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At work he would occasionally give me special instructions for the morning report, or ask for special dispensation, such as if someone was late coming back from leave, he might ask me not put it in the morning report until I heard from him.
I found that I could call home on my office phone for free and so I did that a few times. Then I got a visit from Whom who told me, all the phones on the base and the whole of DC for that matter were tapped, and it was illegal for me to make such calls. And so that was all there was to that. Which reminds me, we had a public phone in the hall in the barracks. It suddenly began to occur that when paying for a phone call, on depositing four coins if you deposited a fifth, all five coins would be returned in the return change slot. It got so people were calling all over the world and talking for hours with just five quarters. I called home myself.
Eventually after six to eight weeks the telephone company discovered the problem and wanted their money. Word went around from the Major on down that the people responsible should refund the money. However nothing ever came of it and it was forgotten.
But like I was saying about Whom who came back from Christmas leave as different. There was a company wide barracks clean-up every Wednesday evening, which was a general moping of floors, some dusting, and a cleaning of the latrine which in all the barracks lasted about an hour. Returning from leave Whom took it into his head that Wednesday evenings in his barracks should resemble Marine boot camp. He started with three hour GI parties.
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