Mr. Schneider - The Lost Years

by Sundry (and I DO mean sundry) Listers

t started innocently enough, as do so many things on this list. The road to heck (you can't say h*ll on a family show, you know) is probably paved not with good intentions, but with the remains of posts from our mailing list... but I digress.

We were discussing Davy's problems with the U.S. Draft Board back in the 60s when Simon reported on the military histories of all the Monkees, including this tidbit about The Fifth Monkee, Mr. Schneider:

Mr. Schneider had a distinguished military career, serving under Col. Tom 
Parker and Col. Sanders in the 15th Kentucky Fried Regiment, before being
seconded to drive personnel carriers for the Salvation Army Tank Corps...

Not one to let this slide by unnoticed, Eva (She Who Is Older Than Dirt And Remembers All History First-Hand) recalled:

A fine outfit (they were the commissary company) but I thought Col. Parker
was with the Tennessee Slightly Irregulars??

To which Torka (who's that?!?) commented:

Right you are. That would be Col. *Mustard* who served with Col. Sanders in
the KFR. He came to a sad end -- years later, he was found murdered in the
dining room with a candlestick.

And Simon, never one to let a good opening pass, returned serve:

My mistake! The Irregulars were never the same after they saw service
in Vegas in the 70s - they should've gone to *Lagos*, but Col T. was
scared he'd not get back in to the US, so they didn't go overseas.

Match point almost goes to Eva:

Yep.....Col. F.S. "French's" Mustard, the man who
singlehandedly captured an enemy condiment train, thus forcing
the other side to eat their army food "plain" and hastening
surrender by years. For this he was awarded the Gold Fork
(with salt and pepper clusters)

But Simon recovers brilliantly:

Of course last year was blighted by the news that ol' Frenchy
was being hounded by a restaurant critic who claimed he should
not have been wearing the clusters... So perhaps the candlestick
was self-inflicted; I've never liked the story that he was cleaning
it and it went off by itself... Mike is working on a song...

On a related matter, Eva also noted in her original post:

There is a story that, after a narrow miss being used for fuel,
Schneider transferred to the Kentucky "Fighting Jack Daniels" Regiment
(The Black Labels) where he served the remainder of his time as head cask
in the aging department.

And Simon felt compelled to add:

The Black Labels are an honourable regiment, but to suggest that
Mr Schneider spent his time on duty full of whiskey is surely a
slurrrrrrrrrrr....

And Eva, old but still sharp, rebounded with:

Quite so.....That should have been "Head Cask" in the
aging department, "Head Cask" being the "official nickname"
of the person in charge.... 

Sorry about that...but I'm OLD....I can't remember
EVERYTHING....<G>

Jaclyn, perhaps referring to the air of nonsense that pervades so much of what we do, inquired about another member of the regiment:

General Nonsense?  Does he work with Colonel Mustard?

Simon, the ever-helpful, volunteered this bit of information:

It was a mission by General Nonsense and his so called
"Barmy Army", which successfully located Coke machines
at strategic points throughout the North African Desert.
Mustard was in Frankfurt at the time... However, they
did work together later...

Eva, who knows all because she was there when it happened, clarified:

General S.N. "Stuff'n" Nonsense was regional
commander. Col. Mustard was, for a time, his aide-de-camp.
It's a little known fact that Nonsense's niece, Miss Scarlett,
was, for a time, engaged to Col. Mustard.....

And Zan Of The Golden Walker, who is only marginally less ancient than Eva, added this tidbit of information (Zan remembers the 60s because she wasn't really there at the time... <g>):

I had always thought that General Nonsense was a contemporary of General 
Malcontent ... both of the '60s era when General Information and Major 
Bummer both came to power.

Simon (what, again?) confirmed Zan's understanding:

He was, and also General Motors, who was at Fort Baxter
with Ernie Bilko in the early 50s, remember? Then he
transferred to a M.A.S.H. unit in Korea, where our
Mr Schneider was serving as a tent-peg, and the rest,
as they say is history...

Which was further backed up by Eva's eyewitness report:

...that is correct. They all served together during the many
campaigns of the '60's. However, Mr. Schneider was, at that time, on
special assignment serving in the 276th Hollywood Reserves (The famed
"Fighting Extras") as commander of the elite unit known as the "Bit
Players".....It was in '68 that he finally rejoined the above 
officers, serving with them until his untimely and mysterious retirement 
after a weekend visit with Col. Mustard.....

And they say history is bunk....<G>

But Simon probably summed it up best for all of us:

I only wish there was some way we could get Mr S. himself
to come forward, but he's a modest fellow, never
sought the limelight, and of course there is a whole
period in his life which even at this late stage,
cannot be talked about, for reasons of global security.
When last week the comission into the Roswell Incident
reported the use of "high altitude test dummies" being
mistaken for aliens, don't doubt that our man was at
the thick of it...