A SHORT STORY

I was stationed aboard the Happy Warship Paul F. Foster in the early 90’s, and we had a Chief Engineer who was a bit on the short side.  Okay, he was shorter than that, because I’m a bit on the short side, and I was a foot (or more) taller than he was.  But what the Cheng lacked in height, he more than made up for in attitude.  He drove his men to the point of dropping, and then beyond.  And, by God, that man loved to yell at people.  Nearly every time I saw the Cheng, he was screaming at the top of his lungs.  To hear him tell it, every Engineer aboard was a bumbling incompetent.  That was, of course, not true.  We had a good gang of Snipes.  They passed every inspection, kept the lights on, the water hot, and the screws turning, and more than that you cannot ask.  But the Cheng thought differently, and he rarely passed up an opportunity to belittle or punish his personnel.

I was doing a lot of cartooning in those days, and it was fairly common for a member of the crew to look me up if they wanted a sketch or a cartoon for a tee-shirt, or the cover of a divisional slam log, or something like that.  So I wasn’t particularly surprised when a small group of Engineers cornered me on the mess decks one day and asked me to do a drawing for them.  I said yes, of course.  They were a good bunch of guys, and we all knew how poorly they were being treated.  It seemed like the least I could do.

They led me down to the DC Shop, where they had a sheet of plywood laying on a table top.  They wanted me to do a pencil sketch of Grumpy, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, directly on the plywood.  They assured me that they would handle painting the image, if I would do the basic sketch.  I picked up a pencil and started to rough in some lines, when the ringleader of the little group stopped me.  He pointed to a faint pencil line, near the right edge of the plywood sheet, and instructed me to pose the Grumpy sketch so that one of his arms was held out at a right angle to his body.  It was very important that the bottom of the hand be perfectly aligned with the pencil mark.

I asked why the alignment of the hand was so important.  The Engineers told me that it would be better if I didn’t know the answer to that question.  I shrugged and got to work.  I figured I would find out what the deal was sooner or later, but a few days passed, and I forgot all about the strange little incident.

A week or two later, the Foster pulled into Thailand for liberty.  Since there were no deep draft piers, we had to anchor out – as was the custom – and ride local Liberty Boats in to the beach.  Some time after the first mad rush of liberty hounds had made it off the ship, and the traffic across the brow had died down to a trickle, Grumpy the Dwarf put in his appearance.  He was positioned right next to the accommodation ladder that led down to the Liberty Boats.

The Engineers had done a great job painting him.  He looked just like one of the painted characters posted outside the entrance to rides at Disneyland.  Under his outstretched hand (the one that I had so carefully positioned to the specifications of the Engineers) was a sign…  ‘You must be at least this tall to ride the Liberty Boats.’

It was instantly apparent that the dwarf’s outstretched hand was several inches above the Cheng’s head.  The crew, and I think most of them saw it, got the message immediately.  The Chief Engineer, he of the mighty temper and the big mouth, was a small man in the eyes of his subordinates.

When the Cheng finally spotted the sign, he knew right away that it was meant for him.  He grabbed it and threw it overboard in a fit of fury.  Still, apparently he got the message, because his treatment of his people seemed to get a lot better after that.