July 11th. There’s something about Wednesday afternoons that doesn’t appeal to me.  First they make you go away and dress yourself up nice and clean and then they look you over and make you feel nearly as childish as you look.  Then they put a gun into your hand that is much too heavy for comfort and make you do all sorts of ridiculous things with this gun, after which you fall in with numerous thousands of other men who have been subjected to the same treatment, and together we all go trotting past any number of officers, who look you over with uncanny earnestness through eyes that seem to perceive the remotest defect with fiendish accuracy.  Then we all trot home again and call it a review.

This is all very well for some people, but not for me.  I’m a little too self-conscious.  I have always the feeling that I am the review, that it has been staged particularly for my discomforture, and that every officer in camp is on the lookout for any slight irregularity in my clothes or conduct.  In this they have little difficulty.  I assist them greatly myself.  To-day, for instance: 

Item one:  Dropped my gun.

Item two:  Talked in ranks.  I asked the guy next to me how he would like to go to a place and he said that he’d see me there first.

Item three:  Failed to follow the guide.

Item four:  Didn’t mark time correctly.

Item five:  Was in step once.

Now all of these things are trifling in themselves, but taken en mass, as it were, it leads up to a sizable display; at least, so I was told in words that denied any other interpretation by my P.O. and several pals of his.  After the review our regimental commander lined us up and addressed us as follows: 

“About that review to-day,” he began, “it was terrible” (long, dramatic pause).  “It was probably the worst review I have ever seen (several P.O.’s glanced at me reproachfully), not only that,” he continued, “but it was the worst review that anybody has ever seen.  Anybody! (shouted) without exception! (shouted) awful review! (pause) Terrible!”

We steadied in the ranks and waited for our doom.

“It will never be so again,” he continued, “I’ll see to that.  I’ll drill ye myself.  If you have to get up at four o’clock in the morning to drill in order to meet your classes, I’ll see that ye do it.  Dropping guns! (pause).  Talking in ranks! (pause).  Out-o-step (terrible pause).  Marking time wrong.  Everything wrong!  Company commanders, take ’em away.”

We were took.

“All of those things,” said my P.O. in a trembling voice, “you did.  All of ’em.  Now the old man’s sore on us and he’s going to give us hell, and I’m going to do the same by you.”

“Shoot, dearie,” says I, with the desperate indifference of a man who has nothing left to lose, “I wouldn’t feel natural if you didn’t.”

And in my hammock that night I thought of another thing I might have said if it had occurred to me in time.  I might have said, “Hell is the only thing you know how to give and you’re generous with that because it’s free.”