When I served as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, the company passed several major tests and milestones. And the company picked up new missions without skipping a beat. Oh, and I managed to get fired and rehired to my job as commander not once, not twice, but three times. But I also seemed to have a penchant for winning favor in certain circles. In fact, awards seemed to be raining from the sky recently. However, the cycle of awards seemed to have ebbed, at least the personal awards, anyway. The 305th Supply and Services Company was still in the running for the Army Philip A Connelly Award for Food Service Excellence. The daily headcount that my mess hall had almost tripled. There always seemed to be a line running out the door and down the street about half a block waiting to get in for every meal. I thought it was quite ridiculous for somebody to wait that long for food, but I had to admit that the food was pretty good. I especially liked the all-you-could-eat soft-serve ice cream. There wasn’t exactly a sign on the ice cream machine that said it was all you could eat, but I kinda interpreted it that way. You know. My mess hall, my rule, or my interpretation. During one monthly Battalion staff meeting, the Battalion Commander gave us a warning order that we would all be deploying to Team Spirit that year. The Battalion Commander turned the meeting over to Captain Campbell, the Battalion Support Operations Officer. Captain Campbell told each commander what elements of their respective companies that they would deploy to Team Spirit. When he got to the 305th Supply and Services Company, he named the usual suspects: Classes II & IV supply, packaged POL, the laundry and bath unit, the Graves registration unit, field Self-Service Supply Center (SSSC), and our new mission of delivering palletized meals forward to the combat elements during Team Spirit. However, he named one totally unexpected element. He told me that I needed to deploy my award-winning dining facility to the field. I looked around the room and said, “What in the hell is up with that?!? We are due to be inspected for the Army Philip A. Connelly Award for Food Service Excellence any day now. We can’t just pull up stakes and deploy the mess hall to the field.” Captain Campbell replied, “According to the Battalion Commander and the Group Commander, you can and you will. End of discussion.” “This ain’t over.” But apparently it was. I stuck around Battalion headquarters after the staff meeting to talk with the Battalion Commander. It was a losing battle. I argued, “Look, Sir, let’s suppose that you have a prized rare trophy automobile that could fetch anywhere between $20 and $40 million at auction. Let’s further suppose that your prized trophy is a cherry 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Roadster. Now, let’s further suppose that your cherry trophy runs like a cheetah, but the only place you can get that cheetah to run is on a dirt road. Think about it, Sir. You would have to take the chance of ruining that pristine trophy by running it down that dirt road just for the sake of getting it to the place you want to be. In this case, the place you want to be is out in the field at Team Spirit. You mean to tell me that you are willing to put your prized trophy at risk just for the sake of a few shits and grins? Cuz that’s what it seems to me that you are willing to do. You are sacrificing your cherry trophy just for a little field glory. Sir, I think we need to leave that trophy right here in Garrison so that we can focus our attention on winning the Army Philip A. Connelly Award for Food Service Excellence.” The Battalion Commander replied, “Wright, I understand your concerns. However, if your prized trophy, as you call it, is destined to win the Army Philip A. Connelly Award for Food Service Excellence, it will win that award even if it’s deployed out into the field. The decision stands to deploy your mess hall to the field. So, deploy the trophy.” I kinda figured my argument would lose even before I started, so I started to make plans on how to deploy my mess hall even as I was walking back to my company. After all, I had to impress the inspectors even though they were inspecting my mess hall while it was in the field. And I had to maintain current headcount numbers while my mess hall was deployed in the field. Any tent that we set up for the mess hall would have to have a raised floor. That meant we would need lots of pallets covered with plywood. One thing you could bank on with Team Spirit was that we would get rain or snow or both. The tables would still need to have table cloths and place settings for decorative ambience. It wouldn’t be feasible to deploy the baby grand piano to the field, so I scheduled another trip to the Property Disposal Office (PDO). I wanted to look around the PDO to see if there were any excess upright pianos available. While I was there, I not only found a piano, but I also found a TV and VCR combination. I figured that we could use the TV and VCR combination to show movies while soldiers were eating in one tent and in the other tent, we could play music. I think I had a mess hall deployment plan. Only time would tell if my plan to deploy the trophy would succeed or if I was walking into one helluva exercise in futility.
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