52
“You ready for this s**t?” Jack asks me. It’s October and the Kansas weather is golden perfection here at Camp Funston. My boots are so new the stiff leather scores my feet where they rub against them. The uniform is new, too, still scratchy in its freshness.
“Frankie,” Momma had told me when Hoover announced the United States would enter the great war, “wait until the Selective Service calls you out.” But the news of the war made me anxious and eager to join the battle far away from the Nebraska High Plains farm where I grew up.
“Ready,” I answer, and lace up my other boot. Jack is from Kansas City, and his short black hair is slicked back with some kind of pomade he keeps at hand.
“Line up,” the sergeant orders as we make our way outside for today’s five-mile hike. The boot rubs t
