"IT'S A CINCH, PRIVATE FINCH," IS CREATION OF EX-ADVOCATE MAN

Ex-Private Hargrove started something when he lampooned his new Army career and turned out a best seller. A number of enlistees have tried "doing a Hargrove" since then, but a combination of a Harvard grad and a free lance cartoonist have just come nearest to making a name for themselves with an Army primer. "It's A Cinch, Private Finch!"

A tall skinny sergeant a tank man, stood rocking with laughter in the art room of "Yank, The Army Weekly," the other day. He slapped his thighs and alternated between bows and quarterknee bends. "Yeah," he snorted, "The injection needles always look that big." He turned pages. He roared. "There's always one guy doin' something out of time at exercise. Rumors! That's right-always a rumor."

Sergeant Appreciates

The tall sergeant leaned back and bellowed. "Yea, there's the guy that walks all over your heels. Oh, ho! Wet Garbage, damn, that stuff's awful."

His face turned stern. "This one's not so hot. What do you mean, sticking a tank up on that block like that?" He looked up and then back at the thin orange-backed book in his hands-then he slowly began to grin, then a broad smile, and then he was laughing again.

Behind the drawing board a well-rounded technical sergeant lounged, sucking a cigar. He smiled slightly as the tall soldier approved of his tank-block cartoon, and went back to his work.

That brief sequence is probably the easiest way to sum up the new book by Sergeants Harry Brown and Ralph Stein, "it's a Cinch, Private Finch!" A "Yank" writer and artist combined on this easy- to-read easy-to-laugh-at review of Army indoctrination both as a refresher for those who have run the gauntlet of basic training and as a forecast for those about to dive in.

The heavy man puffing his cigar behind the desk and keeping an eye on his critic was Sergeant Ralph Stein, who drew the four dozen cartoons illustrating the metamorphosis of George Finch (147 pounds and he never played in backfield.

Wrote for Advocate

Biographer of this modern Babbitt is Harry Brown, who was a member of the Harvard Class of 1938 and editor of the Advocate. Brown, however, is learning of the book's success via the trans-Atlantic cables as he is how with the London bureau of Yank.

The paradoxical situation of a "Hahvvahd" man writing the story of a typical draftee resulted from both Stein and Brown's going through the same process of learning and griping themselves. The professional cartoonist served as a bedpan changer in a hospital and the poet-writer as an Army engineer.

Brisk Style

"It's A Cinch, Private Finch!" is unique in several aspects. Technically, its cartoons and brisk, colloquial style of description on the facing pages are refreshingly novel. Also, unlike Hargrove, it takes a typical draftee on the highlights of his basic career rather than the exceptional private during everyday.

Then, it goes a long way toward proving Esra Stone's recital that the Army's made a man out of him. George Finch starts out with a 34 year old chassis and a 106 aptitude rating and finds the Army rough sledding for the first weeks. He finally gets into the swing, imagines he is knifing the cook, the sergeant, and the company clerk during a bayonet drill and ends up cursing the three-striper himself and getting away with it. "He is a bad man."

In the little volume's forward, Major Hartzell Spence, editor of yank, sums it up with. "The System had done its job." He adds, "Private Finch is a mirror of Sergeants Stein and Brown, the product of their own experience;" and he hints that the overseas adventures of the two will result in future tales of the recently promoted Pfc. George Finch