Judge, 1918-11-30 · page 11 of 32
Judge — November 30, 1918 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Rookie Realisms: Pay Day" This is a humorous military column by Private Chester W. Shafer, illustrated by Albert Levering, describing American soldiers' experience of monthly pay in World War I France. The piece satirizes how soldiers anticipate pay day eagerly but receive far less than promised. A recruit expects $30 but receives only $1.87 after deductions. The article mocks the ceremonial nature of payment—officers gathering groats on a blanket, controlled entry procedures—while exposing the financial reality: after mandatory allotments home, Liberty Bond purchases, war insurance, and laundry fees, enlisted men have almost nothing remaining. The satire contrasts sharply with officers' pay (unspecified but substantially higher) and hints at financial corruption through references to "Shylock" and soldiers tracking "ancestry" through accounts ledgers. The accompanying illustrations show chaotic soldier activity, emphasizing the contrast between the orderly ceremony and soldiers' actual disappointment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Rookie Realisms By Private Cuester W. Suarer Ambulance 330, 310th S Train, France Niustrated by Aument Levertsc Ix. PAY DAY THE MONTHLY MIRAGE AY DAY has the highest rate of evaporation of any of the evanescent features of the army. Nothing in civil life compares with it in this regard. Enticing and inspiratory, it looms up for 29 or 30 day’ and is referred to in gleeful future tenses. Quickly, then, it It has an nowledged bearing on the life he enlisted man, but the influence is altogether too fleeting. On a close interpretation, pay day is the great settling-up exercise. In every company there are a few who can trace their ancestry back over the blue-print direct to Shylock, and they never overlook the penciled entries on the blank pages of the pocket dictionary. These never fail to get their portion Pay day is almost as much of a ceremony as launching a ship. It gives the top sergeant one more chance to line up the company alphs ally, according to rank, and shows the buck priv y essential it is to court schemes for ad- vancement p Cs in and his aides gather in the mess- room on this occasion and pile the groats on a blanket. A non-commissioned officer takes charge of the door. One man is allowed to enter at a time and when the door slams chind him he feels as if he were about to be initiated in some secret order. After he salutes and gets $1.87 out of the $30 that he read about in the home-town paper before he joined the service, he is convinced that his hunch was correct. Soldiers in the guard house have no interest in pay day The rosy color, for them, is bleached by the court martial For the conscientious private also there is but the faintest semblance of regard. After he has allotted $15 home, paid a bit on his Liberty Bond, assumed the maximum of war risk insurance and has loosed $1 to the post laundry fund, he doesn’t have enough left to constitute an imitation, He is about ten ounces lighter than a cork. Pay days with the officers are said to be different from of the enlisted men. A fairly well authenticated rumor has it that their figitres of pay are slightly higher. For some officers it is a day of keen satisfaction, permitting a quict, redolent gloat as they compare the pile in hand with the amounts they used to hook back in civil life in the tannery and on the milk route. A private has no conception of the pay day of a Major or Colonel. To him the salarics of these make an oversubscribed Liberty Loan look like a mort on a crumbling lean-to in a backwoods. It is often said in the Army that a non-com at $42 and found, is better off than a lieutenant who pays his own expenses; but there never has been a necessity for the Government to set aside a day for the trading of status. To a private there are no figures, ex cepting a few wild, chaotic hieroglyphs, past $3.42 comicbooks.com