Free The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan Page B

soldiers who could be sent to CEW. It even reached out to colleges and universities, asking for the names of any graduates who had been drafted so that it could track the young men down and reroute them from wherever they were headed to Oak Ridge—or, as some of the northerners had affectionately begun to call it, Dogpatch.
Captain P. E. O’Meara, Town Manager

Corps of Engineers, U.S.A.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Dear Sir:
My compliments to you sir for your very fine “message” in the October 16th issue of the Oak Ridge Journal. I think it’s darn near time that some got up and gave the Army a great big cheer for the swell job they have done here, and stop finding fault.
The other morning, while waiting for the Cafeteria to open, one of the “patriots” was complaining about having to stand out in the cold. I wondered to myself if this chap had ever read an eye witness account of the invasion of Attu. . . .
Sure, we would all like to be home with our families, so would those kids who “hit the beach” at Salerno—some of whom will never come home.
There’s only one thing wrong with your message, Captain—you hit them with a powder-puff.
Sincerely,
W.J. O’B.
Dorm M-6
    ★ ★ ★
    “What godforsaken place have you brought me to?”
    Celia had to laugh at the outburst, one sister howling at the other as they stood in the dorm lobby.
    Fresh off the bus and just processed, the pair were still gawking at their new surroundings. New arrivals didn’t stick out for long. With the number of people constantly swarming in from all over the country, it had taken Celia only a few weeks before she began to feel like part of the old guard. It wasn’t like other small towns, where you spent your entire life surrounded by the same faces, where brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents had known each other for generations. There was no established cadre of locals who could trace their roots back to Oak Ridge.
    If there were no locals, there were no outsiders. Everyone was from somewhere else. Everyone was anxious to meet new people.
    Some took to the Reservation immediately. Others found the surroundings a little more raw than they had anticipated. There was always a sympathetic ear close by, a make-the-best-of-it spirit infusing the brand-new yet dust-covered town.
    We can do it! That’s what Rosie would have said.
    Stop your belly-achin’! That’s what Appalachian folk would say.
    None had figured the Clinton Engineer Works into his or her plans. How could they have? Nonetheless, this is where they were going to make their stand: together, knee-deep in mud, for the remainder of a hellish war that seemed to have no end. They were told they were going to help bring that end about. They had to believe that was true. And no matter what, they were All in the Same Boat.
    Summer’s searing edge was softening into an autumn much warmer than those in Pennsylvania, but still a welcome relief. Celia thought it must have rained every single day that first August of 1943. Hot summer rains exploding into the middle of a steamy southern afternoon, tearing through the sky and sun and leaving in their wake a sultry memory. Steam rose off concrete and tar, mud swirled beneath ever-present wooden sidewalks, cutting rivers into recently denuded soils. Real “frog stranglers”—that’s what the locals sometimes called a good downpour. Luckily, the few shops, cafeteria, rec hall, and bus were close by, because the only real deterrent to walking remained mud, which Celia soon learned was not the result of some sort of climatological fluke. It was there to stay, occasionally upstaged by its dryer, hack-inducing cousin, clay dust.
    “You’ve got a case of the Oak Ridge croup . . . ,” more than one doctor would quip in the face of a wheezing patient.
    The main cafeteria was a short walk from the dorm and right on Celia’s way to the Castle on the Hill. The food served up there was basic, affordable, plentiful, but a far cry from her