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tightly. “We’re worked up…let’s don’t do anything we’ll be sorry for later. You’ll see, I’ll be gone and it will wear off—you’ll date some other fellows and….”
    “I don’t want any other fellows—I just want you,” she sobbed, turning into his arms.
    “Holy smoke, you’re going to mess up everything.” He stroked her soft golden hair. “Holy smoke…what are we going to do now?”
    “Don’t be angry, Danny.”
    “For what?”
    “Crying.”
    “No, I’m not angry.”
    “Maybe we’re too young…I just want to go on being your girl.”
    “Don’t start crying again.”
    “I can’t help it.”
    “I guess you know what you’re letting yourself in for?”
    “I don’t care.”
    “What will your parents say?”
    “I don’t care what they say.”
    “Gosh…I feel kind of shaky all over.”
    “Me too.”
    “You’ll write all the time?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll let you know my address as soon as I can.”
    “I’ll wait for you, Danny. No matter how long it takes.”
    “If you want to change your mind…I mean it, honest.”
    “You really don’t want me to.”
    “No.”
    He wiped her tears away as she managed a weak little smile. “I guess…this sort of makes us engaged.”
    She nodded.
    “A lot of nights I used to think how wonderful you are, Kathy. I used to dream about the time I’d be able to say what I’ve wanted to.”
    “I’ve thought about it a lot too, Danny.”
    “Do girls think about that?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Honest, I mean do they think about it the way fellows do?”
    “Yes.”
    “I…I guess it’s all right to say it now.”
    “Yes.”
    “I love you, Kathy.”
    “Me too. I love you very much, Danny.”
     
    Morning in Kansas City and another contingent of recruits. A diagonal trek through an elongated wheat field filled the day’s monotony. Rumors, dirty jokes, conversation, and mounting tension. The long line to the dining car. The train bulged with over eight hundred boys and men.
    O’Hearne, down to his last bottle, made a personal call on each one in the car for refinancing. He was only moderately successful. He filled the afternoon with a personal history of himself as boxer, football player, drinker and lurid-lurid lover. He provoked two fights with lesser competition and as night fell the crap game was on again.
    Day again and a crazy course still southward from Texas to New Mexico and back into Texas for a stop at El Paso. A mad rush for the postcard counter. Several bedsheets hung from the windows now, announcing that this was a trainload of Marines heading for San Diego.
    O’Hearne attempted to lure a young awed girl flushed with patriotism aboard. For several hours past El Paso he reckoned that he could have sold her services at least two hundred times at five dollars apiece and set her up in business in San Diego.
    Hot and sticky Arizona. O’Hearne’s mob took to defacing the train until M.P.s boarded at Douglas. And so, into the last night.
    Bursting tension and sheer spectacle as two steam engines lugged the train up the steep embankments of the Sierras. Wild anticipation. Handbags packed and ready. A collection for the overworked porter. Wilder rumors as the train dipped below the Mexican border and stopped for inspection at Tijuana.
    Small boys ran alongside peddling cigarettes and bilking the novelty seekers. The tin soldiers from the Romberg operetta depart.
    “I wonder if they got a band to meet us.”
    “Yeah, after all, we’re the first battalion from the East to ever train here.”
    “I hope they got my dress blues ready. I want to look over the town.”
    “I hear we’ll be in isolation for a couple weeks.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll get into San Diego tonight.”
    Outside, a few palm trees came excitingly into view. Also, a long line of trucks and a host of green-uniformed sergeants and corporals milling about with roster sheets. The green uniforms struck the first sour note in the new recruits.
    “Philadelphia and