KP DUTY

 KP (Kitchen Patrol) duty in the Army during basic training involved working in the mess hall from the early morning hours throughout the day washing dishes, mopping floors, peeling potatoes, and whatever else the Mess Sergeant wanted us to do.   Most Mess Sergeants had the rank of staff sergeant, were overweight, had that greasy look, and never smiled.  If the Mess Sergeant wasn't yelling at us his assistant with the title First Cook was.   Each platoon had to provide 3 or 4 people for KP duty each day and our names would appear on a roster when it was our turn.   If nothing else it gave us a break from marching out to the rifle range, marching in formation on company grounds, crawling through the sandpit under barbed wire or some other thrilling activity, plus being harassed by the drill sergeants.

Preparing breakfast was always interesting as this process started about 3 am each morning with making toast or biscuits in large ovens, cooking a ton of bacon in boiling pots of oil, scrambling eggs in large trays over the stove along with hash brown potatoes frying on another tray.   It was quantity cooking, without much quality for a company of men, about 150.  I remember an old cadence song that we marched to that went like this, "The biscuits in the Army were so hard one fell off the table and killed a friend of mine."

All the fruit and vegetables I remember were from cans, the big one-gallon cans.   Canned green beans, canned peas, and carrots usually overcooked.   The meat was tough and well done.  The cows must have been raised in west Texas where they grazed on sand, rocks, and an occasional tumbleweed.   In the afternoon we had to peel potatoes outside where the grease trap was located.   This was a large concrete basin with a drain in the center where all the grease was dumped after each meal and large pots and pans were cleaned.  Three or four of us sat in chairs with a mountain of potatoes in the center as we peeled them with knives and placed them in big kettles of water.  There were always potatoes in one form or another for dinner--baked, steamed, or boiled.    Desserts consisted of some kind of cobbler that was baked on large trays where cans of fruit were poured into a crust.   The side benefit of all this was eating before all the troops were allowed in the mess hall as some of us had to help serve and others started washing dishes as they were piled on a counter in a large opening in the dishwashing area.

At the end of the day, we returned to our barracks exhausted and it took a day or two to regain our appetite after the experience.