The Sergeant Major tells soldiers to make sure they separate enemy prisoners of war from their broccoli.

SUWON AFB, SOUTH KOREA – A Sergeant Major that many have deemed as “eccentric” or “quirky” has turned out to be completely insane, sources confirmed today.

In the sleepy community of Osan Air Force Base, all is quiet on Friday morning, except a solitary figure of a man standing under the flagpole in his dress blues. A recording of reveille tinnily sounds from the public address system, and Sgt. Maj. Edward Rush snaps to attention to salute as the colors continue to wave languidly in the gentle breeze. In a position as the senior enlisted adviser to the battalion commander of the 6-52 Air Defense Artillery Regiment, the 49-year old Rush is a common sight to all American airmen and soldiers stationed around the city of Suwon.

Soldiers taking time off from training are never safe from his trademark riding crop, which the senior NCO relishes in bringing down on the shoulders of personnel too slow to get to parade rest. In between bouts of incomprehensibly hoarse yelling and ordering soldiers to cut the grass in front of his government housing with scissors, Sgt. Maj. Rush always finds time to impress upon them the importance of the mission at hand.

“After the War in Korea everything got really quiet here,” he lectured a perplexed group of junior enlisted soldiers that he intercepted on their way to the dining facility, “Superman challenged Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman to a race around the world to Pyongyang, and Old Trudy won by a nose. Now, that’s what those comic books would have you believe at least, but the truth is somewhere in between.”

Rush then turned to a nearby shrubbery and demanded to know why it wasn’t at staff duty last night.

“We can’t bust heads like we used to,” Rush told Duffel Blog reporters. “But we have our ways. One trick is to tell these lying whoresons stories that don’t go anywhere – like the time I caught the ferry over to Osan. I needed a lay so I decided to go to the red light district, which is what they called Osan in those days. So I tied a cabbage to my belt, which was the style in Korea at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost five won, and in those days, Korean money had pictures of beards on them. ‘Give you five whiskers for juicy good time,’ I’d say to Songton Sally,” Rush suddenly whirled to face an billboard featuring Korean boy group VIXX, “Hey you! Get yourself a damn haircut!”

“Now where was I?” Rush continued, “Oh yeah. The important thing was I had a cabbage on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white cabbage because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big purple ones—”

One soldier told reporters about an encounter he had with the grizzled senior enlisted man.

“[Private First Class] Huncett and I had a run in with Sergeant Major while we were taking a smoke break,” recounted Specialist Vansold, a Patriot Radar Operator. “We thought we were in for it when he came barrelling down the side walk with both knife hands unsheathed, but instead he turned to the designated smoking area sign and demanded to know if it had taken a tobacco cessation course yet.”

“Sgt. Maj. Rush is a credit to the fighting 6-52,” said Lt. Col. Ethan Kim, battalion commander. “He ensures that first sergeants are holding their units accountable to the standard. Sure I get some complaints about so-called ‘aberrant’ behavior, but that’s just Sergeant Major’s style. He’s old school, and some of these soldiers here just can’t take it.”

“He’s not hurting anybody,” said Maj. Brian Sheol, battalion operations officer. “I checked out his psych profile and he’s pretty far gone. Fortunately, it’s a well-known fact that Sergeant Major is the most useless rank in the army, so he can stomp around like a medieval Abraham-man all he wants and not do any real damage.”

At press time, Rush was unavailable for further comment as he was engrossed in yelling at a pine tree for saluting a passing officer with its left hand.