"You wouldn't care about being anything else in civil life, would you?"
"No," Corporal Noll admitted promptly. "After a taste of real soldiering in the regular Army I don't see how on earth a fellow can be satisfied with any other kind of life. That is, if a fellow has life, spirit and red blood in him."
Sergeant Hupner proved not only to be disengaged, but ready to begin the instruction of the aspiring young wig-waggers immediately.
It is really no part of an infantry soldier's duty to learn telegraphy, but he is trained at times in the use of the wig-wag signal flags. In the Army both telegraphy and signaling are work usually performed by members of the Signal Corps. In the case of telegraphy, however, at an infantry post where there is no detachment of Signal Corps men, then the work at the telegraph instruments must necessarily fall upon infantry soldiers, since some of the messages sent and received at a military post cannot be intrusted to men who have not taken the oath.
"You take one of the flags, Corporal Overton," began Sergeant Hupner, after stepping from barracks out into the open, "and I'll take the other at the outset. Corporal Terry can look on at first. Now, a signalman, at the beginning of his work, holds the flag straight up before him—so. Each letter in the alphabet has its own series of numbers to stand for it. These numbers are made by dropping the flag so many times to the right or left of your body. Thus——"
Sergeant Hupner described some rapid sweeps with the flag to right and left.
"A, B, C, D, E," he spelled along, as he signaled the letters.
"We know that part of it already, Sergeant," replied Corporal Hal. "We've been studying the alphabet and the punctuation points in the book."[A]
"Oh, I'll warrant that you've been studying the alphabet and everything connected with it," replied Sergeant Hupner, with a smile. "And I don't believe you'll need many points from me in order to become first-class signalmen. Take this flag, Terry. Now, Overton, stand off there and signal your full name to me. Spell out the letters slowly, so that I can criticize you when necessary."
Despite his knowledge of the alphabet Hal naturally made a few blunders at first.