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Biltmore Oswald

J. Thorne Smith Jr.

49 ratings
Biltmore Oswald | J. Thorne Smith Jr.

Biltmore Oswald

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The hilarious diary of a young man's recruitment into, and service in a navy, which, though well equipped and disciplined, remains woefully ill prepared for his arrival and dubious contribution.
p. Simply splendid! All we have to do is to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning when it is nice and dark and play around with the cutest little hammock imaginable. When you have arrived at the most interesting part of this game, the four hitch period, and you are wondering whether you are going to beat your previous record and get six instead of five, the bugle blows and immediately throws you into a state of great indecision. The problem is whether to finish the hammock and be reported late for muster or to attend muster and be reported for not having finished your hammock. The time spent in considering this problem usually results in your trying to do both and in failing to accomplish either, getting reported on two counts. Any enlisted man is entitled to play this game and he is sure of making a score. After running around innumerable miles of early morning camp scenery and losing several buttons from your new trousers, you come back and do Greek dances for a man who aspires to become a second Mordkin or a Mr. Isadora Duncan. This is all very sweet and I am sure the boys play prettily together. First he dances, then we dance; then he interprets a bird and we all flutter back at him. This being done to his apparent satisfaction, we proceed to crawl and grind and weave and wave in a most extraordinary manner. This is designed to give us physical poise to enable us to go aloft in a graceful and pleasing manner. After this dancing in the dew you return for a few more rounds with your hammock, clean up your bay and stand in line for breakfast. After breakfast we muster again and a gentleman talks to us in a voice that would lead you to believe that he thought we were all in hiding somewhere in New Rochelle. Then there are any number of things to do to divert our minds—scrub hammocks, pick up cigarettes, drill, hike and attend lectures. As a rule we do all of these things. From 5 p.m. until 8:45 p.m. if we are unfortunate enough not to
Jonathan 10/06/2021
This is quite well written, in an endearing and droll style, and is furthermore an historical document, dating from the last year of the First World War. I was tempted to give it three stars, except that it doesn't really go anywhere or achieve anything, and I may not feel the urge to reread it.

It's
Kenneth A Ashby 12/15/2020
Vintage Naval Tomfoolery

I am a former Marine and I thoroughly enjoyed this sad sack account of military life. Dated but funny as hades. I love Thorne Smith's offbeat sense of humor.
Jim 03/15/2018
A comic diary about entering life in the Navy. Published in 1918, it is a series of short vignettes poking fun at the culture of the time in general and the military in particular. Biltmore Oswald, a recruit with no appreciable talents besides befriending animals and getting into trouble, is somethi
Neil 03/11/2015
Thorne Smith's first book, a fairly amusing, disjointed "Diary" of life in the US navy around the time of the first world war. It hints a bit of his more familiar style and there is, rather out of place in the rest of the book a story about a mermaid that is a pure Thorne Smith comic fantasy.
Richard 03/10/2013
eh. I like Smith, but this dragged. A collection of columns, as I understood it - and was probably fine taken in periodic chunks.

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