The Undaunted

The J Club

The next morning, Jenny awoke with a groan. Her headache confirmed that she had definitely drunk more than she should have.

"That was a night and a half," Iris muttered.

"It sure was." Jenny blinked and tried to focus. "Will you come with me when I go out to the front? Be my jeep partner."

"Love to," Iris agreed. "Are you joining Jack's division?"

Jenny stood up and walked over to the window. "I want to," she said quietly. "I don't know if he'll have me though." She explained to Iris what had happened at the camp dinner. "Jack's in charge of hundreds of men, he's meant to set an example, and I shouted about sex in front of all the men he's supposed to be leading. Warren asked for it, but I shouldn't have said all those things. Jack didn't deserve that."

"Only one way to find out," Iris said practically. "Besides, with all the COs you and I have met over the past few months, we'll find someone to take us on."

Jenny agreed with her colleague, but she knew she'd much prefer to work alongside Jack and his men, GIs she already knew and cared something for. So, the only thing to do was to drive out there and hope he'd forgiven her and not think about where she'd go if he hadn't.

Soon she and Iris were on their way downstairs with their bags. In the lobby they found a huddle of correspondents and PROs, obviously waiting for someone. Jenny soon found out it wasn't what had happened in battle overnight that had got everyone so excited; it was what had happened at the Hotel Scribe right under their noses.

"If only I were blonde," one of them sighed loudly as Jenny walked past.

"You'd need nice long legs too," another one added with a wolfish grin.

"Don't forget the breasts," Warren added, his cold blue eyes focused directly on Jenny, then deliberately drifting down to her chest.

She stopped and stared at him with narrowed eyes. "I assume you're trying to make some kind of point directed at me?"

"You got yourself access to the front. We're just interested to know how you did it," a reporter for a third-rate paper smirked.

"Oh, we know how she did it," Warren leered, his eyes lazily and reluctantly leaving Jenny's breasts to meet her own again. "That's no mystery. Slut," he added in an undertone meant only for Jenny's ears.

But this time she wouldn't fall for it. "Yes," she said. "It is interesting, isn't it? Now I have the same access to the war as you do. No more, no less. I have no extra privileges. Only the same privileges that have been afforded to you all for the last two years. But it's taken me much longer to earn the rights you were handed on a silver platter simply because you're men. So the only reason you might be so concerned is because you think I'm going to get better stories than you and get them first." She began to stride off, but called over her shoulder at them, "If that's the case, fellas, then I don't know why you're all still sitting around in a bar. War's this way!"

And she walked out of the hotel, leaving them all goggling behind her.

***
When Jenny and Iris pulled into the driveway where Jack's division had been billeted, not far from Reims, they both found themselves uncharacteristically speechless. Before them stood a fairy tale chateau. It actually had a turret. Yes, it showed some signs of misuse from German occupation but even the circle of khaki tents spread throughout the once manicured grounds and across the fields stretching down to the canal couldn't diminish the splendor.

"Havre de Rêve," Jenny read the chateau's name on a sign before them and knew it had been appropriately named. It really was a place for daydreaming. A haven from the gory realities of war.