For This We Are Soldiers: Tales of the Frontier Army by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly [Kelly, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cedar Fort, Inc.
Published: 2016-10-10T21:00:00+00:00

Take a Memo

Not for the first time, Corporal of the Day Theodore Sheppard wondered why someone, likely an officer, had decreed the officer of the day building be constructed so far away from the commanding officer’s quarters. The morning had proved quiet, so he leaned in unsoldierly fashion against the doorframe, looking south.

Granted, there were many reasons why a distant figure would be striding in front of Officers Row, headed toward him. Ted could tell the figure getting closer and closer walked with more purpose than someone out for a mere stroll. As soon as he saw a piece of paper in the soldier’s hand, he knew the matter would soon involve him. Ted straightened up and then relaxed again when he discerned no gold bars on shoulders.

Whatever the concern, the corporal of the day hoped for an outdoor assignment. Each warm and sunny August day at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory was a jewel attached to the crown of summer, which would soon turn—and quickly—into howling winds, endless snow, and temperatures registering so low in the bulb that he hadn’t the courage to look at the infernal glass tube.

The only thing better than time spent outdoors now would be a summons to the post hospital. Corporal Sheppard didn’t care for the sickbed more than any other healthy man, but the hospital held an attraction that almost made him want to whine about fictitious illness at sick call—Millie Drummond.

A higher-than-normal round of catarrh, pleurisy, and bronchitis in January year of our Lord 1880 had compelled the post surgeon to search for an assistant hospital matron. He had found one in Millie, after promising her mother that Millie wouldn’t be called upon to bathe soldiers, or help the surgeon beyond dealing with the more socially acceptable parts of a person for an unmarried woman to tend.

Even that wasn’t good enough for Millie’s father, first sergeant in A Company, Seventh Infantry, who had told Ted all this one night when both of them were filling in for others in the guardhouse. “She’s no delicate girl, is Millie,” Angus Drummond had said in his Lowland Scots brogue. “She’s a girl, though, and doesn’t need to see men’s parts yet. She’s spending her time in the kitchen. Her mother and I insisted.”

Ted could have argued that Millie was more than a girl. He knew she was almost twenty, and back from several years of schooling in Chatfield, Minnesota, where other Drummonds had settled. She was red of hair like her father, but slightly tan of cheek like her mother, who had not-so-distant relatives among the Minnesota Leech Lake Ojibwe. Oh, and her brown eyes were deep pools of possibility. Ted reasoned that to a father, Millie would always be a little girl.

The corporal knew several of his equals in rank and one or two sergeants had proposed to Millie. Each time he heard of this, Ted prepared to bow to the inevitable. So far, no one had convinced Millie Drummond to leave the parental nest.

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