The Snack Bar
Twenty-five years ago I went on my first deployment to Kosovo. I was a 27 year old First Lieutenant, prior enlisted soldier, with a lot less experience than I should have had given those facts. The deployment still stands out in my mind. It was a great adventure, where we also felt like we might have actually been doing some good. The deployment sometimes felt like something out of an Eric Ambler novel. At other times it was exhausting or even scary.
I worked in Kamenica Opstina, near the Serbian border. My boss was a very driven Major, whom while not always fun to work for (my own subordinates could say the same of me) taught me a lot about being an Army Civil Affairs officer. The local SF team that worked in the AO nicknamed him Colonel Kurtz and it stuck. We worked supporting the Russian Army who was responsible for Kamenica.
We landed in Kosovo in early February and left in September. In reality it had started at a training exercise called Operation Autumn Thrust, it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what we all referred to it as. Autumn Thrust, which I hope they have since renamed, brought a bunch of Civil Affairs Battalions together for a Brigade level exercise at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Dix was a former active duty base, now relegated to being an Army Reserve/National Guard training center co-located with McGuire Air Force Base which was still active.
Other than the predictable cluster-fuckery of Autumn Thrust two things stood out in my memory. The first a bunch of us being called into a classroom, being told that we were about to receive a Classified Briefing (my first but far from my last) the sum of which was that we were on a Battle Roster and would be in Kosovo in three or four months.
The other thing was the Chow Hall lady. Much of the monotony that the Army provides you is only broken up meals. Though they manage to inject a little by making you stand in line. We would cue up, with our trays, adding silverware, cups for juice/soda or coffee cups. We would shuffle down the line until you could put your tray on the metal railings in front of the servers. That was where we met Chow Hall lady.
She opened her mouth and instead of asking us what we wanted, she sang it.
“Whatcha ya want? Whatcha gonna have?”
She would give you your meal, then she sing out to the next soldier. The whole thing had the effect of being a one woman chorus.
From the first moment we heard her not so euphonious voice, any time someone asked what someone else wanted they would sing it a la Chow Hall Lady.
Which brings me to Ramstein Air Force base in Germany.
We were flying home. The trip home started by bus from Kosovo to Skopje, Macedonia, now Northern Macedonia but then known as Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia or FYROM (pronounced Fie-Rom). From Skopje we flew to Ramstein and spent the night at Kleber Kaserne, a German Army base. This meant we could go into town for a meal. Which meant the Barbarossa Hoff. Across the road from the restaurant was an Irish Bar.
I forget the name now, but the end result of the stop at the Irish bar was that the next day in the MAC terminal there were a lot of very hung over Civil Affairs soldiers. We were hungry and there was just enough time to get a snack before we had to board the Air Force plane. The terminal had a small AAFES snack bar. Hot dogs, Hamburgers, French Fries, that type of place. We piled in.
The one woman working there, both the grille and cash register, was quickly overwhelmed. She was older, in her fifties or sixties, German and we got the impression married to a GI or Airmen long since retired. In her growing frustration she stopped speaking English and defaulted to her native tongue. She also started to slow down. Things did not bode well and it looked like only a couple people were going to get food. Morale was at a dangerous tipping point.
Then two heroes emerged from the woodland camouflage sea of hungover troops. Rob, a tall Major and Cobra, a Captain, stepped around the counter and took over. The Frau was put on cash register duty while Cobra and Rob manned the grille, violating god only knows how many rules, regulations and German laws about food service.
The line started moving again, burgers and fries were being dispensed. As I drew closer I heard Cobra, singing out in a near perfect imitation of Chow Hall Lady; “Whatcha want? Whacha gonna have?”.
I doubt Chow Hall Lady has or had any idea of the impact that her singing had on us.