The Cordova daily times. [volume] (Cordova, Alaska) 1914-1947, 1917-12-31
LIFE ON A TRANSPORT
AS A SOLDIER SEES IT

ents, who crosse de luxe, to send back
a CHEEKY message to the effect that,
except for few cases of humps,
q pleasant time was had by ALL but
if you want to know what transport
life it like you must ask a private
who has lived in the bowels of a
converted liner, meditated upon it in
the long tranquil hours of midnight
sentry duty, and jotted down in his
optimistic, freshly acquired diary be-
tween exercise and boat drill, between
mess and boat drill, between circu-
lation and boat drill. Here, then, are
some brief notes of life aboard name
less American transport which set
sail from an American port some time
in August to cross a certain widely
known ocean:
We foregathered from the four
quarters Of the United States, meet
ing for the first time at the pier, as,
weighted down under our equipment,
harnessed in our blanket rolls, and
staggering under our bullying barracks
bags, we toiled slowly up the for
midable gangways. We all looked
pretty much alike that day, and it
was not until we had put out to sea,
and the swarming hive have settled
down under the subdued pressure of
strict military discipline that any one
of us could realize what an extraor-
binary miscellany of men had come
aboard.
Those lean fellows loungfng there
at the base of the rigging are I'M
mistakably cowboys, and probably
from Oklahoma; standing against the
Tcu beside them, a student of Matisse
is talking with weather-beaten
trainer of prizefighters; the actor
who enchanted New York with his
brilliant and fastidious performance
of the Daffodil in "The Yellow Jack
/ ct" is now, with equal skill. charg-
ing. along the promenade deck. lead,
ing small squad armed with brooms
to clean out the gutter. That man
washing his mess tin in some no lone.
er useful wishwater is smoking a Tn
ion League cigarette in his own right
and bestuwing one, apparently, ON al
elevator boy of his acquaintance
Way forward on the forecastle deck
their heads silhouetted against thu
twilit sky, a group of Princeton boys
are singing Forward March much
as they sang it last fall in the Palm
er Stadium back home. There are
some men reading in what is left OF
the afternoon sunlight One has a
small copy of Fluent French
! Phrases, or some such treatise, by
which he is invading for the first
time the mysteries of "je suits, tn es
and Il est Next to him man is
pouring over the last issue of Breezy
| Stories and the man beyond is deep
In Browning's "The Ring and the
| Book. You never can tell. And when
the lights go down and the hush falls
on the ship they break into little
| groups, to whisper of this or that. to
talk of the American league, or theo-
sophy, or Frances White, or any sub
| ject under the sun except the war.
! That they leave to those who are on
the outside looking in.
They have all weathered the voy-
age we'll, philosophically setting down
the limitations of their comforts to
the exigencies of great country in
still greater hurry Some grumb-
ing there is. to be sure. but it is
a. little like the grumbling of boys
at boarding school, when, for the sew
enth successive day. it is prunes again
for breakfast.
No Smoking After Shutdown.
Or course there hsye been bitter
hardships. 1t is bitter hardship, for
instance, to have to stop smoking at
sundown, but it would never do to
nave thousand or so of cigarette
ups glowing away until the dim gray
transport took on the air Of a Golden