Chapter Sixteen
Chapter One
Camp Jackson Army Base
Columbia, South Carolina
September 1918
“I still can’t believe it.” Leanne Sample gazed around at the busy activity of Camp Jackson. Even with all she’d heard and seen while studying nursing at nearby University of South Carolina, the encampment stunned her. This immense property had only recently been mere sand, pine and brush. Now nearly a thousand buildings created a self-contained city. She was part of that city. Part of the monumental military machine poised to train and treat the boys going to and coming from “over there.” She was a staff nurse at the base army hospital. “We’re really here.”
“Unless I’m seein’ things, we most definitely are here.” Ida Landway, Leanne’s fellow nurse and roommate at the Red Cross House where they and other newer nurses were housed, elbowed her. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, but I still can barely believe this place wasn’t even here two years ago.” Together they stared at the layout of the orderly, efficient streets and structures, rows upon rows of new buildings standing in formation like their soldier occupants. “It’s a grand, impressive thing, Camp Jackson. Makes me proud.”
Leanne had known Ida briefly during their study program at the university, but now that they were officially installed at the camp, Leanne already knew her prayers for a good friend in the nursing corps had been answered. Different as night and day, Leanne still had found Ida a fast and delightful companion. Ida’s sense of humor was often the perfect antidote to the stresses of military base life. As such, their settling in at the Red Cross House and on the hospital staff had whooshed by her in a matter of days, and been much easier than she’d expected.
Still, “on-staff” nursing life was tiring. “There was so much to do,” Leanne said to Ida as she tilted her face to the early fall sunshine as they chatted with other nurses on the hillside out in front of the Red Cross House. “Too many things are far more complicated in real service then I ever found them in class.”
“A free afternoon. I was wondering if we’d ever get one. Gracious, I remember thinking our class schedules were hard.” Ida rolled her shoulders. “Hard has a whole new meaning to me now.” This afternoon had been their first stretch of free time, and they’d decided to spend an hour doing absolutely nothing before taking the trolley into Columbia to attend a war rally on the USC campus that evening.
“However are you going to have time to do this?” Ida pointed to a notice of base hospital events pinned to a post outside the Red Cross House. “I feel like I’ve barely time to breathe, and you’re already lined up to teach knitting classes.”
“I’ve managed to find the time to teach you,” Leanne reminded her newest student.
“Don’t I know it. I tell you, my mama’s jaw would drop if she saw I’ve already learned to knit. I guess you’ve found right where you fit in the scheme of things around here.”
Ida was right; Leanne had found her place on base almost instantly. As if God had known just where to slot her in, placing an opening for a teacher in the Red Cross sock knitting campaign. If there was anything Leanne knew for certain she could do, it was to knit socks for soldiers. She’d run classes for her schoolmates at the university; it seemed easy as pie to do the same thing here. And it would help her make friends so quickly—hadn’t she already? In only a matter of days the vastness of the base seemed just a wide-open ocean of possibilities.
Of course, there were others who were less thrilled at the opportunities ahead of Leanne—namely, her parents. Mama and Papa had come to see her settled in, and they hadn’t left yet. They’d already stayed on in Columbia two days longer than planned. Papa attributed it to “necessary business contacts” here in the state capital, but Leanne knew better. Mama wasn’t at all calm about the prospect of her daughter being an army nurse. Leanne had agreed to meet her parents for a last luncheon before they caught their train, a final goodbye off base before tonight’s rally. In truth Leanne worried that despite already-packed bags, Mama would invent some other reason to delay their return to Charleston.
Ida must have read her expression. “Oh, stop fretting about your mama and papa, will you? Don’t give them reason to stay one more minute. You’re in for a ten-hankie bout of tears no matter what, so best just to get it over with. Don’t you give them one inch of reason to stay off that train.”
Leanne couldn’t argue. She’d declared to herself that even Mama’s fits of worry would not be permitted to dampen the eager wonder she felt to finally be in service. Leanne squared her
