Newspapers / The Waynesville Mountaineer (Waynesville, … / Sept. 2, 1943, edition 1 / Page 12
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(One Day Nearer Victory) THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER THE WAYNESVILLE MOUNTAINEER Page 12 See Here, Private Hargrove! Itji Marion Hargrove (Continued from page 9) through the nose from hay fever yet. Sneezing to glory." The bus station on that morning in July was a pathetic picture. Four large groups of boys, reconciled to the grim and gruesome life ahead of them, were bade farewell by wailing mothers and nobly suffering girl friends who had come down to see their loved ones off in a blaze of pathos. It was pretty terrible. "Selective Service System Meck lenburg County Board Number Three. The buses swung out of the ter minal, through midtown, and out toward the road to Fayetteville. The boys began to feel better, shouted farewells to startled girls on the street and finally broke into raucous song. Four flowers of the nation started a blackjack game on a suitcase in the back of the bus. Brother Piel's spirits brightened a little. His smooth voice found its way through the hay fever and emerged in song. "It's a lovely day tomorrow," he sang. "To morrow is a lovely day." "Look at me tomorrow," he said, breaking off suddenly, "Hay foot, Private F'M. Straw foot, Private Piel. Hay and straw and look at what I've got. Hay fever yet! Oy, what a life I'll lead!" "Maybe what I'd better do when I get there, I'd better tell them I'd like to go north. They could use a good man in Alaska." "The South Pole is your meat," I told him. "That's it! The South Pole! Boy, I'm going to love the Army!" The tumult and the shouting died about halfway to Fayetteville. The boys became quiet and thoughtful. CHAPTER II A soldier stuck his head through the door of our new dormitory and gave a sharp whistle. ''Nine o'lcock!" he yelled. "Lights out and no more noise! Go to sleep!" "It has been, withal, a very busy day," I said to Piel, who was bur ied with his hay fever in the next bunk. "It sure withal has," he said. "What a day! What a place! What Time to Cook with Gas the Perfect Fuel Economical Clean Quick Essotane Metered Service City gat convenience Installed anywhere Brading Gas Service ia life! With my eyes wide open !l'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. 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 ex cept a thin little iodine number on my chest." "Funny thing about the medical examination," a voice broke in from down the line. "Before you get it you're afraid you'll pass. When The old sergeant, his face beam ing sweetly, purred, "You are now members of the Army of the Unit ed States. ..Now, damn it, shut up." 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 hell uva 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. mouth." "Yessir," said Piel, "the Army makes men." The discussion was interrupted by the reappearance of the soldier. "If youse blankety-blanked little dash-dashes don't shut your cuss cuss yaps and get the blankety blank to sleep, I'm gonna come back up here and make yez scrub the whole blankety-blanked dash-dash cuss-cuss floor with a blankety blank toothbrush. Now shaddap!" i 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 hav ing an awful time keeping the men quiet. "Gentlemen," he would be seech them, "Quiet, please!" They were quiet during the administra tion 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 Recurit Reception Center began when we finished breakfast and started cleaning up our squad room. A gray-haired, fatherly old private, .who swore that he had been demoted from master ser geant four times, lined us up in front of the barracks and took us to the dispensary. If the line in front of the mess hall dwindled as rapidly as the one at the dispensary, life would have loveliness to sell above its private consumption stock. First you're fifteen feet from the door, then (whiff) you're inside. Then you're standing 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 ii i 1 1:1. s . I i i . "One of his legs was shorter than " oou.enoerg s casement un a uusy uay. weure 01 liners measured necks, waists, inseams. sifted and assigned to the Fielf Ar tillery Replacement Center. Gene Shumate and I were classified as cooks. I am a semi-skilled cook, 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 doorway. "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, Mel vin Piel, I'm a perfect physical specimen." Big 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 exami ners to get there, he had one foot in the grave." "And the other foot?" "That's the one he keeps in his Eyes Examined For Appointment Glasses Fitted Telephone 2483 CONSULT DR. R. KING HARPE OPTOMETRIST 125 Main Street Wells Bldg. Canton, N. C. 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 Cinderella. 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 rain coats, 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 my 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 his 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 comfor- table." food, and keep the mess hall clean. "With these Oregon boots and ! After we served breakfast, I this hurden of misery," I told him found a very easv iob in the din- nrmiy, "i coumn t even waui (ng nau, wnere me is mum yi. although the onlv eir I to the thing. As for climbing over than ,t in the kitchen. A quartet , hey say, "JfJ it, not even an alpenstock, a burro ! was formed and we were singing ' train, and two St. Bernard dogs I "Home on the Range." A corporal ; 8 're patch, tractor sales complete with brandy could get me Lssed by just as I hit a sour , note, elude etorkjJ Over 11. 1 ric pui L I1C UIUUIII 1I1LW llljr , There was something in his quiet, 1 the mop into my right . . . steady answering glance that re-1 "There was a citizen-soldier from assured me. I went over the ramp Kannapolis to help me clean the in short order. On the double, I . cooks' barracks. For a time it was think the Army calls it. awful. We tried to concentrate on From there we went to the thea- the floor while a news broadcaster ter where we were given intelli-! almost tore up the radio trying to gence tests, and to tne ciassinca-1 ucliuc nucmci nc vic w ... tion office, where we were inter- j tne Army ten years or twemj. viewed by patient and considerate1 We finished the job in an extre- corporals. ! mely short time to impress the "And what did you do in civil corporal. This, we found later, is life?" my corporal asked me. ' a serious tactical blunder and a dis ..x ft Af ti,0 rhai- I credit to the ethics of goldbrick- the sooner you start in on the next. The corporal liked our work, un fortunately. Kannapolis was allow ed to sort garbage and I was promoted to the pot-and-pan pol ishing section. I was Themos Koke nes's assistant. We washed and I dried. Later we formed a gold bricking entente. We both washed and made Conrad Wilson dry. i hrif klavers and one blacksmith. But we'll learn. Already I've learned to make 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 be continued) tr.t had ALL ABOfr n ""v-c upon a tin guy named Bill B.j billboard; he aU bill. Bill rented ana nis billboard iim , nen Bin . t,a, up, Bill became v,-.-.-", and got behind ui-.h h Bill Board's boaid I, very much, and Bit; sen nis Diiiboard. aKY- j, ed Bill. t iim,- i,; : V V Bill Board's back rsin no more, but B board, and Bill's t;lb,i; er Doarded Bill. q.. 1 hi r-1 li Greetings American Enka Corporation ENKA, N. C. 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 woiker."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." This was a lovely morning. We began at daybreak and devoted all the time until noon to enjoy 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 latej, that infernal whistle blew. Melvin Piel, guardhouse lawyer for Com pany A, explained it all on the way downstairs. We were going to be assigned 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, a 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 RRC on both sides of all of them!'' "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 irr in in oniiiam, orange. All afternoon, in a blistering sun, I we painted garbage cans. The other j Charlotte boys waved to u as they j passed on their way to the ball park. Happy voices floated to us from the post exchange. The sup per hour neared. 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, j He motioned peremptorily to us and we loaded the cans into the truck. Away we went to headquarters company and painted more gar bage cans. It was definitely sup pertime 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. We stop ped in front of our barracks and Private 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 of 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 ate. On the way to our barracks we met Yardbird Fred McPhail, neat and cool, on his way to the recrea tion hall. "Good news, soldiers," said Yardbird McPhail. "We don't have to drill tomorrow." We halted and sighed blissfully. "No, sir," said McPhail. "They can't lay a hand on us from sunup until sundown. The whole bar racks is on kitchen duty all day." 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 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 my back a chance to recover from that mop." When I said "mop," the mess sergeant handed me one. He want ed 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 a better place to eat in, at any rate. But KP is like a wo man'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 tne 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- Woolens Should Be Given Expert Care In Summer Every garment worth sav ing is worth cleaning. Wool ens should never be washed with soap and water, as it often causes shrinkage and the finish of the material altered. 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The Waynesville Mountaineer (Waynesville, N.C.)
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Sept. 2, 1943, edition 1
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