Well, I didn’t have anything to do that I knew of, and I intimated as much, whereupon he said, “Your transfer papers—get your personnel officer to see to that. Also get your equipment and replace everything that can’t stand inspection. By the time you return, I’ll have these matters in order and we’ll go to work.”
So I said “Yes, sir” and left. It seemed to me he was in a terrible hurry and I hadn’t the least idea who this “personnel officer” might be. I started to think the thing out, but then I remembered that everyone always said that a private wasn’t supposed to think, so I just proceeded to do the only thing I could do—namely, find the Sergeant Major and tell him what was what and ask how.
I found him in the Y.M.C.A. listening to a phonograph record of the Marine Band, but when I told him what had happened, he promptly came along with me to the headquarters, spoke to an officer about me and told me he’d have the transfer fixed up at once. I asked him what I should do next and he laughed and told me to pack up my junk and have it ready to move to the Divisional Headquarters barracks when he came back. So I did and he finally came back, and I then moved—wondering, as I did so, what Leon would do if he returned to his old bunk before seeing me and learning about the change.
Then I reported back to the Colonel and told him what the General had told me. He was very nice about it—I guess all Colonels are always nice about anything a General wants—and he told me not to bother about his records, that he would get them straightened out without trouble. I guess he, too, wanted this fellow Canwick for future rather than present work.
Back to the General’s office. And when he said he had a million things to do, he minimized matters by about that number, for he kept me going for three hours, and left more to be done in the morning. He dictated at least a million letters—and poor me just by luck seeing an old letter with the form FROM: TO: SUBJECT: on it, which just saved me from addressing the first letter to “My dear Secretary of War.” There was another million of blank forms to be filled out and half the things I didn’t know beans about, but he was awfully nice about everything and seemed to think it was perfectly natural that I should be ignorant about some of them. Anyway, I worked until I was dizzy. And the General smoked the vilest cigars I ever smelled. I bought a package of cigarettes—I just had to practice up smoking—in self-defense.