CORPORAL MERRICK

CORPORAL MERRICK

Written by James Merrick , July 8, 2021

One of my dad’s wartime stories actually became a family tradition. It was a tale he was asked to tell time and time again during gatherings of our clan. Since his death in 1999, the torch has been taken up by other family members to the delight of young and old alike. This is my version of his experience. I hope it brings a smile to your face and a lasting memory.

The Year was 1946. World War II had ended. Dad was in the U.S. Army, stationed in the Philippines. He was doing what he called “mop-up work.” The place, a sweat-drenched Army post, was located on the Island of Luzon.

None of this story would have become history if it had been left where it was, undiscovered in Dad’s personnel file. Those military records indicated that in civilian life he had been a baker, a revelation that set Dad’s superior officer into overdrive. At the time, the post kitchen was without someone who knew how to create bread, biscuits, pies, cakes, and the most cherished delight of all—donuts. The truth was out! Dad had worked for a year as a baker’s assistant in Champaign, Illinois, and another year for Helm’s Bakery in Los Angeles, California. In his words, this made him totally unprepared to take over the baking needs of an entire army post. Nevertheless, he was promptly assigned to bake for the fifteen-hundred men, a thought that froze him like a popsicle.

On his first evening as a newbie baker, Dad was assigned to bake three thousand sugar-coated donuts, two for each man, which circumstances forced him to do without a recipe. No instructions for making donuts were available to him, so he was about to use his only baking resource, a military-issue instruction for bread dough. (In those days, no one had a computer, tablet, or cell phone with which to gain easy access to recipes. “On-line” didn’t exist!)

After the mess hall had been cleared for the night, Dad remained alone in the kitchen to concoct the dough. Breaking his stare from the stack of number ten cans he had carried in from the storeroom, he tilted his face toward the ceiling, lowered his eyelids, and gave God a jingle, praying the Creator would guide his hands and make the donuts heavenly.

As the story goes, with his assignment hovering over him like a threatening storm, and his superior expecting to taste scrumptious donuts the next day, Dad pinned his hopes on a recipe for making bread: flour; shortening; sugar, salt, and yeast. The bottom line was…he had to divine the quantities of ingredients needed. His hands trembled as he tried to remember the mix he had seen the Helms master bakers use—to no avail. Memory failed him. He decided to plunge ahead without a recipe; measuring, mixing, and rolling out the dough as best he could.

The yeast proved to be the most troubling challenge of all. It filled the armload of number tens Dad had carried into the kitchen from the store room. Each container was about the same size and shape as today’s two-pound can of ground coffee. And each was filled to the brim with yellowy, dehydrated, and pelletized granules that had been packed for use in baking—each without instructions.

Turning to the stainless steel work table, Dad began to mix, fold, and roll out the dough, then stamp the circular shapes of hundreds of donuts-to-be--batch by batch. As the minutes clicked into hours, he watched the dough rise through the glass in the mighty oven doors, but feared it would not rise to its maximum potential. Driven by inner and outer forces to succeed, he made the fateful decision to add more yeast to each subsequent mix.

Long before dawn had lifted the blinds on the next day, Dad’s coffee-black eyes became owl-like as he raced to finish his task before others arrived. Years later, this is how he described what took place next that night:

The donuts puffed up into the most extraordinary honey-gold morsels! Those hole-in-one delicacies were so mouth watering that the soldiers swooned as the freshly baked dough melted in their mouths. I can still hear the sounds of delight as their voices lifted from the mess hall and rose in a convulsive wave to the ceiling where they vibrated the corrugated metal roof. However, in an unexpected turn of fate, mountains of batter remained after the donuts had been prepared. I found a way to dispose of the excess dough so as not to appear wasteful. Before anyone arrived, I divided the extra batter into batches and tossed a wad into the bottom of each of the empty metal cans which lined the storage rack in the alleyway behind the mess hall (Twenty thirty-gallon cans in all). I returned to clean up the kitchen. Awhile later, as I finished my work and was wiping the sweat off my brow, I heard repeated metallic rattles and bangs outside the mess hall. I bounded into the alley to investigate the source. To my astonishment, the lids had come off all of the cans. White donut paste oozed over the rim of each container and flowed downward onto the asphalt alleyway. Knowing I could be court martialed for wasting foodstuff, I again divided the leftovers and tossed portions into many of the remaining garbage cans lining the alley.

What Dad went on to mention was that the warmth and humidity of the island turned out to be the perfect catalyst for the yeast-laden dough, which continued to expand exponentially. Before sunrise, as he was leaving the mess hall after baking his extraordinarily plump donuts, he said he was alarmed to see the lids had again popped off their canisters. Oceans of dough had again flowed out of the cans and onto the ground. Assuming he would get reprimanded if he left the disaster as he found it, Dad came up with another idea, He dug a shallow ditch in the soft soil of the hillside above the mess hall and buried the excess batter, thinking that act would finally resolve the problem. Later that morning, as he lay sleeping in his tent, he was awakened by the sound of the Company Commander’s (CO’s) heavy voice coming from alongside his cot. It directed him to come to the office as soon as he got the cobwebs out of his head. With fear and trepidation by his side, Dad dressed and made his way to the nearby office tent where he reported to his CO.

Standing as erect as his exhausted body would allow, Dad’s right hand flew into a proper salute, “Reporting as directed, Sir.”

The husky, disembodied voice emerged from the rotund form seated behind a field desk. A shaft of sunlight slid through a tear in the canvas tent and lit the bulldog’s puffy cheeks and thick lips, “At ease, Corporal Merrick.”

Upon hearing those words, Dad’s body stiffened. His head locked into position. He stared directly ahead as his weight shifted ever so slightly. “Sir, but it’s Private Merrick, Sir.“

The CO’s voice, now cavalier, came again, no longer seeming to be detached from a real person, “It’s Corporal Merrick (as he handed Dad several chevrons to put on his uniforms). Those were damn good donuts. As you leave, walk along the hillside above the mess hall.”

Forgetting decorum, Dad’s parting words stumbled out, “ Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir!”

***

At the reunion I mentioned earlier, Dad brought his tale to a close this way: “ I was so overwhelmed that I turned without a further word and briskly left the CO’s tent and made my way toward the mess hall. As I neared, I slowed to gaze at the dozen men cleaning the hillside. They were using shovels and rakes to clear away the thick white batter that had oozed out of the ground and smothered the entire area in white. It looked like it had been snowing in hundred-degree heat!”