Winter in June by Kathryn Miller Haines Page A

nodded slowly, as though her head weighed two tons.
    â€œIsn’t that a coincidence? Are they old friends from home?” I asked.
    â€œNot exactly,” said Kay. “I was a Wac myself until a few months ago.”

CHAPTER 8
The Captain of the Watch
    Before we could give Kay the third, Dotty returned with another sailor in tow, a stout man with a bald head that had been burned red by the tropical sun.
    â€œThis is Spanky,” he said to us. It was obvious how he’d gotten the name; he was a dead ringer for the kid from Our Gang . “When Spanky’s not breaking hearts here on the islands, he’s the radar operator on an attack transport called The McCawley .”
    â€œNice to meet you, ladies. We thought you might enjoy a tour of camp.” Spanky had a brash midwestern accent and the kind of body that was made for tilling soil and herding cattle. When he spoke, he didn’t immediately gravitate toward Gilda. Rather his eyes landed on Violet and lingered there. She blushed beneath the weight of his attention, although I could tell that she was thrilled that, for once, she was the one being stared at.
    â€œYou have such pretty eyes,” he said. The minute the words left his mouth he snapped to attention as though he’d just rememberedthat they weren’t the only two people there. “Er…this way, ladies.”
    We followed him out of the tent and onto the road. Kay and Violet kept pace with Spanky, while Gilda, Jayne, and I walked with Dotty.
    â€œWhy does everyone have a nickname?” asked Jayne.
    â€œWhen you’re around as many people are we are, it helps to have shorthand to remember who everyone is and where they’re from. It’s less confusing too,” said Dotty.
    I suspected there was more to it than that. The nicknames were a way to distance the men from the lives they’d left behind and help them slip into their new roles as warriors. It was a bit like giving them stage names, I suppose. The soldier on the battlefield was a very different character from the man he’d been at home, just as Gilda DeVane was probably a very different woman from Maria Elizondo.
    â€œSo what was all the commotion before?” asked Gilda.
    â€œJust a normal Tuesday afternoon in the South Pacific.” His mood was dour compared to when we’d first met him. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the events of that afternoon or if Kay’s attempt to avoid him was what was affecting him.
    â€œI couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from,” I said. “Were they bombing Tulagi?”
    â€œGuadalcanal, but Tulagi was in their flight path. What you heard were some of the depth charges going off in the ocean. Water’s got a way of amplifying things.”
    â€œWas anyone hurt?” asked Gilda.
    â€œProbably. Someone’s always hurt. This is war.”
    Sensing his mood, Gilda looped her arm in his and pointed toward a tree in the distance. “What on earth is that brilliantly colored bird?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    The two men took us to each of the major structures on the island and introduced us to the men responsible for running things behind the scenes. We went into the commissary, the PX, the infirmary and the rec hall. Just like the ship, the island felt like aminiature city, set up to provide the men with everything they could possibly need, save the people they’d left at home. I wondered if the department stores even sent girls around in December so the men could pick out their gifts without ever resting from their work.
    Our last stop was the enlisted men’s mess, where preparations for dinner were already underway. In enormous vats that seemed more appropriate for baths than food, huge quantities of potatoes were being mashed by electric implements that looked like they could also be used to break up asphalt in a pinch. While the men waited for