Biltmore Oswald : $b The diary of a hapless recruitSmith, Thorne
General
Biltmore Oswald : $b The diary of a hapless recruit
Smith, Thorne
Humorous stories; United States. Navy -- Fiction
At one restaurant we ran into a female whose hair was nearly as short
as Fogerty's. She was holding forth on the Silence of the Soul vs. the
Love Impulse, the cabbage or some other plant. Fogerty listened to her
for a while and then bit her. He did it quietly, but I thought it best
to take him away.
After supper we went up to another place for coffee, a fine little
place for sailormen, situated on the south side of the square. Here
we were received with winning cordiality and Fogerty was given a fried
egg, a dish of which he is passionately fond. But even here he got
into trouble by putting one of his great feet through a Ukulele, which
isn't such a terrible thing to do, except in certain places.
Getting back to the station was a crisp little affair. Fogerty and
myself rose at five and went forth to the shuttle. The subway was a
madhouse. We shuttled ourselves to death. At 5.30 we were at the Times
Square end of the shuttle, at 5.45 we were at Williams, at 6 o'clock
we had somehow managed to get ourselves on the east side end of the
shuttle, five minutes later we were back at Times Square, ten minutes
later we were over on the east side once more. At 6.15 I lost Fogerty.
At 6.25 I was back at Times Square. "Hello, buddy," said the guard,
"you back again? Here's your dog."
At 7 o'clock we were at Van Cortlandt Park, at 8 we were at
Ninety-sixth Street, 9 o'clock found us laboring up to the gate of the
camp, with a written list of excuses that looked like the schedule of
a flourishing railroad. It was accepted, much to our surprise.
_Aug. 7th._ I have a perfectly splendid idea. Of course, like the rest
of my ideas it won't work, but it is a perfectly splendid idea for all
that. I got it while traveling on the ferry boat from New York to
Staten Island--the longest sea voyage I have had since I joined the
Navy. On this trip, strangely thrilling to a sailor in my situation,
but which was suffered with bored indifference by the amphibious
commuters that infest this Island in those waters, I saw a number of
ships so gaudily and at the same time so carelessly painted that any
God-fearing skipper of the Spanish Main would positively have refused
to command. Captain Kidd himself would have blushed at the very sight
of this ribald fleet and turned away with a devout imprecation.
This was my first experience with camouflage, and it impressed me most
unfavorably. An ordinary ship on a grumbling ocean is difficult enough
as it is to establish friendly relations with, but when trigged out in
this manner--why serve meals at all, say I. Nevertheless it occurred
to me that it would not be a bad idea at all to camouflage one's
hammock in such a manner that it took upon itself the texture and
appearance of the bulkhead of the barracks in which it was swung. In
this manner a sailor could sleep undisturbed for three weeks if he so
desired (and he does), without ever being technically considered a
deserter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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