Word: pfc
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...duty in the G.I. mess hall at fancy-pants Fort Myer, Va., just across the Potomac from Washington, Pfc. Andrew God Jr. was supposed to be peeling potatoes. But like many a soldier before him on many another potato pile, Soldier God, a Detroit architect before the draft caught him, was fairly hacking the daylights out of the spuds, so his mess sergeant reported him for goofing off. Sent up before Captain Thomas Woods, his commanding officer, for disciplinary action, Pfc. God refused a company-punishment sentence of two hours of hard labor every day for 14 days, demanded...
Last week word drifted out from Fort Myer about Andrew God's court-martial. The trial had all the trimmings of the customary military tribunal, even a heavily worded bill of specifications: Pfc. Andrew God, 25, "having knowledge of a lawful order ... to peel and eye potatoes as directed, an order which it was his duty to obey, did . . . fail to obey the same. [He] did, without proper authority, willfully suffer potatoes, of some value, military property of the U.S., to be destroyed by improper peeling...
...prosecution's case was clear enough. The mess sergeant testified that Pfc. God, knife in hand, had removed the eyes in thick wedges, sliced off random peels in flat slabs (instead of removing them nice and thin). Then the mess sergeant, armed with a potato and peeler, earnestly re-enacted the whole business, slashing ruthlessly away until the potato looked like a candidate for a shoestring...
...case for the defense was stronger, and just as reminiscent of TV's Sergeant Bilko and his Fort Baxter friends. A mess sergeant from another company earnestly testified that Pfc. God's peelings were quite normal, considering that the accused had had only a knife to work with instead of a hand potato-peeler. Moreover, defense counsel (an officer picked for the job) was able to prove that Pfc. God's peelings (saved as evidence by the company commander) weighed less than those carved by his own mess sergeant...
...might lack talent after it gives Voice of Firestone the boot, the network wasted no time in demonstrating its taste, beat the competition in signing a prize performer who will not be available until the Army releases him in the spring of 1960. For an estimated $1,000,000, Pfc. Elvis Presley will gyrate and whine through at least one "special" a year for at least three years...