Well Al they's a whole flock of these here reporters over here and I guess
they's one for every big paper in the U. S. and they all wear bands around
their sleeves with a C on them for civilian or something so as you can
spot them comeing and keep your mouth shut. Well they have got their head
quarters in one of the towns along the line but they ride all over the camp
in automobiles and this evening I was outside of our billet and one of them
come along and seen me and got out of his car and come up to me and asked
if I wasn't Jack Keefe the White Sox pitcher. Well Al he writes for one of
the Chi papers and of course he knows all about me and has seen me work.
Well he asked me a lot of questions about this in that and I didn't give
him no military secrets but he asked me how did I like the army game and
etc.
I asked him if he was going to mention about me being here in the paper and
he says the censors wouldn't stand for mentioning no names until you get
killed because if they mentioned your name the Germans would know who all
was here but after you are dead the Germans don't care if you had been here
or not.
But he says he would put it in the paper that he was talking to a man that
use to be a star pitcher on the White Sox and he says everybody would know
who it was he was talking about because they wasn't such a slue of star
pitchers in the army that it would take a civil service detective to find
out who he meant.
So we talked along and finely he asked me was I going to write a book about
the war and I said no and he says all right he would tell the paper that he
had ran across a soldier that not only use to be a ball player but wasn't
going to write a book and they would make a big story out of it.
So I said I wouldn't know how to go about it to write a book but when I
went around the world with the 2 ball clubs that time I use to write some
poultry once in a wile just for different occasions like where the boys was
called on for a speech or something and they didn't know what to say so I
would make up one of my poems and the people would go nuts over them.
So he said why didn't I tear off a few patriotic poems now and slip them to
him and he would send them to his paper and they would print them and maybe
if some of them was good enough somebody would set down and write a song to
them and probably everybody would want to buy it and sing it like Over
There and I would clean up a good peace of jack.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account