The bus from San Antonio pulled in to the curb and stopped. The door snapped open. Half a dozen uniformed upperclassmen wearing grim expressions moved closer to the vehicle.

“Roll out of it, you Misters!” bawled their leader in a voice of authority. “Shake the lead out of your shoes! Pop to it!”

Barry Blake and Chick Enders were among the first out of the bus, but they were not quick enough to suit the reception committee.

“Are you all crippled?” rasped the spokesman of the upperclass “processors.” “Come alive and fall in—here, on this line. Dress right! I said dress—don’t stick your necks out. Atten-shun! Hope you haven’t forgotten all the military drill you learned at primary. You, Mister! Rack it back. Eyes on a point. And out with your chest if you have any. Keep those thumbs at your trouser seams.... All right! Here’s your baggage tag. Write your name on it. Tag your baggage—and make it snappy. Stand at attention when you’ve finished. Hurry! That’s it.... Take baggage in left hand—left, not right. And wipe off your smile, Mister! ’Sbetter.... Mister Danvers, you will now take charge of these dum-dums.”

Barry was sweating. The blazing Texas sun was in his eyes. His chest ached for a normal, relaxed breath; yet he dared not move. Mister Danvers’ barking command came as a sharp relief.

“Right face.... Forward, march! Hup! Hup! Hup! Pull those chins back. Hup! Hup! Eyes on a point! And hold your right hands still—this isn’t a goose-step. Hup! Hup! Shoulders back—grab a brace—you’re in the Army now! Hup! Hup! Dee-tachment, halt!”

For more strained moments the new arrivals stood on the arched stoop of the Cadet Administration Building and listened to acid instructions. The talk dealt with the proper manner of reporting for duty. The tone of it, however, showed the processor’s profound doubt of the “dum-dums’” ability to do anything properly. It was deliberately maddening.

Barry Blake felt a wave of hot resentment sweep over him. A second later cool reason met it and drove it back.

“They’re just trying to see if we underclassmen can take it,” he told himself. “A cadet’s got to learn how to be an officer and a gentleman, in any situation. They’re teaching us the quick, hard way, that’s all!”

Barry held his tough, well-proportioned muscles a little less stiffly. He wondered how Chick Enders was taking the processor’s verbal jabs. From where he stood he could see Chick’s short, bandy-legged figure quiver under the barrage of upperclass sarcasm. Chick’s good-natured mouth was a hard line, and his eyes were pale blue slits above his pug nose. The homely cadet was having a hard job trying not to explode.

Suddenly he relaxed, and Barry, seeing it, chuckled inwardly. He had known Chick Enders since they were both in kindergarten. When he got angry, the kid’s blond bristles would stick up like the fuzz of a newly hatched chick. That always meant a fight, unless Chick’s sense of humor got the upper hand, as it had just now.

While the processor’s stinging remarks continued, Barry’s memory flashed back to the day that he and Chick had graduated from the Craryville High School. Barry had been valedictorian of the class, and Chick, he recalled, had been prouder of the fact than anyone.

There was an almost hound-like loyalty in the homely youth’s soul, and his hero was Barry Blake. From their earliest snow-ball battles to high school and varsity games where Barry carried the ball and Chick ran interference, it had always been the same. Both had enlisted at the same time and later applied for flying cadet training.

“I’m glad we’re still together,” Barry thought, with another glance at his friend’s freckled profile. “If he’d been sent to any other basic training school than Randolph Field, I’m afraid it would have broken Chick’s heart. We’ll be together here for nine weeks. After that—well, there’s a war on. We’ll train and fight wherever we’re sent, with no complaints....”

“All right, you Misters!” the upperclassman’s voice broke in on Barry’s thoughts. “Right, face! Column right, march! You’ll receive your company and room assignments upstairs. Try not to forget them!”

Still under a running fire of orders and caustic comments, the suffering “dum-dums” were taken to the supply room. Here each new cadet proceeded to draw a full outfit of bedding, clothing, and equipment.

“I feel like a walking department store!” Chick Enders muttered as he joined the line behind Barry. “They must have figured out scientifically just how much a guy can carry if he uses his ten fingers, his elbows and his teeth....”

“Roll up your flaps, Mister!” snapped a keen-eared processor, taking a step toward Chick. “You’ll get your chance to sound off soon enough!”

Just in time Chick caught and straightened out an apologetic grin. He had a hunch that any smile just now would be asking for trouble. Pulling his freckled face even longer than usual, he stepped out at Barry’s heels, and hoped that none of his assorted burdens would slip.

At the barracks, while changing into coveralls and new shoes, Barry and Chick were able to exchange a few hurried words.

“I’d heard that these upperclassmen were pretty unsympathetic,” the homely cadet remarked, “but I never thought they’d lay it on quite so heavy. I guess they stay awake nights inventing ways to make a dum-dum sweat.”

“Don’t let it get under your skin, Chick,” Barry laughed. “There’s no meanness behind their processing. It’s intended to make soldiers out of us. The first thing they do is to prick our balloons—take the conceit out of us, if we have any.”

“And the next thing is to toughen us up,” grinned Hap Newton, their roommate. “Don’t worry—in five weeks we’ll be processing a new bunch of dum-dums, and making ’em like it!”

Before they had finished changing clothes the processor in charge bellowed another order.

“Hit the ramp, you Misters!” he shouted. “On the double! Leave your powder and lipstick till tonight.”

Barry Blake grabbed his cap. He headed for the doorway, tightening his belt as he went.

“Come on, Chick,” he said. “I don’t know what the ramp is yet, but I aim to hit it hard and quick.”

“Me too,” his friend grunted, “even if I lose a shoe.... Mine aren’t laced up yet.”

The ramp, they discovered, was the broad stretch of concrete just outside the cadet barracks. Pouring out of the door, the dum-dums were greeted by rapid-fire commands:

“Fall in! Dress, right! Straighten-that-line-d’you-think-this-is-a- ring-around-the-rosy? ’Ten-shun! Count off! Forwar-r-rd, march! Hup, hup, hup! Column right, march! Column left, march! By the right flank, march! To the re-ar-r-r, march! Squa-a-ad, halt! Left, face! About, face! Forward, march!”

To Barry and Chick, both assigned to Squad 17, these maneuvers were a welcome change. Having mastered close-order drill at primary school, they now went through it automatically. Their taut nerves relaxed. The stiff soles of their new issue shoes were just beginning to smart, when a hollow voice boomed through the air.

“’Tenshun all squads now drilling!” whooped the invisible giant. “Squad 26! Take Squad 26 to the tailor shop.... Squad 17. Take Squad 17 to the barber shop. That is all.”

It was the voice of the Field’s public address system. Instantly the processors in charge of the two squads named marched them off the drilling area. As Squad 17 entered the shop, six barbers stood waiting by their chairs. Barry got a quick mental picture of sheep being driven to the shearing pen.

First in line was a sulky-looking youth, whose name-tag proclaimed him to be Glenn Cardiff Crayle. He had a sleek black pompadour, and a habit of passing his hand caressingly over it.

“Just trim the sides and neck, please,” Barry heard him mutter to the wielder of the shears.

The barber exchanged winks with the upperclassman in charge. He slipped expert fingers under a long lock of Crayle’s hirsute pride.

“Maybe you’d better have it regulation, sir,” he suggested with heavy emphasis.

Snip-snip-snip went the shears. Cadet Crayle writhed as if they were a savage’s scalping knife, but he knew he was helpless. Barry Blake chuckled inwardly. “Regulation length” would mean no loss to his own short, wavy hair, or to Chick’s blond bristles.

Six barbers and ten minutes for a haircut! In little more than a quarter of an hour, Squad 17 was marching back to the drilling area. Another half hour of close-order drill—then dinner formation.

Scarcely were they seated in the big cadet mess hall, when the nervous dum-dums found their worst suspicions realized. Mealtime was just another opportunity for hazing by the upperclassmen. Placed at the foot of a table seating eleven men, Barry and Chick discovered that they were the “gunners” of the group. That is, they must pass—“gun” or “shoot”—food and drink up the table whenever asked.

Two minutes after the meal began, the “table commander” at the upper end sent down his coffee cup for re-filling.

“A cup of coffee for Mr. Danvers,” murmured the lowerclassman nearest him.

“A cup of coffee for Mr. Danvers,” repeated Hap Newton as he passed the cup.

“A cup of coffee for Mr. Danvers,” Barry Blake solemnly announced, as he filled it and passed it back.

“You, Mister!” the table commander barked, looking straight at Chick Enders. “The potato dish is empty. You will signal the waiter by holding it up—like this.”

With his upper arm horizontal and his forearm vertical, the upperclassman demonstrated the proper gesture. Hap Newton giggled.

“Silence!” snapped the processor. “What’s your name? Newton? Sit forward on your chair, Mister—on the first four inches. Chin up, get some altitude. And take your left hand off the table. And remember—for a dum-dum to laugh, smile or chortle at mess is an inexcusable breach of manners.”

“Yes, sir,” mumbled Hap Newton, so meekly that Chick Enders nearly dropped the potato dish, trying not to laugh.

Dinner ended all too soon for most of the hungry new cadets. The food was ample, but so excellent that the time seemed too short to do it justice. At the close of the noon hour, Squad 17 was issued rifles, and plunged into the monotonous manual of arms. Not until evening did the weary dum-dums have time to relax.

Their first day at Randolph Field had been a full one—crammed with new impressions that would whirl through their dreams that night.