Johnstown High School - Spectator Yearbook (Johnstown, PA)

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28 SPECTATOR acquaintance, had to induct jacob into the delights of an army bath. One simple lesson like this followed another, Cooper learning just a little faster than his squad, and all learning something new every day. Unexpectedly the Company suffered a heavy loss in the transfer of the Clerk to Headquarters, and we had to comb through our qualification cards very carefully to find in our Berks County aggregation a man fitted for office work. Cooper had scored a modest line under the heading, Book- keeper, and we made him confess that he had also tapped a typewriter in a village store. With Cooper in the office the fun began. VVith elephantine grace he plunged into his work, but his legs were entirely too long for our tiny Or- derly Room. When an officer came in and he snapped up to attention, he always knocked over the chair or jarred the Captain's pen into making an earthquake graph. There was too much of him for our two-by-four office. He had made great progress on military lines, however, and one day the chance came. The Captain looked up suddenly from an order which had just come in. Cooper, how would you like to go to France? My God, no l was the startled answer. No one from the Company had gone overseas up to that time, and Cooper had been too busy to think of such an immediate possibility. The train leaves at nine o'clock, and that gives you about forty minutes to pack up, was all the Captain said. Cooper knocked over his chair, came up to a salute, and charged out of the room. A few minutes later he came in again with his barrack bag, and he looked rather sheepish. he said, I guess I didn't mean what I said about going to France. It came kind of sudden, and maybe there'1l be more room for me over there anyway. The Company was mighty proud of him as he marched down to Regimental Headquarters. That is the simple tale of one man, and it is typical. A cablegram came for a typist, and a good man had to be sent. It was not the long legs, always in the way, that HSir,!!

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SPECTATOR 27 the next issue of The Lyre comes out in 1920 we hope to have them all back with us to tell how the Kaiser was sent to St. Helena. - SEW DAVIS. ...- . A Qlllihnight Barrark Nutr C Company, 316th Infantry, National Army Camp Meade, Maryland 17 January 1918 The Spectator, ' Johnstown High School, Johnstown, Pa. Dear Editor: I am going to let my thoughts revolve around Cooper's legs, to keep from rambling too far afield, it is bad to write letters after taps. Corporal Cooper was one of the selected men, and his legs had been a very great worry to us in the Orderly Room at the Company. I first met his one day last September as he stepped oi? the train at the head of a sturdy quota of Pennsylvania Dutchmen. Cooper did not look at all military, his arms and legs had grown wild. so to speak, his waist measured more than his broad shoulders, and he ambled beautifully. There was an air of responsibility about him, however, and his Local Board had picked him to steer its little group to Camp, and he was worth watching. For several weeks I observed his painful efforts in making his feet do about face, and then, when he began to execute movements like a soldier rather than a windmill, he was made a corporal. To his great surprise, Cooper found him- self a teacher, showing Ignatius and Angelino the difference between right and left, and proving to himself that he would have to conquer his own unruly feet. One day he took a squad of men to a newly finished bath-house for a shower. One unsophisticated rustic, who did not know what to make of the overhead apparatus, exclaimed, I seen one of them things before. But he did not know the open sesame for it, and Cooper, to whom a shower was not such an old

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SPECTATOR 29 sent Cooper to France, but rather his record as one who had made good in Uncle Sam's great university. Cooper's legs always make me think of Camp as a great university. Ditch-diggers and typists, butchers and school-teachers, plumbers and grand opera singers, all of them are living in one great school, learning new lessons in health and vigor, and in discipline of body and mind. The typist straightens up his body, and the singer unbends his mind to a new at- titude on universal brotherhood. The democracy of the squad room is a destroyer of grouches and ill temper. The man who never learned to take a bath is given a lifelong lesson, sub rosa, by his bunk mates, with the aid of icy water, a concrete Floor, and scrub brushes, and the farmer who never saw a football in his life, and who, a month ago, slouched along like a camel, is becoming an expert basketball player. Tony is taught English at night school, and Reuben is taught French. The young officer comes in for more than his share of. the new education, and to him the mere thought of an eight-hour day is a joke. Primarily, of course, he is a military instructor, supposed to do everything better than his men. But that is only a small beginning. During four short months he may be called upon, without notice, to be in turn clerk, ofiice-boy, physical director, lire-chief, mess steward, lawyer, judge, student, teacher, lecturer on hygiene, First aid, anything, section-boss over ditch diggers, wood- man felling trees, carpenter foreman, and even a troop-train chaperone Six months ago he may have been a salesman or an engineer. All of us have become Coopers. working hard, under the inspiration of a great cause, to overcome the civilian handicap of contrary legs or lazy minds. I tell you, it is great. I have not related any hair-raising tales of trench-knives and whizz-bangs, because you have more time to read the real thing in magazines than I have. Let such tales wait for a later day, a pipe, a deep leather chair, and a crackling fireplace. It is pleasant, at least, to think of such al setting. Now, my letter finished, I shall not blow out a candle, nor