The Project Gutenberg EBook of Biltmore Oswald, by J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

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Title: Biltmore Oswald
The Diary of a Hapless Recruit

Author: J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

Release Date: September 3, 2005 [EBook #16634]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BILTMORE OSWALD

_THE DIARY OF A HAPLESS RECRUIT_

BY

J. THORNE SMITH, JR.
U.S.N.R.F.

_WITH 31 ILLUSTRATIONS IN BLACK-AND-WHITE_

BY

RICHARD DORGAN
("_Dick Dorgan_")
U.S.N.R.F.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

_Copyright, 1918, by_

_Frederick A. Stokes Company_
_All Rights Reserved_

_Reprinted from_
THE BROADSIDE
A JOURNAL FOR
THE NAVAL RESERVE FORCE

DEDICATION

To my buddies, an unscrupulous, clamorous crew of pirates, as loyal
and generous a lot as ever returned a borrowed dress jumper with dirty
tapes; to numerous jimmy-legs and P.O.'s whose cantankerous tempers
have furnished me with much material for this book; and also to a dog,
an admirable dog whom I choose to call Mr. Fogerty, with apologies to
this dog if in these pages his slave has unwittingly maligned his
character or in any way cast suspicion upon his moral integrity.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Biltmore Oswald" _Frontispiece_

"'Do you enlist for foreign service?' he snapped. 'Sure,' I
replied, 'it will all be foreign to me'" 2

"The departure was moist" 3

"Hospital apprentice treated me to a shot of Pelham 'hop'" 4

"I feel like a masquerade" 5

"This, I thought, was adding insult to injury" 6

"Mother kept screaming through the wire about my underwear" 7

"A bill from a restaurant for $18.00 worth of past luncheons" 8

"He missed the dirty whites, but I will never be the same" 9

"Fire drill" 10

"This is designed to give us physical poise" 11

"Liberty Party" 14

"Of course I played the game no more" 20

"She wa