Not being military, Dot and Crow couldn’t take the long train journeys the Navy women did; or, if they wanted to, they would have to pay full fare and risk not getting a seat. The military enjoyed fare discounts and seating priority. Even so, the two friends managed to find plenty to occupy their rare free time. They went window-shopping downtown and perfected the art of looking dressy with very little money. Dot managed to acquire a silver fox stole. They toured the museums and monuments and visited the National Cathedral, which was still under construction, but awe-inspiring even so. They took the train up to Baltimore, which had nice stores, to buy hats. In downtown Washington, they bought lipstick at Woodward & Lothrop. Back at the apartment, Crow’s sister Louise—aka Sister—had a tendency toward melancholy, and Dot decided to cheer her up by throwing a party for everybody living in Fillmore Gardens, a gesture that resulted in the young women’s being invited to reciprocal soirees in the apartments of neighbors, who were mostly young couples.
On their day off, Dot and Crow sometimes took a succession of buses and streetcars to do a bit of sunbathing and swimming. A popular Chesapeake Bay day resort, Beverly Beach, offered the enticements of a sandy beach area as well as a dance floor, bandstand, and slot machines. Colonial Beach, in Virginia, had a bathing area along the Potomac. Getting to either place took so long that it would nearly be time to come home by the time the women arrived, but they went anyway. The two code breakers would manage to get burned in what little time they had. When they got back they always suspected that Sister, who was fair and who wouldn’t often risk going to the beach, was secretly glad to see them so red and sunburned. They thought her jealousy was funny. As they went about their travels, Dot would make tart observations about people, like, “She goes to church too much,” and Crow would laugh and say, “Dot, you are an original.” Dot was an entertainer and Crow was an appreciative audience. They were entirely unalike, and entirely bonded. At Christmas, on their modest salary, Crow gave Dot a tiny pair of gold earrings. Dot felt closer to Crow in some ways than to her own siblings.
Some adventures transpired closer to home. There was a rather odd woman in their neighborhood who sometimes gave Dot and Crow a ride to Arlington Hall. She wore what she called “dirt-colored clothes,” so she wouldn’t have to wash them often. Dot and Crow appreciated the ride, so they tried to overlook her eccentricity, but when she backed into another car—to punish the driver for honking at her—they decided they’d rather walk from then on.
From time to time Dot did take the train home to Lynchburg, and sometimes she glimpsed WAVES making the same journey. Loads of girl sailors would pile on. Sitting in her seat, if she was lucky enough to get one—once, she had to make the trip standing on an outside platform, along with Crow and Liz and Louise, getting covered with smoke—she reflected enviously that the Navy women were cute girls and their naval uniforms looked very smart. Unlike the WAVES, she and her Arlington Hall colleagues were largely unrecognized for their war service. They were not feted or celebrated, and nobody asked them to model in fashion shows. People in her family knew Dot was doing something for the war, but they assumed it was secretarial and low-level. She could not even tell her mother. But even as she admired the Navy women’s outfits, it never occurred to Dot that the WAVES might be engaged in the same war work that she was, endeavoring—just as she was—to beat back the fascist menace and break the codes that would bring the boys home. The very thought that so many young women were all working the same top secret job, Dot and Crow and those distant, glamorous-looking WAVES, never crossed her mind. Nor was she remotely aware that the long-simmering competition between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army had come to a head as the Army struggled to match the Navy’s efforts in the Pacific Ocean.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hell’s Half-Acre”
April 1943
Young Annie Caracristi washed her hair with laundry soap. Observing her, Wilma Berryman felt convinced of it. Fels-Naptha, most likely: the strong-smelling bar soap meant for treating stains. You weren’t supposed to use Fels-Naptha on your skin unless you had something dire like poison ivy—certainly not on your hair—but some people did, these days. Shampoo, like so many items, was not always easy to come by. The results were not ideal: Annie’s hair was thick and curly and flew everywhere. But a tendency to dishevelment only increased Wilma’s fondness for her.
Blue-eyed, blond, and good-natured, Ann Caracristi came to work at Arlington Hall each day wearing bobby socks, flat shoes, and a pleated skirt that billowed and swung. She looked like a bobby-soxer, the kind of carefree and heedless college girl who lived for boyfriends and swing dances. But appearances were deceiving. What hidden depths Ann Caracristi had. What capabilities. General Douglas MacArthur did not know it, but his secret weapon—or one of them—was this affable and somewhat cosseted twenty-three-year-old from the upper middle classes of exurban Bronxville, New York. Intellectually ferocious, Annie worked twelve-hour shifts, day after day. The only time she missed work for any time at all was when she came down with chicken pox. She phoned apologetically to say in a tiny, pitiful voice that she could not come in. Wilma Berryman took her some soup.
Annie Caracristi surprised everybody, most of all herself, with her cryptanalytic feats. Though she had been an English major in college, she possessed the mind of an engineer. It was fascinating for Wilma Berryman—the West Virginia schoolteacher who had been one of William Friedman’s early Munitions Building hires, now supervising a major unit at Arlington Hall—to see what Annie could do. Nothing the Japanese did could shake her off. Conversion squares, encipherment tables, cleverly cannibalized additive books—Annie was onto all their ruses. So gifted was she that Wilma made Ann the head of her research group. At Arlington Hall, to have a recently graduated female in charge of a key unit was not unusual. It was normal.