Here's to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army

Mary Murphy

Mary Murphy met Mary Murphy on a train heading west to Fort Laramie. But I can't really say that I met her, because no one introduced us then, and no one ever did later, either. I was just out of the academy. It was August, and after graduation in June, I had rushed through a furlough at Newport Beach with my folks, and then received my orders to Company K, Second Cavalry, garrisoned at Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory. According to my orders, I was to stop at Omaha Barracks long enough to attach myself to ten new recruits for Company K and escort them West. I remember even now the feeling I had as I stood in the middle of the parade grounds at Omaha Barracks and watched the heat shimmer off the quarters on Officers Row. I wondered what I was supposed to do. I had been assigned to the cavalry arm of the U.S. Army, and Omaha Barracks was my first look at a cavalry post. I eventually found my ten recruits. Some of them had served in the recent War of the Rebellion and reenlisted after busting out in civilian life. The others spoke German or Irish-accented English that I could barely understand. Most of them were older than I was. Luckily for all of us, a Sergeant O'Brien from Fort Laramie showed up before we departed. He piloted us West. Mary's name was on the company roster the sergeant handed me before we pulled out—"Mary Murphy, twenty, white, single, laundress." 9780875655642.pdf 192 5/3/2013 12:25:13 PM 184 HERE'S TO THE LADIES The army hired females as laundresses to wash the company clothes. Each company of fifty to eighty men employed two or three laundresses, who received rations like the men and were paid one dollar per month by each soldier for doing his laundry. By 1877, most of the laundresses were replaced by wives of the soldiers, but this was 1875, and Mary was our laundress. I noticed her when she got on the train, clutching a knotted bundle of clothing, a baby crooked in one arm, and a toddler dragging behind her. She was sweating like the rest of us, with half-moons of perspiration under her arms and a streak of sweat soaking through the back of her shirtwaist. That surprised me. I never really thought about women sweating. My mother never did nor any of the women I had even known. The baby in her arms wasn't more than a few months old. It had her dark hair and a placid expression that seemed out of place on the hot, crowded train. The toddler had the bored look of a child who has been on the move constantly. He ran ahead of his mother, found an empty seat, and crawled up on it. He smiled when the soldier across the aisle handed him a sugar candy. Mary came down the aisle, swaying a little to keep her balance as the train started to move. She saw me, paused, and smiled. It wasn't the usual ingratiating smile of an inferior but a relieved, patient kind of smile, as if I could help her. The train lurched down the track, gathering speed, and the sudden motion threw Mary against the back of the seat in front of me. She stumbled and dropped her bundle but hung onto the baby, who started to cry. The soldier behind her put a hand on her waist for balance, and she blushed as the other men in the car nudged each other and snickered. She sat down next to her boy, across the aisle from me. To quiet the baby, she opened her shirtwaist and began to nurse. I had never seen anything like that before. Mother had wet nurses for all of us, and the door 9780875655642.pdf 193 5/3/2013 12:25:13 PM MARY MURPHY 185 to the nursery was always closed during feedings. Mary covered herself as best she could with her shirtwaist, and most of us looked away—including me, but not before I had a glimpse of her creamy skin and the large blue veins in her breast. The men who didn't turn their heads divided their time between staring at Mary, making low comments to their bunkies, and laughing at me. I know that my...