"That's Lieutenant James Brown, I reckon. There's a lot of that name in the Medical Department, but hell! He's married. Nobody writes to him on purple paper. Then there's another one in the One Thousand, Nine-Hundred and Seventeenth Motor-Ammunition-Ration-Revictualling-Woodchopping Battalion. His'n allus writes to him on that kind of paper. I guess that's him, all right. Hey, feller, shove this in 88966543, will-ya? Thanks!"
From the rear of a line of scrapping, frantic mail orderlies, each one trying to corner all the packages marked "Tobacco" and "Chocolate" for his particular outfit, the reporter, by standing on a box marked "Fragile—This Side Up," was able to see the scene depicted above, and to hear, above the din, the Postal Clerk's momentous decisions.
Nothing like that had ever come into his ken before. He had seen Col. Roosevelt at work in his office, talking into two telephones, dictating to four stenographers, and writing a letter with each hand simultaneously. He had watched the President of the United States dispose of four Senators, eight Representatives, three Governors of States, seven Indian tribal chiefs and the German ambassador in exactly seven and a half minutes by the clock. But never, in all his experience, had he witnessed such concentration, such rapidity of execution, as that which the lean, worn man at the big desk possessed. It was better than watching a machine gun in action, with all stops out.
Worming his way up to the desk, the reporter started on his set speech. "Mr. Army Post Office Superintendent, will you consent to be interviewed for——" when he was summarily stopped by the wave of an ample hand and the booming of the P.S.'s voice.
"Want me to talk, do you, eh? Want to know what I do with my spare time? All right, son; just jump over that gang of pouch-robbers and come on inside. Here you——" this to the still combatant orderlies, at the same time throwing an armfull of mail and papers at them—"here's all the stuff for your outfits to-day. Divvy up among yourselves, and then breeze!—beat it!—allez!
"Now, then, you want to know what I do with my spare time? Well, I work eighteen hours a day in the office, and the other six I spend worrying whether or not I gipped some poor Buddy when I cashed his American money order in French paper currency. Like the saloons in Hoboken, we never close.
Really Busy at Christmas.
"That's just about the way it was, no kidding, during the Christmas rush. In about a month enough tobacco, chocolate, chewing gum, [knit socks], mufflers, fruit cake, safety razors, lump sugar—to judge from the contents lists on the outside of the bundles—came through this office to stock the whole of France for the next year and a half. Now, though"—tossing a long, yellow envelope across the room into a numbered [pigeonhole—"things have slackened up a bit.] A week ago I had half an hour off to shave."
"Do the people back home cause you much bother by not addressing their letters correctly?" asked the reporter.
"N—no," replied the P.S. meditatively, "although I did get one the other day addressed to Private Ethan Allan of the 'American Revolutionary Force.' At first I was going to send it back to Vermont, after changing the private to Colonel, and have the D.A.R. see that it got somewhere near old Ethe's final resting place; but on second thought I guessed she—it's generally a she—meant the American Expeditionary Forces. So I went down about three or four regimental rosters, and finally I found the guy. Now he's probably wondering why he didn't get that letter in a month, instead of a month and a half, and cussing me out for the delay.