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When reveille has shaken the remainder of the night's sleep out of his eyes and joints, he swaps his rifle for his towel and with his own or his neighbor's soap hurries for the wash house. Breakfast, not so different than his college breakfasts except in the hour, he straightens his belongings, makes his bed, cleans his piece and falls out for his drill. He may hike, he may dig trenches, he may practice jabbing a very real bayonet into a very makeshift man, he may throw bombs, do close order drill, stand inspection or get paid, he is prepared for anything. That's why they train him like that, they want him prepared for anything.
If he belongs to the artillery, to the cavalry, to the medical detachments, to the engineers, or to the sanitary trains, his day will be just as full and varied and he is just as uncertain what he can look back on at night. In Camp Funston at least, which houses some hundreds of Nebraska men in the different units and the officers training camp, there are other things they expect aside from their daily drill. Fire call is as dreaded as it is infrequent. General fire call, and no one ever mistakes that after they once hear it, means literally that the soldier picks up his bed and walks. No probation week of an initiation ever devised worse punishment. Out of a warm bunk and into your clothes post haste, with dispatch, to be exact, roll your bedding, part of it for your back, part of it for the wagons, take exery (sic) thing you might want if the camp should burn or blow away and leave you with it on your back, shoulder your rifle and prepare for anything. You may be back in bed in an hour and you may be camping in the hills for the rest of the night within an hour. It is the uncertainty that adds flavor to such little, delightful adventures.
But it is by no means a life without play. A few months bring men in an organization into a close friendship as does school. There are evenings, Sundays, sometimes Saturday afternoon and another afternoon in the week, and there are shows, recreation places and amusements for those special times in every camp. Then there is the mail, a life saver, and once in awhile there are passes home. Many of these passes home have served two purposes, some ways two homes, the second one, the University.
Nebraska men have taken with them to the new army and to the new increments of the old army that they have joined or been called to, Nebraska ideas, Nebraska spirit and Nebraska man power. Because the most effective song to show where Nebraska troops were from was the University U-u-u-n-i and because the school itself is only representative of the state it springs from, it has become the most common marching song of whole Nebraska units. The Nebraska championship band plays it before and after every occasion with the same zip that it used to ring out over the south bleachers and they will take it with them, and every man in the Nebraska units will have it with him when the time comes to need a final familiar song before a later scene in the great adventure.
There is no denying that this man for whom life held so much that was to his liking a year ago, is sometmies (sic) lonesome for the campus, the library steps, the front porch or a passing look into the Lincoln. There is no denying that there are times when each of them think rather seriously of the plans and hopes for a year that had to be so changed, who do not feel in spite of themselves a natural disappointment over castles such a little ways in the air and so accessible that had to be left to fall. The men who left school unfinished, particularly have learned faster than is usual that the time they were in school was the happiest time they could expect.
Long days of work and late taps generally find the rows of bunks under the rough beam roofs each sagging with its occupant before the lights are out. Not always are they sleep-
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