War Story 2: Floored By His Thinking

Upon my return from an air force overseas tour in Italy, I was assigned to NSA (yes, the NSA) at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.  My outfit, the 6970th Support Group was located in one of four U-shaped, two-story cinder block buildings. The other three were home to the Marines, who guarded NSA, and the Navy and Army Security Groups. (Search Google Maps for Cochrane Road, Fort Meade and click Satellite to see them from overhead.) I had heard that these old buildings were the original home of NSA before "the building" was built a block to the west. I don't know that for a fact, but the point is that the cinder block buildings were long in the tooth by the time I arrived in 1967.

    The ground floor of our building held the administrative offices, while the second comprised the barracks bays, each divided into three-man cubicals by simple plywood dividers and our grey steel lockers. The floors were covered with the typical speckled, dark brown tiles that one would imagine to find in a '50s government building. Some of the tiles were so worn that several in high-traffic spots, such as the entrance to the orderly room, were literally worn down to the concrete and had to be replaced. We're talking old here. The tiles in the bays were also worn, but, being in a low-traffic area, and by virtue of endless applications of GI floor wax, they had enough shine to pass inspection every time.

    Enter Captain Manzo. He was the newly arrived commander of our "bedroom" squadron, subordinate to the group. As the CO, he was supposed to make sure that we didn't sell the furniture out the door, kept the latrine clean and showed up for work at NSA . But I suppose he had to figure out something to do. He had a PhD. in music, so there was no way to anticipate what was coming.

    A memo from the new CO appeared on the bulletin board; it filled an entire page. The first paragraph started by saying that he wanted, generally, to eliminate the irritations of barracks life. The middle paragraphs were not notable enough to be memorable. But the last paragraph was; it announced a white-glove inspection for the following Saturday. The CO desired that all the floors, with their years of accumulated wax, be stripped and new wax be layed down. Hmmm. Saturday was normally a day off unless there was a parade or nuclear war scheduled, so this meant our weekend off was not going to be so "off" after all. I circled the first and last paragraphs in red pencil and connected them with a line labeled "LOGIC!" Thus it was clear to me that there was going to be no satisfying someone with a thought process like that.

    Friday night, the GI party (cleaning formation) began. Besides our own cubes, each of us was assigned a portion of the common areas to clean—the halls, the latrine and so forth. I quickly did my bit, and then, without doing anything to my cube, quietly left the barracks. Everyone spent the entire evening using stripping solution and mops to remove the old wax. Then they put on a layer of new wax and buffed it with a large electric buffer. It was a messy, smelly job, but when they got through it was, uh, terrible. You see, the only reason that those old tiles (with a surface resembling fine-grit sandpaper) managed to look half-way polished was because of all those layers of wax; once they were gone, it looked like, well, fine-grit sandpaper. This fact had not occurred to managment or they never would have given the order.

    I came back to the barracks about 10 PM, just about when the last of the worker bees were putting away the brooms, mops and buffer. I swept out my cube, damp-mopped it once and buffed it. Now the mop might have retained a residue of wax and probably the buffer brush did too, so when I had finished putting my exhaustive five minutes of effort into the project, the floor gleamed. Lastly, I dusted off my shoes lined up under my bunk. My two cube-mates lived unofficially off base, so in return for the pleasure of having in essence a one-man room, I made sure their shoes were clean and lined up under their bunks. The stage was set and I went to bed.

    Saturday morning, I and my cube-mates were were all standing tall as the commander's inspection team entered the bay.Our cube was number one on the inspection. They looked around for about two minutes, saying nothing, and went off to inspect the others. About 15 minutes, we were told that we were dismissed. My cube-mates disappeared instantly, heading to their digs off base. I later learned that my cube had passed inspection, but that everyone else had failed and they was required to spend all day Saturday re-stripping and re-waxing their floors. You see, their floors were dull, but mine gleamed. The inspectors did not realize that that was because I had not stripped the wax, whereas everyone else had. To avoid any embarassing questioning, I quickly made myself scarce and did not return until evening. Nobody ever asked me why I wasn't there all day, and I certainly didn't bring the topic up.

    I don't know what happened in the other three bays of the barracks, but I can only assume that they had done as ordered and were rewarded as just as handsomly as the men in my bay were. "No good deed goes unpunished" was coined not for nothing.