Pop in World War I

My mother’s mother, née Mildred Phelps, was born in upstate New York in 1896. Her tales of her early life fascinated me and kept me laughing. They also taught me to laugh at myself when I pulled a blunder worthy of one of her stories. 

She married Elmer Waffle; we all called him Pop.

Here is one of her stories as I heard it one Sunday in the summer, after dinner in Santa Monica, California. Grandmother loved to cook and it was common to have from twelve to twenty people around the table on a  Sunday, and this weekend’s dinner had included second cousins, three times removed, visiting from New York. One of them had given me a very long dissertation on what that relationship meant, but my five-year-old self didn’t understand it; I still don’t. 

After dinner and dessert, we lounged around in the living room, all the youngest ones among us on the floor, as there was not enough furniture to hold everyone.  Someone asked if Pop was in the war and Grandmother told this story:

“Oh yes, Pop was a real war hero. You know he grew up on a farm. His people raised potatoes and chickens. He was 18 when we joined World War I, so he enlisted in the army. He was good at farming, not so good at much else, so when his Sergeant choose him to lead the squad to their first dress-uniform inspection, he hadn’t quite figured out all the rules. It had been raining hard the day before and the paths were unpaved and muddy. As they approached a puddle, Pop knew he had to guide them around it or their white dress spats would be brown when they arrived, so, in a commanding sort of voice he shouted, ‘Gee.’

 “Sadly, the men of the squadron had never walked behind a plow horse and they marched straight ahead. Desperately, Pop shouted, ‘Haw.’ By the time he yelled, ‘Whoa,’ the men were splashing through the puddle.

“This landed him Kitchen Patrol (KP) duty. Pop hadn’t done much cooking either, so when ordered to cook a big pot of rice for dinner he dutifully grabbed a 50 pound sack of rice and filled a huge kettle with it, added water, and put it on the wood-burning stove. To his surprise, when it boiled, the rice started flowing over the edges of the pot; Pop grabbed a second huge kettle and scooped half of the rice into it and added more water. Meanwhile, the rice that had landed on the stove top was burning and filling the tent with smoke. While Pop was scraping the burning rice off, both kettles overflowed. Desperate, Pop grabbed two more huge kettles and was transferring rice to them when the Mess Sergeant raced in with a squad of firefighters to save the cook tent.

“For this screw-up, Pop was assigned more KP, much to the Sergeant’s dismay, so he sat Pop down and talked to him. ‘I know you can’t cook rice. What can you cook?’

“‘Never cooked anything before, Sir.’

“‘Well, what have you done?’

“‘I’ve raised potatoes. Sir.’

“‘If you can grow them, you can peel them. Sit down here and start.’

“Pop peeled potatoes for six weeks until the doctors had finished checking the medical records of all the new recruits. At that point they discharged him from the army. He had flat feet. The doctors said he’d never be able to keep up on long marches. Peeling potatoes was Pop’s entire army experience.”

The living room exploded in laughter. 

Pop stood up, looked at Grandmother, and shook his head. “I’m going to go play croquet in the back yard. Who wants to come? Oh, there’s ping pong in the garage.” He walked out, still shaking his head.