Gloom – An Ode to Military Humor

Well, my days serving as the Commander of the 305th Supply and Services Company in the 227th Maintenance Battalion At Yongsan, Seoul, Korea, had come and gone.  And my fantastic vacation to the island of Guam with my family had also come and gone.  It’s funny how time flies when you are having fun.  And it is also funny how time seems to drag on and on when you are doing something boring and mundane.  If you recall my final act as the 305th commander, you will remember that I invited three general officers to my change of command ceremony.  In fact, five general officers actually did show up for my change of command, three US Army general officers and two Republic of Korea Army generals.  One of the three generals, the General Officer in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4 showed up because I was going to be working for him immediately after I left command and returned from Guam.  I was going to work for the General Officer in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4 because I had kind of worked for him while I was assigned to the Matériel Readiness Office under the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command, Camp Henry, Korea.  In reality, I had worked for multiple people while I held the position as the chief of the aforementioned Matériel Readiness Branch.  I had worked for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command.  But I had also worked for the Chief of Staff, 19th Support Command, the Commanding General, 19th Support Command, and General Officer in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4.  One of my duties and responsibilities while I was assigned to the Matériel Readiness Office was to participate as a member of the Eighth United States Army Command Logistics Review Team.  After I reported for duty at Headquarters, Eighth United States Army G4, I was again assigned almost immediately to the Eighth United States Army Command Logistics Review Team.  As a result, I spent a lot of time out on the road  with the inspection team.  As a result, when I came back from one of my trips out on the road with the inspection team, I came back to a new General in charge of the Eighth United States Army G4.  Of course, the new General thought he was the commander in chief or God or some shit and treated all of us like privates instead of the senior officers and NCOs that we were.  One of his new commandments was mandatory Friday morning physical training runs for all of his rank and file sheep.  The inaugural Friday morning physical training run didn’t meet the General’s ‘standard’ and he was none too happy about the run times for some of the people assigned to the G4.  This caused General God-complex to lecture his flock on their poor performance, and this coffee drinking, donut eating General decided to lay on us during the formation for the physical training run on the following Friday.  I did a little G2 (that’s intelligence gathering, for those of you that don’t know) to determine that our beloved new General was a coffee drinking donut eating General.  Of course, it’s not real hard to reach that kind of conclusion when the genius shows up twenty-five minutes late to his own formation with a coffee cup in his hand, and donut crumbs on his mouth and shirt.  I mean, shit, I learned back when I was a kid to get rid of the evidence before I showed up at the house so that my folks didn’t find out that I had been munching out on candy before I came home.  I wasn’t an idiot.  Apparently, this dumb shit General never learned that lesson.  Anyway, after that lecture there was a formation run for the flock while threats of how the General would run with us in formation, the following Friday rang in our ears.  Well, here we were, the following Friday at 0600 hours, the entire staff of the Eighth United States Army G4 was assembled in the parking lot next to the Yongsan South Post gym.  And once again, here we were standing in formation like obedient little sheep waiting for our master and shepherd, the General, to show up.  And once again, the General came straggling in about twenty-five minutes late as usual.  Once again, the General exhibited the telltale signs of having stopped for a coffee and donut break.  Of course, why else would he be late?  Cuz he got lost?  Maybe his car ran out of gas?  Maybe his alarm clock didn’t go off?  Maybe he broke a shoelace in one of his tennis sneakers and couldn’t find another one?  Yeah.  That’s it.  That has to be it.  Anyway, the General gave us his standard pitch about being pitiful and falling out of formation and then he asked the Sergeant Major to lead the way as we all took off on a two-mile-run in formation with the General actually in tow.  As we were running, I was running in formation next to the General and I noticed something rather peculiar starting at about the mile and a half point.  I noticed that the General seemed to be checking his wristwatch on his left wrist every few seconds, while he steadied his wrist with his right hand.  I thought at the time that, either he was concerned with the pace of the formation or with how well he was doing on the two-mile-run.  After the run, and while we were still in formation, the General said to us, “Once again, too many people fell out of the formation.  And folks, we were only running a nine-minute-per-mile pace.  That is totally unacceptable.  The physical fitness level of this staff has to improve ASAP.  You will continue these two-mile runs until everybody can perform to standard.”  Then he turned the formation over to the Sergeant Major, he turned around, he took ten steps, and fell flat on his face.  A few seconds later, somebody asked if there was a doctor present and asked somebody to call 911.  Then, somebody who identified herself as a doctor began to administer CPR to the General.  A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived and whisked the General away.  At that point, the Sergeant Major dismissed the formation to return to the G4.  The entire G4 staff sat at the G4 for the rest of that Friday without receiving any update on the General’s medical condition.  We all suspected that he had suffered a massive heart attack.  But that was not confirmed.  There was a kind of gloom that hung over the entire G4 staff.  It was pretty obvious that our Friday physical training run had ended in a huge exercise in futility.

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