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Show RB3 See Here, flf yD) Private Hargrove! V by Marion Hargrove tf i li gulps. Ooooh! I shuddered violently, vio-lently, but he didn't see. He had turned his face and was coughing with real fervor. We managed to get through the meal all right, weakened though we were by the firewater. I continued to impress him. The only obstacle I hit was his reminder that I would be spending Thanksgiving on kitchen police. We parted when I told him I couldn't get out of a reception I had to attend at 2:30. I had sufficiently suffi-ciently impressed him and, with the aid of Providence, I might be able to borrow money from him occasionally occa-sionally back at Fort Bragg. The meal cost me nothing, but the fifty-cent tip was staggering. If worst should come to worst, I could always hock my watch. If I had a watch. -Rs- Thanksgiving Day with all its roast Vermont turkey, its pies and fruits, its candies, and free cigarettes ciga-rettes was just another day to me. Phooey to it. Our mess sergeant, one Orville D. Pope, was disgustingly cheerful when he awoke me in the morning. "Please go away," I said. "Just go away and let me gently curse." "Oh, Private Hargrove," he crowed, "we have so much to be thankful for. So very, very much! We have food, and warmth, and freedom!" "Food, we've got," I growled. "Including "In-cluding potatoes, with peelings to peeL This is my 678th potato this morning. I don't need coal for warmth when I'm bathing myself in sweat. And freedom? See, I am laughing bitterly! It is Thanksgiving Thanksgiv-ing Day and I am peeling potatoes pota-toes and washing dishes for the orgy. Phooey to Thanksgiving!" Sollie Buchman, the cook, who was a student with me in Battery A, .strode up humming that maudlin old grammar-school song about "over the river and through the woods, to grandfather's house we go." "It is a glorious day," drooled Private Pri-vate Buchman. "It does my old heart good to think of the expression on those boys' faces when they see that Thanksgiving dinner." "Repress yourself, Pappy," I asked him. "It is not to think of the dinner. I am thinking of the sinks overflowing with dirty dishes left by those gluttonous hogs. It was not enough that we had trays to wash. Now we have to have improvements. Now we have to have china plates. And cups. And soup bowls. And silverware. I hate progress!" "Better leave the lad alone, Pappy," Pap-py," sighed Sergeant Pope. "He is pouting and wll not enter into the spirit of the day. He has done wrong and is paying for it now." Private Buchman and the mess sergeant busied themselves at the ovens. I sat there ferociously jabbing jab-bing at potatoes and muttering wildly. Three times I scowled at the sergeant, but he wasn't looking. Maury Sher, my bosom companion compan-ion from the cooks' battery, came racing in through the back door. Maury was slated to be transferred to a cook's job at Madison Barracks, New York, and would be leaving the following day. "If you have come to extend the season's greetings, comrade," I told him wearily, "kindly do not trouble yourself. To paraphrase Dickens, any fool who goes about with 'Happy Thanksgiving' on his lips should be boiled in his own slumgullion and buried with a GI breadstick in his heart. Do not attempt to cheer me." "I'm not going to Madison Barracks," Bar-racks," he shouted. "I'm staying here. Right here in the Replacement Replace-ment Center! I'm going to be a mess sergeant in the antitank battery. A mess sergeant!" B.J I was dawdling over a huge chocolate choco-late nut sundae the other night at the Service Club cafeteria when Johnny John-ny Lisk walked in with someone who was a dead ringer for Simmons Jones of the Charlotte News staff. Anyone who is a dead ringer for Simmons Jones can't be anybody but Simmons Jones, I decided, so I gave the low whistle. The two saw me and came over. It was Simmons, all right He looked as if the two things he needed most at the moment were a haircut and a kind word of sympathy. He had the look of utter futility known only to those who have been in the Army for less than ten days. "Well, boy," I asked him, "how do you like the Army? And you don't need to lie about it." "I don't think I'll ever get used to it," he said. "I've been pushed and crowded and yelled at for a week now, and it doesn't get any better. Maybe I was just born to be a civilian." "You should have seen Johnny and me when we got in," I told him. "That's been only four months ago, and here we are being condescending condescend-ing and fatherly already. Them were the days, weren't they, Johnny?" John-ny?" Lisk sighed deeply. "Simmons don't know the trouble at all," he said. "When Hargrove and I had been in three or four days, they slapped us on KP and almost killed us first thing. Then, the next day, they put the two of us to cleaning and painting GI cans until past lup-Der lup-Der time." Simmons knocked on wood. "Well, they must have forgotten me. I've been in the Army a week a'.readv and I haven't been on KP yet" "You will, brother," said Johnny "You will." "Hargrove," said Simmons, "will you please stop looking at my hair' I can't go ten feet without being reminded to get a haircut. As soon as I- can find a minute, I'll get it cut " . "Are you really having a hard time of it?" I asked him. "Well, after that talk I got from you before I was inducted, I thought I would be going through hell for the first three weeks. The way you talked was terrifying, to say the least. So I prepared myself for a much rougher time than I'm really getting. "The drilling isn't bad at all. I suppose my dancing has helped me there. Anyway, I even surprise myself my-self at it. "But the getting up and dressing in ten minutes! I'll never be able to do it Everything is all right until it comes to the leggins. I struggle with those things until I'm limp, and I never do get them on in time. Yesterday I just tied them on for reveille and sneaked back and "I can't go ten feet without being reminded to get a haircut," he said. put them on properly later. I've tried every way possible, but I just can't get anywhere with them." j "How are the fellows?" I asked ' him. "Nice bunch of boys?" i "I was surprised at them," he said. "People I've never seen before, be-fore, and they all go out of their way to help each other. When we : were first inducted, there were a lot i of fellows I'd seen possibly once oi twice before in my life and we all acted as if we'd known each other since we were babies." "Then, too. I've already run I across some of the boys I know. i Johnny here is attached to our battery bat-tery for rations and quarters, and sa is Buster Charnley. They do as j much as they can to show me the ropes and help me. along during this awkward period." i -Pa-Reading through the camp newspaper news-paper the other day, I noticed sto-, sto-, ries written by Pvt. T. Mulvehill, Private Thos. Mulvehille, Pfc. Tom Mulvehill, Thomas Mulvehill (pfc.) and various other authors whose names bore startling resemblance to Thomas Mulvehill, Pvt or Pfc. The collection of literary and journalistic contributions to the Fort Bragg Post were all marked by the same flair for rhetoric, the true gift of gab, and a certain rich and gorgeous gor-geous sentimentaUty. In the midst of a factual story about a group oi college girl choristers coming tc Fort Bragg for a concert, the steady journalistic strain would suddenly burst into brilliant and majestic phrases such as "The Blankth Battalion Bat-talion recreation hall will burst into golden sound next Tuesday night when the angelic voices of thirty lovely Zilch College young ladies present a recital . . ."or "the Gen-! Gen-! eral's little eight-year-old son, awed by the solemnity of the occasion, clung to his daddy's hand throughout through-out the impressive ceremonies." This is what is known as the Mulvehill Mul-vehill Touch. The Mulvehill Touch is supplied at Fort Bragg by the Public Relations Rela-tions Office's irrepressible and inimitable inimit-able whirling dervish, Black Tom Mulvehill, a fantastic and unbelievable unbeliev-able Irish tyro, who came from New York City by way of Salt Lake City, Utah. Mulvehill of the great head and the shaggy locks, Mulvehill of the lumbering walk, the man of a thousand faces and a thousand voices Mulvehill is the Public Re-lations Re-lations Office's one spark of true glamour, our hope of immortality. Mulvehill is everywhere at all times. Out of every hundred photographs photo-graphs taken at Fort Bragg official offi-cial or personal, professional or amateur am-ateur it is safe to say that the flexible face of Private Mulvehill will beam out at you from ninety-five ninety-five of them. Photographers have no idea of how he gets into the pictures, but a picture of any "Rec" hall in the Center will show Mulvehill Mulve-hill playing ping-pong. (He's the one nearest the camera.) Mulvchill's next greatest talent is his ability to create wildncss and confusion at will. His desk drawers bulge and spill great quantities of unrelated papers, old notes, newspaper news-paper clippings, and weird personal effects. His working schedule and methods are chaotic and unfathomable. unfathom-able. He can write six stories at once, using every needed typewriter in the building. (TO BE CONTINUED) V THE STORY SO FAR: Private Marion Bargrove, former feature editor of a Morth Carolina newspaper, has been In-lucted In-lucted into the army and is recelvine his basic training at Fort Bragg. He has been classified as a cook and this coupled with his frequent assignment to KP have made him quit familiar with the Company Com-pany kitchen. He bas also learned a lot about the finer points of "goldbrlcking" and of other favorite soldier pastimes. He has learned all of the popular army lang expressions. He bas become wet acquainted with a number of other rookies as the first training period draws toward Its close this gang starts to break op. Hargrove himself Is Just starting bis first ten-day furlough. CHAPTER XI It's enough to drive a man to drink. You get a ten-day furlough and head for New York. You mooch a due bill on an ultra-swank hoteL You say to yourself that for those ten days you will be an all-out civil-Ian, civil-Ian, you will squander your substance sub-stance in rioutous living, you will forget altogether the fact that you are a soldier. And thenwhat happens? hap-pens? You wake up at six o'clock, no matter how late you stay out the night before. Then you can't go back to sleep. You have to buy enor- I mous quantities of civilian food to keep up with your Army appetite. You look in shop windows and see books you'd give your wisdom teeth for, but you think of your purse in terms of $36 a month and the inner man convinces you that you can't afford them. You'd like very much to put on your civilian clothes, just for a change, but your friends think you look so pretty in your uniform that they won't let you pull the old blue serge out of mothballs. It isn't bad all the way through, though. For instance, I walked out of the hotel the other day and ran into one of the boys from my own barracks, bar-racks, in New York on a three-day pass. We exchanged the prescribed comments on the smallness of the world and I saw a sparkling opportunity oppor-tunity to spread a thick layer of hokum. I could make the lad think I was one of these filthy-rich pri- You wake up at 6 o'plock no matter mat-ter how late you went to bed. Then - you can't go back to sleep. vates you so often read about in the papers. The kind that go about flashing $1,000 bills before unsuspecting headwaiters. "Won't you have lunch with me?" I asked. Then I added, quite casually, casu-ally, "I'm stopping here at the Astor." His eyes popped faintly, but a good soldier never passes up a free meal. We went back into the hotel and into the terrifyingly smart dining din-ing room. I smiled condescendingly at the headwaiter, to make him think I was a cash customer at the hotel, and he led us to a table. "I'm afraid you'll find the food here depressingly 'dull,' I told my comrade-in-arms. "No ortolans or hummingbird tongues. They seem to go in for plain but wholesome foods. Won't you try the breast of guinea hen, with a sip of Onion Soup Reine?" lKiMdon't care if I do," he said. "I ain't particularly particular about What I cat." "My nerves are all shot," I re-marked re-marked airily. "New York tires me dreadfully. I have to run about nolens volens that's Latin for willy-nilly willy-nilly from one night club to another, an-other, brushing up on old friendships. friend-ships. And I'm getting so tired of shows and cocktail parties! Won't ' you have a slug of hootch with me? I've got to have one." He gulped nervously and replied that he didn't care if he did. I noticed no-ticed with satisfaction that he was taking in all the propaganda about Bight clubs, shows, and cocktail par-tics. par-tics. "I'm a man of simple tastes myself," my-self," I said, lifting both eyebrows to give my face that bored expression. expres-sion. "I can't stand these silly mixed drinks. I like my liquor straight. I'm partial to Scotch." "I'm a rye man myself," he said. The waiter, who had been standing y with a growingly disgusted face, hrugged his shoulders and fetched frvo tiny flagons of the Old Enemy. His face sank a little at the sight, but I managed to keep up a sophisticated sophisti-cated front. I took a sip of soCa and ' lifted the glass. "Well, here's look-jl look-jl lng at you and going down me." li "Corn on the corn," he said, winc- j lng at the toast. I downed the yel-: yel-: low poison and so did he. I bungled ka job though, and had to use two i i |