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National Geographic : 1941 Jul
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The National Geographic Magazine Staff Photographer J. Baylor R]oberts On the March, in Camp, or in Battle, Singing Is Part of a Soldier's Life For centuries military leaders have encouraged national anthems, military marches, regimental songs, and popular ballads, from "Dixie" to "Over There." To its soldiers our War Department has just issued 1,500.000 songbooks. Here a hostess at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. helps the boys in a little barber shop harmony. They told us to which class of Army work we would have been assigned, had this test been in earnest. I was struck by its fair, painstaking thoroughness. Each examiner has a book, with a set of questions applicable to different trades. You can't fool them. If you say you're a paper hanger, a tightrope walker, or a lion tamer, after eight or ten questions the Army can tell whether you really are a lion tamer-or a faker. What does your boy do-the one who en listed, or was drafted? What is the Army doing, for him? Seeking answers, this old reporter spent weeks afield. With him went ex-marine J. Baylor Roberts, yclept "Little Joe," staff cameraman-smiling and nonchalant even in the tiny, freezing open basket of a wind-tossed balloon. "Yes, General," I said, "I do remember when we shot Arizona quail together, when you were a mandolin-playing cavalry lieu tenant on the Mexican border during the Car ranza revolution. But I want now to talk to the rookie; I want this story from the buck private's viewpoint. So scare up some Harvard Ph.D. who volunteered in your outfit, or a hard-boiled sergeant with five service stripes." Old Soldiers Say New Army Is Good "Naw, that's horse feathers!" agreed the old sergeant. "No million men can 'jump to arms before sundown.' Even if they did, they couldn't hit a barn. "In the other war I saw guys sent up front who'd never even fired a gun. We gave 'em five or six cartridges to shoot at tin cans, till they at least learned how to load and pull the trigger. "But General Marshall's starting this Army right. Now a rookie barely stumbles off the train that brings him to camp before we shove a rifle into his hands and tell him to commence shooting. . . . Yet, I must say, it's the first army I was ever in where rookies line up to swear to income tax returns!" The Army has many branches. They range from infantry and artillery to air corps and chemical warfare service. Your boy belongs
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