THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 4, 1995 TAG: 9505040506
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
The fool who writes this column surmised last week that since he hadn't seen women pulling KP, the military must have reserved that duty for men. WRONG!
Four women rebuked me.
``You didn't have to be bad to draw KP duty, you just had to be visible,'' said Sue Nunnemaker, who provides daycare in Kempsville.
As a medic in basic training, she scrubbed garbage cans on the loading bay at Fort McClellan. The cans were greasy, the water in the hose was cold, the weather was hot.
``You really wanted to be alone on the job so you didn't have to interact with anybody as miserable as you were,'' she said.
(Strange how women and men differ - women so dedicated, men so feckless. Three of us on the dock at Camp Stoneman turned the hose on each other. THE THREE STOOGES ON KP. It's even funnier, endearing, too, to think of her working in a fury under that Alabama sun.)
Later, at Valley Forge, every item on the mess tables had to be dressed and covered, each salt shaker on a specific spot, she said. If one was out of line down a long row of tables, the effect was ruined as if one soldier was out of step.
``If someone in charge was real cranky, you never got it right,'' she said. ``All you could do was pray meal time would come soon.''
Mary Frank, public relations coordinator at Chesapeake General Hospital, recalls that on her first day of basic training she drew KP.
Next day, when the sergeant barked orders on the drill field, Frank was scrambling.
The worst detail? ``Washing pots and pans to which the food had bonded in an un-air-conditioned mess hall in midsummer,'' she said.
She was a year and a half in Korea with the American Forces Korean Network newscasting and doing specials for radio and TV.
``I did it for the adventure and to earn money for college. It gave me empathy for those in the military. It's harder than nearly anyone outside imagines it is,'' she said.
As a woman reservist in the Marine Corps, Kitty Hennings of Norfolk missed KP duty. ``Nobody that I knew enjoyed it,'' she said.
Her husband, Paul Hennings, was Hampton Road's warm, morning radio voice for decades. We loved him. ``Remember,'' he told students in his radio school, ``you're talking to one person.'' How we miss him!
She is a volunteer at Sentara Leigh Hospital and helps raise funds with the Auxiliary to Sentara Hospitals - Norfolk.
``I know darned well I served on KP,'' said Audrey Verget. ``I never liked washing great huge greasy pans that were bigger than me.''
She trained at Fort Oglethorpe in 1945 and served at Finney General Hospital in Thomasville, Ga., among nurses replacing male medics needed overseas.
She and her husband, Charles, enjoy ``square dancing, line dancing, round dancing - we do it all. Virginia Beach is fine for seniors.'' by CNB