THE TIMES: FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1920
THREE
MYSTERY OFFICES
AT CANTONMENTS
THROUGHOUT U.
S.
The red taie machins grinds slowly.
The war is long over and the great
army almost demobilized, but the
paper work battle goes gaily on at
the hig cantonment camps of the
country where our heroes received
their first mess kit and garnered the
last dollar due them for good and
faithful service. A weary adjutant
and force of clerks go over the top
every morning in a valiant effort to
clear up the many mysteries of the
Great War. Every camp had its
skeleton in the cupboard, every camp
has some lKtle scandal that has to be
handled wits kid gloves, every camp
has its myaiery of missing men lost,
strayed stolen in the grim grind of
war.
Philip Von Blon, in The Home Sec
tor, the ex-soldiers' weekly conducted
by the former editorial council of The
Stars and Stripes, says: "There is one
building in every cantonment where
the past is very tightly linked with
the present. It is the statistical of
fice, where stack on stack of filing
cases hold the records of ail the men
who were trained at the camp and
all who were discharged there.
"Here officers, enlisted men
fielel clerks are still toiling to
ravel mysteries inherited from
Old Army. Here comes the inquiries
concerning men who may or may not
have been in the camp. A man
sought by a draft board because of a
mixup in records may find vindication
here. He must he answered, for the
benefit of a colonel in Washington,
the question arising out of the fate
of a casual company from the A. E.
