DIE, Quiet Quitting, And the Exit of Competence

03. February 2024 · Comments Off on DIE, Quiet Quitting, And the Exit of Competence · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, Home Front, My Head Hurts, Rant, That's Entertainment!

About the only comfort that I could take away from the initial election of B. Whose-Middle Name-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned Obama was a small one – a hope that the election of a man of partial color and relatively cosmopolitan upbringing would at last bury the last lingering shreds of AmeriKKKa-Is-The-Most-Raaaaacist-Evah! Alas – it soon became very clear this was a sad, and forlorn hope. The new intellectually powered Diversity-Inclusion-Equity racism came roaring back like a movie serial killer in a twentieth remake of a Hollywood horror flick franchise. A decent regard for civil rights of black citizens has somehow metastasized into ‘DIE, whitey, DIE’ or at the very least, ‘no well-paying prestigious job for you, pale-male-and-stale.’ Never mind if the beneficiaries of these policies appear far less able to perform to the standards which the job requires … it seems to be the intentions that count. It’s no biggie if the bridge collapses, the aircraft collide on approach, the expensive movie bombs at the box office, or the press secretary babbles nonsense when asked a difficult question. The good intentions of DIE conquer all, even reality.

Is this a power-play on the part of the Democrat Party, the intellectual fashion o’ the moment on the part of our educational establishment, vicious class snobbery on the part of a managerial elite, nostalgic for the days of forelock-tugging peasantry who wouldn’t disobey the orders of their petty lords? A combination of all three? In any case, the would-be supreme powers appear to be going all out to demean, demoralize and economically beggar a confident property-owning, independent American middle and working class — a class of citizens which is mostly but not exclusively of European origin, and therefore mostly-sort-of-mainly white under the current popular description.

The results of ‘no job for you, whitey!’ is playing out in several wildly different areas with interestingly calamitous results, especially when it comes to lowering standards of competence in order to favor the chosen minority over those competent but disfavored by the principles of diversity/inclusion/equity. Ace of Spades linked to a post on a website called Film Threat, lamenting the difficulties of writers for TV shows; no cushy writing gigs on a diminishing number of shows unless the writer is anything but a white middle-aged heterosexual. Such experienced writers with a good (or even so-so) track record are being passed by, in favor of the trendy young gay, multiracial female (or identifying as such) – who have no experience and little apparent craft in actually telling a story and engaging more than a narrow audience segment. This would explain how domestic audiences for American TV and movies are crashing in such an extraordinary degree of late. Hollywood at large has established what amounts to a color bar; shafting the competent and experienced in favor of the not-so competent and relatively inexperienced … who then produce movies and TV which only a small portion of the available audience want to watch without a gun pointed at their head.

Another area where this is happening appears to be the military, especially in recruitment, now crashing to heretofore unexpected levels. It was conventional wisdom when I was active duty that generally black troops enlisted to get skills training and experience, mostly on the support part of the long spear. Whites and Hispanics enlisted or were commissioned, on the other hand, for the challenge and experience of being at the tip of the long pointy spear – fighter pilots, special forces, rangers, SEALS, whatever. Those guys (and most but not all were guys) came from a working-class, rural and/or southern background and the combat arms were what they wanted to be and to do. Now if they are still on active duty, they are being treated like moral lepers. Potential recruits from families with a long tradition of serving are snottily informed that they aren’t wanted in this splendid new and diverse military. So the rural working-class southern boys are bypassing the recruiting office, to the surprise of practically no one paying attention. Given the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal, any sensible parent or authoritative adult in the life of a potential recruit clearly sees that competent military leadership has left the building. I’m not the only veteran around these days, quietly discouraging any young person from considering a military career or a place in one of the academies.

The more heavily the thumb of the DIE advocates press down on the hiring/promotion scales, the faster the professionally competent will either quiet-quit, quit entirely, or not even be hired in the first place. Anyone not addled by diversity-inclusion-equity at the expense of competence can see this will accelerate the doom loop in the activities cited. Discuss as you wish, and if you have gruesome examples from personal experiences, or insights to share, please do.

History Friday – The Care of an Army

14. July 2023 · Comments Off on History Friday – The Care of an Army · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, History, War, Working In A Salt Mine...

I’ve been going deep in the weeds in research for the current work in progress, the long-put-aside Civil War novel, concerning the experiences of a spinster of independent means, who is active as an abolitionist lecturer in the 1840-1850 time frame, and a battlefield nurse during the war years. Frankly, the research is fascinating in and of itself; the matter of the existence of slavery in the United States was a contentious and hard-fought-over issue in the antebellum years. It’s been quite the antidote to the current 1619 historical fantasy, reading through memoirs and accounts of and by notable abolitionist crusaders of the time. Not only did the existence of the ‘peculiar institution’ in the pre-war South retard economic progress there (as industry and immigration favored the North) but the fight against it was sustained and uncompromising. The first half of the book is just about complete – it’s the second half, concerning the war and most particularly the operation of field hospitals that has me deep in another field of weeds now, discovering some extraordinary stories and some extraordinary women.
One of the reasons that I love writing historical fiction – I very rarely need to create anything of whole cloth and imagination; generally, the honest-n-truth version of events often surpasses anything I could possibly make up. So it is with the epic of a little-recalled national volunteer relief organization called, most prosaically, the United States Sanitary Commission, which mobilized women for the war effort to an extraordinary degree – as nurses, administrators, counselors and organizers of countless benefits to raise funds for military support, the care and healing of the wounded, and later, for the welfare of veterans.

The existing pre-Civil War US Army was a small one as national armies of the times counted, with a correspondingly tiny medical corps. Hospitals at various forts and camps were minimal, usually no more than thirty or forty beds. There was no large centralized military general hospital; medical care of the sick or injured normally fell to orderlies or those soldiers who themselves were convalescent. All of that went out the window when recruiting surged, upon secession of Confederate states and the fall of Fort Sumter. Almost the moment that the newly-formed companies and regiments marched away, the wives, sisters and mothers of those new soldiers went home and ransacked their cupboards and pantries for home comforts – food, clothing, blankets, bits of this or that, writing materials, bandages and medicines for the lads recruited for a regional unit. Some of these first efforts were either ridiculously useless or went astray in transit – inexpertly canned items rotted, jars broke, and the contents of such ruined whatever else they had been packed with. It was all a muddle, at first – but in the middle of June, 1861 Congress authorized the creation of the Sanitary Commission, and it took off with a roar, mostly because many smaller regional and local relief groups eagerly joined their considerable efforts to the national Commission.

Although the national leadership of the Commission at the upper levels were male, women made up an extraordinarily large number of mid-level workers, fund-raisers, administrators, nurses and general support personnel. Being also proud of their contribution, many of those women contributed memoirs written after the war, and those accounts make for stirring reading. (There was a lot of overlap between abolitionists, temperance activists and women’s rights advocates during that period, and many of the best-known women campaigners were active on all three fronts, as well as being friends and associates.)
One of the best and most readable accounts that I am exploring was by Mary Ashton Livermore, who also served as reporter and editor for a newspaper which her Universalist husband owned. Mary Livermore was co-head of the Chicago branch of the Sanitary Commission and penned a particularly vivid description of what a day at work at “the office” involved – the sounds, the bustle of draymen delivering and dispatching boxes, the sights, the and the smells. (An account almost unique for a lack of florid Victorian purple prose, thickets of which must be metaphorically hacked through in other contemporary accounts.) Donations and items of all sorts arrived from all over the state and the mid-west, to be unpacked, sorted, inventoried, re-packed according to commodity, and sent out to those hospitals which had urgently requested them. That was on the first floor of the building housing the Chicago branch -the second floor was given over to sewing machines and volunteer seamstresses producing shirts, necessary linens, and hospital garments. The Commission office also served as a communications hub – for families wanting news of their soldiers, and for dispatching parties of nurses to hospitals where they were needed – especially following on a battle or a military advance.

One of those notable nurses was the formidable widow Mary Jane Bickerdyke. A curious thing that perhaps we do not consider today was how large a porportion of a woman’s domestic duties then involved caring for the sick and invalid. Mary Bickerdyke had cared for her invalid husband for years before he passed away. It must have been much the same for other women volunteer nurses – they had already done a lot of practical nursing, without the benefit of any formal medical training as such. And so, they followed the armies, to tend their boys, their sons and brothers.

(To be continued – the adventures of Mary Jane Bickerdyke in the Union Army of the West. The story is that one of General Grant’s juniors fumed to the General about ‘that damned bossy woman, and couldn’t the General do something about her?’ To which General Grant is supposed to have replied long the lines of, ‘I can’t – she ranks me.)

A Visit To Fort Sam

05. June 2023 · Comments Off on A Visit To Fort Sam · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, History, Local

I had reason to visit Fort Sam Houston last Friday – to pick up a set of prescriptions, at the new and vastly expanded BX mall, going through that one back gate where Harry Wurzbach dead-ends, after wandering past the military cemetery, the golf course and the Towers at Park Lane. It’s been a familiar haunt to me for years, even if I was never assigned there, or had reason to go to any offices when I was active duty. It was an open post back then – so wide-open that it was only embarrassment that kept the Fort Sam EM/NCO club from being listed as off-limits to Air Force personnel. (There was, according to scuttlebutt, a dissolute and faintly dangerous element which used to hang out at that club.) I used to take a short-cut through the post on North New Braunfels to circumvent traffic jams on the Pan-Am Highway, when I had to drive through to Lackland AFB from where I lived on the north-east side of town. I was basically familiar with the older part; the stately red-brick Victorian senior officer-housing mansions along the northern and western side of the monumental, L-shaped parade ground, and the series of enormous three-story neo-Spanish Colonial style tile-roofed administration buildings and barracks which lined the opposite side. The mansions along “colonel’s row” always looked well kept, but in the few years after I retired, some of the older buildings began looking pretty ragged, decrepit even. I sometimes wondered if the Army had given up on painting them altogether, trimming shrubbery and pulling up weeds in the lawns around. Part of the peace dividend, I guessed.

 

Fort Sam Houston – familiarly known as “Fort Sam” is itself a pretty historic place – nearly as historic as the Presidio of the Alamo, the military post that it replaced, late in the 1870s. The Alamo, first established as the Spanish military HQ in Texas, went right on being used as a military post, through possession by Mexican soldiers, Texian volunteers, the US Army, and the Confederate States Army. The US Army took possession again, following the Civil War, when it was headquarters and logistical supply base for the US Army in the trans-Mississippi West, in the days of the Indian wars. But by the mid-1870s, the Army had outgrown the crumbling adobe and stone structures around Alamo Plaza. The city had also spread far enough to surround the old Presidio and considerably cramp military operations. The Army suggested closing the post to save money. The city fathers, probably horrified at the thought of losing the custom of the Army post, as well as the presence of a relatively free-spending garrison, immediately donated 92 acres of land on the low hills north of town and well outside the-then city limits.

 

For the Army it was a chance to start afresh, building exactly what they needed; generous warehouse space to store Army supplies brought up from Galveston and other coastal ports, offices for the supply sergeants and officers to work in, facilities to care for the horses, and the soldiers, and their families. A birds-eye map of San Antonio done in the 1880s clearly shows the original Fort Sam establishment; a single structure called the Quadrangle, a range of two-story buildings around an open courtyard adorned at one end with an ornate clock tower. The Quadrangle also served as an open-air prison in 1886. Geronimo, the last of the fighting Apache chiefs and some of his warrior band were held in the quadrangle for 40 days, while the federal government decided what to do with him. It’s only a legend that the small herd of tame deer currently living in the Quadrangle are those descended from a herd provided to Geronimo’s band as part of their ration issue.

By the turn of the last century, Fort Sam was the second largest military post in the United States. Practically every Army officer serving between the 1880s through World War II passed through Fort Sam at one time or another. Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” rendezvoused and trained there before shipping to Cuba to charge up San Juan Hill. Whenever I pass by the open stretch of the parade ground, I am reminded that it was on that patch of level, open ground that then-Lieutenant Benjamin Foulois of the Signal Corps took off in a 1909 Wright Flyer, dubbed “Army Airplane #1” for a series of demonstration flights in 1910 – four takeoffs, three successful landings, the series concluded with a crash. Lt. Foulois was, for an interesting early period in military aviation, the entire Air Corps/Air Force. Fort Sam also supplied the men and material for General John “Black Jack” Pershing’s expedition into Mexico, chasing after Pancho Villa in 1916. At the very far end of the parade ground is the old Brooke Army Medical Center (built in 1936), formerly the Station Hospital, replaced in the 1990s with an even larger and more splendid complex to the east of Fort Sam. Dwight Eisenhower met and married his wife, Mamie Dowd, while stationed at Fort Sam as a young lieutenant. General Billy Mitchell was assigned to Fort Sam after being court-martialed and demoted. At the end of WWII training of Army medical personnel was consolidated there, and military medical training for all the other armed services was moved to Fort Sam more than a decade ago. This makes it a very busy training facility; it is a showplace for military medicine, which is the reason that I go there for regular visits like today.

I have read that if the post is ever closed, and all facilities revert to the city of San Antonio (like the Presidio in San Francisco) that the stock of historic buildings in the city inventory would double right then and there. Most of those buildings are still in use, though – at present, only the Quadrangle is open to the general public. But there are two museums, also open to the public, that between them give a very good idea of the scope of Fort Sam’s history and present missions: The Fort Sam Houston Museum, and the US Army Medical Department Museum.

Erasing Women

07. April 2022 · Comments Off on Erasing Women · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Domestic, Politics, Rant

Well, it’s really kind of sad – that erasing biological XX-chromosome no-kidding 100 percent female women seems the ultimate endpoint of early 21st century popular prog-thought, as mad and illogical as that might seem as an ambition, or rather an idée fixe. The ancient jape of a fox hunt described as ‘the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the inedible’ comes to mind, only this is the deranged in pursuit of the unachievable. As little as I think of the long-time and loud professional Feminists-with-a-capital-F (or LT&LPF(F) as I call them), and their tendency to view all men as potential rapist and abusers, I would have expected them to be assiduous in protesting for the actual physical safety of biological women in women-only spaces like restrooms, locker rooms, battered woman shelters, hospital wards and prisons. Alas, they would seem to have fixated on the availability of reproductive health or as the rest of us call it, abortion, as the great fight for the LT&LPF(F); the hill upon which they wish to see fetal humans die. I mean; what the hell, LT&LPF(F) – you look away from the physical safety of real, no-kidding vulnerable women … and focus on the rights, ways and means of killing fetal humans. Good job, sisters. (Not.)

I previously would have assumed that the LT&LPF(F) would have looked askance at biological male athletes declaring themselves to identify as female … and walking away with first or second place in track, swim and wrestling meets. That pretense strikes me a particularly egregious; honestly, while I am not a biologist as my mother and father were, my memory of childhood roughhousing with my brother and his friends is quite vivid. The last time when I could hold my own in a physical contest with any of them was at the age of twelve or thirteen, just before puberty hit all of us. That certain born-male athletes have hit on the scheme of claiming to be a woman in order to score wins is a scam. It’s low, dishonest and a cheat. I’m amazed that such can look at themselves in a mirror, without shame and embarrassment at going so low for a win and a medal.

Sexual dimorphism, as Daddy lectured us on nature walks, is a real thing: as it applies to humans, males of our own human species tend to be taller, heavier, and better muscled, and clustered at the extremes of the Bell curve as far as intelligence goes. Females tend to be smaller, lighter, with a higher percentage of body fat, cluster at the middle of the intelligence Bell curve, and be a little better at fine muscle skills. That, and we can have babies; growing them within our own bodies for nine months and nurturing them for many months afterwards, whereas males can really only get them started, which takes a matter of energetic minutes at the most basic level.
We all of us, male and female alike, have our own skills and strengths – and honestly, I have always appreciated those strengths, as well as liking men, generally. (Men are cool, they focus on the immediate, they fix things, build things, and fight for what they value, all qualities which I have always found terribly attractive.) So why now are progressives wedded to the notion of deleting biological women? Is it just the latest and most attractive trend among progressives? Or do they really-o-truly-o hate and envy the female, as some of the early radical professional feminists (who hated men, unreservedly) used to claim.
Discuss as you wish.

In the Field

08. September 2020 · 1 comment · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Eat, Drink and be Merry, History, Media Matters Not

Sometimes, long after first reading a book or watching a movie and enjoying it very much, I have come back to re-reading or watching, and then wondering what I had ever seen in that in the first place. So it was with the original M*A*S*H book and especially with the movie. I originally read the book in college and thought, “Eww, funny but gross and obscene, with their awful practical jokes and nonexistent sexual morals.” Then I re-read after having been in the military myself for a couple of years, and thought, “Yep, my people!”

The movie went through pretty much the same evolution with me, all but one element – and that was when I began honestly wondering why the ostensible heroes had such a hate on for Major Burns and the nurse Major Houlihan. Why did those two deserve such awful, disrespectful treatment? In the movie they seemed competent and agreeable enough initially. In the book it was clear that Major Burns was an incompetent surgeon with delusions of adequacy, and that Major Houlihan was Regular Army; that being the sole reason for the animus. But upon second viewing of the movie, it seemed like Duke Forrest, Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre were just bullying assholes selecting a random target for abuse for the amusement of the audience.

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At the Civil War

25. November 2019 · 2 comments · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, General, History, Local, Military

The reenacted Civil War, at Liendo Plantation this last weekend. I went with a camera, in search of some good pictures, to use for the current Work in Progress – That Fateful Lightning.

Who’s Your Baghdaddy?

30. October 2019 · 2 comments · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Fun With Islam, GWOT, Iraq, Military, sarcasm, War

It is deeply, solidly ironic that at almost the very hour that US forces were bagging Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, fearless leader of the ISIL/ISIS-established caliphate in the Middle East, that the catastrophically-unfunny cast of Saturday Night Live had just finished ragging on President Trump for supposedly coddling ISIS by pulling out of Syria. There hasn’t been a case of timing this bad since 70ies Weatherman terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayres launched his memoir of bomb-building and social mayhem the very week that Osama Bin Laden’s merry crew of jihadis murdered nearly 3,000 Americans and others in a single day, on September 11th, 2001.

Well, who would have thought that our intelligence services were actually performing the hard graft of tracking down dangerous international enemies, instead of attempting to reverse the results of an election, and harass domestic political opponents? Seeing that our military leadership was dead-as-a-doornail serious about taking care of business, in facilitating Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi date with his seventy-two cranky virgins or white grapes, or whatever – was grimly satisfactory. This is the jolly lad whose ISIS/ISIL hardliners set a standard for psychopathic cruelty to captives which might have 19th century Comanche and Apache warriors saying, “Oh, hey, guys – don’t you think that’s going a little too far?” (Or maybe not – those fellows had some stomach-churningly inventive notions about killing slowly.)

It is additionally rather delicious that al-Baghdadi was chased by a military working dog into his last hide-out, and that it was a female working dog at that. And there, the wretched man chose to blow himself up, with three of his kids, although Jamie Lee Curtis expressed some indignation and sorrow on his behalf. Did she or anyone else among the Hollywood Trump-haters express any such tender feelings about those captives of al-Baghdadi who were burned alive, drowned in metal cages, executed with det-cord around their necks, and beheaded in job-lots? Anything about the Yazidi women and girls sold into sex-slavery? So help me, I can’t recall, but then we have come to expect this kind of one-sided concern from the denizens of the celebrity world.

Finally – that the whole operation was kept from the Dem leadership on grounds of operational security? Ah yes; I won’t go as far as to say that Nancy Pelosi would have picked up the phone and called a contact at the Washington Post, saying, “You’ll never guess what is going down – the Special Forces are going after al Baghdadi – but don’t tell anyone, it’s Top Secret!” but at the rate that stuff keeps getting leaked from Dem offices into the media … good call. Yes, someone on a senior Dem leadership staff would have spilled to a media contact, likely out of sheer ignorance and malice toward Trump. The kind of mindset what sees the lower serving military ranks as disposable pawns, only useful for holding umbrellas, or as background for a nice photo op … or if their deaths can be used for a purpose. Yes, I’m that cynical. Discuss as you wish.

For Memorial Day

27. May 2017 · Comments Off on For Memorial Day · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, Air Navy, History, In the Navy

This short has been around for a bit – but still..

Now That We Have a New Administration…

26. January 2017 · Comments Off on Now That We Have a New Administration… · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Domestic, History, Local, Military, Texas, Veteran's Affairs

I had an appointment with my primary care health provider at the dot of 9 AM Wednesday morning, down at the primary care clinic at Fort Sam Houston. Some years and months ago, they moved that function from the mountainous brick pile that is the Brooke Army Medical Center, into a free-standing clinic facility on Fort Sam Houston itself. I would guess, in the manner of things, that this clinic facility will undergo some kind of mitosis in about ten years, and split into another several facilities … but in the meantime, this is where I get seen for my routine medical issues … mainly high blood pressure. So; minor, mostly – immediately after retiring, I went for years without ever laying eyes on my so-called primary care provider. A good few of them came and went without ever laying eyes or a stethoscope on me, as well. But this last-but-one moved on, just at the point where he and I recognized each other by sight and remembered each other from one yearly appointment to the next. But once yearly, I must go in and see my care provider, and get the prescriptions renewed, and Wednesday was the day …

Fort Sam Houston – what to say about that place? Historically, it was the new and shiny and built-to-purpose military establishment after the presidio of the Alamo became too cramped, run-down and overwhelmed by the urban sprawl of San Antonio in the late 1870s. I have read in several places, that if the place is ever de-accessioned and turned back to civil authority as the Presidio in San Francisco was, that the inventory of city-owned historic buildings in San Antonio would instantly double. Yes – San Antonio is and was that important. It was the US Army HQ for the Southwest from the time that Texas became a state, the main supply hub for all those forts scattered across New Mexico Territory (which was most of the Southwest, after the war with Mexico), the home of the commander and admin staff for that administrative area. Every notable Army officer from both world wars put in serious time at Fort Sam during their formative military years, and the very first aircraft bought by the Army Signal Corps did demo flights from the parade ground. (I put a description of this in the final chapter of The Quivera Trail.)

But Wednesday morning, I was interested to know if the clinic administration had changed out the pictures of the personnel in the chain of command yet. (Military custom – someplace in the foyer of many units are a set of pictures; President, SecDef, and so on, down to the unit commander and the First Shirt. Part of the materiel which has to be learned in basic training are the names of the various authorities on it. The pictures are for the edification of those of lowly rank who often go for years without ever seeing the higher-ups of their chain of command in person. I went for a year once, without ever seeing my squadron commander, although I think I might have spoken to him on the phone once.) Anyhow, there was a link going around among some of the mil- and veteran blogs to the effect that a number of units had not yet received their official photographs of President Trump and General Mattis – and had filled in with print-outs of some of the more viral meme-portraits of them: President Trump standing on a tank, rolling through a battlefield, and Saint Mattis of Quantico, patron saint of Chaos with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in one hand. I was looking forward in any case to seeing the new pictures, and yes, they did have the new one of President Trump on the wall, but only a sign with the name on it where General Mattis’ picture should be. Ah well – the Army is notoriously humorless and Fort Sam/BAMC is the showplace of Army medicine, but as I walked past the display, I started thinking about how bizarre it all was. I think I first read about Donald Trump in the Village Voice, in the mid-1980s, or perhaps in some other publications in the late 1980s when he and Marla Maples were huuuge tabloid and gossip-column fodder: an almost richer-than-god and bigger than-life real estate developer, flamboyant, combative, crude, even – a hound for publicity even more than for pussy.

And now he is the commander in chief. It’s been like seeing Paris Hilton, or (god save us) one of the Kardashians with a heretofore unheard of skill set, suddenly developing political ambitions, going for it … and getting there. Who on earth would have foreseen that, twenty-five years ago? It’s weirder than anything made up by an author of political novels.
Discuss.

So Don’t Turn Your Back On It …

25. October 2016 · Comments Off on So Don’t Turn Your Back On It … · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Good God, GWOT, Military

For a moment, as the saying used to go, when I was in. The first part of that truism was, “The military will take care of you.” – This bitter wisdom is now being discovered anew by a number California National Guard troops, who – when they were offered bonuses for re-upping ten years ago, accepted the bonus, reupped and served … and ooops, now it turns out that they weren’t qualified or eligible for said bonus, and the Big Green Military Machine wants the money back. With interest and penalties, it would appear. The Big Military Administrative Machine writes and enforces the rules to suit the needs of the machine – a thing which is screamingly obvious to anyone who ever signed a contract of any sort with the Big Military Administrative Machine. (It was always a point of bitter observation to us overseas, that as the dollar-to-local-currency exchange rate rose or dropped, the military paymaster’s adjustment for that exchange rate lagged or sped up in a manner which invariably screwed the military member living on the local economy. The Big Military Administrative Machine will have their pound of flesh, regardless… And it will not favor the individual military member.)
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Evelyn Waugh and the Sword of Honor

06. October 2015 · Comments Off on Evelyn Waugh and the Sword of Honor · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Literary Good Stuff, The Funny

So, leafing – metaphorically speaking – through the video delights on offer through the Acorn video catalogue in search of something amusing to while away the evening after a day’s labor on various book projects, the most pressing of which is not my own, but a paid client – we came upon a two-part version from about ten years ago of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honor trilogy. I suggested that we watch it, since I had a bout of Waugh fever about the time that I was in college upper division, in hot pursuit of that relatively useless degree in English. (But I enjoyed the pursuit very much on its own merits, not being one of those one-percenters with delusions of the diploma leading me author-matically into an lavishly paid gig anywhere in the academic or in the publishing establishment.)

Anyway, I had read a good few of Waugh’s books early on; liked Scoop – as vicious an evisceration of Big Media as it was in the 1930s as was ever set to page – and the first book of the Sword of Honor Trilogy, as a similarly bitterly cynical romp through the first years of WWII. The training year, the ‘Phony War’ year … when nothing much (aside from Nazi Germany overrunning Poland, the Low Countries, Norway and Denmark, and France) was happening. And then it all turned deadly serious, with which Waugh just didn’t seem able to cope. The seriousness of it all, I mean. Literary and serious observers, looking through their lorgnettes at current events sometimes have this difficulty, I know. Poor P. G. Woodhouse also had the same trouble, regarding WWII, even as it caught him up in its ghastly coils. I surmise that dear old P. G. dealt with it by moving to America and never dealing with it at all, within the frame of his books; probably a wise literary decision, since he had the formula down pat, so to speak.

We watched the whole two-part distillation of the Trilogy – enjoying the scenic views of Daniel Craig no end – but the miniseries kind of left us cold. I suspect that re-reading the Trilogy entire would also leave us rather cold. Apparently in the purview of the Great and Good English Literature Establishment, The Trilogy is held to be one of the Majorly Significant Novels dealing with WWII … to which I blow a large raspberry. (That all you got, English Literary Establishment? Really…) Yes, Evelyn Waugh was a magnificent prose stylist, and his satiric novels in the 1930s are bitchy and hilarious, Return to Brideshead is elegiac and heartbreaking … but the Sword of Honor Trilogy is a very odd fish. The first volume was true to the bitchy and satiric form; frankly, I found it very funny because … well, it was to do with the weirdness of the military. Of any age and country, really; a sort of inside black humor, best appreciated by those who have lived through and endured. (G. M. Fraser’s McAuslan cycle is a wonderful example of this, only not burdened by the weight of being A Majorly Significant Novel, so it can be appreciated for its own merits. What a lovely miniseries the McAuslan cycle would make – I can’t imagine why it has been overlooked in this respect… anyway, back to the subject…)

The rest of the TV version – and take into consideration the fact that I am trying to recall the source novels that I read a lifetime ago – rather fell flat for both of us. We agreed that Waugh couldn’t really write women – although he did have the manipulative bitch subset of the species down cold. It was just rather depressing that just about all the various characters which the hero character tried to help in some way came to rather awful ends. Perhaps that was the inclination of the screenwriters; but really – the message is that it’s useless and futile to be a decent person and do the right thing? How nihilistic is that?

I wonder also if trying to write a novel about current events isn’t rather a trap for the writer; in retrospect it certainly seemed so for Waugh; the Holocaust together with the Communist aggression in Eastern Europe were just too horrific for a satirist to manage within the scope of a serio-comic novel.

Wag the Dog?

03. June 2014 · Comments Off on Wag the Dog? · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Fun With Islam, Rant, sarcasm · Tags: , , ,

I know, it was a bitterly ironic move, and the novel it was based upon was even more bitterly ironic (Trust me, I read the darned thing –eh – moderately funny, but I fear that the only thing that the move took away from it was the premise) but what we may have here *assuming Strother Martin voice* is called a failure to communicate. I mean the imbroglio with returning Bowe Bergdahl, the only recorded POW from the war in Afghanistan to the bosom of his family, after languishing in durance vile for five long years. More »

TV Made the Old Way

02. March 2014 · Comments Off on TV Made the Old Way · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Media Matters Not, Military

Left to myself, I don’t think I would have watched Enlisted, but Blondie insisted, saying it was pretty darned funny a show, and had the right ‘feel’ for a comedy about the present-day military. Or at least – the US military as it was a couple of years ago. (What it is becoming as of this very moment, I have no idea.) So, I we watched the first three or four episodes together, and darned if she isn’t right. It’s a funny, rapid-fire comedy about three brothers at an Army post in Florida, which is affectionate, respectful and knowledgeable about military life … something that I swear hasn’t been seen on network television since Gomer Pyle, USMC or No Time for Sergeants, although perhaps Major Dad took some detours through that route.

Blame me for being jaded, as regards television; a couple of years ago I realized that most shows were just the same-old, same-old, served up one more time. Same old doctor-lawyer-cop triad, same old mystery twist I had seen twenty times before, same old cliché characters, dressed up with a few 21st century attire and attitudes…

All in all, Enlisted is well worth watching – and with luck, perhaps it will last more than just one season. There haven’t been any sudden nasty thwacks of conventional political correctness, so far. And we appreciate a nice little grace note at the end of every episode; service pictures of various kin of people having something to do with show production. Who would have thought it – people working on a TV show about the military life actually having a familial connection to the military? Seriously, that alone is worth a mention.

By the way, I am not the least interested in the Academy Awards. Although … I do have a mild academic interest in what is awarded Best Picture (purely for trivial knowledge points in future), and which actress wears the fugliest dress on the red carpet. Other than that – the last picture I went to see in a theater was the latest installation of The Hobbit, and the last before that was the first installation of the Hobbit.

PS – Enlisted does have a Facebook page. Go ahead and like. You know you want to.

5 PM Follies

28. February 2014 · Comments Off on 5 PM Follies · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Fun and Games, Military · Tags: , ,

Sigh – now that the story of this particularly classless young Army troop has gone all the way around the world, mayhap it’s time for me to weigh in. Look, young Private Torkwad – having to stand at attention at 5 PM, or whenever the official end of the duty day is marked with the lowering of the flag and the sounding of taps – is an established custom on military bases. If caught in the open at those times, stand and render, if in an automobile, pull over and sit at attention. This is the proper procedure, and those who are cognizant of it are pretty well hep to the timing of the day. No, there is no particular shame to neatly time your errands while around and about on post/base to be indoors at 5 sharp; most sharp young troops figure this out within a year or two of going on active duty.

(My daughter figured it out within days of her first overseas at Iwakuni, where the 5 PM retreat involved not just taps, but also playing the US national anthem, the Japanese national anthem, the US Navy anthem and the USMC Hymn. Twenty minutes at least of rigid attention, facing in the direction of the flagpole.) They also figure out that making a flagrant dash for the nearest door at the first notes is obvious, crass, and extremely disrespectful of custom and tradition. Being observed to do so will draw an attitude adjustment session, either impromptu and on the spot by any NCO or officer observing that action, or in your commander/NCOIC’s office later. But going to far as to post pictorial evidence of this on social media goes way beyond all that into unexplored depths of witless self-regard.

See here, Private Torkwad, let me explain it to you in simple terms. When you are in uniform, you are seen as a representative of the military. You are essentially on duty – even if it’s your own Facebook page. Even if you are not formally assigned to the post public affairs office, you still represent the military in the eyes of civilians. Your actions reflect upon the military no less than yourself … and believe me; you have outed yourself as immature, borderline illiterate, extremely self-centered, and appear to take more care of your makeup than your responsibilities as a member of the military. In the pre-social media era, no one would have been aware of this outside your immediate chain of command, and frankly, no one else would have much cared. You would have been reprimanded, and perhaps learned from the experience and gone on to become a stellar young troop and a good example of what the American armed forces can be. Probably just about everyone who ever put on a uniform has done things – reckless, potentially embarrassing and ill-considered things – which by the grace of god, were not a matter of public record.

Console yourself, Private Torkwad, with the knowledge that you are not the only troop ever to screw up. However, now that the matter of your particular screw-up has become of passing interest outside your immediate chain of command, the repercussions will be if not more severe, possibly more personally embarrassing. The internet, dear Private Torkwad, is forever, and everywhere, so do consider this, the next time you post a picture of yourself in uniform to the internet. My own advice to you in this matter is to say no more to anyone (especially in your chain of command) than, “It’s my fault, I screwed up, I’m sorry, and it won’t ever happen again.” Repeat as often as necessary. You’ll be a better troop for it.

Counting the Blessings

07. August 2013 · Comments Off on Counting the Blessings · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Air Force, Fun and Games, Good God, Rant

Among the blessing that is about biggest in my inventory of them – aside from finishing out my final military tour in Texas, which I didn’t much like at the time, since it was third on my list of choices. Dammit, the personnel who dictated broadcaster assignments were supposed to turn themselves inside out, giving retiring broadcasting personnel their first choice of a final assignment location since they could then do things like buy a house and work up local connections to facilitate the post-retirement second career which the customary long stretches of overseas/remote duty tours usually didn’t allow an opportunity to do. It turned out for the best, although I certainly didn’t see it so at the time. The main thing is that not only am I now glad that I am retired and long past being recalled to active duty (like they couldn’t get enough military broadcaster talent that they have to recall a slightly overweight lady of certain age) but I am glad that Blondie is also long past recall. And that she didn’t sign up for Reserve duty, either.

There, I said it. I am glad both of us are no longer on active duty; and I am also glad that the handful of friends that I kept in touch with post-retirement are retired. The hints and portents which have emerged from the military machine over the last year or so do not give cause for assurance; a portion of the tippy-top echelons in the service being forced by convenient circumstance to retire at the top of their game is, I think the most obvious harbinger. God knows how many other of lesser rank, or long-experienced NCOs are also seeing the writing on the wall and walking away. Certainly note won’t be made in individual cases. Military operations in Afghanistan appear to be going about as well as every other historical foreign military operation ever did – and I should like to point out here and now that I never really expected much else, even back in 2003. Keep the money flowing, and a couple of units of Special Forces to thump the obvious Talibunnies when they got too obstreperous, secure Kabul and some of the other population centers, and generally administer to the theater with a very light hand. Let the indigenes sort out their own salvation and keep them from damaging anyone else. Of course, our current administration, not known for any other political and international savvy than it needs to keep the Chicago political machine functioning, thought otherwise. Now there is a steady trickle of metal coffins coming back, to practically no notice in the news media than that in the hometowns of the deceased. (Anyone know if the current president has a private meeting with every family/next of kin to those killed in combat? The usual search engines are … unproductive of answers in this regard.)

Then of course, there is the one-two punch of allowing openly gay personnel to serve also openly and with every prospect of the same benefits and courtesies as the heterosexual, and the ever-green question of permitting women in direct, full-frontal infantry-style combat specialties. Both of these moves by the current administration were immensely popular among that portion of the civilian population which didn’t actually have to deal with realities on the ground as experienced by serving military. Believe me when I tell you this – it’s a great deal more complicated than it appears when discussed in the faculty lounge. Really-oh, truly-oh.

Allow a slightly overweight and defiantly non-combat-specialty retired career AF NCO to provide enlightenment. Firstly, at the grunt-level, my own service and specialty didn’t give a rip about what you did with your significant other in bed, as long as you weren’t doing it in the road, or on the base commander’s front lawn. No, really – we didn’t care all that much. Just – don’t demand rapturous approval of your life-style, which from my own personal observation and the best figures available, only involves about 2-3% of the general population. No, really – a dismayingly large proportion of the public thinks that a quarter to a third of the population are gay, but that’s because they are only so LOUD about it. I don’t know which percentage of that 2-3% are confrontational to the point of hysteria about demanding that the rest of us line up and clap like a gaggle of performing seals – but I suspect there are actually not many, and very few in the active and serving military.

No – some deep dark secret-revealing here; I am about 96% certain that the true reason that the military didn’t go out and embrace the rainbow agenda is that administratively, they barely had a lock on heterosexual harassment; mostly of males doing it to females, but now and again the other way around. It was about as much as they could do to keep the heteros from jumping each other and using upper rank to exploit the lower. The last thing that anyone in authority wanted to see was even more sexual harassment cases on their personal docket – or because the military is still a preponderantly male preserve – to see it turn into something like a state prison, only with snappy uniforms for all, not just the prison guards. A lot of military life is lived in confined quarters, and with a severely authoritarian structure in place. The scope for abuse of the lower-ranking is incredibly wide. Again – turning a large structure inside out and upside down for the benefit of a microscopically small but vocally outsized minority – only a community activist and former college lecturer could think it a good idea, or that there wouldn’t be problems down the line – including morale problems. More about the morale problems later.

As for women-in-combat; back in my day the Air Force was pretty ecumenical about it all. Because it was … the Air Force. Technical and brainy and all that stuff; no very great degree of upper body strength required for most of the AF specialties. After the Vietnam War (say from about the early 1980s), the only Air Force specialty confined to strictly XY Americans in good health and medical fitness for military service was that of para-rescue specialists, and if memory serves, of advance AC controllers and spotters. One required a great deal of upper body strength and a tolerance for dealing with dead bodies in variable states of decay, and the other with Special Forces-degree skills at humping a heavy pack through the brush while avoiding or dealing with hostiles who didn’t have your best interests at heart. Other wise, most of the Air Force military specialties could be performed as easily by women as men. Not so your basic grunt rifleman, although there have been women – especially Marine women who had the basic fitness, were taught the skills and could very well cope with incidental combat when it came their way. But full-time, all the time and round the clock for indefinite periods of time … er – no. This is not to downplay the courage and skills of women who have served as such in the most recent round of wars, especially those who performed heroically when the hot lead was flying; but they are a small percentage and self-selected. In the long run, about all that we can count on is that training standards will be loosened to accommodate women, the guys will resent the hell out of them, and very likely women will die … to prove a point upheld by academics and politicians who will never in a blue moon come anywhere closer to the military than a base open house.

I am also hearing rumblings regarding balancing the rights of atheists with regard to Christians in the military, and frankly I am a little perplexed at that. Looking backwards at my own career, it didn’t seem to me as if believing and practicing Christians of whatever denomination were a big enough percentage of the force to give anyone who wasn’t any kind of heartburn, even overseas. Anecdote is not data – but those of us in the habit of attending weekly services, or going as far as regular Bible study were pretty much in a minority, considered against the non-observant. Making a habit of proselytizing your peers was considered bad form – and frowned on, for one of higher rank to proselytizing those in lower ranks. I did know a couple of atheists or people who claimed to be, and there was one young man whom it was whispered, belonged to a Wiccan coven – which was no sweat off mine, since it meant that he had a social life after all. I suspect that it is the attitude of believing Christians with regard to gays that is driving the sudden upsurge of hostility to the openly devout.

These four things – the purge of the upper ranks, dropping of don’t ask-don’t tell, women in combat specialties, Afghanistan – are all affecting morale in the services, to one degree or another. Morale, in an individual or in a unit of any size, is a delicate thing; hard to build and easily destroyed. I’ve been in units which had good morale and a sense of mission, a leadership cadre whom we trusted and in turn trusted us. I’ve also been in units which didn’t have good morale, where we scraped by from day to day just hoping to escape being made a scapegoat for a leadership-created disaster. At those units, I counted the days until I rotated out. I expect there are a fair number of serving NCOs and officers now doing the same.

(cross-posted at chicagoboyz.net)

What We Have Here

01. August 2011 · Comments Off on What We Have Here · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, General, Stupidity, War, Working In A Salt Mine...

. . . in the words of Strother Martin, from the old Paul Newman movie Cool Hand Luke, “is failure to communicate.” Although, in the case of one Private Nasser Jason Abdo, one really does wonder how much of that deliberate non-receptivity is on the part of the receiver; firstly – being eighteen years of age. Most eighteen year olds are idiots. I was one, and I remember thinking that yes, most of my peers were drooling morons. (Most of them did grow out of it, so there is hope.) Secondly – he willfully and with aforethought enlisted in the Army. Enable routine, inter-service slam here: oh, yeah, he enlisted in the Army. Any brains, you’d pick the Air Force or Navy, any balls, you’d go for the Marines. Disable routine, inter-service slam, and for the record I have known many brainy and ballsy Army troops, it’s just that . . . hey, opportunity presents and custom demands.

Anyway, our young hero decides to join the Army, go through Basic and probably tech school, and oh, wow – suddenly discovers that he has enlisted in a wartime military, where . . . umm . . . they kinda expect you to go out there and kill the enemy and blow up their stuff, routinely and regularly, in exchange for a paycheck, PX privileges and the burden of not having to decide to wear what to work each morning. This war thing, in Afghanistan – it’s a thing which has been going on since 2003. I know it doesn’t make the headlines every damn day, but really . . . if you were deciding to join the military in late 2009 or early 2010, it’s one of those things that I would have hoped that a bright young enlistee would have noticed, even if his recruiter failed to point that out. And if his recruiter had not made it relatively clear, I’d have thought Army basic training would have. So, anyway, upon receipt of notice that he is bound for deployment to Afghanistan, our your hero suddenly gets in touch with his inner Muslim and discovers that he is, in fact, a contentious objector, and the requirements of religion forbid him to kill other Muslims. Note; historically and in current events this particular stricture would come as rather a surprise to . . . say, participants in strife between Sunni and Shia, between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s . . . and in Afghanistan itself, where the local Muslims seem to kill each other, frequently, bloodily and with every evidence of keen enjoyment. And also – past times in the US military, declaring yourself to be a conscientious objector in the US military did not automatically relieve one from an obligation to serve in uniform. During WWII many conscientious objectors served as combat medics, and in fact, there were two Medals of Honor awarded for having performed heroically in that role.

So, on the basis of his suddenly-discovered pacifistic inclination, our young Private Abdo is made much the pet and prize of the anti-war movement, such as it exists in these strange days, but just as the Army is about to wash its hands of him metaphorically speaking, investigators find kiddy porn on his government computer . . . which is either very convenient for the investigators, or the abyss of stupidity on Private Abdos. I’m kind of torn on this one, but our young hero doesn’t exactly strike me as Mensa material – note above, regarding joining the Army in time of war and then being horrified to discover that participation in said war is obligatory.

And to crown the whole farrago of self-serving stupidity to go AWOL and be captured in Killeen, Texas . . . for trying to purchase guns and bomb-making materials, with the apparent intent of setting off explosions in an off-post eatery popular with the local troops. Okay, then . . . Private Abdos apparently does not grasp that whole conscientious objector concept, as we in the wonderful world of the military – and possibly even most of those on planet Earth – understand it , and in a fairly comprehensive way. This is an irony so dense that it threatens to drop through the earth’s crust, all the way through the molten core and come out the other side, and having a particularly dark and ironic sense of humor, I am getting at least a few chuckles out of this from watching the anti-war organizations dropping him as if he were made of plutonium, nearly as much as I did from the unmasking of Jesse McBeth.

(re-edited to permit comments)

I Can Hear GWB Facepalm From Here

24. June 2011 · Comments Off on I Can Hear GWB Facepalm From Here · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, General, GWOT, Military

Or so is one trenchant comment on this discussion thread, with regard to Obama’s more-than-embarrassing confusion while visiting the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, between a living recipient of the Medal of Honor and one who was awarded it posthumously . . . You know that the MOH is not handed out like tricker-treat candy, and to be the one presenting it to a soldier/sailor/airman/Marine who has survived . . . one would have thought a few details, like the name of the first living recipient since the Vietnam War would have stuck in the presidential mind. (Note to the president: the living MOH recipient is SSgt Salvatore Giunta, and he was and is a 173rd Airborne troop.) Really, one would have expected better of the mind of one so frequently lauded by a lickspittle press as being so intellectually superior. Back in the day, Sam Houston was absolutely legendary for his recollect of the name, service and exploits of just about every man who had ever enlisted and fought under his command in Texas; he, of course, had at best only a thousand or so to keep in mind. Still – one would like to think that the names of those awarded the MOH during his administration could be kept in mind, if not by the commander in chief himself, at least one of his flunkies.

Stuff like this – the names of heroes – is one of those things that military members are expected to know. It’s kind of a core-knowledge thing. We used to have a special category of spots to air on military TV and radio about heroic deeds, and the names and faces of those who went above and beyond, and that’s the kind of history included in our basic training, promotion testing, and professional development courses.

So – here we have a CinC who either can’t be bothered to get it straight – or doesn’t care, and goofs it horrendously in front of a lot of people who did and do care, very much . . . and possibly could have served with the late SFC Monti. It says a lot for the self-discipline of the 10th Mountain Division troops that there seemed to have been no overt reaction, other than a lot of poker-faces going rather more poker-faced. Very likely this would be seen by ordinary civilians as . . . well, really, one of those silly and quite understandable goofs. But to military members, this kind of mistake is not seen in that light at all. At best – inexcusably careless, and at worst contemptuous of those who serve in the US armed forces.

Because You’re Pissing Us Off

03. March 2011 · Comments Off on Because You’re Pissing Us Off · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, Domestic, Home Front

I saw an online headline in the past couple of days that read, “Teachers wonder:  Why the scorn?”  Had a similar question pop up from an old friend from high school on Facebook.  It also came up up last election season when yet another old friend was running for some position in California (he’s a teacher by trade) and wanted to know why military people seemed so dismissive of “Teacher’s rights?”

I can’t say it’s the right answer or the only answer, but it is my answer:  Military people teach every day.  We train our subordinates, in and out of the classroom.  We help them develop their careers.  We act as mentors, counselors, teachers, friends, parental surrogates, and boss.  We don’t think it’s all that big a deal.  Yes, some people are better at teaching in a formal situation than others, but the passing on of information is not magic.  Not in 2011 when people actually get degrees without interacting with a teacher other than via email or online forum.

One old friend argued that because she has more formal education than most lawyers, and certainly more than “most idiot Republican” politicians, she’s entitled to more money.  I asked if she were teaching MORE as a result of that education?  No.  Was she teaching harder material as a result of that education?  No.  I asked her how her level of education effected how well she taught a standardized curriculum and she got downright pissy.  “There is NO such thing as a standardized curriculum, if you’d ever REALLY taught, you’d know that.”  I ignored that entirely and drove home my point:  A teacher’s level of education has little to no effect on their ability to communicate a set collection of information to their students.  Follow up questions, in-depth subject background, oh-by-the-way-you-might-find-this-bit-of-minutia-interesting, THOSE all benefit from you’re having an advanced degree IN THE SUBJECT YOU’RE TEACHING.  Your advanced degrees make YOU a more informed person, but you’re not doing my kid any more good than the fresh faced youngster with a new BA and teaching certificate who may actually still CARE about teaching.

“Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have.”  ~The Wizard of Oz to Scarecrow.

Unions:  At this point, unions aren’t helping teachers one bit.  When teachers’ unions were formed, they were necessary to ensure that teachers could make a living wage.  And they ARE making a living wage.  They don’t get paid a lot, in most cases, but they now have pay and benefits that are above the poverty line by a good margin.  Good teachers, exceptional teachers, get paid exactly the same amount as really crappy teachers.  Why?  Unions.  The unions are for equality, across the board, no matter how much you suck.  They are a beast that must be fed and to be fed, they must get more for their union members so the union members can feed them more.  They’re like many another bureaucracy, the initial reason for their existence has LONG passed, but they must justify their continuation and the way they do that is to insist that their members are some sort of victims, insist that only the union can keep the evil political machine at bay, only the union can “fix” what is broken.

The problem is that these days we’re all victims, we’re all not making enough, we’re all working harder for less money and teachers unions trying to argue that they’re still worse off than most of the rest of us, just isn’t flying.  If you’ve got a salary AND insurance these days, you’re doing pretty damn well.  We’re broke too, and for you to ask more of us while we’re still struggling to get back on our feet, is just damn insulting.

THAT’S why the scorn.

Bwaaaahahahahahahhaaaaaa

08. March 2007 · Comments Off on Bwaaaahahahahahahhaaaaaa · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!

From FoxNews:

HAMPTON, Va. —  A drill sergeant at Fort Eustis in Hampton is accused of forcing a male trainee to dress as Superman and submit to sexual acts.

Officials say Army Staff Sergeant Edmundo Estrada also faces charges of indecent assault, having an inappropriate relationship with a trainee, and cruelty and maltreatment of subordinates. The 35-year-old was arraigned in January and is scheduled to appear April 17 in a military court. He remains on active duty but is no longer a drill sergeant.

A search warrant affidavit filed in Hampton Circuit Court says officials began investigating Estrada in August after a soldier reported Estrada mistreated and sexually assaulted him.

 I know it’s wrong, but it’s killing me thinking about all my Army friends being subjectd to, “Look!  It’s a bird, it’s a plane…”

News Flash: Military Health Care Sucks

05. March 2007 · Comments Off on News Flash: Military Health Care Sucks · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, Air Force, Air Navy, Media Matters Not, Stupidity, Veteran's Affairs

You would think that the absolute cluelessness of the American Media, and many bloggers I might add, would fail to shock me.  You’d be wrong.

Anyone who thinks this is going to do more than cause some hospitals to paint a wall or two, raise your hands.

For almost 23 years I’ve mostly been given Vitamin M (Motrin) and/or Flexoril for just about every ache and pain that I’ve ever had.  I’ve been to a physical therapist twice even though I’m supposed to see one every other week…he’s usually so overbooked here he actually says, “When it hurts bad enough, come in, I’ll crack it again.”  After 20 years of rather constant “shin splints” they finally figured out I had compressed compartments.  The only reason they decided to operate was that they’d become chronic and were “getting ready to blow.”

And most of my crap is just muscles and nerves not doing what they should.  I can’t imagine being in need of any real treatment.

Let the Savage Mock-Kerry Continue!

03. November 2006 · Comments Off on Let the Savage Mock-Kerry Continue! · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Iraq, War

Myself, I about wore out my arm two years ago, beating the dead horse that is the junior senator from Massachusetts, but our very own Detailed Recuiter, and his good buddy Station Commando continue the mockery here.

(Golf clap of appreciation) Well done, lads, well done!

Almost Makes Me Wish I’d Gone Green

06. August 2006 · Comments Off on Almost Makes Me Wish I’d Gone Green · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, General

Blackfive has LTC Randolph C. White Jr. delivering the graduation speech for the newest batch of Infantrymen to complete training at Ft. Benning, Georgia, on April 21st, 2006.

Absolutely the right thing to say at the right time. LTC White, thank you and your grunts for everything.