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Show P30 See Here, ygJ Private Hargrove! kSMI t Marion Hargrove w.t E? U THK 8TOBT SO FAR: PrlviU Marloa HarrroYe, former feature editor of a North CaroUaa aewipaper, kas keea la. 1 ducted into the army aid I spendlaf kia balaine period at rort Brast. 11 you're folag into tht army, Hargrove I advises a ore-induction period of "paint- j tag tht town red." One you wear the kkaU "keep aa opea mind," ke layi, "for the first three weeks art the hard-at" hard-at" Having failed to matter soma el the fundamentals of army Ufa, Hargrove kas spent considerable time oa EF duty. He kas keea claiilfled as a cook. Thus he la fully familiar with the Company kitchen. Abo a period of leld maneuvers kave made him familiar with sunburn. He Is now undergoing treatment for this. CHAPTER VIII For one I have gone on ilck call for purposes other than goldbrick-inf. goldbrick-inf. This time It was (or sympa-thy, sympa-thy, tenderness, and sunburn lotion. I lot the sunburn lotion. Since then I have been confined to quarters a rathetlc, lorn creature wandering ibout the squadroom In a minimum a clothing and a glow of brilliant red light I Things are getting fairly comfortable comfort-able for a while. The poet Droschnl-op Droschnl-op and the happy warrior Menza applied ap-plied the ointment with tender care. Private Sher was asked to snaffle a sandwich from the mess hall and returned re-turned with a laden tray, replete with Iced tea and a double portion of "A minimum of clothing and a glow of brilliant red light." dessert By sitting on the floor on my heels, I was even able to start reading the novel that has been taking up space In my foot locker (or weeks. I But night must fall. In a case like this, where you're packed in grease like a boxed rifle, if a best to place one layer of newspaper between be-tween sheet and blanket After lying ly-ing there for a while, listening to the newspapers crackle exactly like burnt flesh every time you twist In Cony, you feel the urge to alt up and look at some real stars. They're drafting honest respectable, respecta-ble, hard-working soldiers back Into civilian life now, as you probably read in the papers. Has-beens at twenty-eight these good boys are turned into the pasture under selective se-lective retirement system. It's interesting in-teresting to watch the way they take it Our big loss in Battery A came Tuesday when Joe Gantt went back to Liberty, South Carolina, after five months in the citizen army. Joe is the nice corporal who looked like the soldier pictures In the magazines, used an instinctive psychology in handling his men, and knew every man in the battery as a friend. ' Ha was on furlough last week when he was ordered to return at nee to the battery. He came baek, started through the discharge routine rou-tine and went about hugging every-body every-body with what looked like unbounded unbound-ed Joy. Then he started getting quieter and less demonstrative. He had been relieved from active duty for the remainder of his stay herea matter of four or five days and when the men fell out for calisthenics calisthen-ics or drill. Corporal Gantt didn't cava to go out with them. Every time the whistle blew, you could see lonesome look creeping into his yes. The last time I saw him was Monday Mon-day at noon, when we fell out for enow. Military procedure was over -thrown in a spontaneous revolution revolu-tion and Joe was drafted to march os to the mess hall. It was his last detail. Halfway to the mess hall, ho gave us "To the rear marchl To the right flank marchl To the right flank marchl" and all of the marching commands he had taught us. He's returning to Liberty now, ! where he'll fall bock easily into the life ha left five months s go. But you ' could have seen from a casual glance that be was going to miss the Army. I I'm a student cook in the Army. Cooks arc supposed to have the easiest eas-iest work and the most comfortable positions the Army affords. Compared Com-pared to the boys in the gun batteries, bat-teries, the signal corps, the antitank anti-tank units, we're almost white-collar men, We student cooks the future "happiness" boys of the Army-have Army-have to get up tor reveille at the usual hour, b sating the sun to the rise every morning. We get an hour of calisthenics, directed by a rjoncom who's in good physical shape and expects us to be the same way Then we drill for an hour, and hell hath no fury like ht unleashed on the recreant who doesn't come up to standard in drill We attend class for two hours and there's no foolishness there. After lunch, we report to our kitchens, where we work until seven o'clock, taking our trade practically, practical-ly, taking part in the preparation of food for over two hundred hungry and fastidious soldiers. The next morning finds us In our kitchen at three or four o'clock and we stay there until one. We're supposed to have the afternoon off unless there's something that has to be done In the line of battery duty. When we leave those kitchens for the afternoon, we go back to our barracks for rest and sleep, which we need badly after the twenty-four-hour shift at huge coal-burning stoves. Reading is a popular diver-slon diver-slon during the time, unless you pick up a magazine which tells you what slackers you are because you aren't like the author was In the Real war. There's a different type of article that Is equally nauseating. It tells of the poor little soldier boys, who give up everything to go Into training train-ing thousands of miles from mother's moth-er's lap and who will have to spend their time leaning against urban lampposts because nothing is being be-ing done for their morale. You're talking about entertainment entertain-ment Gertrude not morale. In the matter of entertainment there's plenty of that to be found, even if it isn't like being back home toasting toast-ing marshmallows with Her. There's so much being done here for entertainment enter-tainment that you can't get halfway to the Service Club without being drafted for a battery show or a volleyball vol-leyball game. Morale Is the spirit that gets you when you're out on the regimental parade ground with the whole battalion bat-talion for retreat parade. Every mother's son there wants to look as much the soldier as the Old Man does. Not another sound can be heard before or after the one-gun salute to the colors or when the band crosses the field to a stirring march in the Display of the Colors. And when your battery passes in review before the . colonel, you're firmly convinced that there isn't another an-other battery on the field that makes ss good a showing as your battery. It's the enormous feeling you know when you sit In pitch dark before be-fore a pup tent In the field and "Every mother's son wants te leek as mnch the soldier as the aid man does." watch the Fort's searchlight cut the sky. It's the feeling you know when you can look across a great apace and see long lines of Army trucks moving along every road you can see. That's morale. Just a matter of pride. The good earth on which Fort Bragg Is situated is laden with tradition, tra-dition, ghosts of the glorious past the old culture and little else. Beautiful as it may be for purposes of military training, it has little in-terest in-terest in helping the little green things to grow. Grass and flowers, planted with loving care in the Sandhills Sand-hills dust fade but too soon If left to shift for themselves. To nourish such vegetation, the cavalry units furnish the more aesthetic batteries with certain surplus commodities. Privste McGIauflln, Roff, and I had spent the better pert of the morning with Corporal ' Cleveland James Farmer, heaving and hauling coal in preparation for the long hard winter, when the top sergeant decided that the borders around the barracks should be given their autumn au-tumn tonic. We piled back into our truck and 'sped away to the haunts of the hoss cavalry. We knew, after a few miles of riding, that we were nearlng the cavalry territory. There was a certain cer-tain unmistakable quality about the atmosphere. Something New Had Been Added. The hoss cavalry, it must be said, takes greet pains with the care and distribution of Its vitamin deposits. As far as the eye can see the eye can see orderly, cubical mounds covered cov-ered with straw and earth. None but the most deserving criminal offendersmen of-fendersmen who have earned their letter ("P" for "prisoner") are permitted per-mitted to serve in the maintenance division of this essential agricultural agricultur-al enterprise. We three McGIauflln, Roff. and I stood high on the crest of a hill, loading the truck with its precious csrgo, commenting on the Invigorating Invigorat-ing quality of the air, and pausing ever and anon to lean on our pitchforks pitch-forks and Ustento the conversation of other workers about us. Some there were who could not see the Importance of the service they were rendering; others spoke disparagingly of the place and blV terly cursed man's best friend, the horse. Two soldiers who shared a single pitchfork at the next truck spent all their time discussing the comparative beauties of the music of Liszt and Tchaikovsky, proving 'that art endureth forever even In an alien atmosphere. As for myself, I gloried In the honor of the tradition I was helping to carry' out My mind drew pictures pic-tures of the philosopher Ward Beecher Threatt who boasts that he carried a pitchfork through the heat of the fiercest battles throughout the last war. We made three trips to the cavalry cav-alry barnyard before we had finished enriching the earth about the orderly order-ly room, the mess hall, and the four barracks of Battery A. We bathed vigorously and dressed for early dinner. The mess sergeant met us at the door. He sniffed the air delicately and quietly closed the door In our faces. Then he made the rounds, closing the windows nearest us. "Gitl" he 'said. We went back to the barracks, where we found our comrades returned re-turned from the classroom. . We sat down on our foot lockers and strove to remain as Inconspicuous as possible. possi-ble. Private Sher was the first to speak. "Do you smell something?" Private Pri-vate Sher asked with unaccustomed rudeness. Everyone, it seemed, smelled something. It was not they decided, Chanel Number Five. It was not My Sin or Evening in Paris. One of the citizen-soldiers, who had once worked In the stockyards, knew what it was. When the hunt came nearer, Privates Pri-vates McGIauflln, Roff, and I arose and quietly left the squadroom and quietly sat by the newly Invigorated grass borders outside. ' Maybe I spoke too soon when I denied the sissiness charges by magazine mag-azine writers. It must be admitted, after yesterday's horrible disclosure, that some termite is boring from within us. Some force is sapping the rugged manliness of Battery A. Here's what happened at supper yesterday evening. First of alL when we neared the end of the chow line, we found one of the cooks there, scooping ice cream out of a can. We are meat-and-potato men in Battery A and generally we do not take to such frilly fanclness es Ice cream, although we occasionally humor the mess sergeant by letting him buy it in ready-cut blocks. This time, we found, he had gone too far. Our leniency and intolerance intoler-ance in letting him buy ice cream had gone to his head. Now he was making it at home In the respectable respecta-ble kitchen of Battery Al Homemade Home-made pineapple Ice creaml I didn't ssy anything about it I thought that perhaps he wss merely going through his second childhood, and second childhood is something that every mess sergeant must be permitted to go through once. Realizing Real-izing this, we boys hadn't said anything any-thing when our mess sergeant had alr-condltloning fans put in the kitchen windows to make namby-pambies namby-pambies of the cooks and kaypees. Wo hadn't eald anything when he started keeping Jam on the table at all meals. We're going to have to ssy something some-thing now. The man is going absolutely ab-solutely mad. Not content with springing homemsde ice cream oo us, he had to hesp more coals on the fire of our impatience at the same meal There on each table in our mess hall, brazenly placed In the very cen- There on each table m the mess hall was a shiny container filled wlta paper napkins. ter, was a shiny container filled with paper napklnsl Until something Is done about tht thing, this mess sergeant will ge hog-wild. At his present rate, we'll find toothpicks on the table nexl week, salad forks the week after that finger bowls before November. This will go on Indefinitely until his brain is completely destroyed by this madness. Then he'll start planning plan-ning to surprise us with waitresses dressed In field-artillery red. When this happens, I shall try U volunteer for the psrschute troops. No matter how homey they maki the Service Dubs, no matter how carefully they plan the movie programs, pro-grams, no matter how hard the) work on athletle schedules, they; never be able to compete with a sol dier's favorite evening recreation sitting on the back steps, shooUnj the breeze. (to u cwctinuxd) t |