Army & Navy - The First 24 Hours

From Paris, new TIME Correspondent Joe Weston, sometime soldier, cabled this account of his re-entry into civilian life:

At 4:21 p.m. yesterday, in a crummy, crowded room at Etampes, France, Pfc. Joe Weston, A.U.S., listened to a bored speech by a bored 2nd lieutenant, finally got a brown manila envelope full of papers and heard himself called Mister Weston for the first time in 40 months.

For unbearably long days & nights, when the mental strait jacket of Army discipline and regimentation seemed strangling, I had dreamed of "the moment." Now, at...

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