Excerpt from Trooper Tales a Series of Sketches of the Real American Private Soldier
Civilians write army stories. Commissioned officers write army stories. Enlisted men laugh at the former because the author is remote and they cannot bruise him. Had they the power to lure the civilian into their midst they would shortly drill him full of real army coloring, and his effusions would be shrunken with lean, beautiful wisdom ever after. But, since he keeps his personality removed, the soldiers can only laugh.
The literary efforts of commissioned officers are discussed in whispers by the enlisted men, because they are only enlisted men, while the commissioned officers are old and young gods, who become very masterful beings when criticised audibly by men from the ranks.
But no one can deny that the army stories of commissioned officers are full of officers' instinct, and officers' fleckless uniforms, and clubs, and ladies. The enlisted men who emerge upon these idyllic pages are sort of baneful and temporary necessities, as are warts. There are orderlies with square shoulders and brick faces, whose vocabularies consist of "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," uttered in disfigured English.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Trooper Tales a Series of Sketches of the Real American Private Soldier (Classic Reprint) (Will Levington Comfort)