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. Now, my unit mess hall was 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 had deployed 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 I deployed the main party of my company to Team Spirit, I ran into a huge traffic snarl immediately adjacent to the 305th Supply and Services Company field site that was created by all of the visitors to my mess hall. Those visitors had just decided to park their vehicles wherever they damn well pleased. In the middle of the goddamn road like it was a parking lot. The only problem was that the road was the only two-way access road through that area of the Team Spirit exercise box. The traffic snarl had created a three ring circus of sorts. That would have been fine if all of the people had been eating at the time, but they were actually just lollygagging while watching a movie. Since the Team Spirit exercise hadn’t started yet, the soldiers were killing time by watching movies at my mess hall. All the while, their vehicles were blocking traffic. I soon fixed that problem by setting up a vehicle parking lot for the mess hall. I also received clearance from Team Spirit Exercise Operations to establish a helipad. After a couple of days of monitoring usage of my mess hall, I noticed that the dining tent with the movie equipment was more popular by far than the music dining tent. The only time that soldiers used the music dining tent was when it was used as overflow dining when the movie dining tent was full. That presented another unique problem. Within a matter of four days, we had completely exhausted our supply of movie tapes. I called a staff meeting to see what we could do about the problem. A few of my senior NCOs offered to lend videotapes from their private collections to our cause. We even checked with the Eighth Army library to see what they had available. After pulling videotapes from those resources, we managed to pool a considerable collection of movies to show our customers. During the day, we were even able to offer documentary movies about World War II and the Korean War from the stock that we received from the Eighth Army library. One general that came into the mess hall suggested that I run a valet service for the parking lot. I politely declined because I didn’t have the staff to provide such a service. Jesus H. Christ, a valet service? Really? Was he kidding me?!? When I looked at the sonofabitch, he seemed to have both legs and they both seemed to work. I know why he was bitching. It was kinda drizzling rain that day, but not really raining. You know. Just enough rain to let you know that it’s wet and miserable. But not enough to totally soak you and make you wish you had stayed in bed. But he was a general, so he thought he was privileged. He thought he should be able to ride right up to the front door of the goddamn mess hall. Well, excuse me! Sorry about that shit. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. If you want to eat at my award-winning mess hall with its fine dining and its elegant ambience, you have to park your vehicle in the goddamn parking lot and walk to the front door. What in the hell did they think this was? A Michelin star restaurant? We were out in the goddamn field. They were lucky that we weren’t serving field rations. After a few days, people made adjustments and got used to the parking lot concept. They must have because my mess hall stayed busy. The headcount at my mess hall was off the charts during Team Spirit. Sure, we had some growing pains with some generals getting used to the parking arrangements. But they loved the food, they loved the movies, and they loved the environment that we provided in our dining rooms. In my company, customer service was the name of the game during Team Spirit and we encountered no exercises in futility.
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