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Show tl , GOS 7V WW 1 PRATT W.N.U. RELEASE THE STORV THCS FAR: Forty-four-! rear-old H'lbert Winkle, who operates a : repair .hop In the back of hi. home is souned by bl. draft board that he is ' I A He breaks the bad new. to his jiomineerlng wife, Amy. The night be-ilore be-ilore leavini. Mrs. Winkle tel. Hubert ,he Is worried that he may take up i h ; other women but he tells her she ha. 'antrum to worry about. On arrlvlni i tt camp Mr. Wimple Is given h.s phs-! phs-! leal, and to his great surprise and dismay, dis-may, Is accepted. He takes the oath of tnlistment, Is given Instruction. In bed-i bed-i making, and later given .0 many "shots it cannot remember how many. He I. lent to Camp Squibb, a thousand miles from home, where he meets Mr. Tinker. i CHAPTER VII "Me," said Mr. Tinker, "I feel good. I was going to join up anyway." any-way." After a moment he growled, "My kid brother was at Midway. He was a flier. Yeah, he got killed ! there. After the family squeezed every nickel for years sending him ;o college and on." "Oh," said Mr. Winkle, i "Me," Mr. Tinker went on, "all i ( want to do is kill me one Jap. I I ion't want to shoot him. I just ; want to get him between these." He pushed out two great hairy hands ' and clenched each into a fist. J"ey squandered,, affluence on a bu, V one not on duty " exception of Fredd Mr. Winkle and bgated the an old-fashioned 2' d brick building,' looking stores, if h fir of having to,' ts quiet affair, a found itself with diers on its hands ' After a single tUni the mam street, Mr , pressed his disgust'' said. "A graveyard, or From the , Winkle detected that ft, seer, something he He learned what this Tinker proposed that ft,, a beer, and led the ,,' they had twice passed. Here there was life, , the form of a number ' dies seated In booths Mr Tinker, at , disli, friends in pantomime, them while he and Mr. their beer at the bar p tiously, Mr. Tinker ir' Winkle if he cared to r quaintance of the two ja Mr. Winkle refused si as he could. "But don't t you." he offered broad-rr. Mr. Tinker regarded t lously, as if to wonder r a friend he had made. I over to the ladies, whom enthusiastically. Thej k Mr. Winkle curiously walked out. The first time Mr. Wit to take his pills, he rushe; low them in order to svi sick. The second time hi mind he was filled with ; three days had elapsed retaken re-taken them. Before he could dig do green-metal barracks tru; bottle, it occurred to him t thing was all right The had come, perhaps not g firmly, and taken hii away from him. He no lot ed his pills. When they had first rece rifles, he regarded his thing which might eipta moment The very touch i him nervous and he was , afternoon, after the day was over, to get rid of tt ! it in the rifle rack. In time he developed familiarity with th weapi because it was so muck stant companion. With Position-, of a Soldier, he was airaia to move a finger for fear the War Department would not approve. When the War Department, as represented by Sergeant Czeide-skrowski, Czeide-skrowski, failed to approve, Mr. Winkle Win-kle reported to the Mess Sergeant. Almost always there he found Freddie, who had virtually taken up residence in the kitchen. Jack appeared, ap-peared, too, as well as Mr. Tinker. They washed dishes, swept the floor and peeled onions and even the traditional potatoes. Once Mr. Winkle Win-kle was given a bag and a stick with an iron point on its end and told to pick up papers and cigarette butts around the grounds. He was certain that this was no kind of work for a respectable married citizen of the United States. Not even when he was doing things right could Mr. Winkle satisfy the War Department. On the exercise field he kept up with the other men, though he knew his face was flushed and he breathed hard. Then, abruptly, abrupt-ly, the muscled exercise Sergeant would call: "Hey, you there John!" Mr. Winkle realized he was being addressed. "What's your name?" the exercise exer-cise Sergeant demanded. "Winkle," replied Mr. Winkle quite as if his nameplate, pinned on his chest, did not announce the fact. "All right, John," he was advised, "when you feel you're three-quarters done, stop. That's an order. You know what an order is, John?" Mr. Winkle said that he did. "So I don't want to waste time picking up any guys who pass out," the Sergeant instructed him. Mr. Winkle noticed that he was the only man told to take tt easy. Mr. Tinker wasn't told anything, but kept right on with the others, even though he puffed. At bayonet practice he could find no satisfaction in jabbing at' the swinging stuffed figure. He simply could not conceive of himself ever thrusting that wicked blade into another an-other human being, no matter how much a German or a Jap deserved it. He shuddered when it was explained ex-plained that it was often difficult to withdraw the blade from a body, and sometimes it had to be twisted out. Certainly he didn't lunge at the figure the way Jack Pettigrew did. Everyone knew that when Jack thrust his bayonet into it, he was sticking Freddie with it. When Freddie Fred-die sliced with his bayonet, you could take your choice whether he thought' of the figure' as Jack or the-Alphabet. the-Alphabet. Mr. Tinker swung viciously, vicious-ly, and the figure then became a Jap. But Mr. Winkle had no ferocity feroc-ity at all. The Lieutenant was patient with him, explaining. "Some day you may be in the position where you either get the other fellow first, or he gets you. Think of it that way. Now, try again. Jump at itl Lunge! Kill it!" Mr. Winkle jumped. He lunged. He killed it with a blow that hardly penetrated the figure. The Lieutenant Lieuten-ant shook his head and called the next man. The bayonet and exercise incidents inci-dents gave Mr. Winkle an attack of imagination, the first he had had since being made into a soldier. He became convinced that he could never nev-er compete with the others. He wouldn't be as hardened as they, he wouldn't be sufficiently trained, and u: l j t , . . l vrfic .,'..TT 53 "When yon feel youre thr'ce-quar-ters done, stop." "That'll be for the kid. The rest I'll get will be gravy." Mr. Winkle wished that he had only a small part of the plumber's lust for vengeance. "If I don't get to the Japs," proposed pro-posed Mr. Tinker, "and you do, will you strangle one for me?" Mr. Winkle swallowed. His throat felt dry. "Why, yes certainly," he promised. "Don't go back on me," Mr. Tinker Tink-er searched Mr. Winkle with his beetling gaze. But he didn't give Mr. Winkle the mouse-look. In appreciation, Mr. Winkle said, "I won't go back on you." As if he weren't quite sure Mr. Winkle would keep to his word, or was capable of keeping to it, Mr. Tinker pronounced, "I'm going to ask every guy I meet so there won't be no mistake about it." Mr. Winkle was envious and a lit-tie lit-tie awed. Mr. Tinker scowled. Something was bothering him. "I didn't like all them questions they asked," he said. "What's the idea of all that stuff?" Mr. Winkle explained that it was to fit each man' into work according to the best of his abilities and experience. ex-perience. "You mean," asked Mr. Tinker, "they maybe might not make me into a shooting soldier?" Mr. Winkle said there was a pos-I pos-I fibility of this, especially in view of ' Mr. Tinker's background of being handy with tools. "Not a plumber?" Mr. Tinker ! asked in alarm. "I won't be no plumber." 11 was Mr. Winkle's opinion that the Army had all its plumbing taken ; care of by civilian contractors It would be in some other mechanical , capacity. ! Mr. Tinker looked glum. "Then how am I going to get me a Jap'" j He held up his hands and stared at I em as if he were going to fail j them "I knew I shouldna told that ; guy I take down my jalopies and nut ; them together again." i "Well." Mr. Winkle consoled him i it isn't decided yet " ' He dxidnut ,CnfeSS his fear 'hat it ; was. He had heard the stories-and ' Mhit'nM eXamples-()f Army ' habit of learning that a man was a ! baker and then promptly makin , I dr;rr Ut f him- Thinking : of himself as a round peg Mr r ; I "eaS Sure lhat "e would remain m the square hole of training for tP ' i in antry in which he now found him' I self fastened securely I Mr' WmkIe 'as -'"re that his mis- j : hir fXr ,er than that or 1 I Filled with rules and regular,,. o say nothin, of the Articles of - , nstrucuon on How and Whom to lute. How to Have the Proper An tude. Military Obligate s SP, b.h.ies of Group Life. Jt tar Courtesy. Sanitation. Care o( Clothing .l:d Equipment, and Tbe una wuuiu oe nis own lauit. wnen the test came on the battlefield, he would not be in condition, nor would he be enough of a killer even to protect pro-tect himself. He saw himself in retreat before the enemy. He couldn't keep up. Finally he could go no farther. Mr. Tinker and Jack offered to carry him, but Mr. Winkle wouldn't have it, knowing they would be caught with him. He made them go on, leaving him, and then an enemy soldier appeared. The man raised his rifle high, the bayonet gleaming. It started to come down into Mr. Winkle, who had a last thought of Amy and who knew that the blade would afterward have to be twisted j to get it out of him . j 0n thrir firf;t pay day, which was ; a Saturday, they were given passes j to town. They stood in line before : the orderly room, and entered one by one to receive their salaries. After Aft-er practice under the tutelage of the Alphabet, who watched critically from the side of the Lieutenant's desk, they saluted, wheeled, and marched out again. Mr Winkle was astounded and Mr. Tinker, with most of the others, was aggrieved at the amounts they received. After deduction for laundry, laun-dry, dry cleaning, expenses at the Post. Change, the barber shop, movies, insurance, camp newspaper newspa-per recreation fund, a contribution to the old soldiers' home and several sev-eral items Mr. Winkle didn't alto-gcther alto-gcther understand or remember his envelope contained seventeen 'dollars 'dol-lars and thirty cents. Mr. Tinker did a little better because be-cause he had no wife to whom went twenty-two dollars of his pay, to h ! HPuWuhthe twer"y-eight contributed con-tributed by the Government, the fifty jat would be sent to the homes of married men. But still Mr. Tinker computed that he used to make more ,n a week than he now made i" a month. fnr 1 Weren,t ecttine ready toje J.P. then," Mr. Winkle re- nghtC'"h'" Said Mf' Tmker "lhat' "Can't we do anytUm1 she asked. luctance he even entertsis admiration for the clever its wicked mechanism Firing it, however, matter. The first day Mr. Winkle closed his J pulled the trigger. T explosion made him op For an instant be was shot himself; at least V felt as if he had. He was informed Wit-that Wit-that he hadn't hit any F-target. F-target. On successive lr do much better, but keep his eyes open and 1 1 riflewas bad enouj the day came that the J a machine gun ere them, the palms . hands perspired cop stomach crawled. Nevertheless, he " duty. Sitting before the white cloth ot v came a blank. J perpendicular, and marked on it erased could see them. ' when he squeezed I t his glasses became I he might as well b I Tfh f jnSt of lead. A grt" . , his hands. ItieBg1, sharp electric hurriedly- Except for e guns down the hr.e, lence. . . itj The Alphabet 7 plowed up Ptott told Mr. Winkle- o can do to the Wi tTO BE CO."" |