By Howard A. (Doc) Ellis
Listenin’ to the television news recently I learned that there’s an infestation of bed bugs plaguing parts of our Northeast...especially in New York State where even luxury hotels in The Big Apple have been nipped.
So it was no surprise most recently to hear a Good Morning America ABC television anchor report that a woman who, with her husband, spent the night at an upstate New York hotel claims (with photo documentation) she was bitten by at least 500 bedbugs and suffered welts, bleeding, infection, humiliation and even stress damage. Ergo, she’s suing the hotel owners for millions of dollars...you could say SHES puttin’ the bite on THEM.
I KNOW IT’S NOT FUNNY (except possibly for the fact she’s suin’ for millions of dollars).
But it all reminds me of a tangle I had with bedbugs and the military away back in 1952 at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command (SAC) installation at Tucson, Arizona.
I was, at the time, a technical (but not too technical) sergeant assigned as non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) at the air wing public information office (I think they call ‘em public affairs offices now but I never had an affair in any of ‘em). I was also editor of the base newspaper, THE DESERT AIRMAN. Anyone who knows the military also knows you don’t just do your assigned duty when in uniform but have duties in addition. Among mine was one as barracks chief of the two-story, two-to-a-room enlisted men’s quarters in my squadron.
It was an okay assignment cause most of my tenants were decent guys with only a few who had annoying peculiarities - one being they thought the floor was a trash dump...but that’s another story.
One bright morning a couple of leery-eyed young airmen knocked on the door of my room to complain they’d found bedbugs in their bunks and considered it a profane intrusion. I concurred and checked the rest of the rooms. Indeed there were bed bugs in some and whether they were imported from a G.I.s occasional trips south of the border for rest and relaxation diversions, or home grown, we couldn’t determine.
The important thing was, we had to get rid of ‘em, the bedbugs, not the airmen. But it proved more difficult than this then naive, then young, sergeant expected. At the least, I thought, I’d simply notify the base hospital which would initiate a confirming inspection followed by anti-bedbug fumigation. Alas, I was wrong...so wrong.
I was told, Sergeant, you must first file a report with your squadron commander who will then instruct the first sergeant to contact the base sanitary inspection department and they’ll take it from there, IF bedbugs are located.
How long would that take, I inquired of the medical sergeant on the other end of the phone line.
I figure about a week, maybe two... he replied.
In the meantime my troops have to suffer sharing their sacks with the bedbugs? That won’t fly (an old Air Force term) I pleaded. But I had to hang up and report to the Orderly Room where our first sergeant took my report on the behalf of the squadron commander…
The first sergeant went into the captain’s office and closed the door. He returned within minutes to inform me, the captain says we got no bedbugs in the squadron area or anywhere else...hes not going to mess up his SAC Efficiency Rating System report with bedbugs or with other crap like that. You see, other than actually preparing for and/or actually nuking Americas enemies to hold up our command slogan, Peace is Our Profession, the basic mission of officers and enlisted men of the Strategic Air Command was to run a Purex pure organization from every facet, crack and cranny within our responsibility.
Monthly, the squadron C.O.s had to turn in reports to the wing commander who in turn had to submit them to the superior commander at 15th Air Force who in turn had to report ‘em to Gen. Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command. Curts (I never called HIM THAT while I was in uniform) boys at the Offutt Air Force Base management control office would evaluate such reports to create SAC Rating Achievement Analyses. These were used to give a management and operational efficiency rating to each subordinate air force within SAC and each unit within each...Heck, you get the picture. There wasn’t a unit in the command exempt from the ratings mandate... talk about a monkey on your back.
Since each affirmative item in the unit reports earned gold stars and each negative item earned black marks, MY captain avoided penalty by simply kissin’ off the disgrace of bedbugs slipping through his management safety screen. In a way I couldn’t blame him, ‘cause each negative black mark impacted the entire rating achievement of each base involved, and on up to the shining star in command of the individual air forces within SAC. It was a hot competition ending every year with some earning/winning an oversized Commanders Trophy. Management control inspirational device? You bet.
But to me at the bottom line, it meant my troops and I would all be sleeping with the bedbugs at least until the current ratings competition was over.
Now a sergeant in his right mind wouldn’t go up against his first sergeant, his squadron commander, his wing commander, base commander, local air force commander and sure as blazes not his SAC commander.
But there are those who would say Ellis was not (nor still is?) in his right mind.
I went back to the barracks and armed me with a brush and plastic bag. Then I went from room to infested room and collected and swept up an assortment of two dozen bedbugs (including two who sneaked into my own billet and ‘neath my pillow while I was out petitioning for their death sentence).
Putting the plastic bag and its stinkin’ contents aside, I dug out my portable typewriter and wrote an official report to the commander of the wing medical group, affirming there were live, crawling, biting bedbugs infesting and infecting the quarters wherein I reigned as barracks chief. Then, noting on the report there were attachments, I stapled the plastic bag and the bedbugs to the document and carried it to the base hospital and to the hospital commanders office where I deposited it with his startled WAF (Woman of the Air Force) secretary.
About an hour later, a medical officer came to the barracks and notified me we would all be moved out to another building for as I recall - 48 hours during which our quarters would be cleaned and thoroughly fumigated.
My tenants and I were delighted and packed our duffle bags for the short stay elsewhere whilst the onslaught against bedbugs got under way.
Oddly, as I see it, during those two days I heard nothing from the first sergeant or my squadron commander, although most of the guys in the squadron were laughin’ so hard I think we lost some more SAC rating points as they lost time from duty assignments to split a gut as we used to say. Also, my contemporaries at the Non-commissioned officers club shied away when I showed up. However, the third day after the successful fumigation, we all moved back into the purified and pure-aired quarters and I was told to report to the orderly room at 1 p.m. As I prepared for the meeting, I sat down and wrote a letter of resignation as barracks chief pointing out that I could not possibly do better than I had just done and it was time for a new barracks chief to be appointed.
I think it was called anticipating the command.
Anyhoo, at 1 p.m., I entered the orderly room, handed my resignation to the first sergeant who took it into the squadron commanders office. Then, I swear, I could hear loud laughter as the first sergeant re-entered the orderly room and advised me, Sergeant, the squadron commander accepts your resignation as barracks chief and instructs you to not discuss the incident further...THATS AN ORDER.
Also, I was advised not to print a word of the Great Bedbugs Incident in my Desert Airman column called, incidentally, Ellis in Wonderland.
Of course, I did have to evacuate my barracks chiefs room where I had dwelled and enjoyed privacy as sole occupant and supreme ruler and moved into a shared room with another sergeant who had apparently also screwed up in some other incident...we got along fine.
Somehow, that month, our squadron actually rated a favorable 98% achievement status and no one mentioned ever, ever again, that the 2% missing from our squadrons target of 100 were eaten by the bedbugs (and Sgt. Ellis).
I surmise, with decades of pride, that I am the only United States Air Force barracks chief to officially submit a letter of resignation from that dubious duty, although I also surmise there were many relieved from duty or who just quit in frustration.
Truly, I cherish my air force days and after more than half a century wonder if anyone who lived in our barracks at Davis-Monthan back then still remembers when I went buggy over the bedbugs...I just cant help but wonder...
Published U.S. Legacies March 2003
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