THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 2, 1995 TAG: 9505020273
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
KP is on the way out!
At least that was the word on a Monday morning radio newscast.
The military services are leasing their mess halls to private firms.
At mention of KP, anyone who has pulled it - and there must be hundreds of the damned in this military complex - must feel a shudder shake them as if the KP pusher is at their backs, prodding them.
An odd thing that just occurs to me is that not once in four years in the Army did anybody in our outfit hear of women in the service ever having to do KP.
Had women dealt out chow or washed pots and pans, word of their presence would have swept the mess hall and animated us as we peered about the kitchen to sight just one of those incredible creatures.
How contradictory that women in the military were liberated from a chore that in civilian life was well nigh exclusively theirs.
One of many interesting aspects of the services is that when the chiefs put their minds to it they can advance the military with a reform that will put it way ahead and out of step with civilian society.
With a stroke of the pen, President Truman abolished segregation in the armed services.
Much in the military was worse than Kitchen Police, but among workaday duties it invoked a special dread among us.
Few minor setbacks were more dispiriting than discovering on Saturday morning's duty roster that one had been assigned to KP for the weekend.
Maybe the menial duties - cleaning grease traps, scrubbing pots and pans, wiping rafters, peeling potatoes, dealing out food on the chow line, smashing cans, washing dishes, sweeping and polishing floors - were considered debasing for women.
At any rate, KP was so detested that it was often imposed as punishment. Once, waiting for the Army to make up its mind where to send us overseas, our outfit marked time for more than two months on red alert.
Everybody had to work KP except Sgt. Bull Maypop, who was like a solicitous mother inserting his vast bulk between us and the raging KP pusher when both sides teetered on the verge of mayhem.
We were in a super mess hall that fed 2,500 on two sides at every meal. Before dawn all our outfit's 380 men marched to the mess hall and after dark we staggered in loose array back to the barracks and fell on our cots.
As our sullen ranks passed along the street, other outfits, watching, yelled: ``Sick call! Sick call!''
Bringing up the rear to pick up any lamb who strayed or fell, Maypop bellowed: ``NEVER YERS MIND, MEN. LET THEM TALK. WHEN YERS GETS OUT, YERS CAN GET A JOB IN ANY RESTAURANT IN THE COUNTRY!''
It's something to think about. by CNB