Word: uniform
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...lists, joined a Catholic students' organization and brawled with young Nazis. When the call-up for World War II carne in 1939, he talked himself out of the infantry ("Because I don't like walking") and into the artillery. He was almost court-martialed for calling his uniform a Klufterl (a childish masquerade). But he served in Poland, France, Russia, and at the Battle of Stalingrad he led his platoon out of encirclement, fighting a rearguard action for 50 miles...
...Germany, it has seldom occurred to novelists that life in uniform is a laughing matter. But in 1954 a Prussian-born veteran of the Wehrmacht named Hans Hellmut Kirst wrote a book called Null-Acht-Fiinfzehn-the model number (0-8-15) of the Wehrmacht service pistol-which in Germany is a term roughly equivalent to G.I. The book snickered behind the officers' ramrod backs, put in a plea for the dignity of the individual in uniform, and demonstrated hilariously how a canny conscript like Gunner Asch could win at the old army game simply by hiding behind regulations...
...letter [Sept. 17], Robert J. Beardmore says "I'd like to say that there isn't a marine in the Marine Corps who wears his uniform with any more pride than our airmen . . . Come now. Reader Beardmore, why didn't you sign your rank? Just plain "Robert J. Beardmore, U.S.A.F." won't do, you know. Surely you're not ashamed of being an officer. The clincher is the patronizing way you refer to "our airmen." An enlisted man would lave said "we airmen...
...chaste virginal mother of three"; her husband, a man who has transferred what little emotional-venture capital he once had into 3% matrimonial bonds; their grandson, a mobile Davy Crockett brat; a one-shot bohemian playwright who carries a pants pocket he once tore from Ty Cobb's uniform as a lucky charm; a transvestite and his keeper, a German-born quack psychoanalyst who unnerves his Midwestern patients by drowning out their confessionals with his record player and hissing: "Moww-Tzzzzzzarrrrt isss spikink...
...these responsibilities can become an irritating burden. Last year, for example, on the night of the Spring Formal, Everett's dishwasher broke down and Jini Coggi '57, the social chairman, had to spend the evening bailing out the flooded kitchen. But, generally, the machines are pretty regular, imposing a uniform degree of responsibility on each girl, usually born with a certain amount of cheerfulness. Around examination time, however, tensions frequently rise, and the advantage in having a few close friends instead of many nodding acquaintances can come up for serious second thought...