The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-08-21
MISTREATMENT
AT MILITARY
TRAINING CAMPS
Y outh Filled With
Anti-Labor Ideas
by a Worker Correspondent

(bY u w 0FbeT COIFespOHueHtJ
Comrades, l will tell of the ex-
perience few young workers who
had attended one of these Citizens
Military Training Camps. We were
assigned to large camp called Fort
Eustis, which is in Virginia.
We went down there on July 9th
and not until a day later did we
find out what kind of lousy plSco
the c. NJ. T. Cs. really are. There
were 1900 boys from Virginia, Mary
land, Delaware, District of Column
bia and Pennsylvania.
First of all, you can't get more
rotten food than we got down there.
They give you dirty potatoes which
can hardly be eaten for all meals,
breakfast, dinner and supper. Then
every day you get eggs, for almost
every meal, and they tasted as if
they were laid in storage for
month or so. The other stuff you
get to eat, tastes about as rotten
as Cne eggs ana potatoes.
Then you can hardly have any
liberty at all, for you have almost
600 officers watching you all the
time. Every little thing you do, you
get punished for. They mostly put
you in the kitchen to work. In there
it is worst than working in any
factory. You have to mop floors,
scrub the tables, clean the dishes,
and big dirty pots and pans where
they make the eats in.
Every day about twenty or thirty
boys get sick, and they have to go
to the hospital. This is mostly from
the filthy eats you get for your
meals.
Another thing is the drilling they
make you do. You get four hours
of this every day. You get a rifle
that weighs ten pounds and have to
carry it around all the time, and 1
can tell you that sure does make
your shoulder ache.
You have to drill in the hot sun
until some of the weaker boys drop
down and faint from sheer ex-
hausion.
Another thing, about the water,
you can't get worse water, than
they give you; it tastes as if they
put some kind of medicine in it.
Also there is shooting on the rifle
range with those big thirty eight
and forty-four calibre bullets. 1t is
almost a certainty that someone
gets hurt, either your face, hands,
shoulders or anything else. You
have to throw yourself on the
ground and start blazing away.
Then something should be told of
the kind of lectures they give on
citizenship.
They tell you the reason in having
these camps is to learn how to be-
come "real true Americans" They
say that the Communist are "big
bunch of thieves and renegades, who
are trying to run this country" that
they are trying to have a govern
ment like they have in Russia, which
they say is government that mis-
treats the people, and where parents
sell their children for ten or fifteen
dollars.
Another thing they say is that
Russia is at the end of her power.
In about one year there will be no
more radicals, and Communism is
gradually going to hell" They be-
gin comparing the United States
government, and the Russian govern
ment. l don't think anything should
be told of how they do the COM
pairing, for every true Communist
realizes now they are fighting
against the USSR.
All of this brine out how the
capitalists try to demoralize the
minds Of the youth in this country.
But they will never succeed in this,
for the naturalization and speed up
here are certainly clearing up the
minds Of the youth in this country.
1t certainly is a month of torture,
to have to stay in one of those
camps. One thing else l must say,
that is, I'm quite sure we have won
at least a hundred boys to our cause
for the treatment you get there
sure does make you have hatred
against the capitalist class. If you
want to suffer boys, there is one
place, and that is at the Citizens
Military Training Camps.
IN. r.