Polytechnic High School - Caerulea Yearbook (Long Beach, CA)

Page 28 text:

--sae. 16 CAERULEA '19 army blankets, and candles. Boxes 'covered with blankets provide chairs, blankets serve for rugs, and still more blankets, suspended from a wire form curtains: while candles make fine footlights. An officer on the front row usually asks the house to have the kindnessi to refrain from smoking so the air can clear up sufficiently to allow the stage to be seen. To come upon such a stage before a house packed with American soldiers all lonely, tired, blue, and desperately home- sick or perhaps all wounded: to watch their expressions changing from this attitude to that of amusement, and to keep them laughing for an hour or two, then to go away leaving the temper of the aud- ience entirely changed, is to me a wonderful blessing, for which I' would exchange no worldly possession. I dress in the uniform of an officer with the word Entertainer across my sleeve, but on the stage I always wear civilian clothes, Eng- lish in style, which alone brings applause, because the soldiers are longing to wear civilian clothes themselves. I have been billeted in places of every description and enjoy them all-tents, stables, sheds, and now and then a real house. I am bil- leted in the midst of each division for which I work for about two weeks, in which time I am expected to reach all the boys, from ten to twenty-six thousand, by appearing before them in various places pro- vided for their entertainment by their officers. I never know an hour ahead where I am to appear for the next performance but am ready at a certain time every afternoon and evening to be whisked away in an automobile through mud, rain, or snow and ice to some hut, barn, tent, or house where an eager crowd of boys await me. I have been to Chateau Thierry, the Argonne, St. Nlihiel, Toul, Etain, Verdun, Etrage, Metz, into Esch and Luxemburg. I have seen horses still unburied on the battlefields and skulls in helmets. There are the pistols, guns, masks, cartridge belts, etc., still lying where our happy boys threw them when word came that the battle of hell was over. When one looks upon the long, impenetrable