Number 21

Officers' Training

"We had to have our room in perfect order."

“We lived in a North Hall Hampton Inn. It had been converted. We did all of our training at Smith College but we lived at the Inn and had wonderful food. They had, I think they had regular people working there because we had wonderful food. The rooms were small. I had a real nice roommate from South Carolina... We had to be out in formation at 6:30 in the morning, fully dressed. They’d already told us what we had to wear that day, exactly what our uniform had to be and we had to stand in line and I think I was number 21. I still remember that. You were the 21st in line. But anyway, after that if they called for roll and done whatever they did, we had breakfast. And then, before we went even down to go to muster, we had to have our room in perfect order and they actually came by with a quarter and bounced it on our [beds].They didn’t do it every day, but they did at times, just to see if we had done it right. We marched and it was hot, it was July, and we marched to Smith College which was a good space, piece. I don’t know how far it was. It felt like miles but I’m sure it wasn’t. Of course, there was nothing air conditioned then and there was no such thing in that part of the world anyway and we marched up to classes every day.”

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