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Show ANNOUNCER : CrandalPs takes pleasure in presenting, for the reader's en- joyment, the remarkable and very amusing story of Army life, from the soldier's point of view, entitled: containing H Hargrove" so you ' nvte can enjoy readi nd K And "tune in Weck! (This is, astm say, Newspaper St,t ALD.) P btatl0n HER. Kokene's assistant. He washec" and I dried. Later we formed a goldbricking entente. We both washed and made Conrad Wilson dry. Pollyanna, the glad girl, would have found something silver-lined about the hot sink. So did I. "At least," I told Kokenes, "this will give my back a chance to recover from that mop." When I said "mop", the mess sergeant handed me one. He wanted want-ed to be able to see his face in the kitchen floor. After lunch he wanted the back porch polished. We left the Reception Center mess hall a better place to eat in, fin See Here," fSM yfDj Private Hargrove! ufffi. hj Marion Hargrove .cuc wf A U at them. The overcheerful pri- vate to whom we were assigned told us, "When you finish cleaning clean-ing those, I want to be able to see my face in them!" "There's no accounting for tastes," Lisk whispered. Nevertheless, Never-theless, we cleaned them and polished pol-ished them and left them spick and span. "Now take 'em outside and paint 'em," said the private. "White. Git the black paint and paint 'HQCORRC on both sides of all of them!" "This is summer," I suggested. "Wouldn't something pastel look better?" The sun was affecting the private. pri-vate. "I think you're right," he said. So we painted them cream and lettered them in brilliant orange. or-ange. All afternoon, in a blistering sun, we painted garbage cans. The other Charlotte boys waved to us as thpv nnsspri rm tbpi'r WAV to the buck up here and make yez scrub the whole blankety-blanked dash-dash dash-dash cuss-cuss floor with a blan-kety-blank toothbrush. Now shad-dap!" shad-dap!" So we quietly went to sleep. This morning we took the Oath. began at tlayoreaK anu uevuicu all the time until noon to enjoying enjoy-ing the beauties of nature. We had a drill sergeant to point them out to us. We marched a full twenty miles without leaving the drill field. Lunch, needless to say, OIIAI'TKK I Edward Thomas Marion Yawton Hargrove, feature editor of the Charlotte (N. C.) News, receives notice from his draft board that he is to be Inducted In-ducted in the army. Before he begins an accounting of his actual experiences in training camp he Issues his quota of free advice to prospective Inductees. After his induction Hargrove, with his new buddies, leaves for Fort Bragg, where he is to receive his basic training. j was delicious. We fell into bed, after lunch, determined to spend the afternoon in dreamland. Two minutes later, that infernal whistle blew. Melvin Piel, guardhouse lawyer for Company Com-pany A, explained it all on the way downstairs. We were going to be assigned to our permanent stations. I fell in and a corporal led us off down the street. I could feel the California palm trees fanning One of the boys was telling me later that when his brother was inducted in Alabama, there was a tough old sergeant who was having hav-ing an awful time keeping the men quiet. "Gentlemen," he would beseech them, "Quiet, please!" They were quiet during the administration ad-ministration of the Oath, after which they burst forth again. The old sergeant, his face beaming, beam-ing, sweetly purred: "You are now members of the Army of the United States. Now, damn it, SHUT UP." i This morning our first morning morn-ing in the Recruit Reception Center Cen-ter began when we finished breakfast and started cleaning up our squadroom. A gray-haired, fatherly old private, who swore he had been demoted from master sergeant four times, lined us up in front of the barracks and took us to the dispensary. If the line in front of the mess hall dwindled as rapidly as the one at the dispensary, life would have loveliness to sell above its private consumption stock. First you're fifteen feet from the door, then (whiff) you're inside. Then at any rate. But KP is like a woman's wom-an's work never really done. Conrad Wilson marked one caldron cald-ron and at the end of the day we found that we had washed it twenty-two times. , Jack Mulligan helped me up the last ten steps to the squadroom. I finally got to the side of my bunk. "Gentlemen," I said to the group which gathered around to scoop me off the floor, "I don't ever want to see another kitchen!" The next morning we were classified clas-sified and assigned to the Field Replacement Center. Gene Shumate Shu-mate and I were classified as cooks. I am a semi-skilled cook, they say, although the only egg I ever tried to fry was later used as a tire patch. The other cooks include postal clerks, tractor salesmen, sales-men, railroad engineers, riveters, bricklayers, and one blacksmith. But we'll learn. Already I've learned to make beds, sweep, mop, wash windows and sew a fine seam. When Congress lets me go home, will I make some woman a good wife! (To Be Continued Next Week) o Announcer: In presenting this story, which gets more hilarious hilari-ous as it goes along, Crandall's believes it will bring great pleasure to readers believes that it already has done so in this instalment . . . We invite you to "tune in" for the next instalment in The Herald next week, and tell your friends to do so, and that you will think of Crandall's, carrying on in war time, as in peace, in order that our friends in Springville and throughout this area may obtain the best possible goods, in the many lines we carry, at the best possible prices. Come in and see us when you are in Springville, we'll do our best to supply your wants . . . One other thing, save the pages ball park. Happy voices floated to us from the post exchange. The supper hour neared. The straw-boss private woke up; yawned and went away, telling us what would happen if we did likewise. like-wise. He returned soon in a truck. He motioned peremptorily to us and we loaded the cans into the truck. Away we went to headquarters head-quarters company and painted more garbage cans. It was definitely defi-nitely suppertime by now. "Now can we go home, Private Dooley, sir?" asked Lisk. I looked at Lisk every time the blindness left me and I could see the boy was tired. The private sighed wearily. "Git in the truck," he said. Away we went back to our street. We stopped in front of our barracks and Private Dooley dismounted. "The truck driver," he said, "would appreciate it if you boys would go and help him wash the truck." We sat in the back of the truck and watched the mess hall fade away behind us. Two, three, four miles we. left it behind us. We had to wait ten minutes before we could get the washpit. It took us fifteen minutes to wash the truck. By the time we got back to the mess hall, we were too tired to eat. But we ate. On the way to our barracks we met Yardbird Fred McPhail, neat and cool, on his way to the recreation recrea-tion hall. "Good news, soldiers," said Yardbird McPhail. "We don't have to drill tomorrow." We halted and sighed blissfully. blissful-ly. "No, sir," said McPhail. "They can't lay a hand on us from sunup until sundown. The whole barracks bar-racks is on kitchen duty all day." It was through no fault of mine that I was a kitchen policeman on my sixth day. The whole barracks CHATTER II A soldier stuck his head through the door of our new dormitory and gave a sharp whistle. "Nine o'clock!" he yelled. "Lights out and no more noise! Go to sleep!" "It has been, withal, a very busy day,"I said to Piel, who was buried bur-ied with his hay fever in the next bunk. "It sure withal has," he said. "What a day! What a place! What a life! With my eyes wide open I'm dreaming!" "It's been a little hellish out today," to-day," I agreed, "although it could have been worse. We actually saw a corporal and he didn't cuss us. We have eaten Army food twice, and, except for the haphazard haphaz-ard way the pineapple was thrown toward the peas, it wasn't horrifying." horrify-ing." "I am broken and bleeding," moaned P'iel. "Classification tests, typing tests, medical examinations. examina-tions. I think I walked eighteen miles through those medical examinations. ex-aminations. It's a good thing this is July. I would have frozen in my treks with all that walking and exposure. Nothing I had on, except ex-cept a thin little iodine number on my chest." "Funny thing about the medical examination," a voice broke in from down the line. "Before you get it, you're afraid you'll pass. "When you finish cleaning those cans, I want to be able to see my face in them." got the grind. And it was duty, not punishment. It was all very simple, this KP business. All you have to do is to get up an hour earlier, serve the food, and keep the mess hall clean. After we served breakfast, I found a very easy job in the dining din-ing hall where life is much pinker than it is in the iktchen. A quartet quar-tet was formed and we were singing sing-ing "Home on the Range." A corporal cor-poral passed by just as I hit a sour note. He put the broom into my left hand, the mop into my right .... There was a citizen-soldier from Kannapalis to help me clean the cooks' barracks. For a time it was awful. We tried to concentrate concen-trate on the floor while a news broadcaster almost ,tore up the radio trying to decide whether we were to be in the Army ten years or twenty. We finished the job in an extremely ex-tremely short time to impress the corporal. This, we found later, is a serious tactical blunder and a discredit to the ethics of gold-bricking. gold-bricking. The sooner you finish a job the sooner you start in on the next. The corporal liked our work, unfortunately. Kannapolis was allowed al-lowed to sort garbage and I was promoted to the pot-and-pan polishing pol-ishing section. I was Thermos you're standing between two orderlies ord-erlies and the show is on. The one on my left scratched my arm and applied the smallpox virus. The only thing that kept me from keeling over was the hypodermic hy-podermic needle loaded with typhoid ty-phoid germs, which propped up my right arm. From the dispensary we went to a huge warehouse of a building by the railroad tracks. The place looked like Goldenberg"s Basement Base-ment on a busy. day. A score of fitters measured necks, waists, in-seams, in-seams, heads, and feet. My shoe size, the clerk yelled down the line, was ten and a half. "I beg your pardon," I prompted, prompt-ed, "I wear a size nine." "Straighten up soldier, and git off the floor. That's nothing but a full field pack." my face. We stopped at Barracks 17 and the corporal led us inside. "Do we go to California, corporal?" cor-poral?" I asked. "Naah," he said. "Where do we go?" I asked him, a little disappointed. "To the garbage rack," he said. "Double q u i c k." He thumbed Johnny Lisk and me to the back of the barracks. At the garbage rack we found three extremely fragrant garbage cans. Outside, we found more. Lisk and I, citizen-soldiers, stared weary, "the expression is 'I wore a size nine.' These shoes are to walk in, not to make you look like Cinderella. You say size nine; your foot says ten and a half." We filed down a long counter, picking up our allotted khaki and denims, barrack bags and raincoats, rain-coats, mess kits and tent halves. Then we were led into a large room, where we laid aside the vestments of civil life and donned our new garments. While I stood there, wondering what I was supposed to do next, an attendant caught me from the rear and strapped to my shoulders shoul-ders what felt like the Old Man of the Mountain after forty days. "Straighten up, soldier," the attendant at-tendant said, "and git off the floor. That's nothing but a full field pack, such as you will tote many miles before you leave this man's army. Now I want you to walk over to that ramp and over it. That's just to see if your shoes are comfortable." "With these Oregon boots and this burden of misery," I told him firmly, "I couldn't even walk over to the thing. As for climbing over it, not even an alpenstock, a burro train, and two St. Bernard dogs complete with brandy could get me over it." There was something in his quiet, steady answering glance that reassured me. I went over the ramp in short order. On the double. dou-ble. I think the Armv calls it. The old sergeant, his face beaming beam-ing sweetly, purred, "You are now members of the Army of the United Unit-ed States. Now, damn it, shut up." When you go through the examinations, exami-nations, you're afraid you won't." "I noticed that," I said. "I don't have any special hankering for a soldier's life, but I thought when I was going through the hoops this morning that this would be a helluva time for them to back out." "The little fellow who slept down at the end got sent back," said a loud whisper from - across the room. "One of his legs was shorter than .the other. He's a lucky dog." "I'll bet he doesn't think so," said Piel. "At this stage of the game, I'm glad it was him instead of me." A dark form showed itself in the doorway. "I told you guys to shaddap and go to sleep. Do it!" A respectful silence filled the room for three minutes. "Look at me," said Piel. "Won't the folks in Atlanta be proud when they get my letter! Me, Melvin Piel, I'm a perfect physical specimen." Big Jim Hart, the football star whom I had known in high school, spoke up. "Don't go Hollywood about it, Piel. Just rememember, Hargrove's a perfect specimen, too. And just two weesk ago, when we were waiting out in front of the armory for the draft board examiners to get there, he had one foot in the grave." "And the other foot?" "That's the one he keeps in his mouth." "Yessir," said Piel, "the Army makes men." The discussion was interrupted by the reappearance of the soldier. "If youse blankety-blanked little dash-dashes don't shut your cuss-cuss cuss-cuss yaps and get the blankety-blank blankety-blank to sleep, I'm gonna come From there we went to the theater, the-ater, where we were given intelligence intelli-gence tests, and to the classification classifica-tion office, where we were interviewed inter-viewed by patient and considerate corporals. "And what did you do in civil life?" my corporal asked me. "I was feature editor of the Charlotte News." "And just what sort of work did you do, Private Hargrove ? Just give me a brief idea." Seven ' minutes later, I had finished fin-ished answering that question. "Let's just put down here, 'Editorial 'Edi-torial worker.' " He sighed compassionately. compas-sionately. "And what did you do before all that?" I told him. I brought in the publicity work, the soda-jerking, the theater ushering, and the printer's deviling. "Private Hargrove," he said, "the army is just what you have needed to ease the burdens of your existence. Look no farther, Private Pri-vate Hargrove, you have found a home." This was a lovely morning. We |