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Show PRIVATE PURKEY IN LOVE AND WAR (Harriet Joins Up With the WAACS) Dear Oscar Don't look now, but I'm in the WAAC. If you're in an army why not me? I got to thinking of you doing do-ing your bit as a soldier and I thought I would feel better about it if I was following your example. Well, anyhow, here I am out in Des Moines and already I appreciate all those complaints you used to make about your feet. Right now the girls have made the army reverse the usual routine and give us a light noon meal and the heavy one at night. At noon we just get salads and drug store quickies but I wasn't there three days before I saw it was all a mistake as the work gives me an appetite like a horse. And I don't mean an ordinary horse. Mess Sergeant Harry Decker says tue will all be shouting for big meals at noon in no time and 1 admit he is right. I guess the girls all figured that they must take care of their figures but this was so much wasted worry. This army routine will take care of their shapes. The army has figured it out that a girl soldier needs 2,700 calories a day to a man's 4,000. But it must have reached that conclusion after watching you eat. It will take 4,000 a day to keep me at normal weight. For years I have been nipping at lettuce let-tuce leaves to keep my weight down but in the WAAC I can see my worries wor-ries are over. They can pass me mashed potatoes from now on. A man is boss of us. He is Colonel Faith, which is a pretty name for a colonel and he will have to live up to it if he is to get any results from this army. He is reputed to be a strict disciplinarian but the news should never have leaked out. You know how a woman reacts when she hears that any man who is to tell her what to do is a disciplinarian. disciplinari-an. He has two strikes on him from the start. Quite a few army men are out here in general charge. They try to be stern but they look pretty uncomfortable. un-comfortable. I can tell they would rather be any place but here. Susie Graham says they must have been detailed here as punishment for some army crime. The first big laugh came when army men showed us how to make beds and insisted that we make them their way and no back talk. They made them pretty good at that but we made 'em all over again as soon as they finished. We have steel lockers at the foot of our beds and you are my hang-up boy, of course, dear Oscar. One of the girls asked -me if it was a snapshot snap-shot of Abbott or Costello. It was just because the picture was taken in too bright a light. Well, dear, I hope all is well with you. How I wish we were in the same army! Your Yankee Doodle girl never stops thinking of her Yankee Yan-kee Doodle boy. I love you. Harriet. P. S. Send me a mousetrap. I just heard some funny noises. VOICE FROM THE END OF THE LINE Obstructors of progress, Whose act is a crime, Are those who pick change up One coin at a time, Pier. "Banana Farms to Grow Rubber." Rub-ber." Headline. Okay, as long as the rubber farms don't grow bananas. TO THE LADIES ("The- WPB has restricted the purchase pur-chase of nail polish, mascara, perfumery, perfum-ery, rouge, powder, lipstick and facial creams." News item.) Lips that look a little human. Cheeks that are authentic, too, Help some Yankee bomber's crewmen crew-men Blast a Jap out of the blue. Noses that are sometimes shiny-Faces shiny-Faces that are real McCoy Aid in trimming Moe and Heinie And that Hirohito boy. Hands that are as God intended-Nails intended-Nails as nature made all ten Help to keep explosives blended As a help to fighting men. Gals with all mascara missing, And with faces as designed, Move a foe to angry hissing As his legions fall behind. Just a little touch of powder, Not so many facial creams, Tend to make a hopeless chowdei Of the Axis hopes and dreams. "A man isn't really a good poli tician until he learns to have hi! picture taken without looking direct ly into the lens," says Merrill Chil-cote. Chil-cote. "Shortage of Meat in East." Headline. Anybody who has asked for a hamburger in a lunch-wagon lately could have told you so. "Nobody," says Elmer Twitchell, "is too far in the rear to yell for a second front right away." |