Conscript 2989 Part 3

The rear of the barracks on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon looks like a string of tenement house backyards, with flapping garments hanging from everything, including the electric light wires, and men in various degrees of attirement stand around waiting for the garments to get dry.

Oh, you daren't leave them and go off on some other mission while the wind does its duty. You simply have to stick and keep a careful eye on everything you own, otherwise:-well it works on the principle that the man who grabs the most is the best-dressed man for the following week, and if you are not there to prove ownership you are liable to find a pocket handkerchief where your undershirt was and the handkerchief isn't always what it was originally intended to be.

I did manage to get my wash done and gathered up in time to see the last ten minutes of a Gaelic football game over on the parade grounds. But next week I'm going to take the advice of the Sergeant who suggests that I follow the example of Regular Army men and wash each piece as it becomes soiled. I wonder if I am systematic enough for that?

Sunday:

No I didn't draw a pa.s.s. I've been around camp the whole bloomin' day, but there were about fifteen thousand lucky fellows who did draw pa.s.ses.

I saw them going down in groups for every train to the city since four o'clock yesterday afternoon. But Fat and I seem to be a bit unlucky.

Poor Fat, he has wanted a pa.s.s to get home and see his mother ever since he has been here. But a pa.s.s wouldn't do him much good. He hasn't any uniform yet. Still waiting for the army tailors to get busy. I wouldn't be surprised if they shipped him to France with no more Government property than a khaki shirt. We've been consoling each other most of the day. Fat's a good chap and a mighty likeable fellow.

It has been a day of rest, however, for all except Giuseppi, the company's barber. He has done a tremendous business; shaved every one, from the Captain down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Giuseppi's methods are unique and interesting]

Giuseppi's methods are unique and interesting. Somewhere he found two planks, which he brought into the dormitory, and, by catching the lower ends under the iron work of one cot and propping them against the side of another, he contrived an affair that resembles remotely a steamer chair. Line forms to the right. Bring your own brush and shaving stick and do your own lathering for a quick and effective shave.

I can't guess how many he shaved. The line stretched the length of the dormitory from breakfast to dinner time. The men dabbed their brush into a single basin of cold water and moistened their faces while standing in line. Then as they moved on they soaped and lathered their own faces and rubbed it in thoroughly. And by the time they reached the plank their bristles needed only a final application of lather and Giuseppi got busy with the razor.

He is a wonder. All he did this morning was strop and shave, strop and shave, and at ten cents a head-no I mean face-(twenty cents a head, only no hair cut on Sunday) I guess he made a fair week's wages. As each victim left the planks, said victim wiped the remaining lather from his face, ears and nose and applied his own talc.u.m powder.

Perhaps Giuseppi's business was increased by his announcement: "No shava for tree days now. To-morrow I getta da needle for twice times. No can use my arm vara moch."

Which reminds me that I am scheduled for my second inoculation to-morrow.

I have been discovering some of the unknown who are in our midst.

Unearthed a popular song writer (whose income before he adopted the dollar-a-day job for Uncle Sam was reputed to be $10,000 a year). I didn't unearth him really. He bobbed up this morning, when several of the fellows were playing mouth organs, and now, behold, he's organizing a glee club. Then there is a linguist, who is fresh from the biggest financial inst.i.tution in the world where he handled all their French and Spanish translation work. He has started a cla.s.s in French which is in session for an hour every evening. We are all _Parlez vous_-ing with more or less (mostly more) inaccuracies. But what we lack in accent and correct p.r.o.nunciation we make up for in genuine Parisian gestures. Oh, we're there all right.

Another of our enterprising members is a well-known landscape gardener, who, in co-operation with one of our several architects, has organized a campaign for a "barracks beautiful," all of which doesn't mean very much to most of us, but gives them a good opportunity to dispose of their spare time. Our afternoons have been spent in pulling stumps in the vicinity of the barracks and grading the street and dooryard until now no one would ever recognize it for the same place. But the landscape gardener has carried the work a bit further and with the a.s.sistance of several of us, including myself, gone off into the woods and dug up a score or more of pine and cedar saplings about five feet high. These have been transplanted in the form of a hedge around our barracks, on top of a tiny terrace, and they certainly soften the outlines of the unpainted building and add a touch of that which is lacking in the vicinity of most of the structures.

He, the landscaper, has placed whitewashed stones at conspicuous corners, too, and on either side of our tiny porch he has worked out the number of the company and the number of the division in concrete letters, which the camp orderly scrubs industriously every morning to keep them white and presentable. The job of camp orderly, by the way, is the worst job a man can be detailed to here, being one degree lower than kitchen police; and since I know mighty well the rigours of that, I'm going to steer clear of this other form of punishment, if it is humanly possible to do so.

The Sunday crop of visitors flocked to camp as usual to-day and I entertained several who did not come to see me especially, but who brought along such delightful lunch that I felt constrained to show them about and be pleasant to them at least while the lunch lasted.

Monday:

We were excused from drill this morning for the purposes of being shod and getting our second inoculation. Getting our shoes was the most interesting and least painful of the two.

After being shot (in the left arm this time) we proceeded to the Q. M., where in one portion of his domain shoes were being issued, two pairs to a man, one pair for work and the other for rest and fatigue.

Of course, immediately the fitting began the men started to protest that they were insulted by being given shoes too large for them. But that didn't disturb the shoe man, who merely told them to mind their own business and he'd take care of their feet, which belonged to the Government anyhow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Each man was loaded with a fifty pound bag of sand.]

Standing on a flat surface in stocking feet, each man was loaded with a fifty pound bag of sand. Then when his feet had spread as much as they possibly could, measurements were taken from every angle, just exactly as if the shoes were to be built especially for the foot they were to adorn. The collection of figures was then gone over, and compared with a chart, after which two pairs of shoes were found corresponding with the dimensions covered by number so-and-so. I've forgotten what my number is, but I will confess that while the shoes are several sizes larger than I would ever think of buying in a shoe store, I have never had anything on my feet that gripped my heels and instep and ankles so firmly and yet allowed me room enough to wiggle my toes around. The dress shoes and the trench brogans of unfinished leather with half-inch soles filled with hobs, and steel plated heels, feel more comfortable than any shoes I have ever owned, and I gratefully accepted the two pairs issued to me and left for my quarters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I like t' geev da Kais a keek in da face wid-a dose shoes"]

On my way up the road I pa.s.sed an Italian who seemed so pleased with his new footwear that he just couldn't help exhibiting them to me. "Look,"

he said, waving his huge foot, shod with the trench shoes, about promiscuously, "look ad da shoos. I like t' geev da Kais a keek in da face wid-a dose shoos. Bet he no smile some more dan." Then he added, by way of showing his qualifications to muss up the Kaiser, "I belonga to ah wreckin' crew sometimes when I don't come down here."

Tuesday:

SWEAR; If you can't think of anything else to say, but do it softly-very, very softly, so no one else but yourself will hear you.

Thus reads the sign that hangs over the door of the Y. M. C. A. shack, at the end of our camp street. That's what I call social work humanized.

The Y. M. C. A. here is the most human inst.i.tution in this big, rawly human community. It is the thing that puts the soul in soldier as one chap expresses it. And because it is that way, and because the men feel at home and have a real time, and can smoke and put their feet on the table, they think the red triangle is the best little symbol about the big camp. The "'Sociation" is making thousands of friends every day among these strapping big, two-fisted fellows who really never knew what the organization was. It's bully. We all wander over there sometime during every evening, if it's only to listen to a new record on the phonograph.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Our $10,000 a year song writer]

The shacks (I don't know how many there are, but there must be at least a dozen of them) are the centres of amus.e.m.e.nt and entertainment for us all. And we have some corking concerts and other forms of entertainments there. I don't think I'll ever forget our $10,000 a year song writer as he appeared last night, for instance, standing on top of the piano, his hair all mussed up and his army shirt opened at the throat, singing a solo through a megaphone. And it was some solo! About fifteen hundred huskies in khaki stood around and listened to him and joined in on the choruses.

Then they have lectures: "Ten Years as a Lumber Jack," "Farthest North,"

by a certain well-known explorer; "My First Year of the Big War," and similar subjects appear on the bulletin boards every other night.

Nothing of the Sunday School variety about that sort of thing.

And our prize fights!

I'm all excited yet over the one I saw to-night. It was a whale of a battle; I mean the last one was, there being several on the program. The fellows fight for pa.s.ses to go home on Sunday and the decision is left up to the onlookers. And if we don't make the sc.r.a.ppers work for those pa.s.ses, then no "pugs" ever did work.

Most of the boxers are former pugilists who have been gathered up in the draft net, and so long as they can get a chance to put on the gloves they are just as pleased to be here as anywhere else from all appearances. But sometimes the sc.r.a.ppers aren't "pugs" at that; just plain citizens who possibly have been shadow boxing in the secrecy of their bedrooms for the past ten years and longing for courage enough to step into the ring with a real fighter and discover how good (or how bad) they are. They are getting the opportunity here all right, and some of them are uncovering a likely line of jabs and counters. One fair-haired youngster downed a mighty pugnacious-looking Italian a few nights ago.

But to-night's final was a winner. Three sc.r.a.ps had been pulled off with real enthusiasm and after the final round, there was a call for more material, but no one in the crowd came forward to put on the gloves.

There were calls and jeers and all that sort of thing, then suddenly out from the crowd stepped a soggy-looking, little red-haired fellow.

Yells of "Yah Redney!" "Hi Redney!" "Good boy Brick Top!"

Redney blushed considerably and held up his hand for silence. And when he got it he explained.

"I ain't a-going to fight no one but our Mess Sergeant. That's what I'm out here for, and I'll stick here till he comes."

Calls for Mess Sergeant. He wasn't present. A speeding messenger from Red's company hurried out through the night to find him. Ten minutes later, said Sergeant, a soggy-looking chap himself, was brought in and amid yells from the crowd he stepped inside the ring. He looked once at Brick Top, then spat on his hands and said:

"Where's them gloves?"

Gloves were produced and laced on, then without the preliminary handshake they squared off and went to it. And what a battle! They didn't stop for rounds, or time out, or anything. They just ducked and punched and whaled away at each other until the blood began to spatter all over and still they kept at it. I don't know what the misunderstanding between them was and didn't find out, but they sure meant to settle the thing once and for all.