I had settled very nicely into my new role as the chief of the Matériel Readiness Branch in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command, Camp Henry, Korea. My Guy Friday, Master Sergeant Milton Peterson, was my NCOIC. He and I started to gel so well together that we started doing almost everything together. To give you some examples, we went to the gym together to lift weights, we hiked in the mountains on the weekends, and of course, we went drinking whenever we went on our Matériel Readiness site visits and to do our monthly Matériel Readiness roll ups for the Eighth Army staff. I explained about how my NCOIC, Master Sergeant Peterson, got his nickname Friday. We used that introductory skit whenever we went into a bar or club in any village, and somebody asked us who we were. I would simply respond, “This is Friday. He works on Thursday. My name is Monday. I work on Tuesday.” Then, Master Sergeant Peterson would jump in and say, “Neither of us works on Wednesday. And we don’t do Windows. And we don’t wash dishes.” Then I would look at him and say, “State just the facts, man. Just the facts.” He would look back at me kind of funny and reply, “Those are just the facts.” From that point, we would usually improvise the rest of our little vaudeville routine for the benefit of our audience. On one particular visit to Seoul, we went to the King Club. There were some people in the King Club that remembered me and remembered that I had introduced myself as a Stars & Stripes reporter. Naturally, they assumed that I was still that same person with that same assumed identity. So, after we went through our introductory Monday, Friday routine, somebody interjected and asked, “I thought your name was John something and you work for Stars & Stripes as a reporter?” Upon which I replied, “Well, yeah. That’s true. But see, this here is Friday and he only works on Thursday. And I’m Monday. I only work on Tuesday. You see. We’re just explaining the rules. Try to keep up. The station chief always likes to get human interest stories to use as page fillers for the paper. A year ago, I told you that I was following the Olympics. Do you remember that?” “Oh yeah. Now I remember. You did say something about the Olympics. Why are you here now?” “Well, gee, I don’t know. What just happened?” “I can’t think of anything.” I looked around the room and I noticed a bunch of blank stares on the faces of the people standing around. Apparently, nobody had a clue what was going on or everybody was too busy doing military stuff to worry about news stuff. So I said, “Some significant weapon systems were recently fielded here in country. We’re just here to follow up with soldiers working with those weapon systems to get their impressions.” My Guy Friday caught my attention and said he needed to speak with me urgently in private. I wasn’t sure what that was all about, so I quickly drank my beer and pointed toward the door. We quickly walked outside and disappeared into the crowd and into an alley. Master Sergeant Peterson then said, “Some guy was paying way too much attention to your conversation, if you know what I mean.” I replied, “I know exactly what you mean. The spies-like-him routine happened to me once before in that same club. I think that it is time for us to play a spies-like-us routine. What do you think?” “I think we should come up with our own language first.” “That is an excellent idea. What dialect should we use just in case we’re asked?” “I think we should make up a dialect that sounds a little bit like a mix between Russian and Georgian and Albanian. But you know what it really will be. It will be some bullshit language that we just make up.” “Yeah. That sounds good. But we gotta practice it for a couple of minutes, so it actually sounds like we actually know what we’re talking about.” So, we stood there in the alley and spoke back and forth in our bullshit language for a couple of minutes to practice until it actually sounded like we were speaking to each other intelligently. Then we headed back into the King Club. The people that we had been talking with asked us where we had gone. We made up some bullshit excuse that we had to go to another club for a few minutes, but then we came back. We noticed Joe spy still paying way too much attention to us. So, we decided that it was time to go into our vaudeville foreign-language routine. My Guy Friday and I started to speak in our bullshit made up language. When we did that, Joe spy came even closer to us. I nodded toward Joe spy and said to my Guy Friday, “Oh, look. We have company. Aren’t you excited?” Master Sergeant Friday replied, “I am absolutely thrilled, Sir. I always love it when the rats come out of the woodwork.” “I thought you might be. Did you know that he is a bona fide spy?” “Really? An actual, genuine spy? A 100 percent, True Blue spy?” “Yup. Uh, huh. Absolutely. All of that. The whole nine yards and then some.” Finally, Joe spy interjected and said, “Cut the shit. Why don’t you just announce to the whole world who I am?” I replied, “I don’t think I have to. You already did that. Thanks for confirming our suspicions though.” “Just exactly who are you clowns?” “First off, pal. Let me set the record straight. We are not clowns. Master Sergeant Peterson jumped right in and said, “That’s right. Damn good reporters, yes. Great reporters, questionable. Top-notch comedians, absolutely.” Then I tagged off with him and asked, “Okay Joe spy, why were you eavesdropping on us? We didn’t sell any trade secrets to our enemies. Come to think of it, I don’t even think there are any reporters from the New York Times or the Washington Post over here.” “Oh, cut the shit. I ain’t buying that whole reporter routine. And what was that strange language you were speaking?” “Oh, that. Our grandparents taught us that when we were kids living back on the farm.” “Do you expect me to believe that?” “Look pal. You can believe whatever the hell you want to believe. As a matter of fact, my friend here is Santy Claus and I’m Jack Frost. And our spaceship is parked out back.” Then, Master Sergeant Peterson jumped in one last time and said, “And we got to go. Cuz spies like us don’t have time for spies like you. Besides that, our ship is double parked. We don’t want to get a ticket.” With that, we walked out of the bar and into the night. We let that poor slob wonder how his whole evening had unraveled into an endless exercise in futility.
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