31 chapters
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31 chapters
Thursday:
Thursday:
Once when I was an enthusiastic freshman (it seems ages ago) I joined a Latin society that had for its inspiration the phrase, forsan haec olim meminisse juvabit . All I can remember about the society is the motto, and there is nothing particularly pleasant about the recollection, either. But somehow to-night that fool phrase comes back to me and makes a pessimist of me right off. I wonder how pleasant these things are going to be and whether I will want to remember them hereafter. Perhaps I won
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Friday:
Friday:
I only need to glance back over the page I wrote last night to see how I felt. This conscripting must have gotten under my skin a little deeper than I thought. I’ll admit I was homesick, and I guess it made me a little testy. I think I really should tear that page out and begin over. It isn’t exactly fair, and, besides, it doesn’t fulfil the function of a diary, anyway, which, I take it, is a record of events and things—not a criticism of everybody in general and an opportunity to give vent to d
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Saturday:
Saturday:
The serum injections of yesterday produced some queer, and in one case unfortunate, results. Last night after taps were sounded and lights were out, I lay awake a long time in spite of the fact I was very tired. Couldn’t understand it, and my arm and back were as sore as could be. Hour after hour wore on, and I couldn’t get to sleep. Some did, however, and I had a regular frog’s chorus of snores to keep me company. I became a veritable specialist in snores and wheezes and grunts. Every time I he
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Sunday:
Sunday:
Didn’t sleep much last night, for some reason. Think I was too tired. This is the third night I’ve lost time. Beginning to feel it now. But no one else seemed to sleep well either, or at least they didn’t go to sleep right off. Lights out at ten and all supposed to be “tucked in.” Then came various remarks from the darkness; choice, unprintable remarks about the Kaiser, the Government, the Sergeant, certain Corporals, who doubtless heard all their well-wishers had to say, but could not identify
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Monday:
Monday:
Several things of importance happened to-day. For one thing we got some clothes. I say some clothes advisedly, for I’m not all clothed yet, being minus such important articles as an undershirt, socks and shoes. But those I brought from home, though sanctified and made holey by arduous labours in other fields, will do for the present. I possess a pair of winter breeches and a summer coat, but what matters that. It is sufficient to know that they fit, which is not the case in several instances, no
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Tuesday:
Tuesday:
Too blasted tired to write to-night. I did a whole winter’s work this morning. Shovelled nine tons (almost) of coal into the coal bin, as a starter. Then peeled a sack of potatoes, scrubbed an acre of floor and a half-acre of table tops and benches, washed twenty ash cans, and other kitchen utensils and—oh, I’m too tired now, think I’ll wait until to-morrow. “Local Board No. 163” sleeps out on the porch to-night....
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Wednesday:
Wednesday:
Still kitchen policing. Yesterday I thought I had pulled some job when I peeled an ash can full of potatoes, but that was nothing. To-day I got a better one. I had to peel the same amount of potatoes, only they were in a washboiler this time. Yes, right off the fire. I can’t see why the Government has to serve potatoes with the jackets off anyway. Why don’t they let the men peel them? They are just as well able to do it as we are. If some one ever wants to invent a choice way of punishing refrac
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Thursday:
Thursday:
Real luck at last. No more kitchen policing, thank goodness. It all happened thus: About the time we had cleaned up the remains of breakfast and I was getting ready to turn out for “settin’ ups,” along comes the Captain with two Lieutenants in tow, all with official looking papers. We lined up and he looked us all over very critically. Then he read: “Any members of this company qualified to fill the following positions, step one pace,” and a list of occupations followed that included everything
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Friday:
Friday:
Real work began in earnest here this morning, for the officers in command of the various companies of the Headquarters Divisions, or Depot Battalions, or whatever it is these particular departments are called, are determined to rush our drill instructions as fast as possible, because there is no telling when any one or any number of us will be needed somewhere else in the U. S. A. or in France, all of which sounds promising for a quick change. I’m willing, and I sure hope it’s France. Our day is
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Saturday:
Saturday:
On the camp calendar, to-day is marked down as a half-holiday, which is another one of the pleasant little jokes they have down here. It is a half-holiday. We quit drilling at twelve o’clock. But there is a Sunday ceremony they have called inspection and sometimes when the Lieutenant wants to leave camp early on Sunday he decides to hold inspection on Saturday afternoon. About twelve o’clock some one reminds some one else that the aforementioned ceremony is on the program of weekly events, and t
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Sunday:
Sunday:
No I didn’t draw a pass. I’ve been around camp the whole bloomin’ day, but there were about fifteen thousand lucky fellows who did draw passes. 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 pass to get home and see his mother ever since he has been here. But a pass wouldn’t do him much good. He hasn’t any uniform yet. Still waiting for the army tailors to get busy. I wouldn’t b
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Monday:
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 t
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Tuesday:
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 institution 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 ha
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Wednesday:
Wednesday:
Found my dog! I was over in another section of the cantonment this morning, for a few moments between drill and mess call, and there was “Local Board No. 163” as big as life, trotting along beside a chap I knew. It was Billy Allen. The dog recognized me and so did Billy and we stopped a while and compared notes. Billy had the worst hard luck story in respect to the Draft of any man I know. He’s an old National Guardsman, having enlisted soon after we left school together. Spent eight years in th
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Thursday:
Thursday:
This has been a moist and soggy day. I don’t know that I have ever seen so much rain before in one storm as I have to-day. Before daylight it began; a perfect downpour, so violent that for reveille we lined up in the mess hall. None of us ventured out to wash up, but those of us who missed a cold sprinkle the most had merely to poke our heads out of the windows for a moment and then reach for a towel. Some wetness. The camp is a veritable sea of mud, and those who go outdoors at all do so to the
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Friday:
Friday:
It is fast getting home to me now that in spite of the heterogeneous conglomeration, of races and creeds and languages, the National Army is going to be the real thing as a fighting force after all. Every one is keen for the thing now that the first violent attacks of homesickness have worn off and they are going at their work of becoming soldiers with a will, except, of course, for a few: the conscientious objectors; and their life is no merry one. They are mighty unpopular, as numerous black e
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Saturday:
Saturday:
Sad news this evening. Only twenty-five per cent. of each company is to be allowed to go home to-morrow, because of the disorder and general trouble at the railroad terminal last Sunday. And the twenty-five per cent. is to be drawn out of a hat. No chance for Fat or me, that’s certain. We’re mighty unlucky when it comes to passes and we are laying odds now that neither of us will get permission to go to the city. Anyhow, Fat is still in the same predicament. If he does get a pass he won’t be abl
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Sunday:
Sunday:
I am ready to die with a smile on my lips and a great happiness in my heart, for I’ve spent one night between clean sheets, on a really soft bed. I’ve eaten with a silver knife and fork from real dishes and—whispered softly—in the privacy of my own home I had a glass of beer! No, I wasn’t lucky (neither was Fat) but I think I put something over on Uncle Sam. The passes for the city were drawn for as per schedule and since I was down at the bottom of the list I was not included in the first twent
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Monday:
Monday:
I’ll need no “Melody in Snore Minor” to lull me to sleep to-night, for I am thoroughly weary. It was intimated a day or so ago that our training would be hurried a little so that we would be ready for a quick shift at any time. But hurried doesn’t exactly describe it. It looks like an early fall drive to me. We began at the beginning, this morning, and had our squad drills all over again, and somehow in the juggling about of men to make up our company formation I managed to get last place in lin
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Tuesday:
Tuesday:
I’m really a soldier. I know the manual of arms. This morning, true to the First Lieutenant’s prediction, we drilled with rifles and now I am quite convinced of the truth of the old saying that a gun is dangerous without lock, stock, or barrel. Fat turned around suddenly when he had his rifle over his shoulder and poked the muzzle of it into my mouth; a regular Happy Hooligan performance, and now I have a split (and considerably puffed) lip and a loose tooth to my credit in this horrible war. We
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Wednesday:
Wednesday:
There are a lot of things calculated to stir a chap’s sentimental streak about this camp, particularly the nights; moonlight nights like to-night for instance. Every hard outline of the huge place is softened under the blue-black mantle of night, and the disagreeable things are lost in the heavy shadows and the moonlight floods the open places, and glistens on the rows upon rows of tin roofs and tall, gaunt-looking tin smoke-stacks. Watch-fires (a sanitary precaution) blaze in their deep holes i
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Monday:
Monday:
This place looks like a growing mining town somewhere out West, but for real atmosphere, the civilian camp, outside the reservation, has the cantonment looking really civilized. I went out there this evening after mess; for I heard that there was a cigar store included in the outfit, and the impression I got was a lasting one. Everything of the frontier was there save the saloons and the gambling halls. Shacks, tents (rows upon rows of them), lean-tos and all forms of domiciles. And the men who
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Tuesday:
Tuesday:
The cost of high living here is enormous. The stoop-shouldered, shrewd-eyed, flinty-hearted Yankee clerks behind the broad counters of the “Post Exchange” disdain anything less than a quarter. Dimes and nickels are chicken-feed, and pennies—impossible. If a chap buys one apple at five cents or one pear or one banana (always green and a long way from being ripe) he has to hide himself in the crowd to escape the baleful eye of these grasping sharks. Five cent crackers sell two boxes for a quarter,
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Wednesday:
Wednesday:
That’s the call that brings out all the shirkers. They line up in the morning and present all sorts of ailments from sore throat to heart disease. The line is especially long on mornings when they know we are in for two hours of “settin’-ups” or when some especially hard detail such as camp orderly or kitchen police has been handed out. A day in the hospital will relieve one of all these duties. This morning I was on the long line. But I hasten to explain that I was sick (that’s what they all sa
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Thursday:
Thursday:
If there is one thing that I want to remember more than anything else about this Conscript Camp it is the spectacle I witnessed and took part in this evening. Fancy if you can Tower Hill with its big headquarters building snuggled in among the scattered and gaunt pines, the tall, ungainly water-tank propped up on all too spindly-looking stilts. On top of this a single figure thrown in bold relief by the golden yellow light of a big watch-fire, beating time with his baton, and below him, clothing
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Friday:
Friday:
Momentous news. We of the headquarters company, or rather eighty-seven of us, start Monday on the first leg of that longed-for journey to France. We go to a Southern training camp where new units are being formed into which each of us will fit. And along with this news came the announcement that none of us will be given a pass to go home for a last good-bye. This has stirred the men more than the news of the transfer South. Several impromptu indignation meetings were held this morning and this a
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Saturday:
Saturday:
To-day, for the first time since I have been here, I had visitors. Those at home, eager to get a glimpse of their soldier-boy in his native haunts, came down to see things as they are. I’m quite certain that the general arrangement of the barracks, with its cluttered appearance suggested by many pairs of shoes standing around and many hats and coats and old sweaters hanging about, did not accord with mother’s ideas of good housekeeping. And she assured me that many of the old rose, pink and baby
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Sunday:
Sunday:
Back again, but back to a sad and very unhappy barracks. Fat, poor, poor Fat, who felt downcast because he was not going South, has gone on a far longer journey. It is the first tragedy that has come into our life here in our barracks and with the thoughts of the breaking up of the big family on the morrow, and the homesickness, that most of us feel because of our all too brief trips home, has cast a gloom over us all. Unfortunate Fat, done out of using his pass by the slowness of the army tailo
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Monday:
Monday:
The mere suggestion of troop movements has a thrill to it, and we have had a lot of thrills to-day. After a long period of restless waiting, and good-byes to every one and everything about the old barracks, came the command to fall in. Then in summer uniforms, and each with a big blue barracks bag crowded with personal belongings, extra uniform, shoes, blanket and what not, on our shoulders, we lined up, shouted last farewells and stepped off, down the barracks street and out toward the railroad
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Tuesday:
Tuesday:
We are rolling through Virginia into the sunset. For twenty hours we have been crowded into these cars, and we are cramped and tired, but feeling happier with all. Two to a berth, we tried to sleep last night. But sleep was impossible. I was up most of the night, standing at the upper end of the car looking out the window, while my new-found bunkie tried hard to get in a few winks. He wasn’t successful. At midnight we ran through a little station called Brandy, and there in a pounding rainstorm,
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Wednesday:
Wednesday:
We are travelling through a land of gold and red and green, with huge dabs of white marking the cotton fields. And we are hungry no longer. At Cornellia the train stopped for half an hour, and the fellows, all but famished, made a wild rush for the door, and sweeping aside such obstructions as angry Sergeants took the town by storm. About seven hundred soldiers descended upon it, and bought everything in the eating line that they could possibly find, even to whole cheeses, huge stalks of bananas
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