Free Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres

was only a youthful infatuation, and that she would find another man to love. She was so pretty, and she was so much sought after by all the officers at GHQ, that things would certainly arrange themselves.
    De Prade had rented a little house in Kensington where he lived with three other officers and a servant. Every week end Jacqueline visited them. She had become a sort of mascot, a symbol of home for the group. Jacqueline knew how to manage a house, and the men had grown quite accustomed to having her take charge of their servant. She played the lady of the house, arranged all the menus, and acted as hostess when they had guests.
    With her distinguished grace, with the beautiful manners of a young Frenchwoman of good family, Jacqueline reminded De Prade's comrades of their sisters, their wives, or their daughters. All of them were more or less in love with her, and they deluged her with flowers and candy.
    But Jacqueline loved De Prade. Beneath her air of pampered urbanity, she had a will of iron. She wanted De Prade; in spite of and against everything, she wanted him. During the course of weeks, she had been working on him, playing the innocent young girl, calling him Uncle Alain (he was twelve years older than she). And every day she felt that she was gaining ground, that he was slipping closer to intimacy in their seemingly innocent relationship. She had her own room in the house in Kensington, and slept there on Saturdays and Sundays. De Prade would come to say good night, tucking her into bed and kissing her cheek. Then he would leave.
    He was still a young man, and each week end this game grew more unendurable. But he too was stubborn. He was determined to remain faithful to his wife. For some time the struggle continued. Inevitably, it had to come to an issue.
    While for Jacqueline and for most of us there was a growing life outside the barracks, in our jobs or in love affairs, Ursula was still there at her little table in the hall, on duty, and all her life seemed to be enclosed in the switchboard room with Claude, only a few steps away.
    One afternoon Ursula was seated with her check list as we went back to our jobs from lunch. It was not long after the famous night with Claude. We hurried past her. Most of us got into one of the trucks that were waiting outside, but the richer ones went to the corner to take the bus, and the most ambitious marched off on foot for the exercise.
    Ursula wrote down the names of the last to leave, as they hurried past, running because they were late.
    The Captain walked rapidly by. Ursula rose to attention. The Captain gave her a condescending little nod, and went into her office.
    Ursula could hear Machou yelling in the kitchen; she was probably cursing out one of the girls on K.P. The poor things! Of all the punishments, this was the one Ursula most dreaded. She preferred the heaviest labor to spending five minutes in the presence of Machou.
    She couldn't understand how the regular kitchen helpers could bear their slavery. There were several little girls from Brittany permanently assigned to Machou, and somehow they seemed to have adjusted themselves well enough to their kitchen tasks, and also to life outside the barracks, in London. On their smooth round cheeks their newly employed rouge appeared almost obscene, and their heavily reddened lips seemed to be bleeding. Ursula wondered about them, and she talked to me about them, for they were girls of about her own age, and they seemed to find this life agreeable enough, while she learned so painfully.
    The little girls from Brittany had arrived in different ways, mostly from Brest. Some had come on the fishing boats of their brothers or cousins; others had arrived after wild adventures, stowed away in naval craft. One of them had found herself running along the quay during a bombardment of Lorient in 1940. She was deathly frightened. A sailor ran alongside her. He told her to jump into his boat for shelter. The girl had followed his