The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen GirlMorse, Katharine Duncan
History
The Uncensored Letters of a Canteen Girl
Morse, Katharine Duncan
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
According to directions, I climbed the hill by my billet, went past the
athletic field, past the warehouse and out along the edge of the rolling
open upland. About half a mile out of town I came to a group of seven
French barracks, covered with black tar paper, built at the edge of the
railway cut. This was the Artillery School. I crossed the field, entered
the nearest barracks which bore a Y. sign at one end, and found myself
in a Greenwich Village Tea House. I stood and stared. Some modern-school
interior decorator had been at work. The place was a riot of red,
yellow, salmon-color and black, worked out from a nasturtium motif. In
the wall panels were paintings, some conventionalized fruits and
flowers, evidently done by the decorator; others, landscapes, Japanese
scenes and some rather awful Indians just as evidently executed by the
boys. The whole effect to be sure was a bit sketchy and in spots frankly
unfinished, and yet to one used to such simplicity in the huts as I, the
_ensemble_ was startling. Back of the black and orange partition which
screens the canteen and the kitchen from the hut proper, I found the
staff, secretary and canteen worker. The lady whom I am to replace, it
appears, belongs in reality to the Motor Transport Section. She turned
canteen worker to help out in a pinch, and now is anxious to return
again.
When dinnertime came the Motor Transport girl told me that we had been
invited to dine at the camp. We went over to the mess-hall. “Let’s help
feed the chow-line for a lark!” said the M. T. girl. So we stood behind
the serving-bench and ladled out big spoonfuls of mashed potato and
gravy. This amused the boys immensely; and as they passed they would
sing out:
“When did they put _you_ on K. P?”
“What have _you_ done to deserve this?”
The kitchen was white-washed and specklessly clean, the earth floor was
covered with cinders. These cinders which are in use for floors and
walks in all the camps about, come, I am told, from a great heap down by
the river which marks the site of one of Napoleon’s cannon foundries.
“Why are the boxers in a company always found on the kitchen force?” I
asked one of the cooks.
“That’s so they can handle the boys when they come back for seconds.”
As soon as the chow-line had been fed, the M. T. girl and I had ours
with the Top Sergeant. After dinner the Top Sergeant, who had formerly
been mess sergeant, was moved to unburden his soul as to the sorrows of
a mess sergeant.
“When I was mess sergeant,” he reminisced, “I sure got to know the way
to a man’s heart all right. Why, the days when I gave them a good dinner
there wasn’t a man in camp who wouldn’t positively beam at me; but if
something had gone wrong and the chow wasn’t up to scratch, half the
fellers in the company wouldn’t speak to me the rest of the day.”
Then he grinned. “I wouldn’t want Mother to know the way I used to get
stuff for the boys last winter.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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