Newspapers / The Sylva Herald and … / Oct. 6, 1943, edition 1 / Page 8
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See Here, Private Hargrove! by Marion Hargrove CHAPTER VII One of the nicest things about working in the kitchen in Battery C of the 13th Battalion has been the knowledge that its number-one chow hound, * Buster Cha^nlev, would drop around after supper and the conversational fat. It's like a letter from home to listen to But ter's slow and mournful drawl, and his refreshing dry humon is a pick me-up at the end of a long, hot afternoon. Buster came prancing up the chow line, the other evening with a grin that started at the back of his head and enveloped his face from the nose down. "What's eating you, Walter," I asked him, " ? besides that egg sucking grin?" "Leaving here, boy!" he sang. "You won't Be me around for three months. And when, you see me, son, you'll see stripes on my sleeves and a look of prosperity on my clean-cut Tarheel face!" The man behind him wanted to get to the mashed potatoes, - so Buster had to ? move on flown the line, I got the whole story from one of the kaypees while I waited for him to make his evening call. Of the 200-odd men in Battery C, two men had betn selected for three months' training at Fort Sill, Okla homa. At the end of their three months, they will come back as gun* nery instructors, with a non-com missioned officers rating and a spe cialist's extra pay on top of that. Mrs. Walter Charney's little boy Buster was one of the two men selected. I was chopping kindling for breakfast when Buster came around again, and I painted Fort Sill as a nest of pack rabits, gophers, and rattlesnakes and assured him that Battery C was sending him to school to cut down the grocery bills. If we hadn't been insulting each oth6r in a friendly fashion for years, I would have told him that I wasn't particularly astonished and that I was sure he'd make a good instructor and the kind of non-com missioned officer the boys borrow TOoney-frem. Battery C will miss Ole Buster while he's away. The cooks will miss him because he always re members to compliment them when he likes the meat loaf or the cherry cobbler. The mess sergeant will miss him because he livens the kitchen when it comes his turn to do kaypee. The boys will miss him because he's one of the best-liked boys there. 1 One of the sergeants near here with one of the most glorious shin ;ers that ever darkened the human j eye. "Run into a door?" I asked him. j "Gave a guy the wrong answer," he replied simply, "or^rather, the answer he didn't want." I I looked at his face; his teeth i were all there and his jaw was still 'in one piece. I looked at his hands; the knuckles showed the marks of service. ? "I was at a party," he went on, :"when this fellow who lives next door to my folks wants to know 'how's theT morale in the Army?' 'Excellent,' I tell him; 'excellent!' He looks me up and down sort of pitying-like and wants to Know don't I read the magazine stories : about how poor it is. Well, i tell i him, 'I spend all my time with the I boys and I believe what I see more ! ; than what I read.' I "He goes on from there making cracks at the Army and the coun try and the suckers we are for giv ing our time for what's not worth fighting for in the first place. I listen politely for a while, because , even though I'm not in uniform I don't want to look rowdy. I stand ; as much as I can and then I ask ' him to his feet. # It isn't long be fore his three brothers join the fight. It was one of the brothers put his finger ring in my eye." "Brother," I told him, "that ain't a black eye. That's a badge." "I lost the fight," he said. "You won the argument, though," I told him. "I'd like to use the sergeant's name, but he made me promise not to." "I told the Old Man," he said, "that I got the shiner playing base ball." ? ? * ? "How can -J- -fit you inta a coat,"~ moaned Supply Sergeant Israel, i "with you fidgeting around like a trace horse at the post? Stand still, # idem you, stand still!" I "Heavens to Betsy, Thomas," I complained, "you're getting to be the fussiest old maid in the outfit. I'm not sauirming!" "In the first place, my man," he said, "don't call me Thomas or try to get overly familiar with your el ders and betters. In the second [place, don't argue with me. In the | third place, don't fidget in the first place. And in the fourth place, don't agitate me unnecessarily. I'm 'at the end of my patience with you and I ain't feeling in no holiday [spirit anyway." I buttoned the handsome winter blouse and he stepped back to in spect it with the eye of an artist. "Every time my wife gets mad at me, she has her picture taken to send to me. The picture I got to day showed she's going to eat my heart out unmercifully when I can't put off my furlough any longer and I have to go home. And with do mestic difficulties on my hands, I have to fit your winter uniforms." He yanked at my coattail, stra ightened the collar and scratched his head. "Hargrove ? 37 long," he yelled to the boy at the desk. "Man that is born of woman," I comforted him, "is of many days and full of trouble." "Git off the platform and into this overcoat," he sighed. He held the coat while I ^ot into it and he slapped my hand for fidgeting | again. "Sometimes I wonder why i I got to so much trouble keeping you boys dressed righ|. Here I spend the whole afternoon wiping sweat out of my eyebrows, just to see that your clothes fit you and you won't look like a bunch of bums ? which your are. "Do you know what some un grateful kitchen termite said the other day? He started putting it around that the Army could double itself in half an hour by filling up the extra space in its trousers. Do your trousers fit you bum? He straightened the pleats in the back of the overcoat and gave the tail an unnecessarily vicious yank. "Did I say they didn't?" I groaned, raising by arms despair ingly. "Just because somebody else says you stretch the coat in the back so the man will think it fits i right in the front, you have to go | picking on me!" "Me pick on you?" he screamed. ''It's a wonder my nerves ain't com pletely shot! Do I come around and put signs on the door saying, 'Walk Up One Flight and Save Five Dol lars?' Do I throw gunny sacks on your bed and ask you to take up the cuffs two inches? "With my thankless job, it's a wonder I haven's collapsed before this. I wish I was a permanent kitchen police instead of a supply sergeant. Hargrove ? 37 long! NEXT!" ? * ? "This batter is my baby," Cor poral Henry Ussery said, loosening his belt for a real bull session. I've watched it grow from thutty-one men to what it is now. It was hard work building up this battery to what it is now, but it's worth it when you look around and see what you've done." The assembly sighed en masse and decided to loosen its belts. 'Us sery was wound up again. "When I got here, there wasn't | anybody else but the instructors. I We spent four weeks eating dust and running rabbits. There I was -^I'd spent thurteen months learn ing the old drill and tactics to where I reckon I had it down better than any man in the whole Army. Then they started fhis 'minute Army,' with a bunch of green ignorant Yankees ? and I had to teach them what they had to know!" The bull session nodded wisely and Corporal Ussery went on. "Now this young Corporal Joe Gantt, for instance. Now, this Corporal Gantt when he first came in, was one of the greenest rookies in the bunch. Dut he snapped out of it and made corporal in four months." "Was that soldiering," a voice broke in, "or handshaking ? as the Latins used to say, mittus flop pus?" "Much as I can't stand Gantt, I'll have to admit it was soldiering. That's the way it is. You sweat your head off hammering the drills and the ialisthenics and the mili tary courtesy and ^guard duty and the physical hygiene and the man ual of arms into them. They're all clumsy and awkward as a bear in an egg crate at first, but then you can see them, after a while, snap ping into it and getting better and better. By the time we've had them thutteen weeks, and they're ready to be assigned to their posts, they're i as keen and alert as a bunch of West Point cadets. They're extra good cooks and better soldiers." "Isn't a good soldier a specialist at griping and growling?" some body a$ked him. | "When a soldier can gripe," the corporal announced in a pontifical the sunshine. When he doesn't gripe there's something wrong with him. That's another thing you learn. I When you first come here, you didn't know the first principles of griping. You griped about the clothes; you gtiped about the beds; you griped especially about having to go to bed at nine o'clock." "Griping is an art, just like goldbricking is an art. Before you leave here, you learn that you I don't enjoy griping a bit when you spread your energy all over every ! where, griping about everything. Yyou learn to choose one thing and specialize in griping about that. "If you want to be a specialist at griping, you have to get on your toes. You get to where your clothes are comfortable. Where you used to think the food was terrible, now you pretend that you don't get enough of it. You like the beds and by nine o'clock you're sleepy. So you have to find some thing special to gripe about. If you haven't got any originality at all, -pick -you out one special non com and griep about him. "Now, you take Private Har grove, for instance. First came here, he griped about me telling him he was carrying his riffe wrong. Now he gripes when I tell him he's carrying it right. He might have something there. He still carries it like it was a 75 millinieter gun. He's getting so shiftless, even at griping, that he can't find anything to beef, about except not getting any mail. I'm going to write all his creditors, so he won't even be able to gripe about the mail." "That reminds me," I said. "Did I tell you boys what Sergeant Tay lor told me about Ussery today?" ? "Nine o>cloek411? Ussery shouted. "Lights out! Break it up!" # * * Somewhere on the wild coast of I South Carolina, the battalion in I which I cook is being treated to a weekend to combine business with pleasure. We can romp in the At lantic while we get a "taste of the field." With the wind blowing the sand into kitchens and pilp tents alike, it will be nice to get back to Fort Bragg for a taste of the food we eat. A vexed soldier here don't grate his teeth. He Crunches them. We made the trip here in lor ries, which are the mechanical age's nearest approach in appear ance to covered wagons. You've probably seen them rolling noisily but smoothly through town ? large canvas-topped trucks with a fold ing bench down each side inside. You'd^expect to be hauled out of one of them, beaten to death, at the end of a 130-mile trip. They give a tolerably bumpy ride, just tolerably. When we started pitching camp, about a quarter of a mile back from the beach, we found the place &1 ready inhabited ? by cannibals. These creatures, which masquerade as harmless flies and even camou flaed by the harmless sounding name of sand flies, must have vam pire blood back in the line some , where. I don't hear and grudges against the easygoing, good-natured house fly ? in fact, I feel rather cruel when I squash one for tickling me ? but it arouses my pioneer fight- | ing spirit to see a stunted horsefly ! light on my bare leg, make himsely sassily comfortable and start drain ing off my life's blood. But what can you do? Slapping one only serves to make him mad at you. At night we sleep, or at least we simulate sleep, in pup tents made by our own hands with lov ing care, blood, sweat, tears, two pieces of waterproof cloth, two lengths of rope, and a handful of turned lumber. I share my little duplex with Private Warren, the new student cook who told me the story about the man at the boarding house. When I stumbled home last night, primed to the gills with a- blend of sand and salt water, I discovered that we had an overnight guest! The chief cook on our shift, in the task of packing the field kitchen, had neglected to put his own field pack (tent half, blankets, etc.) on the truck, so he decided to drop over and have us i put hijn up for the night. A pup tent, as you probably don't need to be told, will accom modate two men, provided neither of them walks in his sleep. If three men are to sleep in one ten I, at least two of them must be mid gets or babes in arms. Cooks should never sleep two to a tent, because of their tendency toward plump ness. We arranged ourselves in the tent by wrapping knees around the tent poles, putting all feet out side for the night and raising one side of the u*n high enough to make a rustic -leeping porch of the whole affa r. The guest proved to be one of those loathsome creatures who pull all the covers to their side of the bed. We had quite a lot of trouble with him, since he slept in the middle and rolled up in both our blankets. We remedied this by waiting until he started snoring, then recovered our blankets, rolling ourselves in them and throwing a raincoat over him. The three-man arrangement was very uncomfortable for a while. When I finished opening my eyes by scooping the sand from them, I found that I had rolled through the open side of the tent and spent the night under a myrtle bush ten yards down the slope. During my first off hour, I suc ceeded in getting a tan which must have darkened the very marrow of my bones. My chest, back, and legs looked the color of a faded danger flag and smell ed like the roast pork that the cook forgot to watch. After that, the surf and the sun went their ways and I went mine. (To be continued) READ THE WANT ADS SPECIAL COFFEE Bct}Parl-of (?hcTDcal A Frank Message TO YOU We have been more fortunate than many Laundries. We are in no wise seek ing to boast when we say that we have met the situation with results consider above the average, so far. We ascribe this record largely to loyal help. There is no denying that our work has been slowed down by war conditions. We have had to ask you to bear with us more than once. .You require your Laundry to be 100% in the quality of its work. You are entitled to do so. But, no matter how hard we try, we sometimes fall short of our own ideals ? in these trying days. Whenever you feel that an article PLEASE BRING A HANGER! is unwearable, bring it back? as a favor to us. And, please feel assured that, when minor blemishes mar our services, you can not dislike them one whit more than we do. We promise to keep trying to please to the minutest detail. We feel sure of your considerate indulgence in things we can't help. ?, - ^4/ r SYLVA LAUNDRY and DRY CLEANERS Across Track, Opposite Railroad Station Phone 25 ^
The Sylva Herald and Ruralite (Sylva, N.C.)
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Oct. 6, 1943, edition 1
8
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