A while back, I told you about Specialist Grundle, the annoying soldier who deployed with us to Farah Province, Afghanistan, in 2004. He was furious about not having been promoted and compensated by claiming superior soldier ability and quoting useless weapons statistics.

I was disgracefully overweight when I began my tour, but the extreme desert heat, small rations, and a horrible bowel disease we called “Farah Flu” quickly and drastically shrunk me. Somehow, Grundle remained fat throughout the tour, and one episode of his incredible eating capacity became a lasting company legend.

When my unit arrived in Afghanistan, our base outside the city of Farah was not yet complete, so we lived in a primitive Afghan mudbrick house. The house lacked sufficient cold storage to stockpile frozen or fresh food, but one day, the cookmaster was excited because a truck arrived with real steaks. To our crushing disappointment, the Afghan truck driver hadn’t turned on the refrigeration unit, and our meat had rotted on the hot desert drive.

Several weeks later, we moved to our base construction site. The high outer walls were finished, but not much else. Our leadership decided to try steak night again. The first sergeant made us a grill by placing a metal mesh atop a 50-gallon metal barrel cut in half the long way. The steaks arrived unspoiled.

The problem was that our chow hall was incomplete. We had tons of steak, but no fridge. Our first sergeant issued the order as he fired up the grill.

“The steak won’t keep. We’re going to have to eat it all,” he said.

Our first steak night had begun!

All of us soldiers were tired, dirty, and always hungry. I could hardly believe I was finally sinking my teeth into real meat. We had to constantly brush flies away, and cutting the steak with crappy plastic knives was a challenge, but we didn’t care. We were coming alive again.

Then, incredibly, the first sergeant called, “Come on, eat some more steak!”

Throughout the tour, there were rarely seconds, and never on meat.

“It was the first time in the entire deployment I ever saw Grundle happy,” Sgt. Preston, my friend and former team leader, recently recalled. “He had a huge smile on his face, just shoveling the steak in his mouth.”

We all desperately wanted to eat more, but 2 and 1/2 months of low rations had diminished everyone’s capacity to stuff themselves — everyone except Grundle. He hurried to the grill every time the first sergeant put out the call.

“He was like a giddy, happy schoolgirl every time he got more steak,” Preston said.

Grundle was happier than ever. He was even talking and laughing with Sgt. Beckett, whom Grundle hated for receiving a promotion that he wanted.

“He kept eating long after everybody else was done. I would tap it at five f**king steaks,” Preston said.

After the last call for steak, Grundle rushed over to the grill. But he returned empty-handed and furious. All that joy, all his peace with the world, suddenly vaporized in an inferno of rage.

“Motherf***ers! They’re out of steak!” He slumped his big body down on his cot, and slowly, his rage twisted his face to a look of despair. “I’ve never been so hungry in my whole f***ing life!”

THE ARMY SPORT OF SOLDIER TEASING

Everyone laughed at him. He had just eaten three times more steak than anyone else. After the feast, everybody felt blessed, but not Grundle. It had become the worst day of his life, just like every other day for the soldier who burned with anger for having been denied what he saw as his chance for military greatness.

And for the rest of our time in the war, “I’ve never been so hungry in my whole f**king life!” remained a popular catch phrase before meals, and a tool to further mock Grundle.

Trent Reedy, author of several books, including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.