Giant Steps Page 12

  A chilly shiver ran down Bernie’s back. She pulled her flannel dressing gown closer around her. Bernie had no idea how all of this was going to affect her family, but somehow she was certain it would. She crept back up to her room to try to sleep as the storm shook the world outside her window.

  13

  Spring and Summer 1917

  Dark Clouds Gather

  The storm that had raged so ominously outside a few days earlier seemed to have moved inside the Epperson home. All of Papa’s worst fears hovered like dark clouds, and each family member reacted in a different way.

  Since the April 6th declaration of war against Germany by the U.S. Congress, Papa now shook his newspaper more fiercely as he read it. Often, he would also explode in disgust, “How can people be so blind? When the British got into this war in 1914, they said it would be over by Christmas. Now here we are, three years later, repeating the same idiotic thing! Don’t we learn anything from the past?”

  When Papa, usually so calm, railed out like this, Mother would jump up from the table and hurry to the kitchen with frantic little cries. “Your eggs are getting cold. Do you want me to warm up your coffee? Here, have some of the good raspberry jam I made last summer.” Sometimes Bernie wondered if her mother thought all the world’s problems could be put right with food.

  Bernie, on the other hand, viewed this as a wonderful opportunity to prove to Papa how important it was for women to get the vote. One morning at the breakfast table she managed to get part of Papa’s newspaper and started to read aloud from an article that she thought proved her point. “It says here that not all members of our Congress voted to declare war. ‘Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana voted No. She was only one of a few representatives who voted not to send American men to fight in Europe. She was the only woman in Congress, but she rose from her seat and proclaimed bravely, ‘I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.’”

  Jeannette Rankin of Montana was the first female member of Congress. She advocated for the creation of a committee on women’s suffrage, and when the committee was created she was appointed one of its members. In January 1918 she opened the first House floor debate about a constitutional amendment on women’s suffrage. Rankin left Congress in 1918 but returned in 1940. She was the only Congressional Representative to vote against U.S. entry into both world wars.

  After Bernie read the newspaper article, she commented, “If all the women in this country were able to vote, maybe we wouldn’t be in a war.”

  She glared at Ben and Nick, practically daring them to make their usual smart-alecky comments. To her surprise, neither of her brothers said anything. Nick only snorted and shrugged his shoulders. Ben, who would be a high school graduate in less than two months, just kept eating as he stared past her with a distant look in his eyes.

  Later, Bernie was even more surprised that not all suffragists applauded Rankin’s opposition to the war. Some said that anyone who disagreed with the war was unpatriotic. Most of those in the Lafayette Franchise League insisted that it was their duty as citizens to put aside the cause of women’s rights until after the war ended.

  Even though Nick had not said anything to Bernie after she read the article about Jeannette Rankin, she discovered later that he wholeheartedly disagreed with her position. He said to her, out of Papa’s hearing, that he fervently hoped the war would not be over by Christmas. He had always wanted to be a soldier. One day she heard him singing, in an off-key voice, the popular song written by George M. Cohan, “Over There.” Nick’s raspy tones boomed out when he got to the words, “The Yanks are coming, and we won’t be back till it’s over, over there.”

  She countered by shoving a newspaper clipping under the door of his room. The article told the sad story of the eighteen-year-old son of British writer Rudyard Kipling who had been killed on his first day in battle. Bernie added a handwritten note in the margin of the piece, “War is not the glorious adventure you think it is.”

  Nick did not bother to respond to her warning. Usually he delighted in arguing with her. She was dismayed that he would not take the time to discuss the war with her. She was even more upset when she discovered that he kept a large map of the world posted on the wall of his bedroom. She saw that he had marked every battle location with a pinhead of a different color. He had saved a large stack of articles about these battles, which he clipped from the newspapers after Papa had discarded them. When he caught her in his room one day looking at the map, he reacted very strangely. Instead of accusing her of being snoopy, he did not say a word. He merely grinned in a most puzzling way as she brushed past him to leave the room.

  If Nick was elated by the prospect of war, Bernie was distressed by the fact that everything seemed to change overnight, especially things Bernie thought were vitally important. The suffragists still wanted to get a constitutional amendment passed so that all women in the United States could vote, but that appeared to have taken a back seat to the war effort. It seemed to Bernie that all they did now during their league meetings was talk about what they could do to help the men in the army.

  One of the members reported about a group of Indiana women who wrote letters to soldiers to help keep up their morale. “It is very important for men away from home to get mail. Not every soldier has someone to write to him. Think how terrible it must feel to be left out at mail call,” she said.

  The letter writers were from Henry County, Indiana, from a group called the “Sammy Girls.” Bernie wondered if this clever name was adopted because of the recruitment poster that showed an older, bearded man wearing a top hat, pointing outward, stating, “Uncle Sam Wants You.”

  It was proposed and immediately seconded that the league would encourage their members to correspond with soldiers. Letter writing became something of a competition among the women. Everyone tried to see who could write the most. A tally board was displayed at meetings. It was dutifully filled in as members responded to the roll call with the number of letters they had written during the past month.

  Groups of women also met to knit socks, scarves, and other useful items to send to the soldiers. Even Aunt Rose put aside her crocheted doilies and began to knit grey-green colored sweaters to send to the boys on the front in France. Other women gathered to tear bed sheets into long strips and roll them into surgical dressings for the wounded.

  One league member heard that pits from peaches and other fruits as well as some nut shells and seeds were needed to make filters in gas masks, so the women started bringing in containers of pits to the meetings. It took quite a while for the league to discover where these pits should be sent. Lizzie told Bernie that Uncle Leroy was spending every evening in his barn workshop trying to invent a better gas mask to protect the soldiers.

  Germany introduced chemical warfare in 1915 with chlorine gas. That same year Hoosier chemist James Bert Garner discovered that poisonous chemicals could be neutralized with activated charcoal made from natural fibers found in peach pits and other fruit pits and in some seeds, nuts, and nut shells. Americans gathered pits, nuts, and shells and sent them to the Red Cross so that they could be used in gas masks such as the one shown here. These masks saved numerous lives on the battlefield. Garner earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and was head of the chemistry department there from 1901 to 1914. (Gift of Rowland Allen, Indiana Historical Society Collections)

  Bernie knew that there were women in the league who had wanted to work for peace. Where were they now? Even she had given up. Writing editorials about peace seemed of no avail since the United States had entered the war. What could she do to make a difference?

  Try as she might, she simply could not learn how to knit. Aunt Rose gave up trying to teach her. She began skipping league meetings despite Alice’s and Lizzie’s best efforts to encourage her to attend.

  Bernie remembered what Mr. Graeber had said about war and
the suffering it would bring. But what could anyone do about it now? It seemed as though once the war epidemic struck, everyone came down with it. Bernie did not want to think about it. Her mood seemed as dark as Papa’s.

  14

  September 1917

  Nick Disappears

  It was Bernie who found the note on a Sunday afternoon in late September. She had a report due the next day for her tenth grade history class, and she needed her dictionary to find out if she should use the word “emigrate” or “immigrate.”

  “Mother, I can’t find my dictionary.”

  “Do you suppose one of the boys has it?”

  She went back upstairs and knocked on Ben’s door. “Have you seen my dictionary?”

  He was bent over his college chemistry text. “I don’t have it. Ask Nick.”

  “He’s not in his room.”

  “He should be back before long from his camping trip with Jack.”

  “I need my dictionary right now. Maybe he borrowed it and took it without asking me. I’m going to look in his room.”

  “Watch out for booby traps or green monsters.” Ben was joking, but he wasn’t far off the mark.

  Bernie hated going into either of the boys’ rooms. She never knew what she was going to find, especially in Nick’s. It was a gloomy day, so she turned on the light. To her great surprise she did not have to step over the usual piles of dirty clothes strewn about. She went to the shelf under the window. It held a tattered collection of dime novels—those awful paperback books that Mother did not want him to read. She noticed a glass jar full of colorful marbles. She wrinkled up her nose at the wad of chewed gum stuck on the lid. A couple of stubby pencils, a scruffy pad of paper, and a slingshot lay atop his algebra book. There was no sign of her dictionary.

  Bernie decided to look under the bed, bringing up a memory of another day long ago. Mother had sent her upstairs to collect Nick’s dirty clothes for the laundry. She had found a box under the bed. When she had lifted the lid to peek inside, three frogs had leaped out. Bernie had run shrieking from the room. After that, the boys always teased her about the green monsters. Mother was not at all happy about having frogs hopping about upstairs. Papa laughed it off with the usual, “Boys will be boys.”

  Bernie also noticed that Nick’s bed was not the usual tangled mess of covers. It was neatly made and smoothed out. She got down on her knees and lifted the spread so that she could look beneath it. Another surprise. There was nothing under the bed, not even the balls of dust that she expected to find. She stood up, put her hands on her hips, and wondered what in the world he would have done with it. He had to have her dictionary. She had looked all over the house. Where else could it be? There was nothing to do but wait until he got home and confront him. Then she saw her dictionary lying on the small table at the far side of the bed. She picked it up and noticed something tucked inside its pages. At first she thought it might be his homework, but it was not. It was an envelope addressed to “My Family.”

  Bernie held the envelope in her hands and stared at it for a moment. The writing was Nick’s, but it was very neat and not his usual scrawl. It looked as though he had taken a lot of effort with it. She started to open it, but something about it made her change her mind. She took it downstairs and handed it to Papa.

  “I found this in Nick’s room. I thought you ought to see it.”

  Papa looked at her and then at the envelope with a puzzled expression. Carefully he opened it and withdrew a single page, which he read to himself. Then he read it again.

  Mother was sewing a button on Papa’s shirt and glanced up before she went back to her sewing.

  Papa inhaled sharply, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

  “What is it?” Mother asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Nick has run away,” he said slowly.

  “That can’t be right. Why would he do such a thing?”

  Papa handed her the note. Mother started to read it aloud but got no farther than, “Dear Mother and Father. Please don’t be upset.” She broke down sobbing and let the note fall to the floor. Papa got up out of his easy chair. He went over to her and put his arms around her.

  “Now, now, calm down, my dear. Everything will be all right. I’ll take care of this.”

  Bernie picked up the note and read the rest of it to herself.

  Jack and I have gone to join the army. You know that this is what I have always wanted to do. People say the war will be over by Christmas, so I’ve got to go right away because I don’t want to miss out. President Wilson says that this is a war to make the world safe for democracy. I love my family. I love my country. I want to serve it like Uncle Charley did. Please try to understand. Nick

  “That fool!” Papa exploded. At first, Bernie thought he was talking about Nick until Papa said, “That crazy old fool. Uncle Charley and all his made-up stories about being a soldier in the Civil War.”

  During World War I, posters were a major propaganda tool the military used to recruit men, build support for the war, and call on those at home to send supplies from home to the war zones. Many messages on recruiting posters appealed to people’s sense of duty, honor, responsibility, and patriotism. Nick likely would have seen posters such as this one, and they would have influenced his decision to enlist. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Posters Collection, LC-USZC4-7547)

  Ben heard the uproar and came downstairs. “What’s going on down here?”

  Bernie handed him Nick’s note. He read it, then said, “I don’t believe it. Jack wouldn’t run off and join the army. There’s no way he would leave his sister and her children without him there to protect them from Mr. McClarty.”

  Bernie said, “Didn’t you know? His sister is not there anymore. Aunt Lolly helped Emily and her little ones move out. She found a place for Jack’s sister to stay and work. They’re living with a family and Emily is working as their housekeeper.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Three or four days ago. It was just before Jack and Nick left for their camping trip.”

  Mother was weeping hysterically. Papa helped her to lie down. He put an afghan over her knees. She kept moaning, “We’ve got to get him back.”

  “Bernie, get your mother a drink of water,” he said.

  When she came back from the kitchen, Papa was pacing across the parlor floor.

  “What are we going to do? He’s only sixteen!” Mother repeated.

  “I know the army recruiter here in town. I’ll call him,” Papa said and went to the telephone in the kitchen.

  When he came back, Papa said, “The recruiter hasn’t heard anything about this. He hasn’t seen either boy. He thinks they were too smart to try to enlist here where everyone knows them.”

  Mother started to cry again. Papa sat beside her and patted her arm reassuringly.

  “I’ll get on the interurban and go to Indianapolis first thing tomorrow morning. I have connections with some people down there who may be able to help. Nick is too young to join the army. I’m sure we can get him sent back home.”

  “Come on,” Papa told Mother. “I am going to help you go upstairs. I want you to get into bed. You need to rest.”

  He turned to Ben and said, “Call the doctor and tell him your mother needs something to help her sleep.”

  This underage World War I soldier enlisted at age fifteen. His discharge papers show that he was sent to France and was in some of the worst battles of the war. His older brother, who was also a soldier in the First World War, went to Fort Harrison in Indianapolis where he almost died of influenza. (Courtesy of Mary Blair Immel)

  Bernie didn’t know what to do. After Ben had placed the call, the two of them sat in the darkening gloom of the parlor.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  Ben answered, “Papa will take care of it,
but we probably ought to pray that Papa doesn’t kill Uncle Charley.”

  “What did Papa mean when he said Uncle Charley made up all those stories about being in the Civil War?” Bernie asked.

  “I suppose he meant that Uncle Charley was never a soldier. It was actually his brother, our Grandpa Mifflin, who was in the Civil War. Of course, Grandpa never talked about it, but I once saw a carte de visite of him in his uniform.”

  “A card—what?” Bernie asked.

  “A carte de visite,” Ben explained. “It’s an old-fashioned kind of picture. A lot of soldiers had them made when they first went into the army.”

  “Why would Uncle Charley say that he was in the Union Army if he wasn’t?” Bernie wondered.

  “From what I have heard, Uncle Charley was too young to go to war, but he liked hanging around the old soldiers who used to sit on the benches outside the courthouse. He listened to their stories and later, he passed them off for his own. So, when Nick was a very little boy, Uncle Charley told him those stories. The wider Nick’s eyes became, the more exciting the stories became. I suppose he liked being Nick’s favorite uncle. None of us thought it would ever come to this.”

  Bernie realized that Aunt Rose had hinted about this on the train, but she had never come right out and accused Uncle Charley of not telling the truth. She felt angry and left out.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”