The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1917-08-02
HOME PEOPLE TOO WELL FED
Hardest Task In Making An Army Is
! to Take the Kinks Out Of the Boys
a And Keep Them out--Men Are Well
I Fed and Cared For at All Times.

George Wallace is a soldier from
Racine who is now at Camp Douglas.
He has the habit of writing home and
some of his letters get into print. He
has some ideas of his own about soldier
ing. In letter published in the Ra-
cine Journal-NeWs Wallace has this to
say:
eff troops are to be moved the pow
ers that be are not going around telling
every man in the army. The good sol
der waits for orders.'
Their Is not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die''
and I want to warn Racine people to
not get all excited every time they
read a rumor that we are going to
Ell Paso, Frisco, Saskatchewan, France,
Timbuctoo or Honolulu. It just gives
you so many sleepless nights worrying
about Willie and Jimmie and Ole and
Pete and Kanute and also few more
gray hairs. Forget it. Forget it.
This is not dress parade war; this is
man s war and we don t want the
twimmin'' back home to get all flus-
trated because we do not have feather
pillows, and pie three times day.
Boys Like It.
If all Racine would enlist and go out
in the open air, eat spuds, good black
coffee, sow bosom, beans, war bread and
fresh beef smothered in onions, and
sleep out of doors YOU would be better
off.
People at Home Eat Too Much.
The trouble with you people back
home is that you eat too much, not the
right thing, exercise too little, sleep
in pink silk pajamas, go to bed at mid
night and then get up at 7 or with a
three cornered feeling in the head and
a sour stomach.
Come up with us, enlist, get up at
Sis when the birds are singing, take
half mile run, go through the setting
Il, exercise and sit down to beefsteak
ready to eat horse. Then go out in
the sun and perspire for three hours
Juggling those big guns around and din
ner will taste like the nectar of the
gods. An afternoon of boiling on the
parade ground at foot drill, followed
by shower bath, mess at 5:45 with
the good things that make health and
happiness and you can feel the muscles
growing. Three hours for play, listen
ing to the photograph, home talent
stunts at the tY', impromptu concert
by embryo musicians, or real concert
by the First Artillery band, and when
you go to sleep at 10 O'Clock, instead
of loafing up and down Main street
looking for excitement you will roll
up in blanket and sleep like a baby
doped with Mrs. Soothlaw's Winsling
Syrup.
Sure it was cold nights the first week
or so. Sure the men wrote home that
they were froze. Then you began to
send up lot of blankets that we didn t
need. The less a soldier has to take
care of the better off he is and the
writer is eating the same Sslum' and
sleeping under just the same kind Of
blanket and am not frozen to death yet.
Soldering is a business with the
brussels carpet, pink tea, golf and a
tin lizzie cut out When we go any
place we walk. When we want exer-
else, we don t play golf and make be-
lieve--we work. And don t any of you
over indulging but misguidde parents let
your soldier sons slip one over on you
when he writes that he is being mis-
treated AS a matter of fact you
didn It raise your sons-some of you
you just let him grow up like Topsy.
And now we have to take those boys,
re -model them, re-vamp them, and take
the kinks out of them before we can
make soldiers out of them. Sure they
may get shot; that is part of the game.
But yau can rest assured that here in
camp ] have yet to see a soldier half
shot. And when the boys go home on
furlough as they are doing now, for
heaven IS sake dom fill them up on
junk and put them on the bum so we
will have to put them in the hospital
a week before they are any good as sol
diers. We can guard the Soldiers in
camp but not at home.
We are regulars now, having been
examined and federalized in due form.
We have been vaccinated and shot in
the arm with anti-typhoid and so great
is modern science that it would not
surprise me if we had shot of ma
goozium also for black diphtheria, lep-
rosy, bubonic plague, pediculosis, tuber-
eulos;s of the appetits ,.feyerAanimosis