Just a Sip of Joe

In addition to the daily grind of the S3 office, Physical Training occurred every morning rain or shine, but ironically, a couple of the staff officers always seemed to be absent in the cold, dark mornings on Ardennes Street, too busy to enjoy a refreshing jog down the street with 20,000 other paratroopers. Anyway, mornings were always interesting for a number of reasons.

 There was a ritual of sorts each morning in the S3 Shop and it was always hilarious to watch. The outgoing CQ runner would be tasked to take the large electric coffee urn to the mess hall to retrieve the day’s supply of coffee for the shop. However, there was one small problem with this arrangement. You see the coffee urn was missing one of its three legs therefore you had to turn the urn just so. On its perch in the utility closet there was a block of wood to keep the coffee maker upright. However, occasionally the runner would forget this minor but important detail. The runner would invariably return to a closed door, so naturally, instead of asking for someone to open the door, the private would set the urn down on the closest desk in order to complete his task.  Yep, you guessed it. Almost every morning a gallon or so of coffee would splash all over The Big Ragoo’s desk. His ensuing tirade directed towards the hapless private went far beyond any reasonable response. 

I just sat there at my desk each morning sipping my own coffee and waited for the show, never understanding why the other coffee drinkers didn’t just get a new coffee urn or at least warn the CQ runner about the broken coffee urn.