I slopped my troops telling them about a fine nco I met years ago
Five young men this morning between the ages of sixteen and nine our boys and their friends . I made sos or cream chip beef and eggs to order from over easy to omelettes. And as we all were cleaning up after breakfast.
I mention to the one young man make sure that water is hot. As he was running water so we could wash the dishes I did not feel like running dishwasher. And I remembered this NCO a cook summer of 84 benning osut infantry in basic we pulled KP. That stopped after we tipped into infantry school and I caught KP twice I’m not sure maybe three times in basic.
The one cook was a E-6 a fine nco cool as ever with us private’s E nothing’s in rank. He was a black dude with a CIB combat infantry badge and a big red one subdued combat patch on his right shoulder. First time I saw him at like 03:00 on a hot humid Georgia morning I’m thinking oh shit it’s gonna be long day with this lifer. As kp was usually 16 hour day breakfast lunch dinner.
I was wrong in my judgement as this nco turned out totally cool. Example I was sitting peeling potatoes and drifting off to sleep trying to catch myself. And the staff sgt looked and smiled at me. He said hey I understand and then his history came out. He was a rifle soldier in Vietnam first infantry and after awhile. He extended to get out of infantry to stay alive and became a cook.
And he treated us really decent as the civilians workers in kitchen as well in comparing at 18 years old fresh to the army to our Drill sgts who were just doing their jobs. Fast forward several months later I just graduated airborne school jump school and I was walking back to barracks. We were in lapse waiting orders for 82nd. And this Chevy station wagon pulls up and I hear hey you wanna get a beer airborne and it was the SSG the cook from my osut cycle. I said sure let’s go get my friend Randall. And we went to his on base housing and drank beer with him and his wife. One cool ass dude that staff sgt a fine individual.
