Drafted

by Andrew Atherton

  So we were off and running in what we called “The KP Race to Stardom” for which every move is synchronized and choreographed to feed a mess hall full of cranky, ravenous men on time and without a hitch. Usually.

  Tweeze jogged to the bowl of chipped beef gravy, carried it to the serving table, held it balanced on the table’s edge as he pulled an empty tray from a lower shelf and dropped the tray on the serving table over the steaming water, poured the gravy in the serving tray, and slapped a lid on it. He carried the empty mixing bowl to the big, square, galvanized steel sinks, dropped the bowl in the left basin—BONG—and ran warm water in the bowl. He jogged to the walk-in cooler.

  While Tweeze did that, I pulled two, four-slot toasters to the center of the stainless steel table across the kitchen from the six-burner gas stove. I grabbed a butter brush from a hook on the wall behind my table and reached down for a cookie sheet on which I’d butter the toast and carry them to the steam table.

  I crossed the kitchen. Poured two half-cups of black coffee for Tweeze and me we wouldn’t have time to drink. Maybe a swallow. I threw the empty milk cartons, torn cardboard box, and balled-up plastic bag in the gray plastic waste barrel in the corner of the kitchen. Grabbed a damp wash cloth off a hook above the sink and wiped up flour and drops of milk and gravy off the stainless steel table where Dretchler did his mixing. Rinsed and re-hung the wash cloth. Then I jogged into the cooler and passed Tweeze walking out.

  Tweeze was carrying six square, cardboard egg cartons, each holding three dozen eggs. He set the cartons on the stainless steel table I’d wiped clean, about three feet to the right of the gas stove. Tweeze pulled down, from an overhead hook, a stainless steel mixing bowl and started breaking eggs in it, one egg in each hand, and threw the shells in the covers of the egg cartons.

  He broke thirteen-and-a-half dozen eggs. Threw in palms of salt and a big palm of fine-grained black pepper. Anybody wants more, they can sprinkle it on their eggs with their hot sauce. He added a glug of milk from the half-full carton Dretchler left on the table, and then grabbed a metal whisk from an upper hook and beat the fuck out of the eggs. Then he pulled down a giant iron skillet for the scrambled eggs and slid it on the cold right-front burner ready for Dretchler.

  While Tweeze was breaking and whisking eggs for the scrambled, I grabbed from the cooler three cardboard boxes of bacon—five pounds each—and dropped them on the stainless steel table on the left side of the stove. I jogged to the steel table at the center of the kitchen, pulled down a giant skillet from the overhead hooks, jogged back and slid the skillet over the cold left-front burner and flopped in a handful of bacon.

  We assumed, from breakfasts in the past, that most men would want bacon along with four scrambled eggs. A few men would pass up the eggs for the French toast or the chipped beef gravy on toast, or even cold cereal. So thirteen-and-a-half dozen eggs more than covered forty men. That was the rule. Most mornings forty men showed up for breakfast from Headquarters Company’s roster of a hundred GIs.

  An exceptional breakfast was when we had an early morning rocket or mortar attack. Everybody hurriedly donned their gear and hunkered down in defensive positions. But when morning light dispersed the darkness as well as danger, everybody came to breakfast and ate like starved fools until stuffed. But that wouldn’t be this morning—judging from recent enemy inactivity—so we were ready, scrambled wise, for our breakfast eaters.

  Of the remaining four-and-a-half dozen eggs, one of us, likely Dretchler, would break three dozen for the French toast. The last dozen-and-a-half eggs were for over-easy frying orders from the top brass and Sergeant Major Mollema, if they showed up.

  Where’d Tweeze go? I looked around while jogging to the sink to wash my hands. Usually nobody worries about washing hands on KP, but with my hands covered in bacon grease, I wouldn’t be able to hold on to anything. Hands dried, I jogged toward the pantry. And there was Dretchler leaning against the wall between the pantry and the cooler watching me!

  “Cook’s on deck!” I yelled as I ran into the pantry.

  Tweeze yelled back from inside the mess hall, “Hit the fucker with a frying pan!”

  I laughed as Dretchler followed me into the pantry. In a low voice he said, “You stupid fucks.” A grin turned up a corner of his mouth, but his eyes were hard, staring at me.

  I grabbed six long loaves of sandwich bread, three under each arm, and jogged into the kitchen. Dropped four loaves next to my toasters and carried the two remaining loaves across the kitchen to the stove side and plopped them on the stainless steel table four feet to the right of the bowl of scrambled waiting for Dretchler.

  I pulled a knife from its wooden block on the wall behind the table. Slit the cellophane on the two loaves for the French toast. Dropped the knife back in its slot. Jogged to my toast station across the kitchen and pulled a knife from the wooden block on my wall, and slit the cellophane wrappers on the four loaves. I dropped eight breads into my two toasters and depressed the levers. I glanced over at the steam table.

  Damn. So do it before you forget it!

  I jogged to the steam table and pulled three trays, one at a time, from a stack on the lower shelf and slid them on the table, over gently bubbling water, on my right of the gravy tray. Now we had one heated serving tray for scrambled. One for bacon. One for toast. Gravy tray's filled and covered. I slid two more trays on my left end of the steam table: one for French toast and one for extra bacon and scrambled.

  My toast popped up. I jogged to my toast station.

  Damn! I forgot the butter.

  I pulled out the popped toast and dropped them on the cookie sheet. Dropped eight more breads in the toasters and ran for the cooler.

  Grabbed three waxed-paper covered bricks of butter—one for Dretchler, two for me—and jogged into the kitchen.

  Dropped the butter on the steel table left of the stove. Bumped two sauce pans off overhead hooks, fumbled one, dropped it on the floor—bing-bang-bong—scooped it up and placed both pans on the table. Unwrapped the butter bricks. Dropped two in my pan, one in Dretchler’s pan. Set the pans on back burners and turned on low heat under both and low heat under Dretchler’s empty frying pans so they’d be ready for him.

  Dretchler walked into the kitchen toward the six-burner gas stove. He’d start frying now. But as I jogged to my toast station while glancing behind me, Dretchler spotted our two half-cups of coffee at the far end of the stainless steel table with the big square wash sinks. I stopped at my table and watched as he lumbered to our cups and held them high in the air—uncontestable evidence of our crime.

  “Who poured from my private pot and didn’t even drink it?” He dumped our coffee.

  I returned my attention to my toaster and pulled out eight popped toasts and dropped them, cold and hard, on the cookie sheet where I’d butter them. Cold and hard wasn’t a problem. The serving table would steam and heat them like it did all our toast. Turns them into warm little rubber bath mats moist on the back when you pick them up. I reloaded the toasters with eight fresh breads. As I slapped down the levers on the two toasters, the kitchen suddenly filled with Dretchler’s roar.

  “What fucker put two unattended pans of butter on the back burners to boil all over my goddamned stove?”

  Shit! The butter!

  I jogged over as Dretchler, hot pad in each hand, moved the two sauce pans, frothing and dripping butter across the stove, to the safety of the left-side steel table.

  “Am I looking at the knucklehead who did this? Don’t ever leave unattended butter on a burner! If that stuff caught fire, I’d have you court-martialed.”

  “You’re right, Sarge. But look. Two butter pans. One for me and one for you, too.”

  “You think that’s the end of it?” And in a mocking voice as he wagged his head, “You melted butter for my scrambled? I’ll have you scrubbing this stove all afternoon!”

  I heard my toast pop up.

  I used a pad to carry my pan of butter to the toasters. I loaded
eight more breads. Unbuttered toast was piling up, but now I had my melted butter and my wide butter brush. Buttering one toast takes two seconds. One to dip. One to brush. Wouldn’t be but minutes before I caught up.

  Tweeze finally returned to the kitchen from the mess hall. I called to him as he passed me, “Had enough time with your girly magazine out there, Tweeze?”

  He was carrying two empty five-gallon plastic milk bags, each in its own special cardboard box with a rubber spigot sticking out the bottom edge, one box under each arm. But he managed to flip me the bird anyway. He later told me he’d been restocking the milk dispenser and the jelly packets on the tables out in the mess hall, jobs that should have been done last night. Good thing Tweeze checked them out or we’d have had forty GIs screaming at us alongside Dretchler.

  Dretchler turned up the fire under the egg and bacon frying pans. Poured one-third cup of butter in the egg pan. Swirled it and let it bubble for a moment. Pulled down a steel ladle from a hook above the stove. Scooped up a ladle full of gooey scrambled eggs and poured them in the skillet. He jiggled the bacon pan over the fire he’d turned up, and with his right hand he pulled down a spatula for the scrambled. But he kept glancing up at those overhead hooks.

  “Where’s the tongs for the bacon!’ Dretchler bellowed. “And get me trays for carrying bacon and scrambled to the steam table! Get your thumb outa your ass!”

  And on and on it went throughout breakfast.

  After breakfast we scraped food off the dishes and silverware, rinsed them, and packed the first batch in a big commercial washer. But when the wash cycle ended and we pulled out the dishes on the wire rack on rollers, they were rinsed of soap but cold and greasy. We told Dretchler hot water was not getting to the washer.

  “Do the dishes anyway,” Dretchler said. “They’ll dry and nobody will notice. We’re one KP short and we don’t have time to wash dishes by hand. And maintenance won’t come until tomorrow. I’ll fill out an urgent request form after my smoke break.”

  We finished “washing” the dishes, and handwashed the stainless steel serving trays, frying pans, and cook’s utensils, dried them, and put them back in their proper places. We retrieved the red plastic meal trays stacked outside where each man had dipped his tray in a galvanized trash bucket filled with scalding hot water and disinfectant heated by a waterproof kerosene stove hooked on the inside edge of the bucket. We slid the wet trays in vertical wooden racks at the far-end wall of the mess hall where the men pull them out while waiting their turn at the serving line.

  Our last clean-up job was the concrete floor. We swept up crushed egg shells, pieces of cardboard, powdered sugar, drips of milk, egg, grease, and French toast dip. We sprinkled disinfectant on the floor and hosed it down. We sluiced the brown caustic water toward the drains with push-broom-sized rubber squeegees.

  We sat down at nine o’clock for our first break that morning. Ate sandwiches—made by Dretchler, no less—and drank cups of his burned black coffee. After our fifteen-minute break, we started peeling spuds outside in the shade of the mess hall.

  And then—happy days are here again—the second shift cook, Staff Sergeant Faulkenberry, showed up at 9:30. The real fun would now begin.

  His nickname was Berry. But he told his friends and any KPs who worked for him that we could call him Berry-Ain’t-Cherry, “since da’ Lord know I like sweet pussy.”

  Berry outranked Dretchler and was in charge of the kitchen from the moment he showed up until 8:30 that night. All Dretchler’s put-downs and verbal abuse ended. Berry-Ain’t-Cherry wouldn’t tolerate it. “All my KP is top of the cream, and they don’t need no lashin’ to make ’em better.” Dretchler didn’t say a word the rest of his shift unless it was needed to get the work done.

  Berry was almost as tall as Dretchler, but thin and angular, and he moved with the grace and elegance of a male model on Fifth Avenue in a photo shoot for Ebony Magazine. He loved jazz and rock-and-roll, and his wit and jive were worthy of a stage. When he talked, he focused on our eyes and took our measure as he joked and made us laugh. At heart, he was an entertainer. He said he loved to see people laugh and dance. He even looked the part since his lean frame and pencil-thin mustache reminded us white guys of Sammy Davis Jr.

  The first thing Berry did, whenever he arrived in the mess hall, was turn on his Teac Reel-to-Reel, Self-Reversing Tape Deck jacked into a top-of-the-line Pioneer Amplifier and two kick-ass-big speakers. Berry had asked Tweeze, early in their tours, if he’d attach shelves to the kitchen walls for Berry’s hi-fi equipment and install conduit for the wires so the installation would pass an IG Inspection. Tweeze finished the work in one night after waiting four days for replies to his “unofficial call” for conduit, wooden shelves, and metal brackets.

  Tweeze wouldn’t take payment for his work, but Berry insisted. Tweeze finally accepted Berry’s offer of a Kools pack of ready rolls. Even so, Tweeze made a point of smoking the entire pack, over a period of several weeks, with Berry. After Berry’s shift ended, they’d go between the heavy equipment yards and smoke a few and then come back to their concert-hall kitchen and jam the night away on rock-n-roll.

  Tweeze told me that every night they shared a joint or two, Berry would ask him what kind of music he wanted to hear. But Tweeze was stoned, and he thought he was being asked what kind of rock-n-roll he wanted to hear. Tweeze knew nothing about jazz, and at one time or other he must have said something negative about it in front of Berry. So Berry set aside consideration of his own preferences to please his friend. Tweeze told me he didn’t clue-up to it until that very afternoon the dishwasher broke down. Here’s how it happened.

  Soon after Berry arrived in the kitchen that morning, we pulled him aside and told him about the broken dishwasher. Berry said it was a serious health hazard and he’d get it fixed immediately, even if he had to hammer on the doors of Colonel Hackett and Major Roberts to do it. So he walked over to battalion headquarters office and asked for help from the top NCO of the battalion, Sergeant Major Mollema.

  When Berry returned from the sergeant major’s office, he was ecstatic. “Gotta know how to use your motherfuckin’ connections,” he said, and burst out laughing. And when the maintenance men showed up fifteen minutes later, Tweeze and I slapped each other a high five and got happy, too. But Dretchler shook his head and walked away. He later told Tweeze, “You know that’s racial, that’s all it is. Berry and Mollema doin’ favors for each other. You or I couldn’t do that. They get anything they want.”

  “What kinda music you wanna listen to now?” Berry asked us as the dishwasher started back up.

  Tweeze and I looked at each other and I said, “Let’s go with your jazz shit this time.” Tweeze agreed.

  So Berry cranked out Charlie Parker. Miles Davis. Thelonious Monk. Billie Holiday. John Coltrane. And Dizzy Gillespie. He had other performers recorded, but those are the names I jotted down from the list of artists he’d printed on the label of a tape reel.

  I’d watched Louis Armstrong on The Ed Sullivan Show, but Armstrong made me uncomfortable. Sometimes he seemed to be acting out a white man’s cliché of a black jazz musician. But the music of Parker, Davis, Monk, or Billie Holiday was a world far removed from white-bread suburbia where The Ed Sullivan Show was most at home. Their creativity, unfettered expression and ability to improvise such complex music astounded me. I’d never heard anything like it.

  In the late afternoon, after Bruno Dretchler finished his shift at three o'clock, Tweeze and I were in the pantry getting supplies for supper and digging the jazz. We laughed as we showed each other how we thought black people slow danced at night clubs where jazz was being played. Our embarrassing behavior resembled a cross between Hispanic zoot-suit strutting and the funky chicken. The music’s high volume created a cocoon around us, so we didn’t notice Berry standing in the kitchen watching us through the pantry door.

  He startled and embarrassed us when he walked into the pantry. He wasn’t laughing or smiling, but dead seriou
s.

  “No, my brothers, this is the way you wanna move to my lady Holiday’s grooves.” And he closed his eyes and slow danced, alone, under what we imagined was a blue moon. His movements were smooth and fluid. Tweeze and I watched with our mouths open. Mesmerized.

  ****

  Wednesday, Aug. 20, 1969 - Cu Chi Base Camp

  Dear Janice:

  Today we typed and sent to all the companies Colonel Hackett’s formal announcement that we’ll be moving to Lai Khe in late November or early December.

  Echo Company was sent up there last week to construct hooches and offices and maintenance buildings for when the rest of us make the move. Vietnamese day workers are helping.

  I’ll soon go up there for a “look-see” and to write an article about the progress of the construction. I’ll take some photos and send them home with all the others.

  Lai Khe is about 18 miles northeast of Cu Chi. It’s the home of the 1st Infantry Division (“Big Red One”). We’ll be doing engineering work for Big Red One.

  Lai Khe has a history of receiving lots of incoming rockets, so it’s nicknamed “Rocket City.” But Major Roberts told me they haven’t had much action recently, so that’s good.

  Love, Andrew