Duty Driver

Me as Duty Driver

Most of us enlisted men had to "Duty" about every four days or so.  and about one whole weekend a month.  Duty in this case, meant after 9 to 5 week day work hours.   It usually consists of through the night the people  on Duty would walk the barracks or the hangar and look for something fishy or funny going on.  Most security walk shifts were two or four hours.  Unless are the Duty Driver, then you have the whole period, either 16 hours or 48 hours.

After several months and after I got my government drivers license I became duty driver when it was time for my group.  Several routine jobs to do as Duty Driver.  I had to drive out to the airfield tower and pickup flight plans and deliver ours'.  I had to drive the duty officer to the enlisted barracks and he did a walk-through.  And while he did that I made small talk.  One time I had to drive to the Philadelphia Airport to pick up a new enlisted man, who, I didn't know at the time, but is my cousin.  Small World.

Then, a must, was to pick up the food.  I think each unit had about 25 to 30 men.  Since they had to stay there and be on duty as duty driver I drove to the chow hall to pick up sacks of sandwiches.  They were called "Horse-cock Sandwiches>"  At the chow hall were were usually a cook in charge and several underlings.  One night that I went to pickup the sacks of sandwiches the head cook was drunk.  We had a problem.  He said he didn't like my smirk and he would wipe it off my face.  We talked each other down and one of the underlings got the sacks ready and he followed me to the truck daring me to hit him.  When I got back to the duty office I told what happened as a funny story other than an incident to fume over.  The duty officer hardly looked up when I was telling it.  Shortly he grabbed a sandwich and went back to the Officers Hangout for a while.  What I did not know, he took a drive to the chow hall and met the drunk cook.

The officer wrote up the drunk cook.  A couple of months later I was called to be a witness at a court marshall.  It was my pal the drunk cook but he wasn't drunk, he was seriously sober.  I was called up front and I testified what happened.

The little man was months away from retirement.  It wasn't his first incident. of drunk and looking for a fight.  I heard he got dishonorable discharged