Military Training Camp for Business and Professional Men (Plattsburgh, N.Y.); Military education -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Fiction
I suppose I shall mannage to get along with these fellows, because I know
I must if I want what father promised me, and if the fellows at the
Casino aren't to laugh at me. But so far as I can see, everyone on the
train isn't at all my kind. Father doesn't understand how I feel about
fellows who are not in our set. I don't look down on them, you know, for
I'm sure most of them are very nice fellows of their sort. But I never
knew anyone of their kind before, and what am I to talk to them about?
Its all very well for father to say that I can get something worth while
from every man I meet; but he's a business man, and so he's used to them.
You mustn't think I'm unhappy if I say I shall miss you and shall hate to
be confined by the camp regulations. I'm not going to back out for father
and cousin Walt have put it up to me to see the thing through and though
I'm kind of used to disapointing father I don't intend that Walt shall
think I'm sandless.
But when the camp breaks up you must be sure to be here, with the
Rolls-Royce, to take me home. I don't think I could stand another trip
like this. Love from,
DAVID.
PRIVATE RICHARD GODWIN TO HIS MOTHER
Plattsburg Camp.
Friday evening, Sept. 8.
DEAR MOTHER:--
I had scarcely finished my letter of this morning when the train began to
slow down, and then drew up alongside a wide and gently sloping field,
while on the other side was the lake. With our luggage we poured out into
the field, evidently our training ground, since beyond it were tented
streets, with some big open-sided buildings that doubtless had some
military use, since we saw rookies going in and out. In haste to get our
share of what was to be had, we consulted the printed slips handed to us
in the train.
"On arriving at camp: First, Carry your hand baggage to the Y. M. C. A."
Where was the Y. M. C. A.? There was no building standing near of even
so much as two stories. There were tents and there were shacks, but even
when we came to a street busy with electrics, automobiles, motor trucks,
and foot passers, nothing of any size was to be seen. But as I followed
along with the rest, noting that almost everybody we met, from the riders
in the autos to the drivers of the trucks, was military, I saw a skeleton
structure, tar-paper-roofed, and bearing the magic letters for which we
were looking. There regulars--artillerymen with red-corded hats--received
our bags through the open frontage and stored them alphabetically.
"Second. Go to the mess-shacks for breakfast."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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