Humor in Uniform #96.

LT Bronze Star, breathless from exertion, rips into our hooch and announces that something terrible has just happened at the Beer Tent. “What happened?” I asked. “Another brawl, is anybody dead?”

“Much worse, dude, it has been shut down!” he exclaims.

“CO got tired of the fighting and broken noses?” I offered.

“No man — they ran out of beer,” explains Bronze Star.

So, believe it or not, a plot was hatched. Bronze Star and I go in search of our Company Commander with our brilliant scheme to resolve the crisis. We found our CO but things got off to a horrendous start when I opened with, “Sir, from our experience the Beer Tent situation is going to be bad for morale.”

CO responds with, “First of all you have no fucking experience! Second what is the Beer Tent situation?”

We explained the problem and offered our ingenious and highly illegal solution. We are shocked and relieved that the CO did not kick us out of his tent but said in a calm voice (first time I think that he ever spoke to either one of us without threatening to have us shot at sunrise), “First time you two retarded idiots ever came up with an idea that makes any sense at all.” (We are quite pleased by this compliment.) “Let me run it by the Battalion Commander and see if the three of us don’t get fired.”

Sometime later the Company clerk finds Bronze Star and me and tells us that the CO wants to see us ASAP. We are scared and wondering whether or not we will breakdown in front of tomorrow’s firing squad, but when we find the CO he tells us to be at the flight-line tomorrow morning at zero dark-thirty for a helo ride to Iwakuni, Japan to resupply the Beer Tent.

So we stuff our backpacks with one dollar bills and spend a restless night, dreaming about shave leg, long-haired dictionaries (but I repeat myself), and indoor plumbing. The next day we fly to Iwakuni and walk into the base’s liquor store and tell the clerk that we want to buy beer, lots and lots of beer. “How much?” he inquires. We proceed to dump the contents of our backpacks on the counter and proud of the mini-mountain that we’ve just created tell him, “That much.”

A forklift or three of beer pallets are loaded onto the CH-47 and we change into civvies and go out into the ville on the prowl. Suddenly the sun comes up and we haul-ass back to base and pour ourselves onto the helo mere minutes before launch time. Slept all the way back to the training area, then slept some more in our tent. When we were finally prepared to face the day, we ventured down to the Beer Tent which was already up and running, and in full swing. We were greeted and mobbed as conquering heroes and lifted unto shoulders and marched around the tent until we were both dizzy from all of the laps, pride, and lack of sleep.

Good times!

Am almost 100 percent certain that nothing like this will ever happen again, at least not in the US Marine Corps. Times, as they say, are a changing.