Members of the 413th 
 Officers
Mess 
Clobbering the Vitamins in the Officer's Mess. The officers usually have better food and better 
eating conditions, but in WW2, everyone had it rough.
More Mess Hall Stories 
When I was in the Navy I did my share of mess duty. Potato peeling and scrubbing 
floors.  I don't know what these guys problem was, but they liked clean 
floors and didn't give a hoot about the food quality.  This was at NAS 
Memphis, Millington, Tennessee, in 1972.  After cooking potatoes for a 
couple of weeks I was put onto day shift cleaning the floors.  After every 
meal, we would move all the tables and chairs to one half of the room, then put 
scrubbing pads on the buffer and kitchen cleanser on the floor and go scrubbing 
away.  After we scrubbed the floor we had to mop up all of the kitchen 
cleanser, which took about three complete moppings.  The next step was to 
dry the floor then put wax on it, let it dry again then buff it.  When we 
got that half of the floor done, it was time to do the whole job again on the 
other half.  We did this between every meal.  I was always wondering 
how many years the tiles would last with that much scrubbing.  C. Jeff 
Dyrek, Webmaster. 
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