The serum injections of yesterday produced some queer, and in one case unfortunate, results. Last night after taps were sounded and lights were out, I lay awake a long time in spite of the fact I was very tired.

Couldn’t understand it, and my arm and back were as sore as could be. Hour after hour wore on, and I couldn’t get to sleep. Some did, however, and I had a regular frog’s chorus of snores to keep me company. I became a veritable specialist in snores and wheezes and grunts. Every time I heard a new variety I formed mental pictures of the men who probably made them.

Then the chorus was interrupted by some one not far from me who called out mournfully: “Oh, my back, my back! The needle!” Then in sharper tones: “Count off. 1-2-3-4.” I wondered what horrors his overwrought nerves were causing him to dream of.

But when I did get to sleep I slept soundly, certainly, for they told me this morning that one chap had become seriously ill, and had been carried from the barracks to an ambulance and whisked away to the hospital sometime during the small hours of the morning. It seems that he had an excess of germs circulating around inside of him, due to the fact that he did not know enough to move on after the doctor had given him the first injection, and the physician, looking only for the nearest iodine spot, shot him twice in the same place.

However, I am reasonably certain I’ll sleep to-night all right, for I’ve been pulling stumps all day, or rather during the time I wasn’t learning to recognize my right foot from my left, and a few other things that every man thinks he knows until some one takes the pains to expose his ignorance. Oh, I have the qualities of a really capable soldier in me—if some one can find them. As an infantryman I’m a much better stump puller. I proved that this afternoon. I have a beautiful double handful of blisters, not to mention a ruined suit of clothes and hopeless shoes, to my credit in this war of exterminating the Hun. I hope we get uniforms soon, because if we don’t, I’ll be going about clad in my old rose comforter and some summer underclothes.

Stump pulling is rough on clothes, but it certainly is an appetite builder. I’ve discovered already that it is good policy to be among the first on line with a mess kit, then if you can bolt your beef a-la-mode fast enough, and get outside and wash up your kit, you stand a good chance of joining the last of the line, thereby getting a second helping. Indeed, several fellows have it down to such a science already, that they get three helpings before the cook begins to say things.

The barracks is beginning to look picturesque. The atmosphere of a western mining camp, arranged for stage purposes, prevails. The Italians, swarthy-faced, heavy-featured fellows, for the most part, gather in little groups, smoke villainous pipes and play cards incessantly, whenever they are allowed much time in the barracks. Our Semitic friends linger in the vicinity of the door that leads to the mess hall and kitchen, especially about meal time. And their mess kits are always handy. Nicknames have already become common, and we have among us such worthies as Fat, Doc, Peck’s Bad Boy, Toney, Binkie, Shortie, Shrimp, Simp and Pop. The last name has been applied to me, inspired, no doubt, by the suggestion of baldness aloft.