Now it can be told, continued

My gloomy reverie was broken by the sound of a jeep rattling to a stop in front of us. A tanned sergeant in fatigues was at the wheel. She barked just one command, “Get in!” and we scrambled over the side bars and settled into the seats. Another sergeant appeared from somewhere and handed her a large envelope, containing our orders, which we still had not seen. To tell the truth, we never did see them. They remained a mystery until I found my secret war story on Google, and decided now was the time to tell all.
But not quite yet. All in good time.
The jeep rattled along, stirring up dust and making a good bit of noise. Sad Sack, in the front seat, was buffeted about by the wind we were riding into, and began to come undone. First her hat fell off, luckily caught by the private just behind her. Her bright red hair, always hard to contain, simply fell out of its bun and dangled down to her collar. Her tie came out of her shirt and dangled down her chest. Only a few minutes out of the compound and she was already out of uniform!
Prima Donna, on the other hand, was the picture of perfection. Not a hair was out of place. Her makeup was perfectly applied and she rode with a scented handkerchief to her face, to screen out any unpleasant odors or dust. How she did it I will never know.
As for me, I began to enjoy the ride. We were getting dusty, to be sure, and my allergies were going full blast, but we were clearly going toward some town somewhere, and I hoped we would have the pleasure of an overnight trip on a train. I hadn’t yet learned that riding a train during wartime was an ordeal, rather than an adventure. I began to cheer up. I ventured a smile toward my seat partner, and realized with a start, that we were all redheads! Was that it? Had we been picked because we all shared the same hair color? I had been suspicious of Prlma Donna, thinking that her hair color was too good to be true, but perhaps I had been unkind. But what did it mean? There weren’t that many redheaded women in basic training. Could it be just a coincidence that we were all squeezed together into this jeep bouncing along to some unknown place? Or were we really victims of a cruel fate?
Oh well, time would tell. Maybe more than we wanted to know. But as they say in novels, the die was cast! No turning back now, we were on our way.
It wasn’t long before we reached the train station, and were hustled onto a clanking old passenger train, what was known in those days as a “milk train.” It stopped at all whistle-stop stations and waited there, belching black smoke and cinders, and then with a whistle, chugged forward once again. We did not get sleepers. We were squeezed into hard, crowded seats where we sat all through the long night, now and then dozing where we sat. Most of the other passengers were civilians, who cast suspicious glances our way, obviously thinking the worst. We were escorted by another sergeant, as before, and got bologna sandwiches for dinner. Stale and dry, they were hardly gourmet fare. But if you are hungry, just about anything tastes good. Or so they say.