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Show Fgn ' See Here, E?l ytij Private Hargrove! fWm s7 ty Marion Hargrove fiEcucE fef 4 u 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 spent some time In training at Fort Bragg. In his story he has given prospective inductees considerable advice. Immediately Immedi-ately before induction be advocates a period of "painting the town red." Once in, the new soldier should "keep an open mind" about what he learns because "the first three weeks are hardest." Private Hargrove has been misshig the point of some of his essential training and as a result he has had considerable KP duty. Some of his friends have been advanced to Corporal and his Sergeant has asked why he was not promoted. CHAPTER V "Me?" The idea had never occurred oc-curred to me. "I'm just not the ex-1 ex-1 ecutive type, I suppose. Back at the News, the boss told me that if I stayed there sixty years, I'd never get promoted. I'm just not the type that gets promoted." "Let's look at the record," said the sergeant. He pulled his little black notebook from his pocket. "On the drill field Saturday morning, morn-ing, you pulled 'forty-eight boners out of fifty marching commands. Everything you did was backwards. "Friday morning you fell out for reveille without your leggins. Saturday Satur-day you had your leggins but no field hat. Monday morning neither of your shoes was tied and none of your shirt buttons were buttoned. Tuesday morning it was without leggins leg-gins again." "I'm never really awake," I protested, pro-tested, "until ten o'clock." "You ain't awake then," he scoffed. "Every Monday morning without fail I have to wake you up at least, a dozen times. I have to look behind all the posts around here to see which one you're sleeping against. You snore and disturb your classes, too!" He was exaggerating there, I told him, I don't snore. And I'm sleepy only on Monday morning. The rest of the time I'm alert and energetic. "You're too energetic sometimes!" some-times!" he roared. "Just this morning, morn-ing, when the lieutenant was coaching coach-ing the platoon in rifle sighting and you were on fatigue duty as usual! That was a pretty one! You ran up and down the battery street twenty-two twenty-two times in thirty minutes and you saluted the lieutenant every time If the cook is not feeling cheerful, he can pick on at least one student cook and at least five kaypees. On the battlefield, he is in the safest position behind the lines, since the food is endowed with more sentimental senti-mental value than the top sergeant. The jokes about Army cooks being shot at from both sides are not based upon fact. However, friend cook has to greet the morn before the morn gets there. On the days when he works, he has to get up between 3:00 and 3:30 o'clock in order to prepare a substantial sub-stantial breakfast for about two hundred hun-dred healthy, growing boys whose appetites are exceeded only by the size of their mouths and the power of their lungs. Yesterday we started to school, with cookbooks and manuals and loose-leaf notebooks for our homework. home-work. The only way in which it differed from public schools was that the naughty boys didn't have to go and . sit with the girls. Also, the dunce seat, instead of being in the corner of the classroom, was said to be behind a large sack of potatoes in the battery kitchen. The only hope for an easy time in class was gone in this school. There's no percentage in bringing a shiny red apple to a teacher who has the key to at least one well-stocked well-stocked pantry. Tomorrow, after lunch, each of us will be taken to one of the sixty-four Replacement Center kitchens. There we will present ourselves to the mess sergeant, who will sigh wearily weari-ly at the sight of us and show us where to change our uniforms. Then we will proceed to prove, in our respective re-spective kitchens, the old saw about too many cooks. We will be railed at by the mess sergeant and the first cook and, if we want to and know how to, we can rail at the kaypees in turn. When the boys in line make sneering sneer-ing remarks about having spinach again already, we can jaw back at them. It will be wonderful to be able to jaw at someone again. Life has loveliness to sell. -Sain the kitchen, they tell us, all the cleaning-up work is to be done by the kaypees, so that the cook may be doing more important things. This, unfortunately, doesn't apply to the daily task of cleaning the stoves thoroughly. The stoves, it says here in the books, are the cook's tools and he must do his own grinding. It isn't worth the time to wait for the stoves to get comfortably cool before you begin the twilight beauti-fication beauti-fication of these overgrown infernos. In order to avoid the rush at the theater, and to let the kaypees off early, start work now. The stoves must be cleaned inside in-side and out thoroughly. First, shake down the fire. All the live coals must go into the ashpan under un-der the grate. That much is simple. sim-ple. Then remove the ashpan, red coals and all. It must be dumped into the ash can out on the garbage rack. This entire procedure should be simple, too, it says here. All you have to do is catch the front handle with a heavy glove and catch the little hook in the rear with the far end of your cap lifter. Here we even know you knew. Rake, rake, rake. Time marches on. Still more raking. Like the magic pitcher in the old Greek legend, leg-end, the more you take out the more there is inside. The soot from all three oven jackets will fill one large ashpan, at a double-table-spoonful the rake. By the time you have finished and look about you, the kaypees have finished their work and are sitting around gaping at you as if you were a steam shovel. A very, very black steam shovel. Isn't gas a wonderful fuel? Private Sher and I were sitting out on the back steps to dodge the cleaning work going on inside when we saw the sergeant bearing down on us from the other end of the battery bat-tery street. "It's no use scooting inside, Hargrove," Har-grove," said Sher. "He's already seen us. Look tired, as if you'd already done your part of the work." Private Sher is the goldbricking champion of Battery A and always knows what to do in such an emergency. emer-gency. We both draped expressions of fatigue fa-tigue over our faces and the sergeant skidded to a halt before us. He reached into his hip pocket for the little black book and aimed a finger fin-ger at both of us. "Bums!" he shouted. -"Bums! I worked my ringers to the bone yesterday yes-terday morning getting this platoon to pretty up the barracks for inspection. inspec-tion. Comes inspection and two privates pri-vates have dirty shoes lying sprawled all over the floor under their bunks! Private Hargrove and MISTER Private Sher! Report to Corporal Farmer in fatigue clothes." We reported to Corporal Farmer, who looked at his list of jobs. "As much as you don't deserve it," he said, "you two goldbricks are in line for canteen police." Mr. Private Sher and I walked up the battery street toward the canteen. can-teen. "Is this canteen police business good or bad?" I asked. "Oh, so-so," he said. "You have to clean up the papers and cigarette butts around the post exchange first thing in the morning. Then you come around and check up three or four times during the day." I stopped, aghast. "What do you do between times?" "Just be inconspicious," said Sher. "That's all there is to it. Please pick up that candy wrapper over there. My back aches." We cleaned up the grounds around the post exchange and sat for a while in the shade, watching a battery bat-tery going through calisthenics. With beautiful precision, the soldiers sol-diers swung" their rifles up, down, to the right, to the left. They went through the quarter, half, and full knee bends and the shoulder exercises exer-cises and the rest of the routine. "Those boys seem to be improving, improv-ing, Mr. Sher," I said. "Result of hard work," said Maury. "Personally, I get awfully tired watching this. We'll wear ourselves our-selves out. Let's go over to my kitchen and handshake for a bottle of milk." "No," I protested. "We must go to my kitchen." "To avoid a tiring argument," suggested sug-gested Private Sher, "we will go to both our kitchens. We can't be thrown out of both of them.'-' After successful forays on both kitchens, Private Sher began to yawn with boredom. "My dear Har- "A mess sergeant, according to military legend, is a cook whose brains have been baked out." you passed him! Do you think he ain't got a thing to do but return your salutes all morning?" This was evidently a rhetorical question, so I didn't answer it. "You don't salute an officer every time you see him when you're right there at his side practically all day. You salute him the first time you see him and the last time you're going to see him. "And then when the lieutenant explains that to you," he sighed, "then what do you do! The next tim you see him, you salute him again and then ask him was you supposed to salute him that time!" He put his head in his hands and drummed sadly on the toe of his foot locker. He raised his head after aft-er a time and looked into the notebook note-book again. I knew what was coming next and I edged toward the door. "And then you low-rated the mess sergeant's recipe for creamed beef on toast and told him his chow was the worst in the Army. And - you said you was going to start eating in the next battery. That hurt his feelings so bad that he burned the potatoes for the next three meals!" I promised to apologize to the mess sergeant. The sergeant read out of his notebook for five or six minutes more, enumerating the things I had consistently done wrong. "Now, do you know," he asked wearily, "why you don't get the red stripes when they give them out?" "I suppose I'm just not the executive execu-tive type," I told him. pa A mess sergeant, according to military mil-itary legend, is a cook whose brains have been baked out. This does not apply to the mess sergeant in our battery, whose feelings are easily hurt by cruel remarks and who weeps tears into the mashed potatoes pota-toes when he's picked on. This is simply the old Army definition of a mess sergeant. All of us rising student cooks are eligible to become mess sergeants, Staff Sergeant Adams told us in our first cooking class yesterday morning. Then we can sit out in the cool dining rooms and yell back orders for the cooks to yell at the student cooks to yell at the kaypees. kay-pees. This is not the beautiful goldbricking goldbrick-ing life that it seems, though. The mess sergeant has to make requisitions requisi-tions and keep records on all the rations, he has to make out the menus, see that the food is prepared pre-pared properly and supervise the work of the cooks, the student cooks, and the kaypees. Besides this, he must listen to all the gripes about his food and to the threadbare jokes about cooks who get drunk from lemon and vanilla extract. All this he must do, with his brains baked out. The cook, lucky little rascal that he is, also leads an ideal life. He is allowed to believe that he knows more about cooking then the mess sergeant will ever know, although he is not supposed to tell the mess sergeant that he does. He works one day and sleeps the next two. go! Carry the ashpan well in front of you. Ain't it hot! When you get to the door, simply open it with the toe of your shoe. Like this. Like Doesn't seem to work. Try again. ,Try pushing the right screen so that the left one will swing slightly toward to-ward you. Ready? Slightly push the right screen. Something seems to be wrong here. During this time, you will become increasingly aware that the glove over the ashpan handle is becoming hotter and hotter. Just as you get your toe into the door, the heat penetrates the glove and you decide de-cide very suddenly that perhaps it's best to drop the whole matter. Drop it slowly, carefully, tenderly if you can. Do not drop it upon the wooden floor. Look around, if you think you have time, and locate an overturned boiler on which to set it. Whew, that hand's hot! No boiler? boil-er? Then drop it anyway! You will find that dropping the ashpan, even though you did it gently, gen-tly, has released a small amount of floating ash, all of which will be absorbed into your mouth and nose. Patience, brother. See that the ash-pan ash-pan isn't lying where it will burn anything, such as a perfectly good wooden floor. Pour cold water on the glove, wait for the resulting steam to blow away, prop open the door as you should have done in the first place, and try, try again. This time you will almost reach the garbage rack before the glove again gets hot. Slide, Kelly, slide! You won't get there without dropping drop-ping the whole pan into the clean road, but, at least you tried. Beat the pan against the ash can several times for sound effect. Return Re-turn to the kitchen, where the mess sergeant, who was watching you through the window all the time, will direct you to return and clean it up. When the job is completed, take hope and courage. You have only two more ashpans to empty. Then you may get to work cleaning clean-ing out all the soot which has gathered gath-ered above and below the ovens. In this procedure, a small, solid-surface rake is inserted through a tiny door in front. Using the door as a base of operations, wiggle that pesky little thing around inside the long, wide, low space, pulling out load after load of soot. The work will teach you muscular co-ordination, manual dexterity, the art of contortion, humility and, several dozen new cuss words you didn't i "He's already seen us. Look tired as if you'd already done your part of the work." grove," he said, "we must stimulate our minds. Let us adjourn to my place for a game of checkers." Private Sher's "place" was only one flight of stairs removed from my squadroom, so we adjourned. After two games of checkers, Private Pri-vate Sher waved his arms. "This is folderol," he said. "You are no checker player, Hargrove. You have no idea of tactics. Let us sit by the window and watch our comrades drill. There is something stirring in the sight of fine young men perfectly per-fectly executing a marching oder." While we were sitting there being stirred, another corporal disturbed us. He wanted us to go with him to haul coal. "Much as we would like to help you haul coal, my good man," said Maury, "we are now actively engaged en-gaged in the work of policing up the post exchange. Feel free to call upon us at any other time." The corporal placed his hands on his hips and stared at us. "You're being punished," he asked, "with canteen duty?" "There's no need to be vulgar," said Sher. "If you will excuse us, it is time for us to go agin to look for cigarette butts around the post exchange. Coming Mr. Hargrove?" "Coming, Mr. Sher. And a good day to you, corporal!" (TO BE CONTINUED) |