While I served as the Chief of the Armament Maintenance Branch for the Deputy Chief of Staff, Matériel, 19th Support Command at Camp Henry, Korea, I lived in an apartment at the Sue Song Heights housing complex in Taegu. Usually, I went hiking every Saturday without fail in the local mountains near the Sue Song Heights apartment complex. I usually left the house at about nine or 9:30 AM, and I usually did not come back home until around 4:30 or five in the afternoon. During that whole time, I would stay up in the mountains ridge running with the exception of the hour or so that I spent at the Korean weightlifting club lifting weights. Needless to say, I started burning a lot of calories. When you take into account the amount of time that I spent up in the mountains ridge running as well as the amount of time I spent every weekday morning on my daily runs, I had a helluva workout schedule. And that was before you even talked about the time I spent in the gym each afternoon lifting weights. The first thing I did when I got off work every afternoon was that I headed over to the gym to pump some iron. As a result, I was always hungry. Each morning when I came home from my morning run, I would eat a pretty huge breakfast before I headed into work. My wife would always prepare my lunch for me to take to work. That lunch always included extra snacks that I could eat throughout the day. However, that usually still wasn’t enough food to satisfy my hunger. I always had to go over to the Korean snack bar to get a tuna fish sandwich or two. I also liked their burritos. I’m not saying I bought any. I’m just saying I really liked them. A couple of months after I had been in the command, the 19th Support Command held its first Hail and Farewell dinner. The Chief of Staff, who was on a first name basis with me by that time said, “Wright, these Hail and Farewell dinners are command performance. That means you need to be there unless you are dying or dead. Are we clear?” “Oh yes Sir. Absolutely, Sir. Crystal-clear Sir. Whatever you say, Sir.” I replied. “Cut the shit Masters.” “Yes sir. Right away Sir.” See, he was on a first name basis with me. Not so much the other way around. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t like to rub in the respect-for-rank bit, if you know what I mean. Well, the Saturday evening of the Hail and Farewell dinner rolled around, and my wife and I showed up right on time at the Camp Henry officers club. This was one of those affairs where you preordered the entrée. That particular evening. The two entrées being offered were ribeye steak and breast of chicken with in season vegetables and some other bullshit. As I usually did with these types of events, I ordered one of each type of entrée. That way, my wife and I could share the two entrées. Cuz you know sometimes they would have salmon and steak. Other times, they would have some other kind of bullshit that neither one of us liked. If that was the case, then I would order two of whatever was the least offensive entrée. One time they had the audacity to put fish head soup on the menu. No. I don’t even want to hear that bullshit question. Fish head soup is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a goddamn fish head cut off from the rest of the damn fish and it is just sitting in a damn bowl of water looking up at you. That’s right. That goddamn fish head Is just sitting there in that damn bowl of water. And the sonofabitch is staring at you. It doesn’t even look good. They say it’s a delicacy. Well, I don’t give a shit how delicate it is. I ain’t eating it. And I don’t think anybody else did either. Come to think of it, there weren’t enough Mikey’s at the goddamn Hail and Farewell to eat all of the bowls of fish head soup. What was that? Who is Mikey? You know. Mikey is the kid from the cereal commercial. I don’t think anybody ate that shit. That was one of those meals where everybody pushed the bowl of soup away and said, “I’m not hungry. I ate before I came.” You know damn well it’s a lie. Nobody ate shit before they came. But ain’t nobody eating that fish head either. But I digress. At that first Hail and Farewell, I had pre-ordered one steak and one breast of chicken. I figured we would split the two entrées 50-50. Well, that’s what I figured. When we sat down at our table, a couple of my regular customers for staff duty sat down next to me and across from me. When they brought out the food, I realized that we were not going to be able to split the entrées 50-50. Shit. We needed a goddamn magnifying glass just to find the shit on the plate. I looked at my wife and said, “I should have ordered food for four. Cuz it looks like they were trying to feed pigeons or something.” My wife hit me and told me to be quiet. But I complained that I had been hiking all day and I was hungry. And the little bit of rabbit food that they were giving us wasn’t going to fill me up. As the meal was winding down and the officers club staff was starting to collect used dishes from people, I noticed that both of my customers still had dinner rolls untouched on their plates. I looked at them and said, “Excuse me, are you going to eat that?” And I pointed at their dinner rolls. Both of them said no, so I asked if I could have them. When other people at my table saw that I was collecting food, they offered up their uneaten dinner rolls as well. I gladly took them off of their hands. After we left the Hail and Farewell, I told my wife that we would have to stop somewhere and get something to eat because I was still hungry. At future Hail and Farewell’s, the staff at the officers club started setting up the tables with a seating plan. Each table had nametags for each officer and that officer’s designated guest on the table in front of the plate. Once they started doing that, my wife and I would arrive a little early so that I could see who I was sitting next to. The reason for that was because some people perennially never showed up for those events. As a result, I would move my name tag and my wife’s name tag to a spot on the table where we were situated in between a couple of people that never showed up. Then when the staff started bringing out the food, I would tell them, “Oh, they’re going to be here. They are just late. Please leave a plate for them. That person wants chicken, and that person wants salmon, or whatever the entrées were.” Then, I would eat the extra food and give my wife some. Other people at the table watched me do this, and they would just shake their head and laugh. But it worked out great. I always said, “If they would just feed us enough food for a real person, I wouldn’t have to scrounge plates for three or four people.” But the plates of scrounged food tasted just as good as the food that I paid for. And when I walked out of the officers club feeling like I ate what I paid for, I felt like I had avoided an exercise in futility.
by 
by 