SHARON -- I -- May 4, 1970 (MRS. LIEUTENANT: A WOMEN'S FRIENDSHIP NOVEL))

President Nixon announces he is sending U.S. troops into Cambodia ...  April 30, 1970

“It has been said that when a man acquires a commission, the government has gained not one, but two – the officer and his wife.”  Mrs. Lieutenant booklet

They drive around the western edge of Lake Michigan, past the industrial suburbs of Chicago, down into the flat farmland of Indiana, their tiny convertible a bright yellow bug boring through the cornfields.

Sharon Gold moves her cramped right foot, and the Farberware coffeepot bangs against her shin.  Then the brown paper grocery bag with its open boxes of cereal and crackers shifts across her seatbelted lap.  For the 10th time in the last two hours she glances around the densely packed interior of the Fiat Spider, a car that seemed truly wonderful when Robert bought it last summer, before they had to rely on it as a moving van.

It certainly can't be said that they have all their earthly possessions with them.  When you have a car as small as a Fiat, you take only the barest necessities: Suitcases with summer clothes and bedding tied atop the luggage rack.  A few pots and pans and shoes in the minuscule trunk.  In the well behind the two seats are stashed a tiny black and white television, already several years old when her parents passed it on to them, and the Singer sewing machine presented in the hope that she might someday learn domestic skills. 

Their wedding gifts, their books and her stereo and albums, and the rest of their clothes remain at her parents' home, moved there from Robert's one-room apartment on Sheridan Drive they shared after their wedding.

The branch transfer to military intelligence from infantry has come through!  Robert's orders are to report to Ft. Knox, Kentucky, for nine weeks of Armor Officers Basic to fulfill the requirement of a combat arms course before military intelligence training.  "Why combat arms training?" she asked him when he received his new orders.  "Surely you'll have a desk job.  That's the whole point of getting the branch transfer."  Robert didn’t answer.

Her purse holds the official army reporting packet sent to Robert.  The orders for Ft. Knox say nothing about his wife.  Robert reminded her of the old army joke: “If the army had wanted him to have a wife, they would have issued him one.”

Her purse also contains the journal she bought yesterday.  She’s a firm believer in the expression that, when you are handed lemons, make lemonade.  Since she wants to be a writer, she’s going to record her experiences in the army.  Maybe she can write articles or short stories about this alien environment and sell them to a newspaper or magazine.

"You think your parents are still upset?" Robert asks.

Sharon glances at him, acutely aware of his altered looks.  His long sideburns shaved off; the rest of his dark hair trimmed by the barber so close to his scalp that the waves usually framing his broad face have disappeared.

Is he asking about her insistence on coming with him to Ft. Knox?  Or about something more basic – Sharon marrying him right before the start of his two-year active duty commitment?

At last night's dinner Sharon's mother passed the platter of roast beef for the second time.  "Wouldn’t it be a better idea for you to wait until Robert has gone down to Kentucky?  Checked on the housing situation?  Then you could fly down to join him when he's found a place for you to live."

This plan has been proposed before.  Sharon's mother first put it forward when she and Sharon lunched at Marshall Field's after a morning of shopping in the mammoth State Street department store.  Her mother had actually been somewhat tactful, pointing out how much difficulty Sharon might have relating to the people she would meet at Ft. Knox.  "Remember when you decided where to go to college?" she said.  "You didn't listen to us then about going to the University of Illinois – you insisted on going to Michigan State – and look what happened!"