Squawk Boxes

D Vautier
11/2006

It was the fall of 1965; Beatle music was the rage and I was in the Army, in a great mood and up to no good.  So with nothing better to do and with nothing particular on my mind, me and a bunch of guys got drunk one Saturday night --not really, really bad drunk, more like just sort of happy, high-spirited, goofy, devil-may-care drunk.  Our current grievance was the apparent loss of our cherished liberty, privacy, and personal independence, which had been brought on in large part by the actions of the new acting first sergeant.  Our recently retired top shirt was a great guy and a serious drinker as well, a 30-year man that just about everybody liked and respected because he had common sense when it came to running a battery.  But the new acting top sergeant was, of all things, the former commo chief.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine a worse situation.

So we were all heartily imbibing good German beer and all the while mightily complaining about the commo chief’s latest effort to wire our building for sound with speakers, as any commo chief would do if he got the chance.  He had his people set up a number of these speakers throughout the building and then had them hooked onto a PA system down in the orderly room, where he could make announcements and speeches of all sorts and kinds at his own whim and fancy at any time of day or night.

There was a consensus among the inebriated many, that the proper place for announcements was at formation, not when you’re brushing your teeth, or using the latrine, or engaged in other popular and necessary barracks activities.  At this exact moment I suddenly came upon a most incredible and ingenious plan to rid us of the infamous and ubiquitous “bitch boxes”.  One of the commo guys explained that these speakers were 4 ohm jobs wired in parallel and that a serious overload from, say, a convenient 220 volt outlet could easily blow the entire system out, fry every speaker coil, and perhaps even put a happy and peaceful end to the PA system itself.  And since the commo sergeant had procured the speakers from surplus, it was doubtful if they could ever be replaced.

So acting with a great deal of enthusiasm, no doubt encouraged by the continuous ongoing libations, I procured a length of power cord attached to a standard German wall socket.  On the other end I soldered two large sewing needles (don’t ask me where I got them).  The idea was that if anybody checked the wire nobody would discover these small incisions.

It was about 2 AM and we crept down to the second floor, a location midway in the array of evil speakers.  And because of my rather inhibited state, I carefully got up on a ladder, and placed one needle in each wire.  When I was done I signaled to several of my willing accomplices in crime.  This was their queue to plug the other end of the wire into a 220 volt wall outlet.  In the next instant there was this huge THWAAAAP that echoed throughout the entire building.  I jerked the two needles out of the wire and almost fell off the ladder.  I raced to my room about the same time the CQ (charge of quarters) came flying out of the orderly room shouting. “What in the hell was that noise?”

The next day we found out the grim results of our dastardly deed.  Every speaker on the system had been put to rest.  The PA unit also had become toast, and they soon began a burial detail by slowly removing the speakers.  Nothing was ever said about this adventure, nor was there another attempt ever again to install the evil and hated “bitch boxes”.