Three Ring Circus – An Ode to Military Humor

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.   I had also been recognized with individual leadership awards while in command, and my mess hall was currently being evaluated for the Army Philip A. Connelly Award for Food Service Excellence.  However, my company was also being deployed to Team Spirit, which was an annual war game exercise conducted by the Republic of Korea Armed Forces and United Nations Armed Forces.  The United Nations Armed Forces included the US Forces Korea soldiers and airmen deployed in the Republic of Korea as well as other soldiers deployed into Korea temporarily for the Team Spirit exercise.  My company was deploying the following elements: the company headquarters, the company mess hall, the Class II & IV supply warehouse operation, packaged POL, water purification operations, transportation operations, delivery of palletized meals forward to the combat elements during the Team Spirit exercise, the laundry and bath unit and clothing exchange operations, a field Self-Service Supply Center (SSSC), and the Graves registration operations.  I placed special emphasis on the deployment of my mess hall to the field and therefore had included deployment of the mess hall in my advanced party deployment.  I had received authorization to deploy my advanced party two days ahead of schedule in order to get everything set up before other units started arriving in the Team Spirit exercise box.  When the alert was given, the main body of my company started deployed to our chosen field site within the Team Spirit exercise box.  I had designated Sergeant First Class (SFC) Harding, my Transportation Platoon Sergeant, as the convoy leader because he had previously deployed with the advanced party.  Thus, he knew where our field location was.  The convoy was rolling along fine, and we were making great time moving to the field site.  I thought that we would have no trouble getting our field site fully operational by the evening meal.  However, after we passed a checkpoint near Wonju, the convoy came to a sudden stop.  I received a call over the radio from SFC Harding informing me that we had a problem.  So I just had to ask, “What is the problem, SFC Harding?”  “Well, Sir, you ain’t going to believe this shit,” replied, SFC Harding.  “Exactly what in the hell do you mean, I am not going to believe this shit?”  “Well, Sir, you gotta see it to believe it.  It’s like a goddamn three ring circus up here!”  “Exactly what in the hell does that mean?”  “Well, Sir, have you ever been to a circus?”  “What in the hell does that have to do with the price of Soju in Korea?”  “Soju?!?  I didn’t even mention Soju.  I was talking about circuses.  You know.  Like clowns and elephants and shit.”  “Yeah, yeah.  I know what the hell a circus is.  What does that have to do with us getting to our field site?”  “Like I said, Sir, you ain’t going to believe this shit.  You gotta come up here and see for yourself.  Then, you will know why I said it’s like a three ring circus.”  “All right.  Hold tight.  I’m coming up.”  So, I had Kato pull out of formation and move around the convoy to go up and check out what SFC Harding was talking about.  When I arrived at the head of the convoy, I immediately saw why SFC Harding had halted the convoy.  The road in front of us was impassable and snarled with vehicles of all sorts parked all over the place.  There was even a helicopter landed in the middle of the road at an intersection up ahead.  I told Kato to stop the vehicle and park while I got out and talked to SFC Harding.  I walked over to SFC Harding and asked, “Where exactly is our field site?”  SFC Harding pointed to the left just ahead of the snarl of vehicles and said, “Right there, Sir.”  Once he had pointed it out, I immediately noticed the largest structure at the location.  Close to the snarl of vehicles was the telltale structure of our field mess hall.  There was even a big sign announcing that it was our field mess hall.  Correction: that it was our Eighth Army Philip A. Connelly award winning mess hall.  The snarl of vehicles that created the three ring circus obviously belonged to people dining at our award-winning mess hall.  However, the logjam of vehicles had created a problem because we couldn’t access our field site.  That was a problem.  That simply would not do.  Customers of the mess hall simply couldn’t block the road every day, three times a day, while they came to eat at our mess hall.  We had to keep the road passable.  I could see that I was going to have to come up with a solution.  While I was standing there talking with SFC Harding, another helicopter started looking for a place to land.  I waved it off into the field on the other side of the road.  I am sorry but those sonsofbitches were going to have to walk.  I didn’t give a good goddamn if they were generals.  They had legs.  I walked into the mess hall to see how many of the folks were still eating, but none of the current visitors were eating.  They were all watching a goddamn movie.  That was fine with me, but they were blocking the goddamn road.  I told them that they were going to have to go out and move their vehicles into the empty field on the other side of the road and park them in order to clear the road.  They all got pissed off and asked me who in the hell I was?  I merely mentioned that I was the commander that owned the mess hall in which they were dining and that I needed to get into my field site with my convoy.  When they heard that, they became a little bit more reasonable.  Once we cleared up the three ring circus, SFC Harding had the convoy roll into the proper positions at the field site.  I got back into the Black Beauty and told Kato that we were going to drive to Team Spirit Exercise Operations.  I needed to find a permanent place to temporarily park vehicles while visitors ate at the mess hall.  I also needed to secure a location for a helipad.  I had come up with a couple of ideas that I wanted to run by Team Spirit Exercise Operations.  The whole point of my drill was to see if I could avoid future traffic snarls like the three ring circus that we had witnessed and thus avoid any future exercises in futility.

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