Anyway, Grandfather, you see they are keeping me busy, and I like the risk and excitement of it immensely, and I will never be satisfied till I turn up something big, and after that I suppose I will want to turn up something bigger and so on. That’s the way it usually goes.
Well, in my spare moments I have met a lot of nice people including a few girls—the nicest of whom unfortunately is engaged. But it always does happen that way, eh, Grandfather? The one we want is the one we can’t get. Was it that way with you, or wasn’t it? Most of my acquaintances, of course, are fellow-officers of my own age or a few years older, the majority of them captains in various departments, but I guess there aren’t many I would trade with, for it’s the constant excitement of my job that I like. Anyway, we have gay old times together in the hotel and at parties outside, and if it weren’t the military discipline, reporting every morning at ten o’clock, etc., I wouldn’t ever want to return to civil life.
Mother expects to be here in a few days.
Washington, DC, June 17.
Dear Grandfather:
Mother came yesterday, and after we had spent nearly an hour looking for a house or an apartment that was fit to live in, we gave it up and decided to stop at the Shoreham indefinitely. I think it is much better so, for here we are right in the midst of things. All the best of the young officers are here or come here, and that means it’s the social center of the town.
Last night I went to a very pretty ball and would have enjoyed it very much if I could have become interested in any of the “freelance” girls. Unfortunately the only girl who interests me that I have met here so far, is engaged to a fellow in France. He enlisted in the infantry right after we declared war and went over a year ago in July, but he is only corporal now. Her name is Kathryn Stark, and she is “some peach.” But I don’t suppose you are interested in such things anymore, so I will talk about something else.
I believe I told you about my meeting a man named Tracy on the train coming here. He is correspondent for one of the Cincinnati papers. Well, when I left him after our first meeting, he asked permission to call on me and obtain an interview as soon as I had been given my commission. But he didn’t call, and I was glad of it till I got to thinking that perhaps he would be hurt if I didn’t, and I don’t want to seem snobbish or anything—so yesterday I called him up and had him lunch with me.
He was as breezy as usual; in fact, he did most of the talking, and I was glad to have it that way, for reporters usually make you feel uncomfortable with their impertinent questions. He merely asked what branch of the service I had been commissioned in, and how I liked it, and whether I had run across anything interesting. I told him of course I could not discuss matters like that. So he gave up and entertained me with some of his nonsense.
He asked me what officers I had met, and I gave him the names of a few.
“Haven’t you met Major G. Willis Faulkner yet?” he inquired. “That’s probably because he’s a casualty. But you know who he is, of course.”
Well, I had heard the name, and I told him so. Faulkner is a young millionaire from down South somewhere, about two years older than I and one of the youngest majors in the service.
“Major Faulkner was on the casualty list about ten days ago,” Tracy went on. “He is a major in the Cushion Corps. His job was to go out to the ballpark every afternoon and keep track of the number of balls lost or injured. Of course it would have been a cinch if the home team here had been the only team playing, because they could use one ball a whole season and then sell it for new. But some of the visiting teams sometimes fouled balls off into the stand or over it, or roughened them up with their bats; so the Major was kept pretty busy. But he was making good when a careless vendor hit him in the head with a sack of peanuts, and he got shell shock.”
Well, of course, he was just talking, but it was such nonsense that I had to smile.
“And right over at that third table,” he went on, “sits Capt. F. Conklin Stone of the Monument Department. He tried to enlist in the regulars but he failed on the physical test on account of his long eyelashes. So he’s a captain, and he has to go over to the Monument three times a week and look up and see if the top is still on it. It’s bound to give him stiff neck in time, but you’d think to look at him he didn’t have a worry in the world.
“And the captain at the table near the window,” Tracy continued, “is Captain Jarvis Bellows of the Toy Balloons. He would have tried for the Marines, but he had a hangnail. So now he has to buy a couple of uninflated balloons every day from a street-hawker, and bring them here to give to some of the guests’ kids. And of course he has to blow them up first. And believe me, if one of them ever busted in his face it would be good night! Besides that, he’s got his
