Dear Miss Kopp by Amy Stewart

Author:Amy Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358093015
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Fleurette to Constance

September 7, 1918

C—

Please take this letter directly over to Helen when you’re through with it—I can’t bear to write out this tale of woe twice.

I don’t know what Mrs. Winters told you, but every word of it is untrue. I’ve never met a more mean-spirited, unreasonable woman. She looks at an unaccompanied girl and sees a prostitute—or, at best, a charity girl, who trades dinners and stockings for special favors. As if any of these soldiers have a nice dinner or a pretty trinket on offer!

Well, the girls in that detention center are not those kinds of girls, at least, not the ones I met. I spent two nights there, and had a chance to talk to everyone in my dormitory. I know you’ll believe me when I tell you that these are ordinary girls, many of them working in their families’ businesses—you know the little stalls that crop up around the camps, selling candies, cigarettes, and the like. Naturally the girls fall into the company of soldiers. There are thirty thousand men here—one can’t help but meet a few of them!

And there are romances—the girls confessed that readily enough. It isn’t easy to find a secluded place—you must imagine rows and rows of the most ordinary wooden barracks and tents, stretching all the way to the horizon, with nothing like a nook or a cranny in which to hide. Couples go out into the countryside, following the old roads at the edge of camp, but of course those places are well-known to the Mrs. Winterses of the world. Several of the girls here were rousted from some secluded love-nest behind a tree, as they scrambled to put themselves back together . . . well, you can picture the scene.

It hardly need be said that the man is never punished. The girl is forced into an auto and driven to a detention center, while the man is left to stroll back to camp, whistling a tune.

Call it immoral if you like, but is it illegal? And if it is illegal, when is the trial? What attorney defends the girl in court? A few of the girls were startled to even have the idea put before them like that. Everyone seems to accept that if a girl is caught, she’ll go away. Of course, a few of them are pregnant, or found to be diseased—but why must they be made to suffer either condition in jail?

And it is like a jail. The food is worse than what your inmates ate in Hackensack, the blankets are thin, and there’s nothing in the way of books or pictures or even a window to look out of. Everyone is sick and miserable: half the girls had a stomach ailment, or a cough, or something that looked awfully like the ’flu. A nurse comes but once a week. I picked up a sniffle myself, which is to be my souvenir of Camp Sherman. It’s settling into my throat now, and quite liking the accommodations.

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