Eddie scooped our girls up into one final hug. His pale eyes blinked rapidly, perhaps fighting back tears, but he forced a taut smile as he turned toward me. “I’d ask you to take care of things while I’m gone, Marjorie, but I know you will.”
I opened my arms, wrapping them around Eddie as he continued to hold our girls. “We will miss Daddy, won’t we, girls?” I asked. We held our tight family huddle for a long moment as all around us a noisy, chaotic scene unfurled: the steady clomp of boots up the gangplank, the seagulls arcing down and up in irregular loops, family members offering final tearful farewells as stoic officers urged the men to hoist their denim sacks and get moving. I fixed Eddie with a long, silent look and planted a final peck on his clean-shaven cheek. “I’ll take care of our girls, Eddie. You take care of yourself.” A barely perceptible dip of his chin, a nod, and then he stood to his full height, his golden hair catching the glint of the morning’s bright sunlight as he winked down at Adelaide and Eleanor.
With one low, droning whistle, Eddie’s ship steamed away from the docks and out toward the open water, gliding away from hundreds of waving hands and fluttering flags, plying its path through the harbor toward the Statue of Liberty and the wide blue ocean and, beyond that, a bleeding continent.
* * *
—
A few days later, a muffled knock at my bedroom door stirred me from deep sleep. “Yes?” I blinked, groggy. Was it Adelaide, eager to crawl into bed with me after a bad dream? Or Eleanor, worried about her father? No, it was my household secretary. “What is it?” I asked, the surprise evident in my woolly voice.
“News of the Saratoga, Mrs. Close.”
I sat up ramrod straight in bed, no longer groggy. “Eddie?”
“Mr. Close is safe, ma’am,” the young woman said, her voice barely a whisper in the dark bedroom. “But there’s been a…rather an unfortunate occurrence.”
I hopped from bed, not caring that the woman was seeing me in my state of undress as I fumbled to wrap my dressing robe around myself.
“The Saratoga was struck by another American ship,” she said. “It was an accident. Everyone aboard made it safely to the lifeboats, but the ship…well, it sank, ma’am.”
“Goodness.” I sighed. “And what about all of the medical equipment?”
“Gone, Mrs. Close. I’m sorry to say, but when the ship sank, so did everything on board.”
I sat down on the bed with a loud exhale. I was dizzy with relief that Eddie and the rest of the passengers had been saved, of course. Eddie would continue on to France, I presumed, as originally planned. But nearly a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of medical materials, the entire outfit for a much-needed war hospital, was drifting at that very minute toward the bottom of the Atlantic.
The secretary hovered at the threshold of my bedroom, awaiting some order from me, no doubt. After a moment I stood back up, noticing how my eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room. My voice was steeled with resolve as I said, “Then we will send another ship. I’ll tell my accountants to approve the funds immediately. We’re not giving up. Not when others are giving their lives for the cause.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the secretary said. “Will…will that be all?”
“Yes. Now, you try and get some sleep. I’ll do the same. We can sort all this out tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” She left the room with a quiet click of the door.
* * *
—
The following week, a fresh boatload of hospital provisions was bound across the Atlantic. I saw the SS Finland off with a very urgent entreaty that the crew might exercise all caution to arrive safely. And yet, it wasn’t a friendly mishap this time that threatened to derail my efforts but those horrid German U-boats. I’d heard how the enemy haunted the ports of Europe, wolf packs prowling the deep, and they found the Finland just as the ship was entering French waters. But for the intervention of some nearby Allied battleships who fought off the submarines and escorted the Finland safely to shore, I would have lost another ship’s worth of critical lifesaving supplies.
I whooped with glee and relief when the next telegram came in, this one informing me that all of my cargo and hospital personnel had arrived safely to Savenay, France. Within weeks my white stone hospital, previously a school building and now Red Cross Base Eight, was open and ready to start saving Allied lives.
Ed wrote regularly and reassured me that he was safe. He disliked the weather and the food, and he longed for the girls, but his encampment was far from the worst of the front. That was the gist of what he wrote, perhaps because that was all that was likely to make it past the censors. Back home, I’d never been so busy—or so content. Under Uncle Cal and Colby Chester’s stewardship, my plan for the Post Cereal Company to explore alternative recipes and ingredients was seeing marked success, and we had recovered our initial wartime losses. While Eddie was serving in France, neither Uncle Cal nor Colby Chester had to keep up the pretense that their Post Cereal Company dealings were with my husband. Now, as Ed’s surrogate, I could deal directly with them, and I loved it.