The Wilmington morning star., 1941-02-15
. WASHINGTON Daybook
BY JACK STINNETT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14.-AnsWering the
mail orders matters mostly military:
L.. D., Columbus, O.-Army officials here
tell me that the first major league baseball
player to come in under Selective service is
Gene Stack, Chicago White Sox rookie pitcher
He is now at Fort Custer, Mich. There are
other baseball players, football men from col
lege and pro teams, and athletes in a dozen
other fields on the draft lists. It is merely
the law Of averages that has resulted in no
more of these being called to date. Selective
service officials say that there is no exception
made merely because a man is a professional
athlete or a college star. Every camp is
going to have its athletic teams to match
against other camps. This is an important
phase of the entertainment and morale pro-
gram by which army officials hope to make
that years training something that all the
young men will be eager to dive into. Conse-
quently, I think if %selective service were play
ing any f%avorites at all, it would not favor
the athletes. A baseball player or football
star who draws around $40, 900 a year in the
professional field will be worth a lot to the
army, too Think how many youngsters would
be happy to enlist if they could be in the
same company with Joe DiMaggio, Whizer
White, Tommy Harmon, Bob Teller or big
john Kimbrough.
F. T.. M, Fort Worth, Tex.-Im afraid I
can't give you very much information about
home guard uniforms. The only specific rul-
ing that the war department has made on
them so far is that they must be entirely
different from army, navy or marine corps
they should take the matter up with the war
department through the nearest quartermaster
corps. The reason is that the war depart
ment doesn't want home guard units taking
on uniforms made from materials which
might be nearing a shortage because of the
demands of the military program.
T W., Key West, Fla.-Practically all of
the new army camps are named for generals
of one rank or another and, on rare occa-
sions, for officers of lesser rank who have
written their names in the American history
books. There are two camps, however. which
have been named for privates. One is Camp
Berkeley at Abilene, Tex, and the other
Camp Roberts, near Nacimiento, Cal. Priv
ate David B. Berkeley was a young Texan.
In the World war he volunteered to swim
the Meuse river under enemy fire in an effort
to get important military information. On his
return trip, he droWned-but not until he was
close enough to shore for comrades to find
his body and discover that he had brought
back the vital information desired. Corp. Har-
old Roberts also was killed in action in France
under conditions which merited capital letters
in the army's books, but the army officials I
talked with couldn't put their fingers quickly
on the record.
X. r.. NJ, Brookline, Mass.-The controversy
over the Garand rifle seems to have died
down here. Checking with army officials, /
couldn't unearth even an argument. AS a
matter of fact, they were fairly popping with
the latest accomplishments of their official
semi-automatic rifle. 1t seems that they just
had had official reports on the gun from
Alaska, where the Garand has been given
severe tests under 20-degree-below-zero tenn
perature. Results were said to be as good as
if the boys were firing off Miami and
Santa Monica beaches in chamber OF COM
merce weather From an unofficial but gen.
orally reliable source, I have it that the
army now has about 100, 900 Garands and
plans more than to triple the number within