have a little time for yourselves before we put you both back to work. You’re always so busy taking care of everyone else that you never stop to think of yourself, so we’re going to think of you for you and absolutely forbid you to return for at least a month. We’ll set Minerva on you if you do.
All my love,
Kate
P.S. Tell Will we’ve proclaimed him an honorary Unit member and Mme Gouge is sewing him a uniform as we speak.
—From Miss Katherine Moran, ’11, to the Honorable Mrs. Fitzwilliam DeWitt （née Emmaline Van Alden）， ’11
August 1919
Grécourt, France
Venice was lovely and so was Rome, but I’ve never seen anything so lovely as sunrise through the gates of Grécourt. . . .
It’s a wonderful thing to come home.
I wish I could shrink it all and put it in a snow globe, to put in my pocket and take with me when we’re done here. Kate says we have it anyway, in our memories. Julia tells me not to spew sentimental tripe.
And Will—Will made me a snow globe with the gates of Grécourt in it.
Has there ever been anyone as lucky as I?
—From the diary of the Honorable Mrs. Fitzwilliam DeWitt （née Emmaline Van Alden）， ’11
Historical Note
Back in 2018, I was trying to find information about Christmas customs in Picardy during World War I—as one does—and stumbled on Ladies of Grécourt, a memoir by Ruth Gaines of the Smith College Relief Unit. It turned out that her book was absolutely useless in terms of Picard Christmas traditions, but I was fascinated by the fact that there was, somehow, a group of American college women in the Somme, right next to the lines, arranging Christmas parties for French villagers. It wasn’t what I was supposed to be working on at all. But I couldn’t help myself. I plowed through that memoir, captivated by Gaines’s account of how the Unit came to be, what they did, how it all turned out, and I was tantalized by a few enigmatic comments and inconsistencies.
Why did their director, the force behind the whole expedition, resign less than two weeks after they arrived at Grécourt? What exactly was Gaines getting at when she wrote: “The only limitations to that high experience were the limits of comprehension, of endeavor, of fellowship, set by our own personalities”？ I’d attended an all-girls school. That carefully phrased line about the limits of fellowship set by personalities sent out a bat signal to me. I smelled drama. So I did what any procrastinating author would do: I started digging, first into the publicly available sources, which raised still more questions, and then into the vast piles of letters and journals by Unit members housed in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
The story I found in those letters is the story that you read in this book.