About a year ago I wrote an article about grilled cheese sandwiches, the kind that I had in Germany at the EUCOM HQ CINC's Mess. That article also covered the story of the fella who made the sandwiches for me. Ronnie was a buddy, but he was also a crook...well...not a very bright or malicious crook, more of a useful idiot for the Spanish Mob. Anyway, this morning I was thinking about the boy again. I was noodling around for a breakfast and while I didn't have the materials for a grilled cheese ala Ronnie, I did have the makings of one of my favorite cheeseburgers...one I learned from Ronnie.
It is pretty simple and you have probably done it yourself, but prior to my tour at Patch Barracks, I never really had one just this way. It starts with a larger-than-average hamburger patty, two pieces of toasted wheat bread, American cheese, and a bunch of bacon. So it is either a BLT with a big burger patty and cheese or a cheeseburger with bacon on bread...onions, Claussen dill pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, mustard and mayonaise. Well, I told you it was simple. It made a wonderful breakfast.
While I was chewing I thought about Ronnie and the times before he stepped on his poncho. Ronnie was a funny guy. He was popular with all the big brass and really was a great cook. And for a guy who was working for the mob, he had a sense of fairness and integrity. When word of the trouble he was in spread through the HQ, there was a fear that he might "reach out" to one of the brass that he was so popular with. There is a tradition of "protectionism" in the world's headquarters. The higher the headquarters, the more pull they can exert. Not that there is a lot of illegal stuff but some of it skirts fairly close to the line. I 'll give you a couple of examples. One of the senior NCOs that worked at the Deputy Commander in Chief's (DCINC) house as a cook and personal aide was an Army E-7; he was slightly overweight, enough so that he was on the "weight control program", which meant he could have no favorable personnel actions until he lost enough weight. When the DCINC was informed that he was going to a new command, he asked this sergeant if he wanted to go with him; the General liked the sergeant and the General's wife wanted the sergeant to come along, too. The problem was that the General was Air Force and heading to an Air Force command. The sergeant was Army and there was no place for an Army cook there. Now normally, when service-to-service transfers are appoved (and they rarely are) it involves loss of one grade, loss of time-in-grade, and you have to buy your new uniforms and such. Also, inter-service transfers are always based on "good of the service" considerations. You can't move someone with a job that is short-handed to another service. Likewise, you cannot move a guy into a field that already has too many people in it in the gaining service. At the time that this transfer was made, the Army was short of cooks and the Air Force was overstrength in cooks. Yep, the four-star got the transfer made, understrength to overstrength, no loss of rank, no loss of time in grade, and all uniforms issued at no charge. Never underestimate the power of a four-star general. You could fill a book with stories like that; it is a very commonplace thing.
With all that known, it might seem like a natural move for Ronnie to approach the general for a little help with his "problems". But he never did. I guess he figured that since no one ever hassled him about the extra pounds he carried around, he had already gotten enough help. I still don't know how it all turned out for him; I suspect Ronnie spent some time in Kansas, but by now he has been out for quite a while...in my mind's eye I can see him flippin' burgers in some diner somewhere...or in the executive kitchen of some big corp...whichever, I hope he's okay.
this is a link to the previous article:
https://forums.joeuser.com/379842