Word: feddersen
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Dates: during 1966-1966
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...looks like the stuff of legend: plump and puckish, a shy grin on his broad leg-of-mutton face, a shoulder holster sagging from the armpit of his sweat-blotched, green T shirt, a drinker of nothing more stimulating than cream soda. Yet Senior Chief Petty Officer Bernard G. Feddersen, 35, of the Seabees, is renowned from Danang to the Delta as the sharpest cumshaw artist in all Southeast Asia...
...grateful) and entered U.S. naval argot during the 19th century when ships calling at Canton began swapping rum and ratguards for labor and litchi nuts. Today's scrounger can be an Air Cav supply sergeant or an Air Force crew chief, but Viet Nam's Feddersen outdoes them all-both in Yankee horse-trading skill and sheer inventiveness. In a scant 14 months, he unplugged the logistical bottleneck that had plagued the development of the Chu Lai enclave, and in the process set up his outfit as the most efficient unit in the area. "Over here...
Deal or Die. When Feddersen's Mobile Construction Battalion 10 arrived at Chu Lai a year ago last May, Saigon's harbor was clogged with ships unable to unload their cargoes, and airstrips elsewhere were glutted with traffic. Morale at Chu Lai itself was desperately low due to an overabundance of sand flies and a dearth of comfort. It was a perfect situation for cumshaw, and fortunately Bernie Feddersen was on hand...
Within 23 days of Feddersen's arrival, he had shaken loose 2,600 lbs. of spare parts for failing trucks and bulldozers, procured vitally needed aluminum sections for the airstrip's 8,000-ft. jet runway, and made MCB 10 the only outfit on the base with a perpetual supply of beer, steaks, lettuce, tomatoes and lumber. In the past two weeks alone, Feddersen has turned up a truck engine, two electronic workbenches, 15 file cabinets, 35 electric fans, 1,000 lbs. of small automotive parts and 42 hickory-handled carnival mallets. "You're dead...
Cold Pop & "Snivel." Feddersen's real coup in Viet Nam was the establishment of a private, self-contained, ship-to-site supply route-an exercise that by his count took 17 steps. First he sounded out a Saigon source who, for twelve cases of C rations, revealed the whereabouts of a warehouse that needed 100 shipping pallets. To get the pallets, Feddersen traded surplus steel cargo boxes (bummed from the Army) for enough lumber and nails to build 200 pallets. Another army company built the pallets for Feddersen, keeping 100 of them as payment. Feddersen then gave...