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I have
never quite trusted civilians. Perhaps a better way of saying this
is I’ve never quite understood them. I’m sure my mistrust
or misunderstanding grew out of spending most of my formative adult
years in the military. I retired in 1975 after 23 years of service.
Thereafter, it took over ten years for me to feel reasonably comfortable
out of uniform. I was truly a stranger in a strange land.
One
day I said to my wife, “What is it about civilians? They’re
like a box of bees dropped on a bathroom floor: all of them going
in separate directions with no one in charge.”
Some
ex-military men find the looseness of civilian life too wearing
and yearn for the hierarchical structure of base life. Off base,
I found much of what I was seeing as pointless. After retirement
what I came to miss most was the common mission. Some find the military
too rigid and stultifying. As a writer and artist I never again
would experience the freedom I enjoyed in the Air Force. For some,
the military was a hard place to be and a harder place in which
to die. Conversely, It should be recognized that industry or academia
or the bohemian life offer no sure paths to Camelot. I’m told
that as we grow older, our taste buds begin to fail. Mine began
to go at age 30 when I started to lose my taste for civilian life.
I go
along these days with a lot of things that earlier would have brought
on a severe reaction. Approaching 70, I’ve mellowed –
a little. But the minute I stop to speak to policeman, a firefighter,
a lineman, a paramedic, nurse or doctor – all of whom work
in paramilitary worlds – I realize that I’m really not
at ease when about town.
On
the other hand, I must admit I have come to know a great many civilians
who are terrific models. Models are important to me.
In
1952 I entered the US Navy arriving at Bainbridge Naval Training
Center in Maryland on my seventeenth birthday. Things quickly soured.
I spent two years perilously close to receiving a bad conduct discharge.
From my fifth to my fourteenth month in the Navy I piled up eleven
Article 15s (these are similar to misdemeanors in the civilian world)
and a court martial. Missing ship, AWOL, disrespect to a petty officer,
and assault and battery – I was a kid out of control. I went
before the mast so often the captain knew me by my first name.
I spent
33 months aboard the aircraft carrier Midway. One night during a
mid-watch I took a hard look at the young officer opposite me and
asked myself “What’s the difference between us?”
Education, I realized. I had two years of high school. Luckily,
I had asked a critical, life-changing question and found myself
wanting. Within a few months I passed my high school GED exam, made
petty officer third class and eventually left the Navy with an honorable
discharge.
I often
recall Ensign Perkins whenever I see the beautifully crisp illustrations
that were the hallmark of the Gibson Girl series in the early 1900s
and of the Arrow Shirt men in the 1920s. That’s the way Ensign
Perkins lives in my memory: always the crisp uniform, the young
intelligent face, and an eagerness to perform his military duties.
Always a model.
My
career track was that of recruit, seaman, petty officer, recruit,
airman, sergeant, officer. In time the military sent me to six universities
and I piled up some 300 semester hours. That’s a long way to
come for someone who started out as a New York wise guy.
Sometimes
military life could be Camelot and sometimes it could be sheer hell.
No matter how bad things got there was always satisfaction to be
drawn from “mission accomplishment.” That’s the ideal
that was regularly preached to us. Every commander that I served
under to one degree or another knew how to seek consultation and
work out those problems impeding mission accomplishment. I learned
to take criticism when it meant advancing the mission.
What
I came to dread were the hateful intrusions into our world by certain
civilians – usually politicians. Somehow the more we gave,
the less we were esteemed by such people. To them we were photo
opportunities or men to be left swinging the wind.
I soon
developed a list of grievances.
For
a long time military retirees avoided going to VA hospitals. Under
funded and undermanned, it was a sure way to win an early trip to
Arlington Cemetery. While in the Pentagon I learned that the civilian
workers there – as well those on Capitol Hill – had much
better retirement programs both in terms of money and medical coverage
than combat veterans. Now there’s talk of reducing those benefits
even further. My, oh my!
While
I was stationed in San Antonio in 1961 my wife and I decided on
the spur of the moment to visit one of the married airmen who worked
with me in the armament and electronics shop at Randolph Air force
Base. They lived off base. We pulled up to their door and they came
out to meet us. We never were invited inside. Their faces were aflame
with shame. They were living in a chicken coop – not one of
those nifty structures we see in here in Watauga County. Theirs
had wire mesh for windows and tarpaper walls. This occurred at a
time when the food giants were talking about eliminating our base
commissary privileges. At that time commissaries carried food at
cheaper prices than one could get off base. That advantage has been
largely lost today through an act of Congress. While the trip to
our friends’ chicken coop took place almost 40 years ago, we
still have a large number of enlisted men who are living below the
poverty level.
Just
how many ways can you hurt a GI?
Here’s
a further example. I was at Luke Air Force Base when Senator Barry
Goldwater ran against President Lyndon B. Johnson. At the time,
Goldwater held the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve.
Word came down from the White House through the four-star general
who commanded Tactical Air Command that Goldwater was not to gain
any political advantage from his military service and rank through
appearances at Luke. We were not to allow him to come aboard and
be covered by the local press. For some reason this escaped our
wing commander’s attention and the Senator did come by one
day. The reaction was instant: the colonel was gone in a day. There
was no regard for his career as a military man. He was dropped into
a black hole and disappeared. I have since resented such political
interference.
Here’s
the kind of civilian interference that I do applaud. When presidents
are deciding to “send our boys overseas” as an all-purpose
curative, it’s the men and women on the home front – the
voters – who should be asking tough questions and, if necessary,
raising hell. Yes, we all agreed the Nazi military’s defense
at Nuremburg, “I was just following orders,” was no defense
at all. However, in the US military if you receive orders to go
into combat, our young men and women do not – almost cannot
– question those orders. How many people do you know who are
willing to be mailed to a street corner in some hostile country
and told to stand there and wait for death? That’s what it
means to go to war. As a recruit, as a seaman, a petty officer,
airman, sergeant and officer, I went where I was told to go. I counted
on the civilians at home to watch my back and to make sure that
I going into a war worth dying for. That’s why the advertisements
plead with Americans to vote. It is the people who must act as the
nation’s conscience.
In
the last few years I grow rabid when I see what we’re doing
to our active duty military and retirees. How can we excoriate and
denigrate men like Senators John McCain and Max Cleland? Their valor
is measured by five and a half years of brutal treatment in the
Hanoi Hilton for one and the loss of three limbs for the other.
If you can falsely smear men like that with impunity, who among
us is safe?
When
a man’s military service, his honors and his wounds are questioned,
denied or tarred, we not only hurt the man but we undermine his
branch of service. Medals do not come out of vending machines. The
letter of recommendation (usually written by the candidate’s
immediate superior) is carefully scrutinized and a board of officers
– often of general officer rank -- determine whether or not
it meets the military’s high standards. Rest assured that the
grander the reported act of heroism, the grander the medal sought,
the closer the scrutiny.
Somehow
it has not dawned on the detractors that these public attacks on
individual medal holders devalue the worth of all medals awarded
to servicemen dead or alive. We are all tarred by the same brush.
The proper course of action is to go back to the military branch
awarding the medal and lodge a complaint with them. Somehow, in
a take-no-prisoners atmosphere, such niceties get lost in the scramble
to make a political point.
It’s
time to let genuine heroes remain heroes. They are, after all, models
and models are national treasures.
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