Chapter 7

Me and my two thin blankets As thin as my last thin dime, As thin, I guess, as a chorus girl's dress, Well, I had a dandy time. I'd pull 'em up from the bottom, Whenever I started to sneeze, A couple of yanks to cover my shanks, And then how my "dogs" did freeze.

You could use 'em for porous plasters, Or maybe to strain the soup,-- My pillows my shoes when I tried to snooze-- And I've chilblains, a cough and croup.

Me and my two thin blankets, Bundled up under my chin; Yes, a German spy was likely the guy, And--MY--but they were thin.

AMERICAN EYE CLASSES

ED. B. Meyrowitz

OPTICIAN

LONDON PARIS 1A, Old Bond St. 3, Rue Scribe.

---- HEARD IN THE CAFE. ----

"So you were down at El Paso the same time we were? Bum town, wasn't it?"

"Let's see,--I knew a lad out in Kansas City and his name was--"

"No, I haven't been up in Alaska since 1908, but there's a guy in our comp'ny who--"

"By the way, where did you say you came from in New Hampshire?"

"Sure enough. We hung around there at Tampa until--"

"Yes, I got a paper from my home town in Nevada that said--"

And, in spite of talk like that, there are some people back home that think their own communities' men are doing all the fighting.

---- CAN YOU BLAME HER? ----

Teacher in French School: "Marie, what is the national anthem of La Patrie?"

Little Marie: "La Marseillaise."

Teacher: "Good! Now, the national air of England?"

Little Marie: "God Save the King."

Teacher: "Very good, mon enfant! Now, the national air of the United States?"

Little Marie: "Certainement! It is 'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!'"

---- GOOD ENOUGH FOR HIM. ----

"Well, Bill, how are you getting along with your French?"

"Fine! I know the words for wood, straw, beefsteak and suds; what more do I want to get by with?"

---- SUCH IS FAME! ----

"Jake, who's this Lord Reading that's the new British Ambassador to the States?"

"Reading? Say, ain't he the guy that run a railroad somewhere in Pennsylvania?"

English and American

OUTFITTERS

Best choice at moderate prices

THE SPORT

17, Boulevard Montmartre, 17

PARIS

NEW YORK WASHINGTON

BRENTANO'S

(Societe Anonyme)

Booksellers & Stationers, 37, AVENUE DE L'OPERA, PARIS.

Latest American, English & French Books

MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS.

Dictionaries, Phrase Books in all Languages.

United States Army Regulations, etc.

FINE COLLECTION OF WAR POSTERS.

LIKE A LETTER FROM HOME.

That is the purpose we hope to serve with

THE STARS AND STRIPES

IF YOU ARE A WRITER: Send us Copy.

IF YOU ARE AN ARTIST: Send us Pictures.

IF YOU ARE A HUSTLER: Get your captain to allow you to help us build up a 100 per cent. circulation and put cash in your company funds through subscriptions and advertising. There are no profits in THE STARS AND STRIPES for anyone but its soldier subscribers.

_THIS IS YOUR PAPER IN EVERY SENSE. LEND A HAND._

Address all communications to THE STARS AND STRIPES, Press Division, G.H.Q., A.E.F., France.

ALLIES THE FAVORITES IN BETTING ODDS ON BIG WORLD'S SERIES

---- KID JOHNSON LOSES BELT BY A KNOCKOUT ---- Fighting Fireman from the Q.M.C. Defeats Champion in One Round. ---- By BRITT. ----

An extra long khaki-colored canvas belt, regulation, was turned over this week to Judson C. Pewther, Q.M.C., by Kid Johnson, of the --th Infantry, following a two minute ceremony which ended in a knockout. Which is to say, "Charlie, the Fighting Fireman," is being hailed as the new heavyweight champion of G.H.Q., A.E.F.

Kid Johnson had whipped everyone in sight at G.H.Q., and was being touted as the champion of Amex forces. He was billed to fight both Pewther and a French heavyweight aspirant the same evening. He had to disappoint the Frenchman--_fini, monsieur, FEENISHED_.

Charlie, ostensibly a modest and unassuming fireman in the offices of the Intelligence Section, General Staff, is now recognized as one of the best fighting units in the A.E.F. Report has it that he was one of the best bets on the Border, where he served in the Body Snatchers--with a long string of ring victories to his credit. He had been out of the boxing game for nearly three years, having married in the interim, but no one disputes the fact that he made a great comeback.

Right Hook Turns the Trick.

The scrap took place before a crowded house. The two heavy-weights were evenly matched in height and weight.

Johnson started like all champions, confidently, and let loose a strip of rattling lefts. Charlie faced the fusillade and coolly replied with several vicious upper-cuts reminiscent of Border days. With frequent jabs he rocked the champion's head, and the crowd roared.

He met Johnson's rushes with a persistent left. The champion was fighting mad and rushed in for a cleanup. As he did so, he uncovered. The opening was small but sufficient. Charlie countered with his left, then sent a swift right hook to the jaw. Johnson wilted. Three knockdowns followed. Then the champion took the count.

Fighting Charlie was on the job at Headquarters next morning as usual, showing no marks of the encounter. The petites demoiselles, over whom Charlie exercises daily authority, were dumbfounded to learn that their boss was a bruiser. But it is significant that the fires in the Intelligence Section to-day are burning brighter than ever.

New Champion Is Modest.

Pewther was averse to talking about himself, but he confessed to twenty-nine years and claimed Portland, Ore., as his home. A representative of THE STARS AND STRIPES found him the afternoon after the fight seated on a coal-box reading his favorite dime novel--in which he finds a laugh in every line--and wearing the same sized hat.

"I wouldn't have broken into the game again," he declared, "but I felt that I couldn't stand by and hear the Johnson coterie putting over their sweeping challenges. It was all right to challenge the crowd, but when all the soldiers of the A. E. F. were included I figured it was up to me to register a kerplunk for the Q.M. Johnson would have been champion yet if he hadn't tried to take in so much territory. I'm satisfied to be champion, and let it go at that. But if there's anyone else who wants the title he can have it--unless there's something substantial in it."

Which indicates there may be something doing, as report has it that the doughboys don't intend to let the Q.M. man walk off with the championship.

---- A PINCH HITTER IN KHAKI. ----

Lank used to be something of a baseball player. In fact he's still on the rolls of a certain National League club and back in 1914 it was Lank's mighty swatting that won the world's championship for his team.

Next to General Pershing himself and a few other generals, Lank is about the most popular soldier in France. When his regiment--once of the National Guard--comes swinging down the pike the sidelines are jammed with other soldiers who crane their necks to get a peek at him.

Lank always carries the colors. He's now color-sergeant.

"So that fella's Lank, the great ball player," you can hear one doughboy say to another. "Well, I'll be doggonned. Looks just like any other soldier, don't he?"

"What you expect to see?" will ask a soldier who has worshipped Lank's batting average for lo! these many years. "Didja expect to see a fella wearin' a baseball uniform and carryin' a bat over his shoulder? Sure, that's Lank. Hello, Lank, howja like soldiering?"

Lank will look out of the corner of his eye and then, sure that no officer is looking, reply out of the corner of his mouth:

"We're on to the Kaiser's curves, boys. We'll hit everything those Huns pitch for home runs. No strike outs in this game!"

Lank is the life of his regiment. In his "stove league" this Winter he has organized all kinds of baseball leagues and next Spring he's going to lead a championship team against all soldier comers.

If General Pershing isn't too busy Lank will try and get him to umpire some afternoon.

---- STRAY SHOTS. ----

So Grover Alexander has been drafted? Some squad is going to have a nifty hand grenade tosser to its credit, eh, what?

----

Wonder if John L., when he arrived at the pearly gates and St. Peter asked his name, gave his customary reply of, "Yours truly, John L. Sullivan?" If he did, we bet he walked right on in while the good saint was still trying to figure it out.

----

Speaking of the great John L., we suppose that "Handsome Jim" Corbett is the only old time champion who can at all aspire to Sullivan's place in public esteem.

----

We seem to know the tune of this anonymous contribution, but we never have heard these words before:

We're in the trenches now, The slacker milks the cow, And the son of a Hun Must skeedaddle and run, For we're in the trenches now.

---- FOR A LIVE SPORT PAGE. ----

THIS IS poor apology for

* * *

A LIVE SPORT page but it

* * *

MAKES A beginning and

* * *

SOMEBODY had to do it

* * *

AND I was the goat but

* * *

WITH YOUR help we'll

* * *

DO BETTER next time if you

* * *

WRITE US some notes from

* * *

YOUR CAMP and send us

* * *

SOME VERSES for

* * *

ONE GUY can't handle this

* * *

ALL himself and

* * *

ANYBODY could do the job

* * *

BETTER than I can you know

* * *

WE WANT to find a

* * *

REAL SPORTING editor somewhere

* * *

AND WISH this job

* * *

OFF ON him and then

* * *

WE'LL buy a cable from

* * *

BACK home and tell him

* * *

TO HOP to it.

C. P. C.

---- INDOOR SPORTS ----

SATURDAY NIGHT.

First you take a basin, Place it on the stove, Wait about an hour or so, Shoo away the drove Of your jeering billet mates Betting you won't dare; Then you spread a slicker On the floor with care.

Next you doff your O. D., And your undershirt. Wrap a towel 'round your waist, Wrestle with the dirt; Do not get the sponge too wet-- Little drops will trickle Down a soldier's trouser legs-- Golly! How they tickle!

Then you clothe yourself again-- That is, to the belt; Strip off boots and putts and trou, Socks--right to the pelt; Send the gooseflesh quivering Up and down your limbs-- Gosh! You aren't in quite the mood For singing gospel hymns.

Then you wash, and wash and wash, Dry yourself once more, Put on all your clothes again, Go to bed and snore, Wake up at the bugle's call With a cold, and sore Truly, baths in France are--well, What Sherman said of war!

FOOLING THE FLEA.

You'll march in the flea parade and be glad of the chance after you've lived a week in an old French sheep shed.

"Say, I'll be glad to get back to the mosquitoes," said a young hand-grenadier from Dallas, Tex., as he dumped his "other clothes" in the flea-soup cauldron. "These babies chew you to death day and night. A mosquito's a night-rider only."

The line forms on the right of the cook-shack. The cooks build big fires out in the open and set out great kettles of water. When the water begins to boil the parade begins, each man dumping in his flea-infested clothing--uniform, socks, underwear, wristlets and blankets. The cooks keep the fires stoked up with wood and the garments boil for a solid hour.

Then the men form another line and collect their stuff. They wring out the clothes the best they can and then sit down to "pick 'em off."

"They're fast little devils most usually," said the Dallas man, "but the sudden shock from warm water to cold air makes them stiff, and you can catch 'em easy."

The A. E. F.'s living in sheep barns simply can't keep clear of the things. They're in the rafters, in the hay, and in the planks. Weekly boiling of clothing only gives a short relief.

Really they aren't fleas at all, but a form of sheep tick. But they don't distinguish between sheep and American soldiers.

"BUTTON, BUTTON."

The Army gets some of its best ideas about equipment from the soldiers who have to use it.

Here's an idea, making for efficiency and convenience, which comes from an Omaha boy in the ranks. He says:

"Why don't they put bachelor buttons on our uniforms and overcoats? I've got a 'housewife' in my kit, but I'm working from 6.15 in the morning until 5 o'clock at night, and what little leisure I get I'd like to spend in the Y.M.C.A. playing the phonograph or shooting pool.

"And anyway, if I've got to do my sewing in the barn I live in, I might as well not try at all. My fingers are so numb the minute I take off my mitts that I couldn't thread a needle."

Not only that, said the Omaha soldier, but you usually find you haven't any thread in your "housewife."

There seems to be something in favor of bachelor buttons, especially since the people who sew the buttons on new uniforms and coats always do a poor job.

---- YES, HOW DO THEY? ----

Private Pat: "Mike, what th' hell kind of fish be them ye're eatin'?"

Corporal Mike: "Hush, Pat; don't be disthplayin' yer ignorance--the ould Frinch la-ady might hear yeze! Thim's sairdeens!"

Pat: "Sairdeens, is ut? They're a small fish, ain't they? An' where, pray tell, do they grow?"

Mike: "Pat, I'm asthounded at yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'--oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they live off'n eatin' th' sairdeens!"

Pat: "They do, do they Mike? Thin phwaht I'd like to know is how th' hell do they iver open the box?"

---- SUPPLIES FIRST AID TO CHILLY AIRMEN ---- Red Cross Canteen Serves 2000 Sandwiches and Mugs of Coffee Daily. ----

The Red Cross does a lot of work over here. Its activities in taking care of the population of the Hun-devastated districts, in clothing and feeding the ever-increasing hordes of refugees that pour in over the Swiss frontier, in supplying French and American military hospitals and in furnishing the American forces with auxiliary clothing are well known. It is not known, however, that, somewhere in that nebulous region known as somewhere in France, the Red Cross has gone in a bit for what has generally been considered the Y. M. C. A.'s own particular game--that of running the festive army canteen.

So far as can be found out at present writing, this canteen is the only one operated by the Red Cross in France. It is run primarily for the benefit of the young American aviators whose training station is hard by. And, because aviators, breathing rarer and higher ozone than most of the rest of us, are in consequence always as hungry as kites and cormorants, this particular Red Cross canteen does a rushing business.

It is situated in a long barrack-like building of the familiar type, which is partitioned off into a social room and a combination officers' dining room and a storeroom kitchen. The kitchen--as always in anything pertaining to the army--is the all-important part. This kitchen is noteworthy for two things: It has a real stand-up-and-sit-up lunch counter, and its products are cooked and served by the deft hands of American women.

Girls Worked All Night.

No dinners are served at this canteen for the airmen. Those favors are reserved for the convalescents in the hospital nearby. But the airmen are dropping in all the time for sandwiches and hot coffee, particularly after coming down, chilled and chattering, from a flight into the upper regions of the sky. If they don't drop in to get warmed up in that fashion, they know they are in for a scolding by the head of the canteen, an Englishwoman possessed of all an American mother's motherly instincts and all of the English army's ideals of discipline.

There was one night that the little Red Cross canteen was put to a severe test. Eighteen hundred Americans arrived at the aviation camp after a thirty-hour trip punctuated by no saving hot meal. The manager-matron and her girl helpers, however, stayed up nearly all night, minting hot coffee and sandwiches so that the hardships of sleeping on the cold bare ground of the hangars was somewhat mitigated for the 1,800 unfortunates.

A Repair Shop For Clothes.

In all the canteen disburses about 2,000 sandwiches a day, with mugs of coffee to match. In addition to that, its workers, equipped with Norwegian fireless cookers, sally forth to the aviation fields in the mornings long before dawn so that the men who are going up may have something warm to eat and drink to fortify them against the cold. Not content with doing that for their charges the Red Cross people soon hope to have enough workers to take care of mending the aviators' clothes, for aviators have to wear lots of clothes, and, when they land in trees, in barbed wire, on stone walls and so forth, their clothes suffer in consequence. A doughboy, who wears one suit at a time, doesn't have a hard job keeping it in order; but an aviator with heaven knows how many layers of clothes--oh, my!

The young women who constitute the Red Cross working staff at this particular base, are, for the most part, prominent in society in the larger American cities. Voluntarily they have given up lives of luxury to tackle the job, and a hard job it is. They live in small barracks of their own, as do the "Tommywaacs" (Women's Army Auxiliary Corps) of the British army; but they are "roughing it" gladly to help Uncle Sam win his war.

---- OUR SANCTUM ----

It's an office, all right, for it has a typewriter in it. No, not the feminine person who usually decorates offices; simply the typewriting machine. It has a calendar too, as all well-regulated offices should have. The only things every well-regulated office has which it lacks are the red-and-white signs "Do It Now" and the far more cheerful wall motto, "Out to Lunch."

It has lamps, to be sure, not electric lights, as is the custom among offices in the States. It has maps on the walls, but they differ a great deal from the ones which used to hang above the Boss's desk back home, and at which we used to stare blankly while waiting for him to look up from his papers and say, "Well, whazzamatternow?" These maps have no red circles marking zones of distribution, no blue lines marking salesmen's routes and delimiting their territories, no stars marking agencies' locations. True, they have lines on them, and a few stars on them, but they stand for far different things....

Furnishings are Simple.

The office has a few rickety chairs, and one less rickety than the others which is reserved for the Big Works, as he is affectionately called, on the occasion of his few but none the less disquieting visits. It has a rickety table or two, usually only one, for firewood is scarce in France. It has a stove, which, from its battered appearance, must have been used as a street barricade during the Reign of Terror in the days of the First Revolution. Said stove requires the concentrated efforts of one husky Yank, speaking three languages--French, United States, and profane--all the live-long day to keep it going. Even then the man sitting nearest the window is always out of luck.

The walls are unkempt in appearance, as if the plaster had shivered involuntarily for many a weary day before the coming of "les Americains" and their insistence upon the installation of the stove. The paper is seamed and smeared until it resembles a bird's-eye view of the battlefield of the Marne. The ceiling is as smudged as the face of a naughty little boy caught in the midst of a raid on the jam in the pantry, due, no doubt, to the aforesaid stove and to the over-exuberant rising-and-shining of the kerosene lamps. Some people ascribe the state of the celling to the grade of tobacco which the Boss smokes; but the Boss always thunders back, "Well, what the devil can a man do in a country where even cornsilk would be a blessing?" And, as what the Boss says goes, that ends it.

There is one rug on the floor, a dilapidated affair that might well be the flayed hide of a flea-bitten mule. There is a mantlepiece, stretching across what used to be a fireplace in the days of the First Napoleon, but which is a fireplace no more. On top of the mantlepiece is a lot of dry reading--wicked-looking little books full of fascinating facts about how to kill people with a minimum of effort and ammunition. On the floor, no matter how carefully the office occupants scrape their hobnails before entering, there is always a thin coating of mud.

The office telephone is on the wall, instead of on the Boss's desk, as it ought to be. One has to take down receiver and transmitter all in the same piece in order to use it. And it has the same old Ford-crank attachment on the side that is common to phones in the rural free delivery districts of the United States of America.

Why Hats Are Worn.

Instead of being lined with bright young men in knobby business suits and white stiff collars, the office is lined with far brighter young men in much more businesslike khaki. They keep their hats on while they work for they know not when they may have to dash out again into the cold and the wind and the rain. They keep their coats on for the same reason; there are no shirt-sleeves and cuff protectors in this office, for the simple reason that there are no cuffs to be protected and that shirt-sleeves are "not military."

There is no office clock for the laggard to watch. Instead, there are bugle calls, sounded from without. Or, again the hungry man puts the forearm bearing his wrist watch in front of his face, as if to ward off a blow, when he wants to know the time. Save for the clanking of spurs and the thumping of rubber boots, it is a pretty quiet office, singularly so, in fact, considering the work that is done in it.

Take it all in all, it's a strange kind of an office, isn't is? Well, it ought to be, considering it's in a strange land. It's an army newspaper office, that's what it is--an American sanctum in the heart of France.

---- TACTICS GET GOAT ACROSS. ---- Requirements Include Perfume, a Sack, a Kit Bag and Cheers. ----

From the C.O. down to "Fuzzy," who would have rather taken court martial, no one wanted to leave "Jazz" behind. So there was no end of indignation when the order came at a certain American port that no animals (unless useful) could go to France with the squadron.