Page:Women Wanted.djvu/274

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
254
WOMEN WANTED

It is a grey court yard with ornamental boxes of bright green privet. On the benches about wait the soldiers, legless soldiers, armless soldiers, some of them blind soldiers. On convalescent parade in blue cotton uniform with the gaiety of red neckties, every man of them at two o'clock on a Tuesday is eager, expectant, waiting—for his woman. Mothers, wives, sweethearts are arriving, the girls with flowers, the women with babies in their arms. And each grabs his own to his hungry heart. You go by the terrible pain and the terrible joy of it all that grips you so at the throat. Inside where each woman just sits by the bedside to hold her man's hand, it is more numb and more still. A girl orderly in khaki takes you through. Her blue shoulder straps are brass lettered "W. H. C," "Women's Hospital Corps." The only man about the place who is not a patient is the porter at the gate. The women in khaki with the epaulets in red, also brass lettered "W. H. C.," are the physicians and surgeons.

There is one of these you should not miss. You will know her by her mascot, the little fluffy white dog "Baby" that follows close at her heels. Her figure in its Norfolk belted jacket is slightly below the medium height. Her short swinging skirt reveals trim brown clad ankles and low brown shoes. She has abundant red brown hair that is plainly parted and rolled away on either side from a low smooth brow to fasten in a heavy knot at the back of her head. I set down all of these details as being of some interest concerning a woman you surely will