The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-11-15
x EpORT SOLDIER BOYS ,. AT CAMP DEVENS DON'T KNOW
 WHAT "SPARE TIME" MEANS

tnquiring three times in the same let ter; What do you do with all your spare time, laddie?" asked a question which the rockies of the battery Thought was a joke and which the War department thinks is a question chased under the heading Impor- tant' or Serious"
 Sparetime-where do you get that spare time stuff?' exc1aitns the ,draf- i tee, who never worked so hard be- fore in his five or ten years as working man, who has come to be- 4lieve that there isn't any hero stuff Hin being soldier. Heroes of hard. labor, that's all. ! .tsssAnd the visitors who have seen \ Camp Devens weekdays know nothing, of s.spare time'' for the rockies, either. /From dawn until dusk this city, 1lanted and full grown since. hst 6uly. is "a sight of activity. in sdq(trys military industry, and those Twilight hours are the only ones Hhen the public sees the camp city. It's 30, LOO Inhabitants and more, all men, are all busy. Tho brown-clad ;batfalions march away at 7:30, blend ing with their own dust and the dead trrass fields as you see them a quar- ter of a mile away, starting off to [ drill fields two miles away, off the other side of Aver Junction, or farther ! sway than that to fields in Shirley.
 Another battalion, shouldering k&acks and shovels, is winding up over &kHe. hills back of camp, out to the Etr&nrhes Another organizations 300 E4r,en Of the Ammunition Train, are k6own on the receiving field, in a rak- f1ng November wind, stripped to their Erh1rfs, answering the snappy com krnar1de of Capt Charles B. Salek, who <ras a New York physical director land who is putting men from mills teud stores and banks, all bareheaded, Efhrouzh 45 brisk minutes of army txymnastics-
 x whole regiment of artillery, the 301st Lights are rounding into < smooth drill field which was a fine tecrub forest two months ago. for <Ieeson in pitching pup tents. An- 4other regiment of artillery, is drilling Fin platoon groups with it's wooden E<is1d pieces, while the carpenters of &fhe regiment are rushing the arsenal X york putting together old wagon ff whe@ls gathered from farms of Gen. EtrAl Massachusetts. wait until noon time and you may see half an hour of this spare time" mother wants to know about. On bar ErAcIs' steps they will be reading tnewspapers- Tn barracks yards they \ XI11 be kicking footballs, as if they
 dTa few minutes leisure and need 9d exercise. fSs
 But before you have found the bar fracks that houses the friend you have come to visit the whistle will have Blown again; the companies will have r fal1en in and marched away again; f6e barracks will be deserted again untiI after o'clock, except for the cookees.
 Once or twice during the day you might find 50 or 100 men sitting at tables in mess halls, between meals;
 but a captain or heptenant is lectur- ing, and you have the same chance of infruding for visit that you have of walking up and shaking hands with a rookie skirmishing across the country flat on his stomach.
 They say ants are industrious. Try to. compare this cantonment to an anthI1l of 10 900 acres, with the horde ! scrambling out of holes, meaning },barracks, scampering off in a hun dred directions morning and after knoon, and diving back into the hum
 dreds of holes at nightfall.
 Thsn the visitors go home and wonder how this city lives after dark. Supper is at .5:15 now. The win ter schedule has cut half an hour off
 each end of the day. It doesn't take long to mess, no matter how good or }abundant it may be. At Camp De- vens is ready for its long gay evening E6f revelry, spare time.
 M rfour hours with nothing to do. " Efhing to do, and a thousand things
 fo That's what concerns the War <HXpaEtnnent. Those are the four k1rs to be lonesome, to be larking, f11-sbe 1oaAng. to be doing the things rookie has wanted time to do all E<rhe camp roads which have been E SzIve. for 12 hours are dead with de- ! 6crtfon The b1ackness of a coun- ifryxfda. but with hundreds of build {1nfS, evenly stfered and terraced, each with Its dozens of electric-Iighted !window eyes. e Inside those buildings must be the G0,00o, minus the two or three thou sand who are crowding the sidewalks lin Aver or trolleying to Fftchburg
 and otfsr cities and towns within the ffour-hour zone.
 Tan of the buildings are +. M. c. A. liuts, two are Knights of Columbus buildings, one is a. theatre that used tfo De a restaurant. nine of them are posf exrhanges. The rest are bar racks or officers quarters. But in the
 ga meeting places of the first sen itsnce of the paragraph you have the fife of the party.
 Every ons of them is crowded. If
 fhere were twice as many of each.
 everyone of them would still be
 oroHded. The army is spending it's
 spere time, spare energy spare
 ohanes,
 Start with the change at the regf-
 mental exchanges. The overcoated
 crowd comes In at 6, buys milk and
 cake and sweet chocolate and cigar
 cites and candy. stays to eat it. stays
 fo talk. walks back while the rest of fho crowd is coming ina
 { KY If Albion K, Paris Grindle, store
 Keeper wasn't making out SC faTnotis-
 ly It aadioei<s Mills. Me. we should
 say he dottsr do some eonnfverin'
 bRoah, and rig up some way e get
 ffzf Into this army as a draftes and
 fun post exchange,
 srha depot brigade eanteen turned
 rvsr 9110e eae day last week. GriTi-
 de. and without any special induce 1nents te summer visitors. If was
 dofro this business for myself, I'd be