OUR Yaphank central office, situated in the heart of Camp Upton and
operated by seventeen plucky young women, who are not afraid of
hardships when it comes to serving Uncle Sam, is evidence enough to
anyone who visits it that Camp Upton is full of real soldiers, the
women not excepted. Certainly in appearance the “girl soldier” of
Camp Upton’s switchboard in no way resembles the clipped-haired
uniformed feminine warrior who is now familiar to Sunday supplement
readers. Though their tasks are so vastly different as not to hear
comparison, the spirit and indomitable pluck of both are of the same
stamp.
A journey of fifteen miles in an open motor bus, over roads that
rival the mud of Flanders, every morning at six, and
back again fifteen miles through evenings as black as night. with a
cutting wind to keep you company when blow-outs are repairing—this
sort of things hints at some of the difficulties which beset
transportation at its best between Riverhead and the Camp. For the
girls must live at Riverhead and commute to the Camp every day. The
first group of operators have the long ride, but those who go on
duty at 8:30 make the journey each morning by train to Manorville
and thence by the operators’ motor bus eight miles to Camp. In early
July, acres of pine and oak woods stood where now the miles of dirt
roads take their way into the Camp, so it is more a miracle that
there should be real dirt roads at all than that they should be
deep-dusty in dry weather, and mud to the hubs in rain.
This difficult traveling will soon be ended, however, for the
prophet, who knows, tells us that before the weather gets much
colder there will be a home for the operators right in the Camp.
Thirty miles a day is rather too hard a trip to be anything more
than a temporary expedient and there is nothing near Camp Upton but
Camp Upton. So not far from the central office building is to be
erected a comfortable house for the operators, and it will be a
cheery spot with all the comforts of home and all the fascination
and inspiration of Camp.
There will he a house mother in charge who will chaperone and care
for the girls, see that they have three good, hot meals a day, and
provide in every way for their comfort and health. There will be a
victrola, and plenty of good books, and everything possible to make
the free hours of the girls enjoyable. The plans of the house are
made, and the scheme of furnishings worked out. Soon the necessary
arrangements for the building will he made and then it will not be
long before the operators will have quarters of the most complete
comfort, right beside their work.

Just a sample of the Condition of the Roads After a
Rain.
After the long ride through the green and russet wilderness of pine
and oak, with Mr. Leonard at the wheel, navigating expertly to avoid
the deepest snares of the morassed ruts, the car comes along a sort
of ridge and there is the whole great Camp. Unthinkably more huge
than even an accelerated imagination has painted it, it lies
gleaming in the morning sun for miles ahead. On what seems to be the
far horizon is a low ridge on which are several buildings. The flag
waving over it indicates that headquarters is there.

A Group of the Yaphank Traffic Force One Morning
Just After Arriving in Camp Last Autumn. The Snapshot from Which
this is Enlarged was taken by Sergeant Patterson. Mr. Orth, District
Traffic Manager, is at the Extreme Right, and Miss Tompkins Third
from the Right, Standing
Companies of easy-gaited men in olive drab come across country and
up the wide road, starting out on long hikes. To one who has
evidently not thought as fast in the last weeks as Camp Upton has
acted, their easy march and military bearing show how far those few
weeks have gone in the making of an army. In one place the road is
filled with soldiers, ranks broken, and so narrow is the lane they
open for the car to pass it seems they will let it run over them
before they will sacÂrifice an opportunity, down there in the
heart of “no-girl_land,” to see nine or ten girls all at once!
Past row after row of two-story frame buildings, with wide spaces
between, each with its substantial log coal bin in the “door-yard,”
like a tiny log cabin, roofless, filled with coal,— past barracks,
Post Exchange, storehouses, Y.M.C.A. houses, and more
barracks, the road soon leads beyond that distant headquarters hill,
and there is just another such wide stretch, built up as thickly as
that we have already passed through. It seems there is no end to the
camp, but the end of our journey is at hand. On the slope of
headquarters hill, not far from the neat frame bungalow, in keeping
with the rest of the buildings of the camp, which is General Bell’s
house, stands the “Telephone and Telegraph Building,” a low frame
structure which accommodates the Yaphank central office. A flagpole
in front flies the white flag with the large “T” upon it, which
signifies the telephone headquarters of the Camp, and just below the
flag hang the two white lights, horizontally, the regulation sign of
a military camp telephone office at night.

The Telephone and Telegraph Building at Camp Upton,
Showing the Flag Staff in Front with the
Sign of the Army Telephone on it.
Inside the office one feels immediately the same atmosphere of
businesslike concentration, the same disciplined, ordered work, the
same sense of quiet effectiveness, which first impresses the visitor
to any telephone exchange. A great stove heats the room, for
furnaces are as yet unknown, but otherwise the appearance is that of
any central office of our Company. But stand near the switch-board
for a moment and listen to the low voices of the girls as they work,
and see if there is anything to tell you that you are watching the
nerve centre of one of the greatest organisms of the country, one of
Uncle Sam’s National Army camps.
“Base Hospital ? One moment
please”… Chief Signal Officer ?”…‘‘West Point ? Did you call West
Point? Here is your party”… Plaza 2345” ...‘‘Thompson Starrett,…
what extension, please ?“ Field Artillery ?‘‘ ... “Y M.C.A.
Headquarters ?”… Quartermaster Corps ?”
If the general appearance of the office is much like that of any
other exchange of our Company, certain it is that the texture of the
work, the actual traffic itself, is vastly different from the usual
come and go mixture of social and business calls, weighty and
unimportant, rushed or lackadaisically given messages which make up
civilian traffic. Though a telephone call is, to an operator, always
au important call, always one to be completed with all possible
dispatch, the imagination of the onlooker is tempted to play with
the significance of the calls that go over these military wires.
Here at Camp Upton there is no time for anything but urgent work.
The importance of the messages is immediate, in the preparation of
our great fighting force, and the responsibility of the telephone
operators, in putting them through speedily and smoothly, is
distinct.
How well they have been discharging that responsibility was
suggested in the chance remark of an officer in the Quartermaster
Corps, on the train from Camp Upton, when he observed to another
officer—who was also a telephone man, though the speaker did not
know it—that if there were any in Camp who ought to get what they
wanted it was the telephone operators, they had done such splendid
work, and for his part he would be glad of a chance to do something
to show his appreciation of the fine work they had been doing from
the first, under all kinds of trying conditions. Nothing was too
good for them
Miss Irene Tompkins, suburban chief operator of Long Island, who has
been guiding the fortunes of the operation of the Yaphank
switchboard since it was given to the young women operators on
September 3, happened to be in another car on the same train, and
the officer—telephone man made no delay in coming to tell her. It
was such sincere, unconscious evidence of the feeling of the
officers in Camp toward the girls who were handling their calls, and
so speeding and facilitating their work, that it was doubly
valuable. Fortunately the scribe was there to hear the words (which
else would never have come to light, such is modesty) and see the
smile and glow of pleasure which shone in Miss Tompkin’s face at
these words of admiration for the good work her girls were doing.
Before the weekends and holidays comes the rush of traffic from the
pay-stations. All the week there is a steady stream of official and
administrative business, flowing rapidly over the wires, while the
soldiers are busy with the complex activities of their training. But
the approach of a “day-off” means plans—plans for visitors at Camp,
or perhaps for a day at home, or too true, a sudden change of plans,
“No furlough, try to come down here.” This means that the booths in
the Y. M. C. A. houses and elsewhere are full and each has its long
waiting line. No, it isn’t a case of “busy hour” in the Yaphank
office; it is a whole day full of peak load once a week. And what is
holiday for the soldiers in olive drab is work and more work for the
girl “soldiers of the switchboard.”
Perhaps the most soldierly’ characteristic of our girls at Yaphank
is their matter-of-fact attitude toward themselves and their work
there. There is no self—consciousness about the patriotic service
they are rendering, no romancing, no posing, nothing but a quite
professional disregard of anything spectacular in their position.
Theirs is the real military attention to the discipline and the
business itself the decorative effect, the picturesque they leave to
others less busy with essentials.
Away from the switchboard the Yaphank operators are a very normal,
jolly set of young women. One end of the little “Telephone and
Telegraph Building” is reserved for their sitting room, dining-room,
cloak-room, combined, and here the noon periods are spent with as
much fun as in any of the more spacious quarters of a city exchange.
In one corner of this versatile chamber is a tiny kitchenette, with
oilstove, icebox, porcelain sink, table, and dresser full of dishes,
and utensils, so that a cup of tea or coffee may be made, or even
some real houseÂkeeping indulged in—a good makeÂshift until the
house is ready. There is no chance for outdoor sports during the
noon hours, for the central office is literally in the midst of the
camp, Signal Corps barracks on one side, and officers’ quarters on
the other, and indeed operators have rather more than enough outside
air, they sometimes feel, in their thirty miles of outdoor traveling
each day.
Since September third the girl operators have been “manning” the
present Yaphank switchboard, a common battery board of eight
positions, to which two positions are soon to be added. Before this
board was cut over, a four position magneto board occupied the
present operators’ quarters, and before that, in a little shack, was
working the historic 40-line magneto switchboard which was installed
in the wilderness that was to be Camp Upton, in less than
twenty-four hours after the order for service was given on June 29.
The contractors were beginning their hurry-up job of building the
camp in time for the arrival of the thousands of men about September
first, the telephone plant men were working to make ready an
adequate telephone system, for the city that was to spring up there,
and so the teleÂphone traffic over that little 40-line board was
heavy and, as always, indispensable. Mr. John Ormond and Mr. Frank
Sweeney arrived on July 1 to operate the board, day and night, and
the days and nights of which that was the beginning were enough to
have cooled their courage, could they or anyone have foreseen them.
Mr. Ormond had been chief operator at the Madison Barracks exchange
during the winter and spring, and Mr. Sweeney had been associated
with him there. So they knew a good deal about the operation of
military camp switchÂboards, but this little board in a
mosquito-ridden wilderness was something entirely new in the way of
military work.
Sergeant Patterson, formerly of the New Jersey Equipment Engineering
Department, who was looking out for the making of the Camp Upton
telephone system, and Mr. Ormond and Mr. Sweeney, camped together in
the little shack which was then the central office. When the cots
were in position there was no more room, even the door had to be
blocked, and to put through the telephone calls at night it was a
case of climbing across the other two, if the inside man was the one
who happened to be awake, to reach the switchboard. But as a rule it
was the exception if anyone happened to be asleep, for the
mosquitoes made any rest next to impossible. The heavy rains which
accompanied the work and did their best to retard it in the early
weeks, and the underbrush not yet cleared away, both were fine for
the mosquitoes—and they made existence in that part of the world
worse than torture. Sometimes, in spite of the mosquito helmets
which the men were obliged to wear, the conditions at the camp were
so bad that in order to get forty winks of sleep during the entire
night our men had to walk eight miles to the railway station at
Manorville. The dampness played havoc with the food, too, and
frequently decorations of green mould had to be overlooked, if one
was to have anything to eat at all. But the boys lived through it
all, and brought the telephone service and system through it with
flying colors, turning over to the girl operators on September third
an efficient system, which is growing all the time. Now Mr. Ormond
is in charge of the public telephones of the Camp, and having been
there continuously since the Camp was nothing but a stretch of
woodland, and having gone through the whole gamut of the hardships
which have made it what it is, he is one of the few who can really
appreciate what the Camp has been made.

Mr. John Ormond, Telephone Operator at Camp Upton
When the Mosquitoes
Tried to Decree there Should be no Camp there. Mr. Ormond is Now in
charge
of Public Telephones at the Camp.
The story of the operation of the Yaphank switchboard, if written
day by day from the beginning, would make a chapter of telephone
history full of interesting and unique highlights. The chapter
covering the first two months, while the camp was building, from
June 29 to September 3, would be full of anecdote and real war-time
experience. That of the first few months under the girl operators
would be still another and a different illustration of the
traditional heroism of the girl telephone operator, not for a few
tense moments but for many tense weeks of trying but well taken and
triumphant experience. It would be full of tales of long, hard
rides, of accommodations that were cramped and inconvenient, of the
inauguration of the new type of military switchboard, and of
variations in methods of operating made necessary by the new
conditions,—conditions before unknown, of the running of a great
cantonment; full of all kinds of difficulties which the operator in
the city or village will never know, that tale would be, but it
would be full, too, of good fellowship and team work, and not
without its humor. The chapter which would follow promises to be
much more comfortable and easy, as far as circumstances go, for with
the compleÂtion of the operators’ home in the Camp, and the choice
of the houseÂmother who will reign there, a new phase of life, a
veritable taste of boarding-school days, and a very comfortable,
jolly, and interesting time will open for the operators at Yaphank,
our soldiers of the service.

Miss Marion B.
Ketcham, Evening chief operator, Yaphank. Miss Creighton. Chief
operator, and Miss Tompkins, Suburban Chief Operator of Long Island,
whose Pictures Appeared in the November Telephone Review, were So
Modest About Posing Again that it Frightened the Camera and the
Pictures, Which Should Have Accompanied Miss Ketcham’s, Didn’t Come
Out