Harry and the CCC's

When Dave got us all teamed up, we were a team of fellows that you win quite a few first's awards. We took a 8 ft piece of 4" pipe, loaded it with first, 4 sticks of dyno-mite, about 1 lb. of carbide, drilled a tiny hole in the breech where we could put a fuse in to the dino-mite and also pour water on the carbide.

Buried the breech up in dirt and loaded our cannon with rocks and pointing it at the cook-house, we poured water on the carbide and give it about two minutes, then we lit the fuse about 6 inches long. Well there were some of the boys setting around the cook shack at the time our home made cannon went off. Well, hell broke loose. It blew the cook house off the hill top, rolled it right over, and several of the boys was meowing around camp for several days with stone bruises.

Of coarse the dino-mite split the breech of our cannon and blew it out of the ground. Well, the Captain of the 15inf Camp F92 swore he was going to get to the bottom of this gag. So he called us all down to F92, and lined us all up in line. And in a Father Bear voice, told us of the horrible act of war we had perpatrated on supposedly friends.

And gave us several examples of the horrible deeds that so and so pulled while he was in the Army. And the old hot bowling ball trick and etc. And therefore, the perpatrators of this deed take one step forward. Lo and behold, the entire line up took one step forward sending the Captain into such a rage, he immediately set off on a canter around the room whipping his legs and high English Riding boots with that short buggy whip Officers always carry around to flex their muscles on, while saying dam, dam, dam.

Well I see it's to be the 3rd degree for you men. A guy can't treat you decent. While my partner, who seemed to have some experience, was repeating in his soft voice Yes Sir, No Sir, Yes Sir, no Sir. I really think it had the effect on calming the Captain down.

Well the famous third degree was he split us up in groups of 5 men. Then he would call each group in for counciltation there after, he had filed about 1/2 of us by him, he came hurrying out and told us not to worry, two of the boys had confessed. So we told him that those two boys wasn't even there when it happened. Then he said he would have to revert to the tried and true method called observance. And he turned us loose to travel around camp at put leisure, while he would watch us with a pair of field glasses. He finally gave it up and we went back to our Spike camp. Laughing after that episode, we felt very close to each other, almost like brothers, and we put our arms around each other and sang all our old CCC songs, especially we would sing " In the Valley of the Moon."

Take from Harry Hicks' Life History