Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [127]
Because Lazar had a profession much in demand, he was awarded the instant rank of Chief Pharmacist’s Mate. He was immediately assigned to a hastily formed medical detachment of a few hundred naval physicians, surgeons, enlisted pharmacists’ mates, and hospital apprentices, who were to establish a medical service for the Marine Corps, a small elite prewar force of fewer than ten thousand men.
A brigade consisting of the 5th and 6th Marine regiments was rushed to France in the vanguard of the American Expeditionary Force. The Marines were the soldiers of destiny, preordained to make up in valor what they lacked in numbers in some of the bloodiest and vital battles of the war.
The moment he boarded the crowded troopship Henderson, Lazar Balaban felt, for the first time in his life, a sense of freedom. He was free of his detested father, free of the red-necked bigotry that had killed his brother, and free of the Balaban women.
To most of his mates, the war was the answer to boyish dreams of high adventure and the stuff of spellbinding romance. Tough, apple-cheeked young men, untouched by the decades of warfare the Europeans endured, had come fresh off the farms and cities of a largely rural and unsophisticated country.
France! My God! France meant women ... POON ... doing it in the French way, whatever that meant. They listened to the nightly bull sessions of magically woven tales rendered by the old-time Marines who had been on the Shanghai detail and the Yangtze patrol.
For a young and naïve America, which had never engaged in a great international conflict, it was the end of innocence.
By mid-1917 the 6th Regiment had landed in St. Nazaire. The boys were so hyped up, they could not see the awful realities that lay beyond.
WHEN LEAH EMBARKED on her ill-fated marriage to Richard Schneider, Hannah used the contract money to take out a long-term lease on a building with a shop front on Fayette Street. Not only was the location more desirable for business, it afforded them living quarters such as they had never had. Hannah and Leah had private bedrooms for the first time in their lives, and look, such things existed ... a separate living room with a genuine mohair sofa.
The Balaban women fell into lockstep with the war effort. Jobs in the garment industry, once scorned for their raw exploitation and working conditions, now became attractive and well paying. A former notorious sweatshop, Ginzburg Brothers, won a lucrative contract for making Army uniforms. The factory near the Camden Station of the B&O Railroad was only a skip and a holler away from their home. Leah and Fanny went to work as seamstresses at double peacetime pay.
Pearl, the youngest, found a fabulous job as a welder in the shipyards at Sparrows Point, so they were able to afford a full-time shvartze to keep the house. The Balaban coffers tinkled, another first.
There were numerous military installations about Baltimore, including a major overseas staging center at Camp Meade. Jewish soldiers and sailors on liberty found their way to the two synagogues on Lloyd Street and a nearby servicemen’s canteen, and they were taken in and adopted by the community. The Balaban sisters got their share. With the war on and the large number of Jewish boys in uniform as a rationalization, the Balaban rage against the male species was suspended for the duration. There were nightly dances at the canteen and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, where the sisters could usually get the pick of the litter.
The Balaban house on Fayette Street was open to the boys and the table was filled with Jewish dishes so they wouldn’t forget home. Although some foods were difficult to find, Hannah was an old-time balabosta and could always put something together from the vast Lexington Street Market, and her baking sent out an aroma of welcome.
Each Tuesday she closed the shop early and baked past midnight. Wednesday