New Britain herald., 1926-12-23

named Margaret ana EilZaDeth ana
 nicknamed Rusty and Betty. America enters the World War
 and Jim Elwell enlists.sTwo nights before he goes away he discovers that one of the twins loves him and that he is in love with her. He tells his mother this, but does not tell her which one it is, as he wants her
 10 love both girls equally as well does not come back.
 Two days later Jim Elwcl de- parts for training camp.
 NOW BEGIN THE STORY CHAPTER MI
 No more did the merry song of youth ring out in glad tones in the
 away. Rarely vas Betty's harp ever Touched. No longer were laughing voices heard calling from upstairs
 and down and from kitchen to par ! Tor. The free and careless spirit of other days Was gone from the little i home where sadness had been a thing unknown.
 Prof and Mollie, badly as they felt, | still managed to keep up a brave | front, but the girls just couldn't seem to become reconcilcd to their loneliness. Their big pal. Jim, who never had given either of them a l harsh or unkind word. was gone and their young hearts were deso- | late.
 But they learned to stand it. the Elwells. as millions of others i throughout the land learned during
 the sixteen months that followed. , And many of them who didn't learn then have learned since and
 are standing it and will keep on standing it for many years to come. The cards that were drawn by Jim Elwcll in the big game of war assigned him first to a training camp not far from Indianapolis. There
 they flocked. young men from every where. volunteers, buck privates and
 candidates for officers commissions
 There Jim learned to hate such things as kitchen police, guard duty | and setting up exercises. There he | learned to leap 10 his feet at sight of ! a uniform with gleaming metal on
 it's shoulders. There he learned that brigadicrs ! were almost as insistent on being 1 saluted as second lieutcnants and listened with awe to the strange and bloodcurdling vocabular,es of veter-
 an top sergeants. There. too, he learned in time to overcome the feeling of nausea and 1 revulsion that accompanied bayonct | practice, when young men were transformed, some of them, into demons that stabbed and tore at the ! dummies with strange and fearsome looks in their eyes. He learned how to pick ont the vital spots on the dummies, learned | to twist and tear with his bayonet, learned from some of the veteran in structors that the best way to dis | engage your rifle when it had trans
 fixed an enemy was to pull the trg- ger.
 In short, he learned soldering
 modern soldering. He experienced
 the agonies of close order drill be-
 heath a shriveling sun, executed | squads right and squads left. learned | to call them squads east" and
 Squads west" toiled with a shovel | digging dirt and came in time to
 place a high value on cigaret and
 on the rest periods that came so in-
 frequently. | The uniforms that were handed to | them when they first arrived in
 camp were sights to behold They | bulged where they should have fit
 ted tightly; they gripped snugly
 where they should have bulged; the
 and produced blisters and kindred 1 torments.
 His second day in camp Jim and
 his squad mates took pictures Of one another and sent them home. Prof Elwell wrote back, T didn't
 raise my boy to be this kind of a sol dier.' and asked Jim if he didn't think the Commandant would listen
 to a proposition involving the hiring of dressmalIer. Mollie, he said, would volunteer A week later Jim, after having persuaded the quartcrmastcr depart ment to exchange a few garments, was photographed, and this time
 the resultant picture, after having been sent home, was pronounced 0.
 K. by the family council.
 I've think" wrote the twins, "that
 you look perfectly adorable" Jim's companions in camp were a
 varegated lot. Farm boys. college
 graduates. products of the slums of
 the big cities, youths from small
 towns just like Jim's home town,
 married men, single men--an kinds.
 Jim accepted them all alike. He made no especially strong friend ships but was a good fellow to many and so regarded many others, One youth, Fred Simmons. from Chicago and the son of a wealthy soap manu-
 facturer, he liked because he always grinned when he lost at craps. Sim 1
 mons had tried to get in the air service but had been rejected on some techinCality concerning an eye | test Failing this, he had gone to the | first recruiting office and 'drawn | cards" as he said.
 Dick Canfield up in Long Island. l had learned to fly, he wrote, and | was about to sail for France. They | tell me-" he said in his letter. that | We haven't any planes over there, | but it's all right with me. Now that ! I'm in this thing I want to get over seas and see it through"
 He had, he wrote. received