A calendar of triumphs, defeats and contortions of the human spirit during a year of war.

January. In Stamford, Conn., an A.W.O.L. soldier, with a coat bearing the name Doak and a bracelet identifying him as Leslie Tripp, was reported to have admitted that though he had last married under the name Arthur R. Daly, he was actually John R. Schwartz.

February. In Bound Brook, N.J., Barbara Jane Brilliant was engaged to Lieut. Saul "Sunshine. In Woodland, Calif., Mrs. John Snowball paid $5,500 for a house to Bartholomew Blizzard.

March. In New Britain, Japanese troops charged American lines, shouting "To hell with Babe Ruth!" April. In Shreveport, La., Lucille Cash, chased by her husband, cleared a seven-foot barbed-wire fence.

May. In Manhattan, New York Post Columnist Leonard Lyons reported that in California a psychiatric patient was asked if he were Napoleon. He craftily said "No." A lie detector showed he was lying.

June. A Dixon, Calif, newspaper ran a want ad: "Owner of a truck would like to correspond with a widow who owns two tires. Object matrimony. Send picture of tires." July. In Denver, Mrs. Martha Martin got a black eye when a stranger walked up and hit her. Said the stranger, apologetically : "I thought you were my mother-in-law."

August. At the Utah State Prison, Warden J. H. Harris warned his charges not to use the colloquialism "We wuz robbed!" during baseball games. Both umpires, he explained, were doing time for robbery.

September. In Lewiston, Idaho, a waitress flatly refused to sell cheese to be taken out of the restaurant, gave in when the customer ordered "two cheese sandwiches -- untoasted and without bread."

October. In Cincinnati, the Procter & Gamble research department furrowed its collective brow over a freak bar of Ivory Soap that would not float.

November. In Sedalia Field, Mo., a private first class sewed master-sergeant's stripes on his pajamas, said: "I can dream, can't I?"

December. In Ocoee, Fla., a Miss Gladys Argo became the bride of Army Sergeant Harvard Yale Princeton.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.