Short Stories – Warm Meal

Warm Meal, Warm Heart
Arthur Cofresi

My story begins in December 1970.  I’m freezing my butt off at the Navy’s Great Lakes Training Facility north of Chicago, Ill.  It’s a week before Christmas and the Navy, in the spirit of Christmas, decided to send three fourths of our navy recruits in training home for the holidays.  I was not one of them.

I could whine about not spending Christmas with my family, etc. but what really hurt was the Navy temporarily shut down one of our cafeterias.  It may not sound like much, but this facility was massive.  There were two cafeterias that fed the entire recruit center.  Each cafeteria was laid out in four sections and each section was capable of feeding 200 to 300 recruits.  Every thirty minutes 1,200 recruits were cycled in (that’s a lot of toast and jam).  With only 3,000 recruits remaining on base, the Navy decided to close down the cafeteria closest to our barracks.

Okay, I know what you are thinking, but consider, it’s winter, it’s very cold, very dark, and I am hungry.  Our wake-up call occurred at 5:30 each and every morning.  Before we could go to breakfast we had to clean.  Then, we had over a mile to march to the cafeteria; through that damned Lake Michigan wind.  All of this to be one of the last companies to eat what was left of breakfast.  No milk, cold eggs, greasy bits of bacon, and rock hart grits.  Not a meal that was worthy to die for your country, if it happened to be the last meal.

I became bitter.  I was a senior company recruit officer, and as an ‘officer’ I devised a plan.  After a week, just before lights out and being incapable of bearing the thought of one more cold breakfast, I lashed out to my fellow recruits.  Proclaiming the next morning we were going to forgo our normal routine and get up, get dressed, and have a hot breakfast.  I would take full responsibility, heck what could the Navy do?  Draft me and send me to the Army?  I couldn’t sleep that night.

The next morning arrived right on schedule.  The hundred or more sleepy recruits in my charge were stumbling to do their normal morning routine.  I was furious, and in a fit of anger reminded them of our plan.  Somehow convincing them to follow my lead.  In total darkness we hundred souls all dressed in Navy black filed outside.  We were amazed that no one noticed us.  In silence we marched to the cafeteria and arrived just as the doors were opened.  I shouted spread-out, so as not to bring attention to our group.

Glory be, before us were trays of steaming hot eggs, bacon fresh fruit, and fixings galore.  Things we had only imagined.  Fresh cold milk, chocolate milk, which we had never seen before was flowing from the milk machines like water.  The meal was absolutely wonderful.

For the next three months we never experienced another cold breakfast.  We never got caught and no one ever told what we did, or how we did it.  We were amused as we marched in the dark seeing the young men in the lighted barracks desperately trying to clean up, so they could make it before the milk ran out.  My satisfaction was obvious, but the real sense of accomplishment comes from knowing that for a brief time I fed my men well.

The moral of the story is if you are ready to take full responsibility and you plan as well as you can, there are no limits.  On the other hand, there may be some great rewards.

Tagged Arthur Confresi, short stories, warm heart, warm meal