Continuing the further adventures of PFC (Private First Class) Chas (as promised):
Having survived boot camp and the Third Herd, I was still at the mercy of Uncle Sam. I was obliged to serve one year of active reserve duty and one year of inactive reserve duty. Good soldier that I was, I quickly found the nearest reserve unit and reported in order to get it over with. Happily, there was a reserve unit in Aurora, so I didn’t have to travel very far. That unit was (and still is) the Headquarters Company of the 553rd Engineers Battalion, a brick building west of the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) tracks on West Sullivan Road.
What, you may ask, dear reader, were my qualifications as an engineer (civil, not choo-choo!)? And, I reply, none whatsoever. I was a medic and thus was assigned to the company infirmary. There were only three other members of this unit, a major, a sergeant, and a corporal. I did receive a promotion while there, a promotion I had been denied while in the Third Herd, because the Herd never promoted anyone, preferring to demote as many soldiers as it could for the flimsiest of reasons. I still was low man on the totem pole; even though I was in the same pay grade as the corporal, his two stripes outranked my Eagle 4th Class.
The major in civilian life was a veterinarian, and the sergeant was a butcher. I kid you not! I was told to never, ever, divulge this information to a living soul. The “or else” (implied) was presumably castration, overseen by the major and performed by the sergeant. Good soldier that I was, I kept my mouth shut and my privates intact.
Active reserve duty occurred on the first Sunday of each month at 1200 hours (that’s High Noon to you civilians). Roll call was taken, the company commanding officer (a pipsqueak of a man) made a few uninteresting remarks about the purpose of the 553rd, and then we were off to perform our function in the cosmic scheme of things. What the other units in the company did to perform their duty, I never knew, and frankly, my dear, I didn’t give a you-know-what. The medical unit was farmed out to local hospitals – a different one each Sunday – to do our duty. The Third Herd was never like this; Herders never saw the inside of a hospital unless we were basket cases.
We stood out like a sore thumb – four men in olive-green uniforms in a sea of white. We were thus the low men on the totem pole. Even the maintenance staff members were allowed to lord it over us. Imagine then what we looked like in the eyes of a doctor!
I must admit that this view was not entirely true. The major was allowed to accompany a doctor on the latter’s rounds to check on the progress (or the lack thereof) of his patients. Curiously, it was rumored, the major insisted upon examining a patient’s teeth in order to discern his/her medical condition. He recommended that the patients be served with a bucket of oats instead of the usual hospital food. That notion was nixed immediately. Given the nature of hospital food, a bucket of oats would have been the better choice.
Meanwhile, the sergeant was assigned to the surgical teams. He was allowed to make the initial incisions and to close them up when the surgery had been completed. Unfortunately, it was rumored at one hospital – here unnamed in order to avoid any lawsuits –that he slipped up and accidentally mentioned what it was he did for a living. Several patients were said to have threatened the hospital, all of its staff, and its board of directors with lawsuits for medical malpractice, attempted homicide, and conspiracy to commit homicide. We never worked at that hospital again.
The corporal and I, being the lowest of the low, became orderlies. We emptied bed pans, stripped beds of used linens after patients either were discharged or joined the choir invisible, took said linens to the nearest laundry chute, pushed carts full of medical supplies hither and yon – mostly yon – wheeled patients to and from their appointments, took inventory of medical supplies (overseen by a battle-axe of a nurse), and whatever else the staff members didn’t want to do themselves – which was just about everything, making the Third Herd look like a vacation site in comparison.
Nevertheless, we survived the ordeal and later laughed about it over a beer or three. Yours truly was as happy as a clam when his year was up, and he could resume a normal lifestyle as nature intended.
To be continued