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 Post subject: Kitchen Police
PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 1:01 am 
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Feldmarschall
Feldmarschall
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Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:48 am
Posts: 1051
Location: Washington state
(moved from the old YW site)

Kitchen Police
________________________________________
Commonly called "KP" by the initiated. I had to do KP in basic training; if I had to do it while in AIT, I don't remember, but after that never again. After AIT, I was a company clerk and they NEVER do KP. The First Sergeant doesn't want to give up his clerk to the mess hall, and he's the one who does the duty roster. When I got to 'Nam, we always had the luxury of plenty of local nationals to do our dirty work in the mess hall which we had in the rear area. I don't think I ever once ate C-rats in 'Nam, but ate them quite often in my six years in the National Guard after that.

In basic training, KP was the pits. First of all, the mess hall is run on a two-shift basis, from about 0400 hours to whenever they get done at night, say 1900 or 2000 hours. The cooks work in two shifts; the poor KP's work the entire day, which might just be 14 to 16 hours.

In my company at Fort Ord, they used a sign-up board to divvy up the KP jobs. Not all jobs are the same, some are more desireable than others. The "D.R.O." or Dining Room Orderly just wipes off tables and carries dishes for the cadre. On the other end of the spectrum, the Pots and Pans Man, well, you can figure that one out. The first KP to report to the mess hall on his day of duty gets to pick his job and sign up for it, and on down the line until the board is full. Pots and Pans Man was the last line filled in. It was the job of the Charge of Quarters runner to wake up KP's on the morning of their duty day. We were in big old three story concrete barracks, and the runner would start on the first floor and work his way up. I was on the third floor and wound up being Pots and Pans Man every time I pulled KP. After while, I got used to it and actually liked it since you were the most left alone because of the nasty nature of the job. As long as you did your job right and kept the metal clean, you didn't get much noise from the cooks. Nothing out of the ordinary, that is. In training environments, the level of harrassment is high just for the hell of it, even from the cooks. They say it is part of the training, but I think there was some degree of sadism involved as well. We had these two Puerto Rican cooks, Lazardo and Valasquez, who even though they were only E-4 and E-3, were often running around screaming, usually some form of "Less-go, less-go, less-go" in gangs of three like that, which I think meant, "Let's go!"

Man, those big old sheet pans did pile up sometimes. They might be cooking pork roast; when done, they would bring you all these huge sheet pans that all had about a half-inch of congealed grease all across the bottom of the pan. Except for one huge, dark burnt patch right in the middle that was tough to get off. About the time you got done with these, another meal was done cooking and you had a whole new batch.

The next step up from Pots and Pans Man was Cups and Bowls Man, but not a very big step. First you had to hose all the big chunks off, then arrange them in trays to run through the China Clipper. Lots of very hot water involved. I never saw so many water glasses get broken in my life. I think guys broke them so they wouldn't have to wash them.

After all the small stuff was cleaned up after the last meal (called "supper" in the Army), there was all the big stuff, like range tops, range hoods, greasy walls, and so on. The amount of work involved here usually was determined by how bad the cooks wanted to get out of there themselves that evening. If the cooks were in a particularly sadistic mood, they would keep finding things that were greasy or dirty after what was thought to be the "last" thing was done. Greasy air exhaust filters, grease trap in the drain, toothpick rolled under the officers' table, etc. Then you might finally be released from your stint of KP. You went back to your barracks and had to get ready for the next duty day just like nothing had happened.

Added:

My older cousin, Rich Kaulen was drafted in June 1959 and also took his basic training at Fort Ord. Several times, we have discussed our individual experiences there and they seem to have been remarkably alike.


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