Page 1 of For This We Are Soldiers
Such Brave Men
Alittle paint will make all the difference,” Hart Sanders said as he and his wife surveyed the scabby walls in Quarters B.
Emma stood on tiptoe to whisper in her husband’s ear. She didn’t want to offend the quartermaster sergeant, who was leaning against the door and listening (she was sure). “Hart, what are these walls made of?”
“Adobe,” he whispered back.
“Oh.” Perhaps she could find out what adobe was later.
Hart turned to the sergeant in the doorway. The man straightened up when the lieutenant spoke to him. “Sergeant, have some men bring our household effects here. And we’ll need a bed, table, and chairs from supply.”
“Yes, sir.”
Emma took off her bonnet and watched the sergeant heading back to the quartermaster storehouse. Then she turned and looked at her first army home again. Two rooms and a lean-to kitchen, the allotment of a second lieutenant.
Hart was watching her. Theirs wasn’t a marriage of long standing, but she knew him well enough to know that he wanted to smile but wasn’t sure how she would take that. “Not exactly Sandusky, is it?” he ventured finally.
She grinned at him and snapped his suspenders. “It’s not even Omaha, Hart, and you know it!”
But I have been prepared for this, she thought to herself later as she blacked the cook stove in the lean-to. Hart had warned her about life at Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory. He had told her about the wind and the heat and the cold and the bugs and the dirt. But sitting in the parlor of her father’s house in Sandusky, she hadn’t dreamed of anything quite like this.
Later that afternoon, as she was tacking down an army blanket for the front room carpet, she noticed that the ceiling was shedding. Every time she hammered in a tack, white flakes drifted down to the floor and settled on her hair, the folding rocking chair, and the whatnot shelf she had carried on her lap from Cheyenne Depot to Fort Laramie. She swept out the flakes after the blanket was secure and reminded herself to step lightly in the front room.
Dinner was brought in by some of the other officers’ wives, and they dined on sowbelly, hash browns, and eggless custard. The sowbelly looked definitely lowbrow congealing on her Lowestoft bridal china, and she wished she had brought along tin plates like Hart had suggested.
She was putting the last knickknack on the whatnot when Hart got into bed in the next room. The crackling and rustling startled her, and she nearly dropped the figurine in her hand. She hurried to the door. “Hart? Are you all right?” she asked.
He had blown out the candle, and the bedroom was dark. “Well, sure, Emma. What’s the matter?”
“That awful noise!”
She heard the rustling again as he sat up in bed. “Emma, haven’t you ever slept on a straw-tick mattress?”
“In my father’s house?” She shook her head. “Does it ever quiet down?”
“After you sleep on it awhile,” he assured her, and the noise started up again as he lay down and rolled over. He laughed. “Well, my dear, be grateful that we’re not in a connecting duplex. This bed’s not really discreet, is it?”
She felt her face go red, then laughed too, and put down the figurine.
A
She had finished setting the little house in order the next morning when Hart came bursting into the front room. He waved a piece of paper in front of her nose.
“Guess what?” he shouted. “D Company is going on detached duty to Fetterman! We leave tomorrow!”
“Do I get to come?” she asked.
“Oh, no. We’ll be gone a couple of months. Isn’t it exciting? My first campaign!”
Well, it probably was exciting, she thought, after he left, but that meant she would have to face the house alone. The prospect gleamed less brightly than it had the night before.
D Company left the fort the next morning after Guard Mount. She was just fluffing up the pillows on their noisy bed when someone knocked on the front door.
It was the adjutant. He took off his hat and stepped into the front room, looking for all the world like a man with bad news. She wondered what could possibly be worse than seeing your husband of one month ride out toward Fetterman—wherever that was—and having to figure out how to turn that scabrous adobe box into a house, let alone a home.
“I hate to tell you this, Mrs. Sanders,” he said at last.
“Tell me what?”
