My Guy Friday – An Ode to Military Humor

I had settled into my new role as the chief of the Matériel Readiness Branch in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19^th Support Command, Camp Henry, Korea.  In that role, I worked hand-in-hand with my new partner in crime, Master Sergeant Milton Peterson.  Master Sergeant Peterson was my NCOIC, but he soon came to be known as my guy Friday.  Of course, you had to be just a teensy bit familiar with that old TV cop show to understand the humor.  If you ain’t familiar with that old 1960’s TV cop show, here is a hint.  It was remade into a more modern late-1980’s comedy movie by the same name.  Still puzzled?  Do a Google search on cops named Friday.  Hey, I can’t spoon-feed everything to you.  Anyway, my guy Friday was born and raised close to the motor city.  That’s right.  Good old Detroit city.  The motor city.  And if you sit right back and relax a bit, I’m going to spin a little tale to tell you how he came to be my guy, Friday.  Master Sergeant Peterson and I had previously gone to Seoul to Eighth Army headquarters to present our Matériel Readiness data to the Eighth Army G4 staff.  The Eighth Army staff then presented our findings to Major General Taylor, the United Nations Command (UNC), United States Forces Korea (USFK), Eighth United States Army (EUSA) Chief of Staff.  After I stood up in that briefing and performed some theatrics as a spin doctor in order to bail out the Eighth Army staff, Master Sergeant Peterson and I exited stage left and got the hell out of Dodge lickety-split.  For those of you that don’t know just exactly how quick lickety-split is, lickety-split is twice as fast as two shakes of a lamb’s tail.  If that doesn’t clarify it for you, I’m not exactly sure what would clarify it for you except to say that it was mighty damn fast.  Well, we managed to get to Seoul station just in time to catch the next blue train South to Taegu.  Back in those days, there were no cell phones, so we didn’t have to worry about someone trying to track us down for the next three hours in an attempt to rip us a new one about talking out of turn in an Eighth Army readiness briefing.  After all, it was an Eighth Army briefing.  Yeah.  I didn’t even need to hear any bullshit from the peanut gallery about my theatrics as a spin doctor.  No sir’ree Bob.  And don’t call me Bob.  The next day when we got into the office, my boss walked in and said, “The Eighth Army Chief of Staff called to speak with me about some mysterious Captain on my staff who had managed to upstage the entire Eighth Army staff and answer all of his questions.  You don’t by chance happen to know anything about that conversation, do you?”  I replied, “I vaguely remember something like that possibly happening in the briefing, but all of the events from that briefing are such a blur in my memory that I can’t really remember the details, Sir.”  “Uh huh.  Sure.  That sounds believable.  What really happened?  Sergeant Peterson, would you care to elaborate?”  Master Sergeant Peterson chimed right in, “Well, Sir, it’s like Captain Masters said, everything from yesterday is such a blur that I don’t really remember what happened.  But there was some mysterious Captain that did seem to swoop down from the skies like Superman to save the day.  Yeah.  That’s how it happened.  I didn’t really get a good look at his face though.  And I don’t think I caught his name.  But he was from somewhere and he said something, I just don’t remember what.”  “Let me see if I got this straight.  This mysterious Captain was from somewhere and he was somebody, but you don’t know where he was from and you don’t know who he was.  And you don’t know what he said, but you know that he said something.  That’s just great.  You’re both full of shit.  That is the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard.  How long did it take you guys to rehearse this horse shit?”  “Rehearse what Sir?”  “Never mind.  It seems quite obvious; I’ve finally got the right team in this office.  Captain Spin Doctor, that’s what everybody in Eighth Army is calling you now, I need you and your guy Friday to head out next week to conduct Matériel Readiness briefings in all of the units that failed their Matériel Readiness status this month.  Put it on your calendar.”  “Yes sir.”  So, we booked meetings with all of the units that had failed their readiness status so that we could conduct Matériel Readiness training with key members of their unit staffs.  After the first day on the road, when we had finished conducting our training, Master Sergeant Peterson and I headed off base to grab a couple of brewskis in the local village.  While we were drinking, a few of the locals recognized us from the training and came up to speak with us.  They introduced themselves and asked who we were.  I introduced Master Sergeant Peterson as my guy, Friday.  I said, “This is Friday.  He works on Thursday.  My name is Monday.  I work on Tuesday.”  Then, Master Sergeant Peterson jumped in and said, “Neither of us works on Wednesday.  And we don’t do Windows.  And we don’t wash dishes.”  Then I looked at him and said, “State just the facts, man.  Just the facts.”  He looked at me kind of funny and replied, “Those are just the facts.”  “Oh yeah.  I forgot.  Thanks for reminding me.  It must be time for another brewski.”  And so it was.  The legend of my guy, Friday, was born.  We managed to slip, slide, dodge, duck, and dash our way clear of many exercises in futility as an unbeatable team.

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