Stories
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"Where's the real army SARGE? SHORT!" This was especially galling to the sergeants, since this unit was so obviously the absolute pits, under Major Joinagain.
Every Saturday morning was company inspection at nine. I was unused to inspections coming from Headquarters DC. We did not have them except for a barracks clean-up. Pentagon Generals didn't want their men harassed in their barracks. I had to get all my stripes, name-tags and emblems sewed on my fatigues, again something we never wore in DC, work clothes. I had to paint my name and serial number on my duffel bag with a stencil. I laid it outside to dry on the ground a couple of hours before my first barracks inspection, but a stray dog laid on it and the wet paint. Joinagain wasn't too happy about that.
Every morning we had revelry at seven, which meant stand in three or four lines in the company street in front of the baracks, where someone would take a head count and all present and accounted for, before chow at the mess hall. However every Saturday morning Joinagain would hold a company street all in lines inspection. For these Joinagain always wore his black leather gloves, sunglasses and swagger stick. He would range up and down the lines stopping before this or that troop but not others. We would be with rifle, fresh pressed fatigues, shined boots and brass. There where eleven General Orders that were a sort of code of conduct like the Boy scout laws as helpful, loyal or friendly. Each of these was supposed to be memorized. Very few could or at least did do it. In basic training one was asked one of the generals orders verbatim before one could eat at the mess hall. At the door, "Sir my general order eight is" ... and mis-messing it one had to go to the end of the line.
They were like General Order number one: 'To take charge of this post and all government property in view.' I having always found memorization difficult and more likely impossible did not know them. My fellow servicemen were eager to help. "Remember," they would say, "he doesn't know them either. When he asks you for a specific general order just recite anyone you know, he won't know the difference".
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