Show See Here r J o Private ate Hargrove LA y by Marion Marton Has grove Ut ss 4 Vr ruE STORY SO FAR Private Marlon Hargrove former lormer editorial employee of 01 ofa a North Carolina newspaper has bas been Inducted Into the army and Is receiving his bis basic training t at Fort Bragg He De Ins has been lIeen classified ss as a cook class together with a more than usual have caused him to amount of RP KP duty become pretty wen weD acquainted with tI n e Company kitchen Pr Private Yate Hargrove has bas become rather well weD vcr versed cd In the tho many angles of goldbrickIng and other army pastimes He claIms calms however that Shooting the breeze or the b H D session Is the soldier s favorite non Uon At this stage of training some soma of 01 In the art As 1 fie e the boys are experts pick up op the story he Is discussing tills this CD CHAPTER O PC n By this time the evening bull ses sons have worn om themselves into a avery avery very definite routine U H Corporal Ussery is there he lectures on how he d run the Army If It S PrIvate Terrence he tells how he used to dIrect the intrIcate traffic affaIrs of Radio City MusIc Hall when he was assistant ch of ef doorman there Unless PrIvate Henri Geld Gelders Gelders ers is stopped he ll 11 start a violent argument among the butchers over how to cut a steak McGlauflin sill ill talk for hours about the es of the lakes In Minnesota will dell deller delier er discourses on how he would run the Wisconsin football team Pappas about Alabama s Crimson Tide Ma will sermonIZe on the ut- ut utter ut utter ter baseness and treachery of worn Lately however howe the sessions have come more and more under the sway of Private ate Merton Hulce a amad amad mad IrIsh lad from Muskegon Mich Michigan igan PrIvate Hulce apparently didn t stop at kissing the Blarney Stone He must have ha stolen half of It to carry With him Hulce s ch of ef tOpiC of con com ersa bon tion IS his mother s fabulous family the Smiths all of whom seem to get enmeshed in every war that comes along IDs His grandfather who was a captain m in the Coast Guard at the outbreak of the last war was Vias transferred to duty at guarding mu rations dumps and such for the dura durat t ton on of the ar a ar According to Hulce one of the munitions guards With his grandfather titers ther s detail was approached late one night by an officer of the guard Halt shouted the sentry and the officer halted Advance to be rec recognized saId the sentry and the officer advanced The sentry for forgot forgot got to order bait balt again agam and the officer came Within a foot of him J Js s G t s NW In the midst of this j fiery hell he saw a peach tree wIth peaches grow lag on It suddenly the officer reached out and snatched hatched the rifle from the guard s shand shand hand This was Vias an exceedingly uncomfortable positIon for the guard espe especially m in that time of war He mIght even have been sentenced to death The officer stood there Just at the guard for fully a minute What would you have bave done he asked In a terrible vo ce tf If an enemy had got your gun like lake that The guard trembled for a moment and recovered I would have snatched ted it t back a k E- E Ehe s r he said lIke THAT I And the officer stood there empty handed Hulce s grandfather who told that story Is now about sIXty five his grandson says He was asked to come back Into the Navy three months ago as a n Being a aSmith aSmith Smith he s back WIth him In the armed forces today are two of his sons Bons and two of his grandsons Merton had two uncles in the last war exceedingly both of whom fared exceeding ly well when you take a cal calview calview view of it NeIther tired bred himself out The first crossed the ocean nine tImes playing the clarinet in a troop shIp s band The Germans torpedoed the boat once and the holes in the sIde were stuffed wIth mattresses Hulce s uncle rode back Into port still playing his clarinet That was the goldbricking uncle The other uncle served as a kay pee on the trIp across Carrying a tray around the deck he was heck heckled heckled led several times by a person he soon grew to loathe Eventually the Irish wrath of the Sm rose to bOIling POint Uncle Smith lifted the tray high overhead and wrapped it around the hecklers heckler s neck He spent th the rest of the war in con confinement Then there was the cons n grand grandma roa ma s sisters sister's boy Serving in the front line trenches he grew suddenly hungry one morning Looking out of If the trench trench he saw a peach tree growing there In the midst of the fiery hell and there were st 11 peaches on it He tried to sneak into the tree but the enemy s bul bullets bullets lets found him He was carried be behind behind hind the lines Just as the stretcher bearers laId hIm down an enemy I shell exploded in the center of their little group and none of them were ere i ever seen again This happened at ei ten teno teno o clock on the morning of Novem November November ber 11 one 1918 hour bour before the Armist ce was sIgned r JS- JS Next to the Bugler I suppose the battery clerk has the est job in ID the battery You could cut his pay to ten dollars a month and he d stIll be defrauding the govern government government ment Just watch the battery clerk for fora fora a while and you start wondering why he s in the Army when he s so eVidently cut out to fit the lean leaning ing end of a WP A shovel WhIle the rest of the battery Is earning ItS dally daily bread With sweat the bat battery battery tery clerk sits In the orderly room hob with the powers that be typing the dally daily st with Ith original spellings for all the names and wondering how long It is untIl lunchtime Our battery clerk IS a beardless youth named Howard Miller I tripped 0 oer er him yesterday evening on my way ay back from a hard day days s work and stopped to chew the con conversational fat Junior I asked him how does your conscience feel about thiS six day goldbrIcking schedule every week Don t you feel a twinge on payday Corporal MIller made a move to draw himself up indignantly but de decided it wash wasn t worth the effort U If you re insinuating that I don t have to work you OU re off your bean sonny I do two or three times as much work as you happiness boys I yawned and sat down After listening to Ussery shooting off hIs mouth fifteen hours a day I can take yours Go on With your fan fantast fantast tast c story Boy saId Miller the bIll bIllis is enough to kill an ordinary man I m a one man information bureau for the whole battery I have to know who everybody ever body is where everybody Is where every everybody everybody body s going and how long he s go going going ing to be there I have to know the anSWEr to ery e dumb quest on you guys come popping up with Where s my ma mail When do I get my furlough Where are we going to be sent when we get shipped out of here Why d do t tI tI I get a weekend pass Why was I Ion Ion on KP again agam today Every sort of question you could imagine QUIt popping your guns laddie I told him That s no grind for you You use the same answer on all the quest ons Ho v the hell would I know He was qUiet for a wh le Ie and I thought he had gore to sleep again agam agamI I was all primed to hum Chow Call to wake him up when he hest hest st and sighed heavily hea Ily All right I prompted him so you re the one man information bu bureau bureau reau So what do you do m in theline the theline line of actual work Work he shouted That s what I work do-work Why I have to write all the letters and keep all the files and keep duty rosters up to date I I have to make thousands of rosters of the battery every month month- That I suggested should take at least two or three hours bours every everyday everyday day What do you do to role chile away the other tedious hours of the day He was qUIet again for about a minute Then he arose I ye ve got gota a pretty hard day ahead of me to tomorrow tomorrow morrow Hargrove he saId I hope you wont on t mind If you excuse myself You have to get plenty of sleep when you have a lob Job like mine When you have a job like yours I growled you ou can sleep night and day dayA A The top sergeant stuck his head out of the supply room and beck beckoned beckoned with his Ius arm Come ere youl you I dropped my stable broom in the battery street and hastened toward him as one always does when sum summoned summoned by the top kick V kell ell PrIvate Hargrove he said this is a red letter day for you You mean you re go ng to let me go out and drill like the other fellows Private Hargrove he saId I mean I m going to let you turn in all your You are no longer to be a rookie Private vate Hargrove You are going to tobe tobe be an Important working cog m the great wheel of national defense You are arc leaving us What Whets s the deal deal I asked Where do I go and what do I do The sergeant chuckled and leaned back in n h s chair He sIghed ec cc stat rally cally t vIce Would yOU really like to know son or would you youra ra rather ther put It off as long as you youcan youcan can Well I sa d thankfully you youcan youcan can t be sending me out as a cook because I don t know anything about cook ng The sergeant sat back and drummed hapPIly on the table Great gods I shouted I m not going to be a am I No Private Hargrove he sala after aeter another long pause you re not going to be a We re going to give you a job fob where you youcan youcan can use your natural talents There was a dIstinctly sadIstic tone in his vOIce I waited alted You re going to be a first cook Hargrove he said fondly Not just a plain cook A head cook I IA A lang king in your own kitchen a man manof manof of responsibility Ain Am t that lovely You can t do thiS to me I I roared when hen my breath returned It s against every decent human law I don t know anything about cooking I want to be a cannon eer Sergeant Goldsmith s eyes wan wandered wandered dered gUIltlessly to the cell ceil ng You don t know anything about cooking huh That s bad boy that s bad Why you re supposed to be on shift rIght now Sergeant I saId I couldn t fry an egg right now of If It had dl di directions on the package You re m in the cooks battery ain t you You ye ve been going to cooking school and you ye ve been sent to a kItchen for all these weeks You re supposed to be graduated any day now What have you been beenSon d I Son lie he said you re going to tomake tomake make a perfectly breathtaking Hor- Hor Horrible Horrible Example I had nothing more to say doing m the kitchen I put you in Making Jerk ade I explained chopping celery peeling onions They say I get m in their thelI way They say I keep spirits too high and pro production too low lowI I feel for you the sergeant said I deeply sympathIZe You re ra going to be a mighty unpopular lit ht littie tie boy in your new home it If that supper tonight don t melt m in them boys mouths and send them clam clamoring oring for more they II B either mas massacre sacre you or run you over the hill bill That s one th ng the boys won t al low bum cooking Sergeant Goldsmith sIr I lID im implored him Can t somebody else go in my stead Somebody who can cook Look at me-a me digger of ditches a of floors a scrub scrubber her ber of kitchens a ministering angel to undernourished grass plots but a cook never You don t know what you re doing to me meSon meSon Son he saId you re goIng to tomake tomake make a perfectly breath taking Hor Horrible Example Then he rose and walked back into the supply room Thomas he saId check in thiS I a equipment Sergeant Israel looked up from his Form Th Two records Don t he like his eqUipment Check m in everything but his clothing the top kick leck sa d Get Geta a truck to take him to Headquarters Headquarters Battery Sergeant Thomas W Israel looked up m in faint amazEment I looked in sheer beWilderment They had to figure some way to stop hIs cooking career and save the morale of some battery as would get hun as a cook said Ser Sergeant Sergeant geant GoldsmIth So he s being palmed off to Center Headquarters as a public relations man manThe manThe The word buddy t come into popularity yet in the new army I suppose that If there were such things Maury Sher would be mme mine Sher and I ed adlo adJo ning bunks when I was in Battery A Private Sher IS a smart and Ilk able JeWIsh boy from Columbus Ohio He went to school at South Southern Southern ern CalifornIa until he learned all the world s knowledge doesn come from the intellectual who usually teach the 8 30 class Then he went back to Columbus had bad an Idea patented and built him himself himself self a restaurant shaped like champagne glass Came the fateful SIXteenth of October Oc October tober and Sher enrolled for the Se Selective Selective ServIce System His apple catton cation was accepted last July and since he had bad been the success proprietor of a restaurant he classified as a promising student fo the Army cooking course The two to of us got together he was sent to the Replacement Cen Center Center ter here We started an ance when I topped all his jokes and began teaching hum ho hoto to speak Yiddish I was by his native intelligence his ant personality hIs sense of the similarity of h s likes and likes to mine hIs subscription PM his well stocked supply of my brand and the cookie he constantly received from home So we became more or less co stant compan ons We made th rounds here together sent ent to Cha Chalotte lotte together made goo gao goo eyes the same waitress in ID and swapped valuable trade secret in goldbricking TO BE CONTINUED |