“——and then the Germans charged, and the captain shouted, ‘Shoot at will,’ and I shouted, ‘Which one is he?’ And then they took away my gun, and now I can’t play any more.”
GOING HOME
Visitor—“And what did you do when the shell struck you?”
Bored Tommy—“Sent mother a post-card to have my bed aired.”
ENLISTED MEN TELL WHY THEY JOINED THE ARMY
OUR first forces in France were volunteers, part of the old regular Army, though many of the enlistments were recent. The motives leading men to join such an army are varied and in many cases humorous or pathetic. A Y. M. C. A. secretary in France, who had won the confidence of the men with whom he was associated, wondered why each man had come. So he arranged that they should hand in cards telling why they had enlisted. Mr. Arthur Gleason presents some of the answers in the New York Tribune as “the first real word from the soldier himself of why he has offered himself.” These replies came from two battalions of an infantry regiment, which, for military reasons can not be identified. Mr. Gleason puts them in several groups. One is the sturdily patriotic. Thus, one soldier says:
“My reason in 1907 was that I liked the service and wanted to try for something new and bright for my country.”