Little was said about Eleanor Brown at her memorial, in thebeautiful old chapel at Arlington National Cemetery. She would havewanted it that way. Her daughter knew this as she skated lightlyacross the surface of a life well lived, recounting Eleanor'sfondness for popcorn and poker and shoes, lots of shoes.
It was the words unspoken that best eulogized Eleanor Brown,capturing the reticence of one generation and the hunger of anotheras parents who revealed too little about their extraordinary liveskeep slipping, too quickly, away.
Eleanor Brown was a 26-year-old secretary in Upstate New York whenshe enlisted with the first wave of recruits after the Women'sAuxiliary Army Corps was mustered in 1942 to place women in themilitary's technical or clerical jobs, to free men for combat inWorld War II. She spent two years as a company clerk in Italy,dutifully writing home to her parents each week as the bloodiest warin the history of mankind raged on around her.
When the war ended, 1st Sgt. Eleanor Brown returned to SacketsHarbor, N.Y., and soon became an Army wife. She raised a daughter,Christine, and never spoke of the war she helped win. "I knew she'dbeen a WAC in Naples, period," Christine says. "My mother was not atalker. I didn't really know my mom."
When Eleanor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three years ago,Christine began cleaning out her widowed mother's apartment in SunCity, Fla. There, in an old army footlocker tucked back in a closet,she unearthed a stack of letters. There were more than 150 of them.
"I started sitting on the floor, reading them to her," Christinerecalls. "I realized she had this whole life . . . "
I am stationed somewhere in Italy, much to my surprise. We live ina convent. . . . Several little orphans go to school in this buildingand my heart just aches for them. They bring their lunch every dayand all they have is a crust of bread. I am well and safe, so don'tworry about me. -- Dec. 10, 1943
Christine, now 57, felt a small give in a window frozen shut. Shetried to pry it open, peppering her mother with questions. What didyou do, what did you see, whom did you love, what did you feel? Theanswers were minimal. Eleanor would claim that she didn't remember,or it wasn't important. "Maybe it was modesty," Christine speculates."But maybe some memories are lost simply because you don't sharethem."
Days before Friday's memorial service at Arlington, she sits atthe kitchen table of her gray Victorian in Montclair, N.J., where anAmerican flag flutters from the front porch. She wonders what she cansay as her mother's ashes are borne to the grave. "I don't have thestories," she laments. "She loved popcorn and fudge and shoes. Shehad hundreds of shoes."
In the memorial program, Christine cited Psalm 145:4. "Onegeneration shall laud your works to another, and shall declare yourmighty acts."
Did she have any regrets? her only child wondered. Only two,Eleanor said. She wished she had had a real wedding gown instead ofthe teal wool suit she was married in, and she was sorry she hadnever seen India. Her husband, Col. Noel Brown, had served thereduring the war, and had painted such a vivid picture, Eleanor alwayswanted to go. Christine felt the same pull, and visited India on herown 20 years ago.
Christine's own children are busy teenagers now, and they neverask about her life beyond motherhood, about her career as a high-powered executive, or about her adventures as a military brat livingin postwar Japan or beneath a thatched roof in rural France, beforesettling in Alexandria. "I realize I don't talk much to my kids," sheadmits. Her 15-year-old daughter wanders into the kitchen. "Did youever know that I went to India?" Christine asks, and Laura says no,she didn't, but she doesn't ask for more details, and Christinevolunteers none. Her mother's girlish letters make similar wide turnsand abrupt stops, the breezy banalities suddenly pierced by momentsof darkness and despair.
Tonight I'm going to the opera with a group of girls. It is'Madame Butterfly.' -- Jan. 10, 1944
And then, barely a week later:
There are several cases of typhus here in the city so they havemade it off-limits to all military personnel. . . . Every Fridaynight we have to powder all our clothing and bedding. -- Jan. 18,1944
Eleanor's cancer went into remission after intense radiationtreatments, and she was soon back to playing golf and bridge with herfriends. Christine took the letters and yellowed newspaper clippingsand stray photographs home to Montclair, becoming the amateurhistorian of a life unexplored.
Over the past three years, she meticulously organized her mother'smemorabilia, carefully photocopying each letter and tucking theoriginals in plastic sleeves. She catalogued and indexed them,filling six black binders. She listed each movie Eleanor mentionedseeing, and wonders now if she should rent them all and watch themherself. She went on the Internet to learn more about the WACs, anddiscovered how controversial they had been in their time, how asuspicious American public largely believed that the 150,000 womenwho volunteered were prostitutes or loose women whose real missionwas to sexually service the boys overseas. Newspapers falselyreported that large numbers of the women were returning pregnant. Theugly rumors were so rampant that Congress demanded to know how manyWACs were pregnant or infected with venereal disease. The realstatistics quickly convinced the lawmakers that commendation, notcondemnation, was in order. Christine shared some of her researchwith her mother.
"She stopped and said, 'That's why Daddy didn't want me to talkabout it!' " Christine recalls. It was when they were in Japan,Eleanor told her daughter, right after the war, that her husbanddemanded she stop mentioning her stint in the WACs. His service wastreated as a source of pride; hers, one of shame.
Christine examined each fragment of information she discovered inthe footlocker and tried to find meaning: The newspaper clips abouther mother's meritorious service plaque, the engraved silver box shewas presented as president of a golf club, her swift promotions inrank -- her mother, Christine realized, must have been a competentmanager long before she was a self-effacing homemaker who took pridein her perfect gravy. And while never analyzing it or debating it,Eleanor clearly saw the cruel irony of war and understood thatliberation and survival were separate ambitions.
She wrote about her few days' leave in Rome, and the locket shewas sending home blessed by the pope. She talked about havingbreakfast in bed at her hotel and then touring St. Peter's, where apriest pointed out the kittens in a painting of "The Last Supper" andremarked how sad it was that starving Italians were now forced to eattheir own beloved house cats. She described courtyards blooming withorchids and camellias while people scavenged the bombed ruins oftheir cities.
Sunday night I visited one of the big hospitals with several othergirls. . . . Most of the fellows that I saw had just been sent backfrom the front with frozen feet. . . . They were all such nicefellows and so young. It made me feel as though I never wanted tocomplain about anything again. -- Feb. 1, 1944
She wrote about a St. Patrick's Day dance and about longing on adreary day to be sitting in a cozy chair next to the fire back home.
I write you about the parties and dances because I am not allowedto write you about the places I go or what actually goes on overhere. Don't worry about me because I am well and happy, only I wishthis war would end soon so I could get home again. -- March 16,1944
She mentions a beau killed in action, revealing her sorrow, butnot his name.
He was a wonderful fellow and I liked him a lot. We took picturesone day when we were visiting the ruins of Pompeii. His death wasquite a shock to me and it took me some time to get over it, butsince that time I have become a little more hardened to that sort ofnews. It is best not to get too fond of anyone over here. -- August8, 1944
She asked for a care package of Fanny Farmer candy and said shecould use some nail polish, too, and some "bright, flashy pajamas" tolift her morale. That same month, her 22-year-old cousin, Ramsey, wasreported missing in action.
If he was taken prisoner, he will be OK and the war should soon beover with the Germans.
She asked her parents to send a small picture of themselves.
Eleanor hounded the Red Cross for any word about Ramsey, but nonewas forthcoming. His family received news of his death five monthslater. His remains were lost.
(Christine remembers walking through European graveyards as asmall child in the late 1950s with her parents, looking for Ramsey'sgrave. Her father was based in Verdunnes then. One afternoon inFlanders, in the late 1950s, her mother was drawn to a particularwooden cross, and discovered Ramsey's name on it.)
It was after Ramsey's death, in the waning days of the war, thatEleanor's letters turned somber.
I don't go out much anymore. . . . I am so tired that I prefergoing to bed with a book or magazine. I am taking piano lessons oncea week from an Italian teacher who is very good but doesn't speakmuch English . . . it helps to break up the monotony of the same oldroutine. -- March 21, 1945.
And then finally, on May 2, 1945, in the middle of a letter aboutthe placemats she was sending home and the rose-velvet gown she woreto another WAC's wedding, Eleanor hears on the radio that the Germanshave surrendered in Italy.
It is really official this time. It is so wonderful but it makesme feel like crying. No one will ever know what those boys up at thefront have gone through.
By September, she was home, with her picture in the local paperabove a story that focused on her disdain for khaki. The only quotereferred to her surprise over how narrow skirts had become. Mentionwas made of her buying "a cherry-red sport frock in size 14." She hadbeen at war for 23 months, but no mention was made of what EleanorBrown had seen or felt.
She died at the age of 89 last Dec. 10. Her daughter still holdsthe random pieces of a jigsaw life, mourning the mother she neverknew. She will donate her modest archives to a military museumsomeday, "but I'm not ready to part with them yet."
Both of her parents always wanted to be buried at Arlington. Whenthe cancer came back, and the end was near, Christine asked hermother if she wanted military honors. She was entitled. "No, I don'tneed any of that," she insisted.
But Christine did. "So I'm doing that in spite of her wishes," shesays defiantly, before the rainy afternoon when she accepts thefolded flag and the three-gun salute in her mother's honor. "I'mdoing it for me, for my children." For all the daughters who linger,thirsty, in the cool silent glade of a mother's reserve.
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