Incognito – An Ode to Military Humor – Springtime Folly

I left the 19^th Support Command at Camp Henry, Korea, and traveled to Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, to report to the 227^th Maintenance Battalion. Ultimately, I was leaving the 19^th Support Command at Camp Henry, Korea, to take command of the 305^th Supply and Services Company. As a result, I was being reassigned to the 227^th Maintenance Battalion at Yongsan, Seoul, Korea. When I traveled up to Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, my wife and children stayed behind in Taegu until housing became available in Seoul. Thus, I was living out of a small duffel bag and staying in the BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters). After I reported to the 227^th Maintenance Battalion, I asked the Battalion Commander to give me a few days to G2 the company incognito before he introduced me to the company formally and we started the change of command inventory process. What was that? What does G2 mean? That means to snoop around or spy on somebody or something to collect intelligence or get the lowdown on them, so to speak. That’s why I said that I wanted to look around incognito. Incognito basically means to have your true identity hidden or concealed. I guess you could also put on a costume and a mask and be incognito as well. But that would defeat the purpose because you would stick out like a sore thumb unless it was Halloween. And then, you could only wear the costume for one day. That would kind of suck. But nobody questions a military officer strolling around as long as he’s not bothering anybody. And let me tell you something. You can find a helluva lot of shit out just by strolling around and minding your own business. Since the Battalion Commander had given me a relatively grim assessment of the status, morale, and esprit de corps of the unit, I needed to get an accurate assessment of just how bad the situation really was. I wouldn’t be able to do that if people knew who I was, and they started to hide things from me. I wanted to catch them with their pants down as it were. The Battalion commander agreed with my logic and my approach, so he granted my request. The first day I walked through the 305^th Supply and Services Company area, I thought I would start out by going to the orderly room to see if I got challenged. I walked in like I owned the joint. The building was wide open and there was not a soul in sight. Not even one. If I had a truck, I could have backed it up to the door and loaded the ass end of the truck with all of the valuable equipment out of the orderly room and drove off. How in the hell do you leave your orderly room unattended and unsecure? The phone rang three times while I stood there. I figured what the hell, I might as well answer it. So I did. I picked up the phone and said, “Hello.” The voice on the other end must’ve been somebody important, and somebody really pissed off. The voice at the other end responded, “Who in the hell is this?” I replied, “Who wants to know?” The voice at the other end of the phone said, “God dammit! Put your commander on.” “I’m sorry, Sir. No can do. My commander isn’t here.” “God dammit! Just who in the Sam hell is this?” “You don’t know. Do you?” “No. God dammit.” “Good! It’s been nice talking to you, but I’ve got to go. Bye.” Then I hung up the phone. Whoever the hell was on the other end of that phone was probably really pissed off. Cuz smoke was coming out of my end of the phone. But I wasn’t even here. And apparently, neither was anybody from the 305^th Supply and Services Company. I had a sneaking suspicion that the Company Commander, his First Sergeant, and a few other people from that orderly room were going to catch a whole lot of shit behind that phone call. Oh well. You know what they say about communication security: loose lips sink ships! They can also get a lot of people’s asses in a jam as well. I walked out of the orderly room and headed down toward the motor pool. When I walked through the gate of the motor pool, several people saw me, but nobody stopped me. I walked right by a Sergeant First Class who I thought might have been the Motor Sergeant, but he didn’t even give me a second glance. However, when I actually got close to the motor pool maintenance building, a staff Sergeant came out and stopped me. He asked, “Excuse me Sir. Are you a new officer assigned to Battalion?” I looked at him and asked, “Why do you ask Sergeant? “Well, because if you are, you need to bring a copy of your orders down here, plus your driver’s license, and a request for dispatch signed by your section chief, in order to dispatch a vehicle.” “Okay. Very good. Thank you for the information Sergeant. Have a nice day.” “You too, Sir.” I looked at my watch. I could not believe it. Half of the day had already gone by. I decided to go down and eat in the company mess hall. When I walked into the mess hall, nobody called attention or anything. But I figured that might be because another Captain or other senior ranking officer had already entered the mess hall. I paid the fee for the meal and got in line. But before I did, I asked the clerk taking the money if another officer had come into the mess hall that day. He said no. Strike one. However, when I went through the line, they were out of almost everything. They had no entrée to serve me. Strike two. I asked to see the head cook. The cooks on the line told me he wasn’t there. I asked him where he was. They said he had to run an errand. I told them that running out of food halfway through the serving hours was unacceptable. I ended up eating a short order. After I finished eating, I walked over to the ice cream machine to get some ice cream. But the ice cream machine was empty, and it just dripped melted ice cream into the drip tray. Strike three. This simply would not do. I decided to look a little bit closer at the mess hall. The whole serving line was filthy. It didn’t look like the cooks were making any attempt to keep it clean. Dirty dish trays were strewn about on tables in the dining area. Nobody was enforcing any kind of rules in the mess hall. I wanted to start jacking people up right then and there. But I bit my tongue. Cuz these were not my people yet. I took out my notebook and started making some notes. One of the cooks noticed that I was writing something and walked over to me and asked what I was writing. I said that I had to run some errands before I went home from work in the evening, and I was just making some notes. I had noted that a few people still cared , but there was an awful lot broken. And the worst part was that I hadn’t even started to scratch the surface in this unit. That led me to ask myself the next question. Exactly how bad were things in this unit? It seemed that everywhere I turned, I had to negotiate another exercise in futility.

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