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Show 172 by hitting the ball with his fist. If Red hit a handball just right he could splatter it, but then of course he lost the point. Chaplain Captain Chaplain loved to hang around the Officer's Club where all the Marine and Navy oficers k spent there time relaxing from the pressures of war in San Diego and make wagers on horse shoe pitching matches and handball games and because he was thin and lanky with glasses and losing his hair the officers xk were happy to accept his challenges and then Chaplain Captain Chaplain would send for Red and the two of them would mash the officers and win lots of money, then Red would xakaxi give them a rocking horse and that's how Red got to be a corporal, ixag though of course everybody on the base learned pretty quick that Red and Chaplain Captain Chaplain xai could clean up anybody in the world in horse shoes or handball so the a Officer's Club saved them ax especailly for visiting dignitaries, admirals and generals and movie stars xxx and such, who got to spend an extra lot of time going around playing horse shoes and handball as a break £a from all their war strategy and who usually thought nobody in the world could beat them, especailly not a chaplain and a corporal, which of course was absolutely wrong. If there was anything Red liked nearly as much as lunch while he was in the Marines it was putting ringers on top of admiral's and general's ringers, he liked it even better than smashing handballs with his fist, because there was xix always the chance that somebody might return a fisted handball, even if by total luck, xi but there wasn't nothing anybody could do when you put a ringer on top of their ringer. Red was x having a good time in the Marines • But in other places in the world things weren't going so xxx well for everybody, in particular as far as the Mai Marines were concerned, the Pacific Ocean, and in fact every week more and more new Marine recruits came to San Diego and more and more of the Marines who'd been there awhile got sent into the Pacific to battle Japs for tiny islands that nobody used to care about. More and more often Red and Helen had Sxx-i Chaplain Captain Chaplain over for xi dinner in the little bungalow Helen rented off base and Chaplain Captain Chaplain worked hard at keeping his horse shoe and handball partner from being sent out, though he never told Helen and Red, xxx once even managing to get Red transferred to a riifteteni milt bhe^ay before Red's old unit got their packing |