Trooper Tales — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- viii INTRODUCTION. whose realm does not embrace an aptness in the softer arts. In short,he is an atom of no consequence. I realize that, in writing thus, I hurl from me all dreams of ever being a private soldier again—at least, under the name I used in my last enlistment. It is pathetic for a writer who might be a soldier to starve just because he is frank. The army stories which civilians write have none of this ungovernable officer’s instinct. Corporals and colonels become chummy in such tales. A trooper and a troop commander wax convivial together at the canteen. And that is why enlisted men who read all army stories grin unfeelingly. The young man who scans this volume of cavalry stories and enlists afterward will probably make a good soldier, because he must be a very reckless young man. The enclosed choice cuts of wisdom were drilled and pounded into the author, and the wisdom which leaves tooth marks behind is not superficial. And yet the man does not exist who has once soldiered who does not yearn sometimes to again be a blue atom in © the great blue mass which makes the backbone of Uncle Sam’s fighting bottom—when it comes to a show down. The cactus and alkali of the Southwest blows about in a couple of these yarns, because I “soldiered” there. The flies and fever of a Southern army camp crawl about in a couple of others because I “soldiered” there. A num- ber of the yarns are full of the groans and drug odors of an army hospital, because I was fortunate enough to get Eomichooks (S@)