The Ely miner., 1943-09-09

forks and listen to the conversation
of other workers about us.
Some there were who could not
see the Importance of the service
they were rendering; others spoke
disparagingly of the place and Bit
terly cursed mans best friend, the
horse. Two soldiers who shared a
single pitchfork at the next truck
spent all their time discussing the
comparative beauties of the music
of List and Tchaikovsky, proving
that art endureth forever even in an
alien atmosphere.
AS for myself, I gloried in the
honor of the tradition I was helping
to carry out. My mind drew pic
lures of the philosopher Ward
Beecher Threat, who boasts that he
carried pitchfork through the heat
of the fiercest battles throughout the
last war.
Corporal Farmer had no comment
to make about the work. Himself a
philosopher, he feels that a job
worth doing is worth doing right.
We made three trips to the cav
airy barnyard before we had finished
enriching the earth about the order
ly room, the mess hall, and the four
barracks of Battery A. We bathed
vigorously and dressed for early
dinner.
The mess sergeant met us at the
door. He shifted the air delicately
and quietly closed the door in our
faces. Then he made the rounds,
closing the windows nearest us.
''Git!" he said.
We went back to the barracks,
where we found our comrades re-
turned from the classroom. We sat
down on our foot lockers and strove
to remain as inconspicuous as possi-
BILE. Private Sher was the first to
speak.
"Do you smell something?" Pri-
vate Sher asked with unaccustomed
rudeness. Everyone, it seemed,
smelled something. 1t was not, they
decided, Chanel Number Five. It
was not My Sin or Evening in Paris.
One of the citizen-soldiers, who had
once worked in the stockyards, knew
what it was.
When the hunt came nearer, Prt
Yates McGlauf1in, Rolf, and I arose
and quietly left the squadroom and
quietly sat by the newly invigorated
grass borders outside.
>-A-
Maybe I spoke too soon when
denied the sissiness charges by mag
azine writer's. It must be admitted,
after yesterdays horrible disclosure,
that some termite is boring from
within us. Some force is sapping
the rugged manliness of Battery A.
Here's what happened at supper
yesterday evening. First of all,
when we neared the end of the chow
line, we found one of the cooks
there, scooping ice cream out of a
can. We are meat-and-potato men
in Battery A and generally we do
not take to such frilly fanciness as
ice cream, although we occasionally
humor the mess sergeant by letting
him buy it in ready-cut blocks.
This time, we found, he had gone
too far. Our leniency and intoler-
ance in letting him buy ice cream
had gone to his head. Now he was
making it at home-in the respecta-
BILE kitchen of Battery A! Home
made pineapple ice creaml
I didn't say anything about it.
thought that perhaps he was merely
going through his second childhood,
and second childhood is something
that every mess sergeant must be
permitted to go through once. Real
izing this, we boys hadn't said any,
thing when our mess sergeant had
air-conditioning fans put in the
kitchen windows to make namby-
pambies of the cooks and kaypees,
We hadn't said anything when he
started keeping jam on the table at
all meals.
We're going to have to say some
thing now. The man is going alb
solutely mad. Not content with
springing homemade ice cream on
us, he had to heap more Goals on
the fire of our impatience at the
same meal.
There on each table in our mess
hall, brazenly placed in the very GEN.