Grab Your Socks

Grab Your Socks is a 1963 animated short made by King Features Syndicate and stars Beetle Bailey. The short centers on Sergeant Snorkel's obsession with being up early for an inspection by The Pentagon.

The Plot

The short starts with General Halftrack getting a long awaited call from General Stonewall at the Pentagon. Stonewall would like to come down for a surprise inspection of Camp Swampy. Halftrack calls Sgt. Snorkel in, who already knows and plans to surprise "them" with an inspection.

Back in the barracks, Sarge, Otto, and Beetle are winding and setting multiple alarm clocks. Beetle and Rocky complain of not having dinner or being able to watch a favorite TV show, which Sarge ignores. Eventually he calls for lights out, and orders Beetle closer to him as a third ear.

Before Beetle could even get his first boot off, Sarge is up yelling for everybody to get up, and Beetle has to calm him down. Sarge goes back to sleep, but a drop of water from the overhead pipes hits the frame of his bunk and he's up again yelling. After being calmed down by the rest of the platoon, he and they fall asleep again. A feather comes out of Rocky's pillow when his face hits it and floats over everyone's mouths as they snore, eventually coming to rest on Sarge's nose. Sarge hits his nose from the irritation, and is up yelling again. This time everyone is up begging for him to calm down. He finally does, and they all fall asleep for the rest of the night...

...and the morning. Due to the constant awakenings, they are all so tired that none of them hear a rooster crow or any of the alarm clocks go off, and are still alseep in their pajamas when Halftrack and Stonewall come in. Stonewall leaves declaring not to come back for about three years, and having been embarrassed in front of a four-star general from the Pentagon by them, Halftrack has the whole platoon arrested.

In the stockade, the platoon is still sleeping, until Sarge is finally awaken when a guard's keys fall off his belt and clang to the floor. He is yelling "Everybody up, up, up..." then realizes he is in jail, and Gen. Halftrack, who happened to be just outside the window Sarge poked his head through, tells him to go back to sleep and have "pleasant nightmares".