Bring out the Liver! the instructor shouts. Bring out the kidneys!
Parry, thrust, turnâ??it doesnâ??t matter that their enemy is made of cloth, the bayonets of wood.
Stick it in, turn it.
Kill.
Forty-six hundred young men work at the bayonet in the May sun, sweat darkening the unfamiliar khaki on their backs. Parry. Thrust. Turn. A cool breeze stirs occasionally from nearby Lake Champlain and then wafts away. A runty army regular screams commands and at times comes in close, so close they can smell the tobacco on his breath and feel his warm bark on the napes of their necks. Give it to him, he yells. Kill.
All morning they work at the bayonet, then turn to calisthenics, and after lunch there will be hours spent on signaling and the sighting of rifles, learning to balance the weapon in their arms and then slowly squeeze the trigger. After dinner they will work on skirmish drills and then hit the books to learn the armyâ??s many arcane rules and regulations.
Some will wash out today, some tomorrow, some in the coming weeks, and return to their civilian pursuits or stubbornly insist on enlisting as privates. The rest will carry on as best they can, intent on gaining a commission as a reserve officer, though many know not why exactly they have answered their countryâ??s call in this spring of 1917 by applying for officersâ?? training camp at Plattsburg, New York.
Itâ??s a contingent made up largely of college boys, with the Ivy League well represented. Among these Ivy Leaguers are 350 Harvard men, a smattering of undergraduates and graduates, mostly young, well educated, and the progeny of some of the leading families in American society; many have been here before, turning out in droves to attend the 1916 Plattsburg camp and learn the rudiments of war-making.
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