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Show Pin See Here, fjgg 5J Private Hargrove! KC ty Marion Hargrove .sts-x fcf 1 L THE STORY SO FAR: Private Marion Hargrove, former feature editor of a North Carolina newspaper, has been inducted in-ducted Into the army and has completed a good portion of his basic training at Fort Bragg. Classified as a cook and with plenty of extra KP duty because f his failure at times to grasp some of the fundamentals of army life, he has become be-come quite familiar with the Company kitchen. He has learned the finer points of "goldbricking" and has mastered the elements of army slang. As we pick up his story here, Hargrove Is listening to a bus driver in a nearby town expand on his formerarjny -career. Hargrove suspects (and rightly so) that the truth is being stretched. The bus driver speaks: CHAPTER XIH " 'Well,' he said, hemming and hawing a little, 'three stripes means he's just a plain buck sergeant. Six stripes is a master sergeant. I'm a supply sergeant That's two grades above a buck sergeant and one grade below a master sergeant. I'm expecting to be a master sergeant In a month or so. That's as high as you can get.' "I didn't say anything for a while; Just sat there looking like I was letting it soak in. Then I asked him, real calm-like and ignorant. 'How many stripes does a private first class have?' "So help me, he looked like he was going to choke for a while. Then he came back with a snappy answer in a flash. " "Well,' he said, 'first-class privates pri-vates have one stripe, just like us supply sergeants, only their stripe is bottom-upward from ours. Their stripes point down.' "Well, sir, I thought I'd die. I almost popped trying to keep from laughing, but I kept a straight face. Then I said, Things sure have changed since I was in the Army. Back then, three or four years ago, supply sergeants were just plain buck sergeants and first-class privates pri-vates were the only one-stripe men.' " 'Yeah,' he said, sort of weak-like, weak-like, 'time changes a lot of things.' "That was all he had to say. He looked sort of foolish and pulled the cord to get off at the next stop. "So there was another bull session ses-sion shot to hell. Maybe it was for the best, though. I didn't have a chance against a fellow with that much talent" Ha- ' I ran out of cigarettes this afternoon after-noon near my old cooks' battery, so I thought I'd drop in on First Sergeant Ser-geant Goldsmith, who smokes the same brand that I do. Sergeant Goldsmith is the old type of top ser-' geant with a heart of GI shoe leather and a voice that would put the stoutest bugle to shame. "Great gods and little paychecks," he railed. "Look what's loose again! What's the latest, little man, or aren't reporters supposed to know?" "The only news I've heard today," I told him, helping myself to a coffin cof-fin nail from his desk, "is that they're sending all the first sergeants ser-geants in the Replacement Center - to Panama for hard-labor service detachments. de-tachments. Polish your brass and you might make acting corporal before be-fore the war's over." "Oh, it's lovely to run into an old top sergeant who can't put you on kitchen police when you sass back at him." "You're a sweet little lad, Hargrove," Har-grove," he purred. "We really do The basket had in It a cheerful little lit-tle blaze bright enough to take action ac-tion photographs on a moonless night. miss you here. When you were here, I never had to worry about where I was going to get another man when there was a stovepipe to be cleaned or a street to be swept. Now I have to go and search around search, mind you for someone who's been a bad little boy. Never had that trouble when you were here." "Sergeant" I told him, propping my feet on his wastebasket "you never miss the water until it's gone under the bridge. This battery owes a lot to me. Look out there at that grass growing in front of the orderly room. That grass wouldn't be there much less be that green if I hadn't spent time and labor sprinkling sprin-kling it with fertilizer. And think how much cleaner the windows were when I was here to wash every one of them every week. I'll bet you haven't had a clean floor in' the battery bat-tery since I laid down my' mop." "How's sergeant Oo.ton making out with his grocery budget?" I asked. "Trying to feed you on forty -vivo cents a day? The last Umeit I saw him, he was working out plans to feed you on Buncombe County turnip' greens or pay you to eat at the Service .Club:"' ' " . ...... "OhV th'at,": he. said. "I've saved so much on cigarettes since you left the battery that I could afford to eat uptown now if I wanted to. And let's leave any remarks about Buncombe Bun-combe County out of this. And let's leave your feet out of my waste-basket" waste-basket" .-"-.J- . ' ' From now on I must deny myself one of the. fundamental rights and joys of mankind. I must quit bumming bum-ming matches from those near and dear to me that is, if I want them to remain near and dear to me. Whenever I ask anyone around Center Cen-ter Headquarters -even Mulvehill or Bishop or Bushemi for a match, I get one of two answers, both of which are getting very tiresome by now. I hear either "What's the matter? mat-ter? Has your fire gone but?" or "Just light your cigarette on one of our conflagrations there should be a small arson in yonder corner." Since I am' a patient and long-suffering long-suffering child, I make no scathing remarks in return for these jaded witticisms. I merely shrug my frail shoulders pathetically and seek greener pastures. It isn't so bad, their refusing the match- The worst part of it is .the reminder of an incident in-cident which might well be forgotten. forgot-ten. The incident is of no consequence, conse-quence, but it might as well come off my chest. - Being a slave to the despoiler of human health .and well-being, the cigarette, I still have a fondness for an occasional switch to a pipe. I don't especially enjoy the- taste of pipe tobacco, and I don't believe even the most avid pipe smoker especially cares for it. Most of them like, me, merely like the feel of a pipe in their mouths and the dignity and solemnity a pipe gives them when they punctuate their conversations conversa-tions by jabbing the air with-it ' Smoking a pipe only occasionally, I still have not become overly proficient pro-ficient at keeping... the little ..things . burning. When. I buy a can of tobacco,-. . I-Jauy . a. .: five-cent .box., of country matches with it Half my smoke is tobacco; the- other half is Georgia pine smoke from the match- sticks. , .':. ... .' " -' I was busy today typing out story, and I had lit my pipe for about the twenty-second time. I threw the match into the wastebasket and forgot for-got all about the whole thing. I was absorbed iri 'my work; ' I noticed by degrees that our office of-fice - was becoming lighter . and warmer. I noted the fact; .with a riph feeling of comfort, but no great interest in finding out the cause. It wasn't until I reached for another match .to. light that pipe again that I noticed my . wastebasket. The thing had in . it . a cheerful little blaze bright enough to take action photographs photo-graphs on a moonless night . There was nothing to get excited about I told the remainder of the public relations staff, the sergeant , major's corps of assistants, and the filing department. I nonchalantly put my foot into the basket and started stamping out the fire. The thing would have worked, too, except ex-cept that the length of my foot was greater than the diameter of the wastebasltet. The foot stuck and I could not stamp. Corporal Sager, of Plans and Training, leaped to the rescue, pried the foot from the basket, grabbed, the basket and sped away to the water cooler. I followed him and poured myself a cup of water. I still saw no cause for excitement To the bystanders' catcalls, unseemly un-seemly laughter, and accusations of arson, I turned a fatherly ear and a quieting voice. I explained patiently patient-ly that setting fire to wastebaskets was an ancient and honored pastime in the newspaper world. I told them that one of the best newspaper men North Carolina has ever seen "Uncle "Un-cle John" Dickson, former city editor edi-tor of the News used to set his wastebasket on fire at least twice a week by tossing cigarettes or burning burn-ing matches into it It was a mark of certain industry, a sign that a man was wTapped up in his work. -R - Maury Sher, my old buddy when we were together in the student cooks' battery, had been on an extended ex-tended furlough. Before he returned, I had left on' a three-day pass for Charlotte. We had not got together for two or three weeks, so I went over to his battery to look him up. The battery street was almost empty; the mess-hall door was locked. The mess sergeant was nowhere no-where to. bei seen. Finally I found a soldier who had seen Sergeant Sher in his room, so I looked for him there. The sergeant lay on his lazy back on a stilted bunk in his cadre: room, reading Dorothy Parker. The windows win-dows of the room had been equipped with flimsy green curtains, and partially par-tially deflated holiday balloons fluttered flut-tered against them. On the wall above the bed hung a small oil painting of .a forest with , an icy white mountain in the background. A writing' table had been installed and on a shelf in over his bunk were a. reading lamp, a small radio, and a heat array'of books. I stood there surveying the'pTace , for J;hite. .""hat in. the sweet name of military hardship have you got here?" I asked him. "All this place needs is a couple of Morris chairs and a sign reading, 'What is home without a mother?' " . "Beginning to look nice, ain't it?" he said. "Just a few minor improvements im-provements here and there. Know where I can pick up a small upright piano at a good price?" I looked over the room again and my eye fell on the resplendent forest for-est scene. "Where'd you get this canvas knickknack? It's an original, isn't it?" "It ain't nothing else but," he said. "Painted by a friend of mine up in Columbus. Guy knocks them off like that in about twenty minutes. How do you like it?" Aside from the fact that the waterfall water-fall is a little frothy and the mountain moun-tain looks like something from a mentholatum advertisement, it would do credit to any mess sergeant's room in the whole Replacement Center." "You didn't notice this," he said, lifting himself lazily from the bunk. From the table he took an ordinary-looking ordinary-looking beer can with an extra lid on it "John Bull Beer," he said. "Can't buy it anywhere except in my family's fam-ily's restaurant in Ohio and Pennsylvania." Penn-sylvania." He lifted the top lid, revealing a businesslike cigarette lighter. I took the can, struck the flint and a roaring blaze leaped at me. It burned merrily away. "Not bad, huh? Good advertising scheme." "It should come in handy," I told him, "anytime the furnace goes blah. That little conflagration would heat a whole "barracks in three minutes min-utes flat' He twisted the dial of his radio and a high-pitched feminine . wail bounced off the far wall. "I've been listening to the opera most of the afternoon The Magic Flute." "What happened to the magic skillet?" skil-let?" I asked. "How come you're lying around here instead of bustling about your kitchen tickling the pal- ' "Have yon any last words before I pass KP on you?" the sergeant asked. ates of the. men with your culinary delights, as they say in the Army cooks' manual?" . "No supper tonight," he explained airily. "We're just changing cycles and there ain't nobody here but the noncommissioned officers, like myself. my-self. I told them to go and eat next door. "This is the life, little man." He yawned. "Nothing to do, nothing to worry about Just lie around, read and listen to the opera. Sans souci, as we French say without care." -Sa- . The first sergeant looked over his glasses with a rather unpleasant gleam in his eyes. He glanced significantly sig-nificantly at the top of my head, so I removed my cap. The first sergeant ser-geant adjusted himself in his chair and cleared his throat. "Private Hargrove," he began slowly and deliberately, "the government govern-ment of the United States, to whom no task seems impossible, has tackled tack-led the job of pulling you a little of the way out of your abysmal ignorance. ignor-ance. With complete faitli that heaven heav-en will help them in this job, they have begun a series of lectures about why you are being trained to fight, whom you are being trained to fight and all the other little things you should know." . "Yes, sir," I said hesitantly, running run-ning my finger around the inside of my collar. "You mean the radio lectures on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons." "From four until four-thirty," the first sergeant said. "The entire population pop-ulation has been invited by Upstairs to gather in the mess halls to hear and discuss these lectures. Yesterday Yester-day afternoon you weren't on hand. Have you any last words before I pass KP on to you?" "It's a rather long story, sergeant" ser-geant" I began. "Here we go again," sighed the sergeant "Have a chair and begin breaking my heart It will make you feel better to have that off your chest before you go to the kitchen." "Sergeant," I asked him, "were you ever editor of a high-school newspaper?" "Is this long story about me or you?" the sergeant asked. "Please continue with your story." "Well, sir," I continued, "only a high-school editor could know the pain that is in my heart Only he could sympathize with me. I have gone back to my old job I had years ago. I am again a true high-school editor. I am editor of the Replacement Replace-ment Center section of the Fort Bragg Post" "Meeting such a dignitary is one of the greatest occasions of my life," the first sergeant said dryly. (TO BE CONTINUED) |