OCR Text |
Show THE RICH COUNTY REAPER, RANDOLPH. UTAH m s See Here, Private Hargrove! Morion Hargrove Gems of Thought I fey THE STORY SO FAR: Private Marion Hargrove, former newspaper employee of a North Carolina paper, has been In- -. ducted into the army and Is receiving his basic training at Fort Bragg. Ho bas become well acquainted with many phases of army life but because of his classification as a cook and his KP assignments ho knows more about the Company kitchen than most rookies. ' He has acquired a good understanding j ; ' i too-ofte- n ' of goldbricklng," shooting the breeze soldier and all the other activities. As we pick np the story he is discussing some of the Interesting traits of his close friend. Private Sher. It Is with Sher that Hargrovo has shared many of his adventures. extra-curricul- ar I CHAPTER X there, you grow closer through hardship and privation than you can possibly grow to any other group. After you get out into a line organization a real tactical unit, such as these boys are entering any hardship or misery is just a part of the routine. The sufferers are men rather than Hart retrieved the Again Private ' pillow and again he lay down. Why, he asked, must you behave infant? Cant liVo a you act like a normal adult? Sure I can, Private Sager replied. Kindly step outside with me and put up your fists. Private Hart gave vent to a quiet Please do and gentlemanly oath. to shut honor me the your mouth, I should like to read he requests. without the clamor of your big yap roaring in my ears. If you want peace and quiet on these nights, the best solution is to go to the second barracks down the line. Theres nobody down there except members of the band, who are always rehearsing at this time of night. two-year-o- ld boys. But in this first training cycle, this rookie stage, you havent been hardened. You and the new soldiers about you are sensitive, delicate boys, newly yanked from home or g school, accustomed to an and usually painless life. You share each others illness, fatigue, despair. When Happy Menza grows homesick for Buffalo and McGlauflin starts a wistful reminiscing about the lakes and forests of Minnesota, you are homesick for them rather than for yourself. You are companions tested in misery. Slang runs wild in the Army. Its Friday night was probably the last like a disease or the liquor habit. crowd evening the boys of my old would be together. At least, it was Among the boys who sit around on the last evening they were sure of being together. The following day they were to go home for a weeks furlough. On their return, next Monday, they will be assigned to their permanent stations to enter the field as soldiers. So they arranged to hold a party Friday night on the river beyond Fayetteville. When we rode to the river in our chartered bus, we rang the welkin with the old songs the faintly fragrant songs you pick up through the years and the Caisson Song and Old King Cole that you learn in the Army. They were boisterous, those songs, but a melancholy strain easy-goin- stay-at-ho- fifty-eig- There was one Sunday evening when Sher started a letter to his family and found, after a couple of paragraphs, that there was nothing for him to write about. Here, JunWrite a letter for ior, he said. your old daddy. Give them the old Hargrovian schmaltz. Since Junior was in a devilish mood, he sat down and wrote a long and inspired letter to the Shers of Columbus, Ohio telling them how their little Maurice was falling behind in his class by goldbricking and hanging out late at the Service Club, entreating them to return him to his true career, the Army. I finished by saying, You see whos writing the letters; you should know where to send the cookies. Forget that bum Maury. Several days later after I had swapped in skillet for a typewriter and had moved to Headquarters Battery I came by Battery A to see if I had any mail from my nonwriting ran under all of them. friends in Charlotte. There werent At the party we ate barbecue and any letters, but there was a package we drank beer and we recalled the which looked about the size of a best anecdotes of the training cycle. steamer trunk. There were enough We sang and we shouted. Two or cookies inside to feed a small regi- three of the boys dipped a little too ment for three days. deep into the keg and became slightAnd although the The card inside read: Dear Har- ly sentimental. grove We think your idea about the food and the beer were the best, the cookies is superb. Give Maury one songs were the songs we loved and or two; hes a good boy when he the anecdotes were the cream of the wants to be. Why dont you come up season, it was empty joy. It had a j to Columbus on your furlough? dull undercurrtent of sorrow. It seemed that this beautiful It was the sort of feeling that you friendship with all its fragrant know in the last hour before the memories, its happy hours and hell- New Years bells, the feeling that raising, its beautiful cigarettes, reaches its fullest when Auld Lang cookies, and Samaritan relatives Syne is heard. was destined to end with the closSince we left our homes last July ing of the basic training cycle here. weve learned a lot. Drills and rifles, pup tents and gas masks, all The old gang, which has lived and of that. This, though the scattering of our worked and played together for over first fraternity is another thing we three months and has grown into a close and sympathetic brotherhood, have learned, now and for the first is dissolving now. The training cy- time. It is our first lesson in a new cle is being finished and already the kind of homesickness, bred only in the Army. old ties are loosing. -B- aThe student cooks whom I grew I said to myPrivate Hargrove, to know and feel a fondness for have been self, you doing quite fornot so those months are during gallivanting lately. There tunate as some of the other soldiers. too much too many movies, too The Charlotte boys who were in- have been too many hours bull sessions, many ducted with me and who went spent at the Service Club and too much time spent flirting with that cute little waitress at the delicatessen in Fayetteville. Tonight, Private Hargrove, you will take this interesting and improving book, read it until Lights Out and go to bed promptly at nine oclock. There was a little back talk, a little argument, a little entreaty. However, the forces of Truth and Progress prevailed. Immediately after supper I adjourned to the squadroom, arranged myself comfortably on my bunk and dug into the interesting book. Peace and quiet held sway about me. Private Wesley Sager, late of Amsterdam, New York, grew weary of the quiet. Yawning widely, he rolled over in bed and with a sudden swoop yanked the pillow from bethe head of Private Melvin neath with that cute little waitress at the Hart. Yippee, screamed Private in delicatessen Fayetteville. Sager, tossing the pillow across the through their antitank training to- squadroom to a willing accomplice. Yippee, screamed the willing ac- gether will go together to Fort Knox and will continue to be with complice, tossing the pillow back to each other for at least a while long- Private Sager. Private Hart rose and retrieved er. On the other hand, these student cooks of Battery A will not go his pillow with dignity and formaliout together. No Fort is going to be ty. He placed it on his bunk, sent a whole battery of cooks. One smoothed it and laid his head upon cook will be needed here, another it. Three privates sighed in resignathere, and the old third platoon will tion. The incorrigibles were at it be scattered from hell to breakfast. again. Private Sager lay quiet for a An old thirty-yea- r man, with five or six hash marks on his sleeve, while. Then he broke into a loud, will tell you that no matter how regular, but unconvincing snore. The long you stay in the Army, youll three sighing privates did not renever find a battery that quite stacks turn to their occupations, but lay hi up to the first battery in which you philosophic expectation. Once the served, no group of buddies quite boys in that corner got started, like the old gang you knew first. nothing but physical exhaustion Theres a reason for it. In your could stop them. first organization, you learn for the Private Sager turned as if tossing first time all the regulations and the in his sleep. Private Hart noted customs and the traditions of the the move and held his book ready Army. When you first face them, to strike if a hand came toward theyre tough or theyre uninterest- his pillow. Private Sager turned ing, and when you finally get to un- again, facing away from Private derstand and agree with them, Hart, and Private Hart relaxed his theyre identified in your memory vigil. When he did, the hand shot with the battery where you learned out once more and file pillow sailed them. across the room and into waiting With the men who serve with you arms. t ht A new and gullible man is sent for the cannon report, or the rubber flag which is used on rainy days.' the back steps after Lights Out and bat the breeze far into the night, no simple and understandable English word is used where a weird and outlandish concoction can be substituted. Water is GI lemonade. Salt is sand or Lots wife; pepper is specks; sugar is sweetening compound. Milk is cat beer; butter, dogfat. Ketchup is blood. In the untiring imagination of the soldier, green peas become China berries; hominy grits are glamorized into Georgia ice cream; rice is swamp seed. Potatoes become Irish grapes; prunes change to strawberries; hot cakes become blankets. Bread is punk and creamed beef on toast is punk and salve. Meat loaf and(hash are kennel rations. It is strictly against the code of the Army to say a complimentary word about the food or the cook, no matter how good the food is or how hard the cook labors to make it so. Oscar of the Waldorf in the Army, would still be either a or a Back at the News, the boys in the composing room and the mailing department used to send greenhorns searching all over the building for erasing ink, striped or dotted ink, paper stretchers, and other non existent items. Here, a new and gullible man is sent for the cannon report, or for the biscuit gun, the flagpole key, or the rubber flag which is used on rainy days. Here are some of the most popular. figures of speech: Army Bible the Articles of War; regulations. Barrage a party, especially where the Demon Rum rears its ugly head. Blanket drill sleep. ' Butchershop a dispensary or hospital. By the numbers like clockwork; with precision and efficiency. Chili bowl regulation haircut. Chest hardware medals. Didie pins the gold bars of a second lieutenant. The eagle money. On payday, the eagle flies. Flying time sleep. Gashouse a beer joint. Glue honey. Goof off to make a mistake. the higher Higher brass ranks of officers. Holy Joe the chaplain. the garbage Honey wagon slum-burn- er By VIRGINIA VALE Released by Western Newspaper Union. HAWK, CBS quipmaster Thanks to the Yanks," manages to spend at least two Bob nights a week performing for men in the armed services. When a camp calls for a show Hawk sends out a call to his many friends in the entertainment world and immediately a The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being. Thomas Jefferson. The soul of man is audible, not visible. Longfellow. Trust no future, howeer pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act act in the living Present! Heart within, and God oerhead! i t H. W. LONGFELLOW Employment, sir, and hardships, prevent melancholy. Samuel Johnson. It matters not how long you live, but 'how well. Publius Syrus. tJ well-round- ed show of varied acts organizes to help Thanks to the Yanks. Bob, who taught junior high school English when he was 18, has broadcast everything from grand opera to wrestling matches says his toughest assignment was giving a description of a miniature golf tournament. Hes never done better work than hes doing now for the men in the service. hole-by-ho- i I v le - Handle fruits and vegetables gently. Do not bruise. m Rich, active suds and thorough years ago Lucille Ball rinsing are elemental requirewent to Hollywood as a show girl, ments for successful laundering. to appear in Eddie Cantors Roman e Scandals, along with 11 others. A bit of wax rubbed on the botYoull see her, as a show girl, in toms of rockers, will prevent them marking even the glossiest of Just 11 floors. Common table salt is the best cleanser for a milk strainer. Rub both sides of the strainer vigorously with the salt. I When you hear a Marine called a Leatherneck, it has nothing to do with the epidermis of his neck. Years ago the Marine uniform was equipped with a high stiff leather collar. From that time on, Leath--' erneck has been the word for a Marine. The word for his favorite cigarette is Camel the favorite cigarette also of men in the Army, LUCILLE BALL Navy, and Coast Guard. (Based on actual sales records from serv- -j Meet the People; shes climbed ice mens stores.) And though clear to the top of the ladder in the there are Post Office restrictions! meantime. Right now people are on to overseas Armyi packages crowding to see her in Du Barry men, you qan still send Camels Was a Lady. Shes the only one of to soldiers in the U. S., and to men the original twelve whos still in in the Navy, Marines, and Coast pictures. Guard wherever they are. Adv. Those American Youth , : , iV I Hostels that have become so popular get their innings in Song of the Open Road, for which Sammy Kaye and his orchestra have been signed. Redheaded Peggy ONeill makes her debut in the starring role. Leatrice Joy Gilbert has been under contract to Metro for some time, but its only now that shes going to get her chance a role in Kismet. She worked in summer stock last season, and if theres anything in heredity this daughter of Leatrice Joy and the late Jack Gilbert certainly ought to go far as an actress. Her father was one of Metros big stars for years. 0. emtimd.dneps i HELP FHEVEUT MANY COLDS from developing Put a few drops of i each nostril at the very first snif ol or sneeze. Its quick action aids 4' Natures defenses against colds. Follow VlCLlS t va-tqo-g- oi belly-robbe- r. , . truck. Jubilee reveille, which is too often pronounced revelee. y Mother Machree a Some clever lad at MGM is composing a new song for Lena Horne, who will wow audiences everywhere, the studio predicts, in I Dood It, the Red Skelton-EIeanPowell picture. The song is called, were told, Moonlight Sinatra. Sea Barnacle The barnacle is a sea animal, a bit smaller than a mans thumb. or One photograph of Renee Terry of CBSs Bright Horizons, inspired 341 proposals of marriage immediately after it appeared in a New York newspaper. It showed her in her Nurses Aide uniform, feeding a baby in the childrens ward of a hospital. m Frank Sinatra seems to like Hollywood and picture-makinhes going back in November to make Mr. Cinderella for RKO, and they do say that the story of the picture is pretty much the story of the young mans life. g; SNAPPY FACTS I ABOUT RUBBER l l per cent ef the cars on highways continue to waste rubber, for officials report that that number continue to be driven over 35 mph. A year ago 91 per cent of the cars traveled fatter than the rubber conservation limit. Fifty-thr- z, that trip that took him to Africa, Sicily and Iceland 1 sure whether hed be able to the air September 21 said Bing Crosby would for him if he couldnt. He ty tired, but forgot that talked about his trip. The thing that ever happened said he. And Believe me, grams we do from the S going to mean more than e now that we know what ti: to the men. ee rubber-bearin- f y Rut-st- an g dandelion, was planted and grown In 100 different test localities In the U. S. last year. The B. F. Goodrich Company is aiding in this experiment. If your tires shew undue wear at the center ef the tread, it Is a signal that you are overinflating. This is as much a rubber waster as underinflation. sob-stor- alibi. Pocket lettuce paper money. checks Pontoon canteen checks, good for credit at the post exchange. Ride the sickbook to k the easy way by pretend; to be ill. ing ' Shoulder hardware the shoulder insignia of a commissioned officer. gold-bric- (TO BE CONTINUED) - V tui Ufi the Edgar Bergen-Chshows because of la This year Bergen will view of the show, just the air, plus added enti Songstress Dale Evans for service men on fu Los Angeles area. So day night therell be diers, sailors and ma: ai M fnyt j |