We had a guy similar to Wayne's in our outfit at Pease AFB in Portsmouth, NH. This guy was a family man but simply couldn't seem to do things right, always screwing up the simplest of assignments. They finally gave him the job of driving a Metro van to haul repairmen from the shop out to the aircraft on the ramp and back, along with whatever equipment and parts they had. One day he was given a note to go back to the shop and get a certain part out of supply for the job the tech was working on, the tech was staying at the a/c and continued working. An hour later, he's nowhere to be seen, when suddenly a practice alert is called and all the operational B-47's were cranked up and started taxiing toward the end of the runway. That's when they discovered our friendly Zero. He was slowly tooling down the ramp, listening to the World Series on the radio with the volume cranked up, and three dozen highly pissed off a/c commanders in B-47's tagging along behind him.....very slowly. His answer to the AP's when they caught up to him....."I got the part....!"
Strangely enough, this guy was always sharp looking, uniform always looked great thanks to his wife, always polite and often would talk about equipment problems others couldn't figure out. So he'd give his opinion and then walk away. Turned out he was on the mark. At a hearing held to consider giving him a discharge, someone spoke on his behalf and followed up with some testing. Result....this dude was a freaking genius. He literally had trouble getting involved in the mundane events of the day. If someone didn't point it out to him, he'd go all day long with a shoe untied or his fly open. Later in my life while working for Xerox in the 60's, my territory was Argonne Nat'l. Laboratory SW of Chicago. Out there, that same kind of daily exposure was normal. Those were some really strange dudes and dudettes. Not everyone that worked there, mostly just those that worked in the Atomic Energy section or in the new computer building. I'll never forget one guy that watched me overhaul a microfiche copy machine. He stood there all day while I took it apart, IRAN the whole thing and put it back together. He then told me everything I had just done, item by item, over the last 12 hours.....then with a blank look said he was happy with my work and walked away. He never said a word during the previous 12 hours. Found out later he was 19 yrs. old and had two Phd's, earned by age 16. Wonder what planet he was from.
