Mess Hall Memory

 

Back in the days of the "old Corps" of the 1960's, SOP was the E-1's and E-2's were allowed to report to the Mess hall for a maximum of 30 days mess duty once in a year.

As a Boot buck private, I did not escaped mess duty at Camp Matthews the first week of rifle training and spent a week scrubbing out pots and pans and garbage cans.  I thought my mess duty time was over, wrong.

At ITR,(Infantry Training Regiment) I missed being assigned mess duty only by the chance of names being called.  A boot camp fellow Marine answered up first when the name Harris was called since his last name was also Harris.  They didn't mention the first initial which was M.  He went to the mess hall and I ended up on Camp Clean-up detail.  Which meant going around to the empty Quonset huts and swabbing out the decks. The only things in these Quonset huts were metal two tier racks and a deck that would turn into mush when swabbed with a wet swab.  The decks would then have to be swept clean with a broom then swabbed then swept.  Mindless busy work since nobody had lived in those Quonset huts for over a year.

After boot and ITR I joined with the infantry regiment 1-9 at Camp San Mateo where, I also missed mess duty, barely.  Once we located to Okinawa, my time finally came up.  Off to the mess hall and there I leaned how to serve the mess, clean the tables, fill the salt an pepper shakers, swab the decks and any other of the multitude of chores needed to fill the stomachs of the Marines assigned to my particular mess hall.

30 days of up at 3:30AM, donning whites, reporting to a couple of mess sergeants that seemed to enjoy their work and feeding my company Marines while being harassed by my platoon mates more than needed to be since they bragged that they were going to be going hiking and camping out in the NTA(Northern Training Area), eating C-rats and cooking Smores over the campfire, while I slaved away as a mess boy.  I think I started drinking then.

Finally after 30 days of wearing whites and trudging off to the mess hall at Oh Dark Thirty, I skipped happily back to the barracks to regain my sateen greens and start doing what I'd enlisted to do, be a Grunt.  The Gunny welcomes me back and says he has some bad news for me, my replacement had just returned from Sick Bay and he has a case of the Clap.  All other Pvts. and PFC's have had their 30 days of mess duty or are otherwise engaged.

My first reaction was, "Gunny! I can only have 30 days of mess duty in a row, that's the rule."  The Gunny says, "Take a day off and report back to the mess hall the day after tomorrow."  He wasn't very sympathetic.

I probably said a few things; under my breath that us Marines say when faced with the unbending rules and regulations of the Marine Corps that make no sense but what else is a PFC to do?

I practiced my drinking that night and into the next day, then reported to the mess hall the following morning, at Oh dark thirty. The two mess Sergeants were surprised to see me among the new mess people reporting and asked what I was doing back so soon.  I had to confess I was the only one in my platoon that was free of disease and not among the sick lame and lazy at sickbay.

They took pity on me and made me their houseboy.  I still had to report at 3:30AM but I didn't have any duties other than sit in their office and let them know, when they came in, that all the new mess personal were aboard and accounted for doing what I told them to do.  Then I would take a nap in the cook's office.

At times I was able to play with the large cooking surfaces where twelve eggs or more are fried all at once.  Got so I was able to hold two in each hand and crack them one at a time onto the grill.  I was beginning to think that being a cook wasn't so bad.  Every thing in the preparation of food was laid out in clear and easy to read orders.  How much coffee when into a 55-galleon cauldron, how much flour, water and eggs went into a mixing bowl the size of a wash tub to make bread, how much this and how much that.  Easy.

Until I was walking by the Salad makers area and my life changed.

Two Cook Striker Lance Corporals were tossing up a huge bowl of salad and having a good time joking with one another about this and that.  They saw me passing by and without a moments delay; they both spit into the salad bowl and smirked at me.

I didn't eat a mess-hall salad ever again and has been hard to do so ever since, even in restaurants.  Who knows, those two bozo's may still be making salads and adding their little bit of extra flavorings.

My favorite job as a two time mess-hall loser was to take the 6By down to Naha and pick up food supplies for Camp Schwab from the supply station down there.  One time we stopped at Kadena air force base on the way back and picked up some sheet cake from their bakery.  It was destined for the officer's mess at Camp Schwab.  I sampled it to make sure it was suitable and found it to be the most delicious cake I've ever had up to then and even until now.  I'm sure they didn't miss the half sheet of cake that didn't show up.  It's a long ride from Kadena to Camp Schwab.

By the way, I didn't miss out on the NTA.  When my second 30 days were over, I got back to the barracks just in time to suit up in combat gear and join the battalion for another training exercise up there.  That was the one were we got to walk back to Camp Schwab.  50 miles if I remember it right.  I also made Lance Corporal promoting me out of the mess hall list of those eligible.

Semper Fi