No Favors for Lemon Squads
[Although no official announcement has been made as yet,] it is safe to surmise that some company commanders will offer prizes for the squads [producing the biggest pumpkins,] the best summer squashes, and the most luscious watermelons. (Texas troops please heed.) Company commanders, you know, have never been in the habit of awarding prizes for the squads producing the most lemons, but, then, war changes every thing.
So keep your old campaign list for garden wear (if the Q.M. will let you); make a pair of overalls out of the burlap the meat comes done up in; use your trench pick and shovel, plus your bayonet, to do the plowing, and scatter the tender seedlets. If a few acorns come along with the rest of the plantables, plant them, too, for if we're going to be over here a good long time the shade from these oaks will come in mighty handy when we're old men and have time to sit down.
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OUR OWN HORSE MARINES.
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Horace Lovett, U. S. Marine Corps, on duty "somewhere over here," has just been appointed a horseshoer of Marines with the rank of corporal. In the same company Sergeant John Ochsner is stable sergeant and Corporal Stanley A. Smith is saddler. No, you have guessed wrong. The captain's name is not Jinks but Drum—Captain Drum of the horse and other marines.
HIS MORNING'S MAIL
IS 8,000 LETTERS
——
Base Censor Reads Them
All, Including 600 Not
in English
——
"Now, how the devil did he pick mine out of the pile?"
Shuddering, a young American in France gazed at the envelope before him, addressed in his own handwriting, to be sure, but with its end cut open and a stout sticker partially closing the cut. Stamped upon the face of the envelope were the fatal words "Examined by Base Censor." And the words, because of the gloom they brought the young man, were properly framed within a deep black border.
It was this way: The young man in question had been carrying on, for some time, a more or less hectic correspondence with a mademoiselle tres charmante in a not far distant town. That in itself would be harmless enough if he had sent his letters through the regular military channels—that is, submitted them to his own company officers to be censored. But dreading the "kidding" he might receive at the hands of his platoon commander—which he needn't have dreaded at all, for American officers are gentlemen and gentlemen respect confidence—he had been using the French postal service for his intimate and clandestine lovemaking. That, as everyone knows or ought to know, is strictly forbidden but the young man being "wise," thought he could put one over on the army. Result: That much dreaded bogey-man, the Base Censor knew just how many crosses he had made at the bottom of his note to Mlle. X.
But he needn't have worried a bit, for the bogey-man isn't a likely rival of any one. In fact, he isn't a man at all, but a System—just as impersonal as if he wrote his name, "Base Censor, Inc." Also, he is pretty well-nigh fool-proof and puncture-proof—which again removes him from consideration as "a human."