the Army. We were used to doing
exactly as we liked, and the unquestioning obedience demanded did not
come easy. Gee, but it used to hurt to take a "call-down" from a petty
officer without having a chance to reply or even to show what we felt
in our faces, and when he had said everything he could think of we had
to touch our cap and say "Yes, Sir!" I assure you, very often we felt
like saying something entirely different.

Training in the open with the thermometer ranging anywhere between 25
and 40 below zero is no fun. We were taught to shoot, march, skirmish
and drill, and we also learned the art of "old soldiering," which means
the art of being able to dodge anything in the shape of work. By the
way, they have a fancy name for work in the Army--they call it
"Fatigue," but when you come to do it it's just the same as the common
variety spelled with four letters. We did not get meals at barracks,
but took them in a restaurant downtown--and rising at 6 A.M. on a
bitterly cold winter's morning and having to walk a mile to breakfast
was not always pleasant. Sometimes we would break away and take a
streetcar, till an order was issued forbidding our doing it. However,
one very cold morning following a heavy fall of snow we plodded our way
downtown; our new uniforms with their unlined greatcoats (minus the
cozy fur collars such as civilians wore) did not keep out more than a
quarter of the cold, the rest went through us. Our caps were
wedge-shaped affairs of imitation black fur, and on mild days we felt
very smart in them, but when it was forty below and Jack Frost was on a
still hunt for every exposed portion of our body, a cap that would not
be coaxed down to meet our collars was a fit object for our worst
language.

Well, on this particular morning every one got half frozen going down,
and after breakfast no one felt like walking home. About half of the
boys "fell out" and took the street-car. I got on a car that was
pretty well filled with our lads, and we were having a jolly time when
the car stopped and in walked our O. C. Several of the boys jumped up
to offer their seat, but the Colonel smiled and said, "Never mind,
boys," and continued to stand at the back of the car. We were pretty
quiet, for we hated to be caught disobeying orders, and especially did
we hate being found out by our O. C. Well, he got off the car before
we did, and we did not see him again till the next parade. Then when
we were li