Newspapers / The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, … / Nov. 4, 1943, edition 1 / Page 9
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Private Hargrove! [jjßJ 1>« Morion Hararove wt » TBS STORY SO FA*: Edward Thomas ■brloa Lawton Hargrove, featare edi tor of the Charted* (N. C.) News. haa started his story of a private's lite la Ike army by itrtni prospective doufh boys soma solid advlca oa what coarse to parsos the days aad nights bclora Induction. H* advises them to "paint tha town red." Oa letting Into the army ha tells them "to keep your rfind open" as the "Srst three weeks are the hard est." Uks a Job la clvU Ufa, says Har arove, It's the Brit Impression that cosals. Ha.has received his own Induc tion notice and with a number of other seoa-to-be-setdlers has. completed the Srst day at camp. He Is stationed at Fert Bract, N. Carolina. CHAPTER n A soldier stuck his head through the door of our new dormitory and .gave a sharp whistle. "Nine o'clock I" he yelled. "Lights out and no more noise! Go to sleep!" "It has been, withal, a very busy day," 1 said to Piel, who was bur ied with his hay fever in the next bunk. "It sutw withal has," he said. "What a day! What a place! What a life! With my eyes wide open I'm dreaming!" "It's been a little hellish out to day," I agreed, "although it could have been worse. We actually saw a corporal and he didn't cuss us. We have eaten Army food twice, and, except for the haphazard way the pineapple was thrown toward the peas, it wasn't horrifying." "I am broken and bleeding," moaned Piel. "Classification tests, typing tests, medical examinations. The old sergeant, his faee beam ing sweetly, pnrred, "Ton are now members of the Army of the United States. Now, damn it, shut np." I think I walked eighteen miles through those medical examina tions. It's a good thing this is July. I would have frozen in my treks with all that walking and exposure. Nothing I had on, except a thin little iodine number on my chest." "Funny thing about the medical examination," • voice broke in from down the line. "Before you get it, you're afraid you'll pass. When you go through the examinations, you're afraid you won't." "I noticed that," I said. "I don't have any special hankering for a soldier's life, but I thought when I was going through the hoops this morning that this would be a helluva time for them to back out." "The little fellow who slept down at the end got sent back," said a loud whisper from across the room. "One of his legs was shorter than the other. He's a lucky dog." "I'll bet he doesn't think so," said Piel. "At this stage of the game, I'm glad it was him instead of me." A dark form showed itself in the doarway. "I told you guys to shad dap and go to sleep. Do it!" A respectful silence filled the room for three minutes. "Look at me," said Piel. "Won't the folks in Atlanta be proud when they get my letter! Me, Melvin Piel, I'm a perfect physical specimen." Bitf Jim Hart, the football star whom I had known in high school, spoke up. "Don't go Hollywood about it, Piel. Just remember, Har grove's a perfect specimen too. And just two weeks ago, when we were waiting out in front of the armory for the draft board examiners to get there, he had one foot in the grave." "And the other foot?" "That's the one he keeps in his mouth." "Yessir," said Piel, "the Army makes men." So we quietly went to sleep. This morning we took the Oath. One of the boys was telling me later that when his brother was inducted in Alabama, there was a tough old sergeant who was having an awful time keeping the men quiet. "Gen tlemen," he would beseech them, "Quiet, please!" They were quiet during the administration of the Oath, after which they burst forth again. The old sergeant, his face beam ing sweetly, purred: "You are now members of the Army of the United States. Now, damn it, SHUT UP." This morning—our first morning in the Recruit Reception Center began when we finished breakfast and started cleaning up our squad room. A gray-haired, fatherly old private, who swore that he bad been demoted from master sergeant four times, lined us up in front of the barracks and took us to the dis pensary. If iKe 11M in front of the SMSS hall THE DANBURY REPORTER, DANBURY. N. C„ THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1943 dwindled u rapidly as the one at the dispensary, life .would have love liness to sell above its private con sumption stock. First you're fifteen feet from the door, then (whiff) you're inside. Then you're stand ing between two orderlies and the show is on. The one on my left scratched my arm and applied the smallpox virus. The only thing that kept me from keeling over was the hypodermic needle loaded with typhoid germs, which propped up my right arm. From the dispensary we went to a huge warehouse of a building by the railroad tracks. The place looked liKe Goldenberg's Basement on a busy day. A score of fitters measured necks, waists, inseams, heads, and feet. My shoe size, the clerk yelled down the line, was ten and a half. "I beg your pardon," I prompted, "I wear a size nine." "Forgive me," he said, a trifle weary, "the expression is 'I wore a size nine.' These shoes are to walk in, not to make you look like Cin derella. You say size nine; your foot says ten and a half." We filed down a long counter, picking up our allotted khaki and denims, barrack bags and raincoats, mess kits and tent halves. Then we were led into a large room, where we laid aside the vestments of civil life and donned our new garments. While I stood there, wondering what I was supposed to do next, an attendant caught me from the rear and strapped to ray shoulders what felt like the Old Man of the Mountain after forty days. "Straighten up, soldier," the at tendant said, "and git off the floor. That's nothing but a full field pack, such as you will tote many miles before you leave this man's army. Now I want you to walk over to that ramp and over it That's just to see if your shoes are comfortable." "With these Oregon boots and this burden of misery," I told him firm ly, "I couldn't even walk over to the thing. As for climbing over it, not even an alpenstock, a burro train, and two St. Bernard dogs complete with brandy could get me over it." There was something in his quiet, steady answering glance that re assured me. I went over the ramp in short orde»- On the double, 1 think the Army "alls it. From there we went to the thea ter, where we were given intelli gence tests, and to the classifica tion office, where we were inter viewed by patient and considerate corporals. "And what did you do in civil life?" my corporal asked me. "I was feature editor of the Char lotte News." "And just what sort of work did you do, Private Hargrove? Just give me a brief idea." Seven minutes later, I had fin ished answering that question. "Let's just put down here, 'Edi torial worker.' " He sighed compas sionately. "And what did you do before all that?" I told him. I brought in the pub licity work, the soda-jerking, the theater ushering, and the printer's deviling. "Private Hargrove," he said, "the army is just what you have needed to ease the burdens of your exist ence. Look no farther, Private Har grove, you have found a home." -fc- Thls was a lovely morning. We began at daybreak and devoted all the time until noon to enjoying the beauties of nature. We had a drill sergeant to point them out to us. We marched a full twenty miles without leaving the drill field. Lunch, needless to say, was deli cious. We fell into bed, after lunch, de termined to spend the afternoon in dreamland. Two minutes later, that infernal whistle blew. Melvin Piel, guardhouse lawyer for Company A, explained it all on the way down stairs. We were going to be as signed to our permanent stations. I fell in and a corporal led us off down the street. I could feel the California palm trees fanning my face. We stopped at Barracks 17 and the corporal led us inside. "Do we go to California, cor poral?" I asked. "Naah," he said. "Where do we go?" I asked him, • little disappointed. "To the garbage rack," he said. "Double quick." He thumbed John ny Lisk and me to the back of the barracks. At the garbage rack we found three extremely fragrant garbage cans. Outside, we found more. Lisk and I, citizen-soldiers, stared at them. The overcheerful private to whom we were assigned told us, "When you finish cleaning those, I want to be able to see my face in them!" "There's no accounting for tastes," Lisk whispered. Neverthe less, we cleaned them and polished them and left them spick and span. "Now take 'em outside and paint em," said the private. "White. Git the black paint and paint 'HQCO HRC' on both sides of all of them I" "This Is summer," I suggested. "Wouldn't something pastel look better?" The sun was affecting the private. "I think you're right," he said. So we painted them cream and lettered them in brilliant orange. All afternoon, in a blistering sun, we painted garbage cans. The other Charlotte boys waved to us as they passed on their way to the Ball park. Happy voices floated to us from the post exchange. The straw-boss private woke up, yawned and went away, telling us what would happen if we did like wise. He returned soon in a truck. He motioned peremptorily to us and we loaded the cans into the truck. Away we went to headquarers com pany—and painted more garbage cans. It was definitely suppertime by now. "Now can we go home, Private Dooley, sir?" asked Lisk. I looked at Lisk every time the blindness left me, and I could see the boy was tired. The private sighed, wearily. "Git in the truck," he said. Away we went back to our street. W« stopped in front of our barracks and Pri vate Dooley dismounted. "The truck driver," he said, "would ap preciate it if you boys would go and help him wash the truck." We sat in the back or the truck and watched the mess hall fade away behind us. Two, three, four miles we left it behind us. We had to wait ten minutes before we could get the wash-pit. It took us fifteen minutes to wash the truck. By the time we got back to the mess hall, we were too tired to eat. But we a^e. -fc- It was through no fault of mine that I was a kitchen policeman on my sixth day. The whole barracks got the grind. And it was duty, not punishment. It was all very simple, this KP business. All you have to do is to get up an hour earlier, serve the food, and keep the mess hall clean. After we served breakfast, I found a very easy job in the dining hall, where life is much pinker than it is in the kitchen. A quartet was formed and we were singing "Home on the Range." A corporal passed by just as I hit a sour note. He put the broom into my left hand, the mop into my right . . . There was a citizen-soldier from Kannapolis to help me clean the cooks' barracks. For a time it was awful. We tried to concentrate on the floor while a news broadcaster almost tore up the radio trying to decide whether we were to be in the Army ten years or twenty. We finished the job in an extreme ly short time to impress the cor* poral. This, we found later, is a serious tactical blunder and a dis credit to the ethics of gold-brick ing. The sooner you finish a job the sooner you start in on the next. The corporal liked our work, un fortunately. Kannapolis was allowed to sort garbage and I was promoted to the pot-and-pan polishing section, I was Themos Kokenes' assistant. He washed and I dried. Later we formed a goldbricking entente. We both washed and made Conrad Wil son dry. Pollyanna the glad girl would have found something silver-lined about the hot sink. So did I. "At least," I told Kokenes, "this will give me back a chance to recover from that mop." When I said "mop," the mess ser geant handed me one. He wanted to be able to see his face in the kitchen floor. After lunch he want ed the back porch polished. We left the Reception Center mess hall • better place to eat in, at "When yon finish cleaning those cans, I want to be able to see my faee in them." any rate. But KP is like a woman's work—never really done. Conrad Wilson marked one caldron and at the end of the day we found that we had washed it twenty-two times. Jack Mulligan helped me up the last ten steps to the squadroom. I finally got to the side of my bunk. "Gentlemen," I said to the group which gathered around to scoop me off the floor, "I don't ever want to» see another kitchen!" The next morning we were clas sified and assigned to the Field Ar tillery Replacement Center. Gene Shumate and I were classified as cooks. I am a semi-skilled cook, they say, although the only egg 1 ever tried to fry was later used as a tire patch. The other cooks in clude postal clerks, tractor sales men, railroad engineers, riveters, bricklayers, and one blacksmith. But we'll learn. Already I've learned to meke beds, sweep, mop, wash windows and sew a fine seam When Congress lets me go home, will I make some woman a good wife' (TO BB COHTIKUBO) IMPROVED UNIFORM INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY I CHOOL Lesson By HAROLD L. LUNDQUIST. D. D. Of The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. Released by Western Newspaper Union. Lesson for November 7 Lesson subjects and Scripture texts se lected and copyrighted by International Council of Religious Education; used by permission. THE SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE LESSON TEXT—Exodus 20:13; Matthew 8:21-26, 38-45. GOLDEN TEXT—Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.—l John 3:15. Human life is sacred—and there Is a very important reason why that is true. It is not because of any law of man, but finds its foundation in the fact that God created man in His own likeness and image. Be cause that is true, no man has any right to take the life of another for any cause except at the direct com mand of God. Only by the orderly process of law for the protection of society and in accordance with the Word of God may there be any such action by man toward man. Both of these truths are declared in Scripture in God's covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:5, 6), which was made possibly a thousand years before the Ten Commandments were given to Moses. One cannot deny that human life is held rather cheaply in many places today. War helps to create that attitude on the part of nations which makes them count boys and girls, yes, mere babies, as "war ma terial." Btit not only in war is life care lessly destroyed. We decry the "slaughter of innocents" on the highway, unnecessary death in in dustry, yes, even in the home. I. The Prohibition of Murder (Exod. 20:13). The word "kill" in this command ment is one which means a violent and unauthorized taking of life, and is therefore more properly translat ed "murder." Not all killing is murder. A man may kill another entirely accidental ly, or he may be the duly consti tuted legal officer carrying out the law of the land in taking the life of one who has forfeited his right to live because he has slain another. There is also the right of self defense, be it individual or collec tive as in war. But these are the only exceptions; let us not attempt to justify any other. Murder is more prevalent than most of us suppose. Some years ago we were told that there was a murder every forty minutes in our land. With the general increase of crime, and of drunkenness (which so often incites murder), the cur rent figures would probably show an increase. Do not forget the deaths, the de struction of life, by avoidable auto mobile accidents. Some of these were really murder because the one responsible drove with defective brakes, dangerous tires, or while he was intoxicated. Add to these the deaths in industry caused by failure to provide proper safeguards or healthy working conditions, and by the exploitation of child labor, and we say that we should cry aloud, "Thou shalt do no murder." n. The Provocation to Murder (Matt. 5:21,22). Murder finds its provoking cause in the heart of man. Our Lord was concerned about correcting the de sires rather than to apprehend the offender after the act had been com mitted. It is the better way, and the more effective one. In this matter of murder, Jesus cut right through the outward as pects of the matter and pointed out that an angry hatred in the heart is the root of all murder. If we hate, we have murder in our hearts. Cir cumstances may hinder its fulfill ment, but the danger is always there until we remove the cause. Just being angry—calling our brother "raca" (the modern equiv alent of which is "nobody there"), and calling him "thou fool," which classifies him as "morally worth less"—these are the three dread ful downward steps to murder. And they begin in anger. May God help those of us who have strong feelings that we may not yield them to the devil in such anger against our brother! 111. The Prevention of Murder (Matt. 5:23-26, 38-45). Prevention with God means more than putting up a barrier to keep us from killing. He deals with the heart, and thus puts the whole life right. It is not even a question of how we may feel against our bi oth er. If he has aught against us we are to do all we can to win him. He may be unreasonable, grasping, and unfair. However, the spirit thpt will win him is not that of retaliation or sullen submission to the inevitable, but rather a free and willing going even beyond what is required. It is clear from other scriptures that our Lord does not mean that wicked and unscrupulous men are to be permitted to defraud and destroy God's people. At the same time, we must be careful not to explain away the heart of our Lord's inter pretation of this great command ment. We who believe in Christ are to be in deed as well as word the sons of our heavenly Father (v. 45), lov ing not only those who are kind to us, but even our enemies. WxM ON THfi EH pOME FRONTS IF YOU want to make a gift that * really is different, try a door pocket planned for special needs. Notice the laundry bag flat against the wall on a hanger with a pocket for handkerchiefs and fine things. Also the shelf covers of bright oil £ £l'o-'' 'ig SHELFCOVER/ll WHIST BROOM [ MEUM HAT BRUSH ANTT? SHCE CLOTH A JFLZUFL' , A SMALL BO* 4 r.T.5, 63" rJTv PLEAT AT BOT-Jl ■S.LtIM Pf v TOMOF POCKETS in 'JI t) ft I * UMBRELLA ,'[[ STOCKINGS r LK 1' RUBBERS lliiligT'j Q—SJ BONE RINGS |Tol^>i,S SEWN TO EDGE fVCte FASTEN OVER w' HOOKS IN DO HI llMflMllli cloth with prepared edging as a finish. The dimensions in the sketch will give you ideas for re modeling your own closet. Allow ance is made for long dresses and deep hat boxes, giving space for at least one extra storage shelf above. • • • NOTE: There Is no further need to be without enough closet space. Mrs. Spears has prepared a sheet 17 by 22 Inches containing step-by-stcp Illustrations and directions for making the most unique and efficient closet you ever saw. There are a dozen or more places in almost every house where this type of closet may De built. In any size and depth from twelve Inches or more. Send for Pattern No 256 to: MRS. RUTH WYETH SPKARS Bedford Hills New York Drawer 10 Enclose IS cents for Pattern No. 256. Name Address HIJOUSEHOID SrllNTSffi For a different flavor, substitute brown for white sugar in bread pudding. • • • Save all old leather from high top shoes for mending leather gloves, mittens, overshoes. It is soft and pliable. • • • Those extra unused paper doilies Will stay clean and wrinkle-proof if rolled up and placed inside a mailing tube. Tie paper or cloth over each end. • • • Do not allow cover crops in the vegetable garden to attain too much top growth before digging under, as then decomposition is often very slow. • • • Dates filled with cheese, nuts or peanut butter make a good sweet to top off lunch. Serve them with crackers. • • • An old pair of curling irons makes an excellent gripper when dyeing garments. They hold tight, and you can swish the material about in the dye bath without its slipping off as sometimes happens when a stick is used. • * • Keep a dishpan of warm soapy Water handy when cooking and wash each pan as you empty it. You will cut actual dishwashing time in half as the utensils are much easier to wash if done im mediately before foods have had an opportunity to dry on them. K NEW EDITION fl I mw s FLHSaWWNN'S'eREW ■ WMm |B®?jHb WH|fiT^y§J H W 1 |v only **"? KeisciZ ***«• . . H J like muffins? love tempting Muffins"! AlWßran "Honey Muffins shortening 'A cup honey \ t( . as poon baking 1 3fc powder V» cup witter- lca spoon salt IXII »/ 4 teaspoon soda Blond 0^ in l f n tn d ereSmy: Add «W nnil Wit " lfl gn;i u until mill' and All-Bra .. u[) Slft most of ron'stiire w nJd , dry i"K r, ; ,l ,'" ,t9 . l n?rinK only until first mixWre. rtirr'"* jj)uf . flour diMP!^''«- 1 '» 1 J b kB in a fin l-ans -A full anu t medium-hot oven W«° A- ' 25 minutes. „ Crisp! Delicious! Nutritious! Re member, KEILOCG'S ALL-BR.'.N is a riclj natural storehouse of "protective" ele ments—protein, the B vitamins, phos phorus, calcium, iron. 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The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, N.C.)
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Nov. 4, 1943, edition 1
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