Point Loma: New Normal
Editor’s note: People are chasing the astonishing amount of newly printed money flying about. Some perfectly reasonable people have tried to find a path forward through the current dislocation. This is Point Loma’s take.
-Vic
Taking Things off the Table – and The New Normal
Taking things off the table is another way of stating the old cliché of “bait and switch.” We’ve all been victims of that game, just depends on your circumstances. So I am going to dredge the past 60 or so years for some insights for today, and how it is never too late to grow up. In these desperate times, we’ve all got to dig deep, and it may be a little astonishing at what you find out about who you really are. I’ve managed to rock my own world.
I grew up with guns. My step-dad was a hunter and we learned how to shoot handguns and shotguns; we went deer, quail, and duck hunting every year, not matter how cold it got. We shot hand-thrown skeet off the end of our beach off Mobile Bay in Montrose, Alabama, along with our gun nut neighbors. We had a whole screened in pavilion down there full of duck decoys and a kitchen for cooking birds and sea food. Unfortunately, it did not survive Hurricane Camille, which struck shortly after we had moved from there to bigger digs in downtown Fairhope in the Fruit and Nut district – shop that neighborhood for over-priced real estate these days. Then we moved further up the social scale but down more south to our waterfront paradise in Point Clear. We had guns around all of the time – hell, my dad’s pickup truck had a gun rack in the back with a .22 rifle and a 410 shotgun hanging – try driving around like that in Maryland these days; and I had an ice chest usually full of cold Bud when I was home on leave. Life was good growing up as a semi-educated redneck and life guard in Lower Alabama.
My step-dad before he died gave me two guns – an elegant French-made hexagon barrel hunting rifle in a rosewood case, the kind you had to assemble a la a James Bond assassination rifle. The second was a silver chrome 1906 Colt 44 Peacemaker revolver with ivory handles, the same gun that General George S. Patton used to wear. He had just had it re-finished and presented it to me in a well-worn brown calf-hide holster about a month before I left home to join the Navy where, even though I qualified for pistol and rifle medals, we had way more interesting ordnance to consider dropping; and we did do that on Midway in pretty incredible ways about ten years later; yes we watched ourselves do that.
For obvious reasons, I couldn’t take my personal weapons with me to OCS, and then on the ship, and then later on to Europe. By that time, my step-dad had passed, and my mother not knowing his wishes sold my guns to some bull-shit collector. I was pretty fucking pissed off, but what the hell, she was a still grieving widow and not cognizant of all family drug deals. And besides, we didn’t need guns then, in all of the places where we have lived, but maybe now we do.
This has not been a snap decision, as I have been thinking about it for a long time. My concern about having home weapons is that my kids would find them and then try to figure out how to use them like in a real game of Doom. They are smart kids, but total fucking idiots – Autism has its limits and common sense ain’t part and parcel of that package deal. However, biometric gun safes do work, as I am finding out. But before it bought that little bit of a final life insurance policy, I did invest (via USAA) in a security service which you will recognize:
So, this was the first move. I looked at the Wi-Fi offerings that were available on Amazon and at Best Buy which were quick to set up, and cheap. My soon-to-be NSA hacker son did his own research and demonstrated to me how easily those systems could be defeated by a handheld cellphone jamming signal. ADT is hardwired and can’t be spoofed, and I had them install an outside siren that will singe the hair off of your gonads (we tested it) so that gets rid of the rookie looters – it is the hard core that I am more concerned with. My next door neighbors are great people but in their 70s and trusting in the “system” to protect them. The day I had my alarm system installed, I asked if they had one and any home weapons. They didn’t, but I had two yard signs so it told them “well, you’ve got one now – where would you like me to pound in your sign.” But I knew that it wasn’t enough. So, I went and exercised what is left of my 2nd Amendment rights in the People’s Republic of Maryland, and bought myself The Governor.
It’s a pretty bad-ass piece of gear – it fires .45 Long Colt, ACP rounds, and .410 shotgun shells all at once; like something out of the Wild, Wild West. The problem is that even though our Governor and otherwise good guy Larry is a Republican, he shut down all public and private gun ranges as non-essential functional businesses and thereby kowtowing to the anti-gun commies and the voting looter class and other rent-seekers so we can’t engage in target practice. Really?
We have a few Maryland State Delegates who live in or near our neighborhood tucked into our semi-hidden and otherwise non-descript left-handed crook off the Severn River; Pat Sajak has a big house further up the river but he also has his own body guards. There is usually an Anne Arundel County Sheriff SUV angling around here to respond to any calls for assistance.
We realize that the Charm City bad guys know where we live – we’ve had our share of Saturday afternoon scouts over the past few years sniffing out alarm systems and bad dogs. I’ve run a few of them off, and even called 911 one Saturday night on some asshole who knocked on my door at 2030, after evading my video alarm, and entertained me with a weak minstrel show on how he was collecting money for inner-city kids up in Baltimore. I convinced him in my finest Marine Corps Command Voice that I learned from my best-man Dale that it would be a good idea for him to leave NOW. The cops showed up about five minutes later and jacked his ass up – turns out he had been harassing people in neighborhoods up and down Route 2 and had a four-page rap sheet. The lead Anne Arundel County Deputy Sheriff came down and thanked me for calling them in, since the guy had been threatening anyone who turned him in to further un-named retribution if they didn’t give him any money.
When I had confronted the guy he told me that he had a civil right to be on my property – that was when I first really realized that I needed something like The Governor. I fervently hope that I never have to really use it, but otherwise, I could be dead for at least four minutes before the cops showed up to catch the bad guy raping my wife – which that option is now off the table.
Taking lots of things off the table is a great way to equalize an otherwise unequal playing field. I learned early on from my good bud B’wana that having a clean haircut, driving a quiet car and wearing conservative preppy clothes were a great shield for all kinds of minor discretions – no one suspects you of harboring ill-motives, much less those that involve a debutante’s virginity – and alcohol may or may not have been involved. Go to church on Sunday, and get down on your knees to confess your sins – it’s actually a great system. Moms love you, and you get to meet new chicks. People thought that we were fine upstanding young men, even though we were life guards, much less senior naval officers later on. It was something of a misnomer I suppose all around. But it is a philosophical approach that has served me well for more than 40 years. The logic is impeccable – if you don’t put it on the table, then it doesn’t exist.
The other thing I learned to take off the table was to be well-dressed. I did pay attention and read a few of those self-help retirement things during TAP and saw how little attention people (and I mean men here) paid homage to how to dress for success. It is really not hard, just be aware of your choices, assuming we still have the option of wearing power suits, and understand how to dress appropriately for whatever the hell the situation is that you are getting into. I spent extra money buying bespoke suits, shirts, shoes, and ties, to make sure that I was ALWAYS the best-dressed guy in the room. When I showed up, you looked like a slob, while I looked like a million (actually at JIEDDO, it was a billion bucks), so now we are going to do business – and I’m not in any way concerned about how I look, but now you are. The only guy who I could not consistently out-class was General Meigs – he used to eye what I was wearing when I entered his office or a meeting and always gave me a once over, a wry grin and a head nod as if – you’ve got it son. The world has not manufactured many individuals who can communicate with and command you with looks that speak volumes – Meigs was all that. He hooked me on a phone call, confided in me since I was a Navy guy and he couldn’t trust all of the Army guys around us, but after a whirlwind year then he took his wisdom off the table and left.it.up.to.me. Yikes.
A few other things that we as a society take off the table, or inoculate ourselves against, are simple but manifold things that you may not notice. It’s like teaching everyone basic first aid, CPR, fire-fighting in the Navy, and getting all of the childhood good habits and later vaccinations that we are required to get in order to survive at least the bad shit out there we can still conquer. I’m not sure what the COVID-19 scar is going to be, but I imagine it could be something like the small-pox scar – do you have one?
Almost everyone on the planet at one point back in the 1960-80s shared that until it was eradicated. You know if you have one, since it is usually a pock-marked patch of skin on your upper left shoulder – I still remember getting mine something like 60 years ago, which was renewed when I got in the Navy back in 1980, and I could see it on the people in other countries that I visited over the years that were in the tropics and the kids didn’t wear T-Shirts. It was weird at the time when I got the first one – the nurse smeared some creamy substance on my shoulder, then applied this stippling gun which chewed up my skin like it was so much hamburger, and then applied a big wad of a cotton ball, taped on a bandage, and admonished me to not to scratch it. The resulting festering scab was one itchy leaky son-of-a-bitch that hung around for over a week. But we all got over it.
That was one thing that everyone on the planet shared at some point in time. I imagine the COVID-19 vaccine will be something similar, at least burned somehow into our collective psyches. However, in the meantime and trusting no one that I don’t know for bad intent or is it just diseased, just assume that I am no further than a few feet away from a loaded weapon to defend myself and my own. Fucking with me is no longer on the table – enough goddamn it.
So to be legal, I have bought three gun safes – one for under the bed, one for ammo in the basement, and one for my car and my new CC pistol. Don’t worry, I have signed up for the proper training and licensing, so I’m just going back to my roots. It’s not the same world we have gotten used to over the past 40-50 years, and the bad guys don’t give a fuck, anyway. These days, I’m beginning to believe that only a fool doesn’t go around anywhere unarmed. I’ve learned to face it as the new normal and I refuse to be a victim of someone else’s emotions or fetishes, so I’m taking that off the table. Wearing an NH-95 mask and carrying a big gun, it’s like being the COVID-19 Lone Ranger – Hi-Ho Silver Away…
I remain your faithful servant.
Copyright 2020 Pt Loma
http://www.vicsocotra.com
Point Loma: Weight of Command
“Captain, USN, Departing.”
Much ballyhoo has been made about the case of Captain Bret Crozier, skipper of the TR, and his stand on taking care of his crew, however painted quixotically it has been. I never, ever thought that there would be a SECNAV dumber than Ray Maybus, but then along came Modly. As Bugs Bunny used to remark about someone stupid, “What a maroon.” One of the watch phrases we learned about at OCS Newport now 40 years ago was this “You never want to have a change of command without hors d’oevres.”
In the military, we have all sorts of levels of command, but nothing approaches the awesome responsibility of command-at-sea; something that was denied to us 16XX girls growing up. And it doesn’t matter how big or small your ship is – the crushing weight of the responsibility is just the same. The only difference is that on a carrier you’ve got a whole lot more admin help than you do on a fleet tug in Yokosuka. Navy Regs are pretty clear on that point:
0802. Responsibility.
1. The responsibility of the commanding officer for his or her command is absolute, except when, and to the extent to which, he or she has been relieved therefrom by competent authority, or as provided otherwise in these regulations. The authority of the commanding officer is commensurate with his or her responsibility. While the commanding officer may, at his or her discretion, and when not contrary to law or regulations, delegate authority to subordinates for the execution of details, such delegation or authority shall in no way relieve the commanding officer of continued responsibility for the safety, well-being and efficiency of the entire command.
2. A commanding officer who departs from orders or instructions, or takes official action which is not in accordance with such orders or instructions, does so upon his or her own responsibility and shall report immediately the circumstances to the officer from whom the prior orders or instructions were received. Of particular importance is the commanding officer’s duty to take all necessary and appropriate action in self-defense of the command.
Our attention is invited to the last sentence in 802.2.
There are a couple of other un-written “good deals” that go along with command, the most striking is that you are only as good as the weakest member of your command, and you are ultimately responsible for the actions of every member of your crew. This is not a job for the timid.
So, the brouhaha about Skipper Bret Crozier and what he did, rightly or wrongly in your own opinion to which you are entitled is open to question; but if you haven’t walked this walk, then shut the fuck up. There’s more than enough hand-wringing to go around about what happened to Bret, and the rampant speculation that he is going to be re-instated. That, in my mind, would be a mistake. Despite what he might feel or think, presuming I know anything about that, I wouldn’t go back. As the great Tom Wolfe wrote in his post-humous novel – “You Can’t Go Home Again.” It will never be the same, and now you have the ghosts of dead shipmates to deal with, and all of that now awful legacy.
After what happened, he cannot go back to walk those decks, and maybe never or at least for years after the ship has been de-commed. The memory and emotions are too raw. It took me more than 25 years to go back to see Midway as a museum piece, and that was after a happy time since we didn’t lose any of our friends in the good Gulf War. I’ve had the chance to be back onboard three times in the past few years and every time I salute the ensign at the stern and request permission to come aboard, I’m back there on that November day in 1990 after trapping in Miss Piggy, and I might get a little teary-eyed at the memory. There was something about that ship that I and 350,000 other shipmates can’t explain.
Vic knows a thing or two about it. Well, I gauran-goddamn-tee you that Bret Crozier should feel that same way about going back to the TR – re-instated in command when he never should have been relieved in the first place (see Navy Regs, above). While it might be tempting and make for some made-for-TV Hallmark movie kind of story, my advice is don’t do it, as it will never be the same. It is time to end that chapter of your life and go on to other things as she is not your ship any more.
We used to have a tradition in Naval Aviation reserved for those overly inquisitive guys in the squadron who identified what they thought were serious problems – we would reward their zeal and diligence by making them responsible for fixing what they had found out to be wrong; it used to be called Special Projects. Well, I think if I were in charge and had a sense of humor about any of this bullshit, I would appoint Captain Bret Crozier as the special DoN and/or DoD Special Projects rep for fixing the corona virus in the services. Rudyard Kipling had some nice verses for this situation – I invite you gentle readers to indulge with me:
If
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on;”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!”
Do that well, and your career path to flag rank will be clear. Then you can go back to TR, be the CSG commander, and walk those decks again proudly. That would be poetic justice, and go a long way towards alleviating what must still be the crushing weight of command, and getting relieved for doing what you thought was right
I remain your faithful servant.
Copyright 2020 Point Loma
http://www.vicsocotra.com
Point Loma: Blues on the Lagoon
The thing about the skipper of the TR getting relieved is really chapping my ass. so i have to write an an allegory about that since i’m so pissed off at would-be SECNAV Modly and his fellow cast of OPNAV fools. it is way past time to keep treating naval operators as would-be criminals, and return to us the trust of that touch of Nelson. Since i think i excel at telling sea stories and am always competing with Vic, i’m throwing down a gauntlet of sorts. and i think i always have a good story to tell.
Since Tailhook 1991, we in the Naval Aviation community have been put in some kind of a penalty box for now almost 30 years. So enough, goddammit.
We were there in the Persian Gulf in Carrier Operations (CVOA-1), just off off of Kuwait, and knew that the execution order was for Operation Southern Watch, enforcing the no-fly zone over Southern Iraq was pending. Sure enough, it came, and we were in the middle of a cyclic ops event when it happened. The recall order was for everyone to come home to Mother to plan, and in our case, it was no longer Ma Midway, but the now trusty Indy. And of course, it was chaos.
Our Airing Commander (CAG Bud), aka Darth, was flying a Tomcat, and since the order of recovery was now totally fucked up, he was one of the first to trap, but not without a story to tell. While into what was a now ragged pattern, he had witnessed a searing white contrail descending into the vicinity of the battle group. Not knowing better, he called an inbound missile – it was classic, and comical once we figured out what had happened.
As it turned out, one of our trusty squadron skippers (Firckle of VA-195, the Chippies), had been the last Hornet tanking off of the duty Eagle KA-6D, so instead of getting 3k, he had taken almost 5k to burn, and since he had no wingman due to a down aircraft, he zorched off to 50k ft on a different flight ladder to be the overseer of CAP – Hornets are the gods of high altitude flight.
When the recall order came, Firckle was still fat on gas, so he accelerated to something like Mach 1.2 and performed a hard wing-over to get down to the marshall stack. He started to dump fuel on the way down to get to recovery weight, and was blowing a huge contrail. that is what duped CAG into calling in a missile attack, which then awarded him from the collective air wing ready room geniuses a new call-sign – Like the old Soviet medium rocket- SCUD.
Once we had sorted it out in CVIC, we were laughing our asses off – Firckle was just having fun, which is what it really should be all about. then, it got serious, and we went about business. Firckle came to Newport for some reason when i was at the War College, and called me up to say he was in town, along with his lovely wife Sue. i invited them over to our condo and after steaks on the grill and lots of good wine, we spent two hours on my Hornet computer flight simulator trying to bag traps, usually dying in the process. yeah, we might have had too many drinks to be naval aviating; his bitch about it was there was not enough power response in the simulator when you needed it to get out of trouble. i told him he had gotten used to what Uncle Milty called HUD-cripples to enjoying too many bolters. there was no ready room slack. one of his JOs was a guy with the callsign Yoda. His wife was a figure skater and they had triplets and even after all that, she was still drop dead tight- little- assed-to die-for gorgeous.
Yoda had a signature move when he boltered at night; he would utter out on the recovery radio Chewbacca’s Wookie call. He was a Japan repeat offender and came back to Westpac to command a squadron, and ultimately the airwing- CAG-5.
I used to go up to the flag bridge late at night, just to clear my head from all of the chaos which always threatened to consume us, and would take a seat in the admiral’s chair, since it had the best view. It was usually deserted there. But one night, i sensed a presence on my right – it was Brent, the admiral.
Oh fuck. I apologized but he told me to stay right there. He said, this is good training isn’t it? I told him “no sir, this is what we have been training for all along, now it is real.” he thought about that for a moment, and said “You stay right there.” And then he went back down below.
A good officer in a command position does what it takes to take care of his troops first, and worries about himself later. That is what the skipper of the TR was trying to do. If you can’t tell, this is pissing me the fuck off. Acting SECNAV Modly is a designer Naval Officer, so is willing to shit-can a carrier commander for disagreeing with what is now a willy-nilly COVID-19 policy and trying to force him to not sacrifice the well-being of his troops – really? we all swore an oath, and now that somehow is not good enough?
Vic, his is probably worth a Socotra, but for now i’ve got to go out and buy me some guns. i was at the Commissary yesterday and the food shelves are getting a little empty. Thanks to God that the exchange liquor store still appears fully stocked.
Once again, that is the mark of true professionals and what is really pissing me off- amongst other things about the Navy these days – the civilians have way too much control.
If you take the TR as an example, the troops are revolting, which is really fucking bad doodoo. we all took a sacred oath to support and defend the constitution, but the unwritten codacile of command was that we would do what it took to take care of our sailors and our troops.
Time to let the operators do what they do.
Copyright 2020 Point Loma
http://www.vicsocotra.com
Point Loma: The Right Stuff
Gene Kranz, NASA Mission Control Flight Director
How would you like to get this ass-chewing?
“Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, “Dammit, stop!” I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.
From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: “Tough” and “Competent”. Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write “Tough and Competent” on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”[1]
Gene Kranz is better known for the phrase “failure is not an option” and even though that is the title of his autobiography, he actually never said that – it was attributed to another member of the Apollo 13 rescue team. I’m okay with that, since I prefer the above lengthy quote – but it’s not a proper fit for a book title.
Gene is a genuine American hero – an Air Force fighter pilot who flew F-86 Sabres post Korean War before he became an aeronautical engineer and later national icon – I’d like to think my dad repaired his squadron’s jet engines when he was deployed. Gene went into the reserves and was actually still an Air Force Reservist during the time he had the reigns at NASA as a Senior Mission Control Flight Director of the Apollo program, retiring as a Captain in 1972 – everyone has an angle. Even this guy:
Brig Gen James M. Stewart, USAFR, Ret.
This guy also had the Right Stuff. I’m willing to bet beers or the cold frosty beverage of your choice that few of Vic’s young readers know this piece of history. Stewart started off as an AAC Officer in 1940, and retired in 1976. He was the second highest ranking actor in history, right behind the Gipper. During World War II he flew B-24 Liberators in Europe and North Africa, and was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses and four Air Medals, as well as the French Croix de Guerre with bronze palm. Since it is still around Christmas time, the next time chance you get to catch It’s a Wonderful Lifeon the tube, remember that he served, and continued to serve as long as he was allowed to – a good guy.
Gene Kranz is renowned in our history of spaceflight as the Mission Controller for Apollo 11 and 13 – he was the steely-eyed missile man personified. The Apollo 11 landing drama is riveting, but if you look more closely at it, it was just another test flight – albeit extreme considering the circumstances. People overlook the fact that Neil had overshot the preferred landing spot since he and Buzz were distracted by abstruse flight computer 1201 and 1202 warnings. But that is why we sent test pilots, and they landed the Eagle beautifully and walked away from it so to speak.
Apollo 13, on the other hand, was an engineering marvel of a rescue mission. It took a measure of concentration on the tasks at hand that goes beyond category, and it needed the consummate will power of determined Senior Mission Flight Controller to will that crippled spaceship home to splashdown and a happy ending.
Jim & Marilyn Lovell’s Resting Place – They Ain’t there yet…
Every January, my son’s Boy Scout Troop performs a community service project in clearing off the wreaths laid on the 2000 or so graves at the Annapolis National Military Cemetery. I always go and help out and pay homage to the graves of the Navy heroes interred there – but Jim is not one of them, yet. He could have been honored with a memorial service in absentia, lost in space or cremated during a botched re-entry, but he and his Apollo 13 crew escaped a tragic fate – like Naval Aviators have a knack for doing. Gene Kranz made the difference in my view, but there was another guy who had great impact in how that difference was executed, and that was John Aaron.
John Aaron – The Original Steely-eyed Missile Man
John Aaron grew up in western Oklahoma. His mother was a minister, and his father was a cattle rancher. After spending a year attending Bethany Nazarene College, he transferred to Southwestern Oklahoma State University, from which he graduated in 1964 with a degree in Physics. He was going to teach mathematics and science after graduating from college, but applied for a job with NASA. When he arrived at NASA, Aaron was trained as an EECOM, a flight controller with specific responsibility for the electrical, environmental and communications systems on board the spacecraft.[2] In that role, he knew more about the workings of the Apollo Command Module than any of the astronauts – we have all met those kinds of guys – call them geeks, but they are driven to perfection. It was John who discerned the meaning of the 1201 and 1202 codes popping up during the lunar descent of the Eagle during Apollo 11, recalled the right switch setting that saved Apollo 12’s mission, and figured out the power-up procedures to get the Apollo 13 Command Module to regain operational control for re-entry which saved the lives of those astronauts. Kranz may get the headlines, but John Aaron was doing the über professional system expert dirty work.
Tom Wolfe wrote the book “The Right Stuff” and it is a good read and later an entertaining movie. Astronauts in the 60s and 70s were rock stars, deservedly so, but Gene and John had all of that same quality as men ruling the missions at the consoles, in spades. So where am I going with this?
Last week, the National Defense Authorization Act (aka NDAA) created the long-anticipated Space Force, I’d rather they had called it the Space Corps, or even go all the way and call it Starfleet. At any rate, Gen Raymond will be the Chief of Space Operations, so there is a Navy slant to the whole Space Force Enterprise(like how I did that?). So, what does that really mean?
Dum de dah, de diddly dah…?
If duly implemented, the Space Force should be an amalgamation and tight integration of the uniformed service’s space operations and personnel, the NRO, academic research, and the rapidly emerging space technology sector of both the US and our allies, since we are all in this together. Sound easy? I predict it will take years, if not a decade or more. I’m not a nay-sayer – hell, I love the idea but it should have been done a lot earlier.
Alas, I’ll never get to be a member of Starfleet, since I’m getting to be too fucking old for playing the cosmic reindeer games of young men and women. I feel privileged that I got to witness the original Space Race of the 60s and 70s, as well as Star Trek but not sure what this latest Space Race is going to yield. I’m a little wary of the roles being played by the latest commercial superstars in that trade space – like Elon, Jeff, Richard, etc. I hope their motivations are not just some perverted ego trip, because like it or not, we are in space – it is important, and we have to play to win. And Boeing’s failure to achieve the proper orbit for the initial crewed Starliner launch last Friday was not a good start – and that’s being kind. NASA is trying to put lipstick on that pig –it sucked plain and simple. I note people at the top of Boeing are bailing for various reasons usually blamed on the 737 Max – don’t be fooled. The Starliner fuckup may prove to be a bigger deal…
Those who are going to be charged with architecting the Space Force need to be on their game, and have the Right Stuff, like Gene Kranz, Jimmy, and John. Take Gene’s words from the quote up front to heart – be tough and competent. The future depends upon it.
I remain your faithful servant.
P.S. And now a rebuttal from E, aka Pt. Loma, Junior, who wants to be a Space Force Starman in his own right:
“Boeing’s failure was probably just a few lines of code somewhere; nothing that couldn’t have been fixed with a human test pilot. Then again, it could’ve been worse with people on board. You learn more from failure, and in an un-crewed test flight, failure is an option.”
And this is from someone who likes SpaceX more than Boeing.
Copyright 2020 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com
[1]Source Wikipedia.org.
[2]Source: Wikipedia.com.
Point Loma: On Writing [1]
Charles Krauthammer
Some people transcend time and space – here’s one. It is a little around a year and a half from his passing, which still is a national tragedy. I miss this man and his common sense genius greatly. He was such a fixture on Fox News and in our lives. I always made it a point to see Bret Baier’s show every night to hear what Charles had to say about the vagaries of the political tomfoolery of the day gone by – and now he is gone. I wish I could have met him in person. He was a class act, and one well-worthy of emulation.
But his legacy lives on, just get his last book “Things that Matter” – I keep a copy next to my bed and will read a passage or two every night like it is some kind of common sense writer’s Bible; not that my own work exhibits much religiosity – yeah, too many F-bombs. I’m better than that and am trying to clean up my act but sometimes, I can’t help my fucking self. Charles was also a fellow Harvard alumnus, so Vic and I share that academic bond, given that we sealed it up in Boston in a place that Dick Nixon called “The Kremlin on the Charles.” His son has just recently completed an unfinished work waiting to be released and I hope he can measure up to the father in capturing his last precious thoughts.
Call me an idiot, but I didn’t realize until late that Charles was a paraplegic. He hid it well, just like FDR did, for almost 50 years. Those of us who stride the world with arrogant confidence need to be mindful of the fact that misfortune and disaster could strike us at any moment – the wolf is always at the door.
We who choose to employ words to make a living draw upon a wide variety of inspirational role models to emulate – for me, Charles is one, but there are others. A lot of obvious choices out there are Hemingway, WEB Griffin, Philip K. Dick, Vic Socotra, etc. There are also artistic and musical influences and creative works of visual and sonic wonders that stretch your heart strings – see Picasso’s “les demoiselles d’avignon, Wassily Kandinsky’s “Landscape with Red Spot” of which I have a framed poster print I bought from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum during a memorable weekend in Venice hanging on my wall, or just dial up on YouTube Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” Gustav Holst’s Planet Symphony, or Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” as bookends. I always try to work in past and current pop cultural references in the literary imagery I try to compose, as well as other smart-ass shit, questionable innuendoes, and evocations of time and place that transport you gentle readers to exotic places like Paris or Hong Kong. I really have taken to Vic’s format of incorporating graphics into the unique screedology I am in the busy process of perfecting – it does pack a visual, visceral punch.
les demoiselle’s d’avignon
I used to cajole my Air Wing JOs when I had assigned them to writing analysis to use that opportunity to hone their writing skills – I had a mantra – create a “clichéa day.” Well, the new measure is to create a word that you cannot find in a Google search and I have just done it again – go ahead, Google “screedology” – there will be no results. Here’s my wiki entry, since I now own it forever:
screedology
/skrēd ah low gee/
Noun
“A term describing a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious.”
Well, not that flattering I guess, but I’ll take it – it’s not often that you get the chance to defeat Google.
The few out there that know my real identity ask me how I come up with this stuff – I can say truly that I don’t rightly know. In Latin it is best expressed as “quod est quod” – it is what it is. But maybe there’s a better explanation.
The act of creative writing, for those of us who indulge in it, is a curious combination of Indian torture and sexual release when you’re done – except I’m never done. Vic can tell you that he will get four, five, six or more versions of these pieces before he can post the penultimate one. It is never good enough – and when I read something that is now indelibly committed to web land, I still spot errors and omissions, bad wording choices, and ways to make it better – always. As Sam Kinison famously acted out in an on-stage skit, it never ends. There may be one explanation, and it is heredity. We Finns are a curious mix of Hungarian Magyars, Mongols, Russians, Lithuanians, Poles, Swedes, and Nordic mystics. Our native language (of which I can’t speak a word of by the way) is one of the most complex ones on earth – ranking up there with Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Urdu. Throw in my Mississippi and Alabama hillbilly tendencies, then you can start to understand some of the off-of-the-wall BS I come up with. Maybe another picture can illustrate the demons I have to wrestle with amidst the kaleidoscopic chaos of my thoughts – I hearken back to that weekend in Venice where and when I achieved a moment of clarity, as if:
Wassily Kandinsky – Landscape with Red Spot – 1913
Maybe this starts to explain it. I am starting to realize that I don’t have a lot of time left – and as my friend Billy Ed likes to observe on the implacable ticking time clock of mortality “…it’s later than you think.” So it’s time to spread my weary wings and take a few more cat shots in the cockpit of a new supersonic strike fighter of my own design – I just wrote my first country music song the other night; should have done it years ago.
For my fellow Socotrans out there, keep up the good work and the high quality of what we inflict upon our wider audience. We are not casting pearls before swine, but exploring our inner quests for perfection – in our own idiosyncratic styles, in an effort to educate as well as entertain. I challenge you going forward to try harder to find the right themes, the right turns of phrase, and the right words. And for our gentle readers out in NIP world, imbed it in your lizard brains that writing well is an important skill, whether you do it to make a living as an intel professional, or just having fun – ideally, you can do both. And moreover, telling tantalizing and inspirational stories in whatever you do that sew intellectual and emotional mayhem, and deeply resonate about things that matter is a worthy endeavor – and a higher calling.
That’s what Charles did on writing – so it’s good enough for me. Study his style; I am trying to do my best to be as erudite albeit a poor runner-up at best. No one will ever again be Charles, but that does not mean you can’t try to be as good, or even better, in your own style.
I wish you a happy and even more prosperous 2020 and as always, I remain your faithful servant.
Copyright 2019 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com
[1]With apologies to Carl von Clausewitz.
Point Loma: Roll On
This is a Christmas Story, I promise…
So why am I, a quasi-Naval Aviator and Intel professional writing about trucking? The writer’s muse is a horny bitch without mercy, and she strikes without warning. I am at her bidding, so here goes…
Driving big trucks is a lot of fun. I got my start when I was a grounds keeper at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear at age 16, after I had done my tour as a bus boy in the restaurant. This was like going to Middle School before I graduated to my dream job of Life Guard.
I worked for a fellow Finn, Archie Halonen. I recounted my earlier time there when I invented photo-bombing in a piece for Vic called Roundup.This is just part and parcel and ancillary to that, but I find it amusing, nonetheless. I trust you will do the same.
We Finns have a stoic side which is to never yield; we call it Sisu:
“Sisuis a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English.”[1]
Archie had that quality – quiet but determined. We groundskeepers were always on the clock, since there was a never-ending list of little shit to do, including rolling out and grooming the putting green in front of the Bird Cage Bar which overlooked Mobile Bay. And when the task list got short, Archie always had a mantra – “If you’ve got nothing to do, then you can always rake leaves.”
We had a motor-propelled leaf sucker golf cart to scoop up the vile little critters that dared encroach themselves on our sanctimonious grounds. It felt good. By that time, Archie had forgiven me for killing all of the sidewalk side grass with an over-exuberant application of Roundup and since I was one of the few guys who reliably showed up on time, he promoted me to dump-truck duty – awarding me with the well-worn keys to the beast.
We had several leaf-suckers to scavenge the expansive grounds, but all roads led to the dump truck. At the end of the day, the duty dump truck operator at that time was me. Everyone else had clocked out so after sun-down, I had to drive out to the dumping place (which is now the locale for $1M homes, so go figure), and relieve the load. Of course, I would stop off at Gary’s on the way and grab a few beers as a reward. Usually, the dumper switch worked, but one night it didn’t – fuck. Here I was stuck in the dwindling twilight and with the dumper in a half-raised erection and not sure what to do to escape.
I cycled the switch a couple of times – no joy. I got up into the bed, cleared the herbal detritus, and then did my best by jumping up and down to get the dumper to level on the truck bed. Fuck it – I cracked another beer and started to think my way out. I did have a flashlight so went into the
Of course, the battery on the dump truck was weak, so I had only a few cracks left on the motor. Resolved, I fired it up, performed a series of violent jerks both forward and back and voila! I got the bed to go down. With dim headlights I made the hazy way back to the hotel, and parked in the appointed spot. I think that was the last time I drove that truck.
My step-dad Henry was many things – and a hobbyist who mastered whatever tantalization there was out there for him to grasp. At that time, he had just retired from being President of his company in Mobile, so his next obsession became Ham Radio. He put up a 120 foot tall retractable antenna in our backyard on the bay, powered by a 1000 watt transceiver. He would carry on nightly conversations with people around the world – he even installed a base station in his pick-up truck. His father was a Baptist minister in Mississippi and the running commentary on his radio obsession was that he was talking with God every night – and maybe he was. That man taught me how to cuss among other things, and also to get down on your knees to pray for forgiveness like a schoolboy – I worshipped him. That was sort of the internet social media meeting place of the day, so my parents would go to Ham Radio Fests around the country, and we also had some visitors on occasion – fast forward a few years. It was just before Christmas in 1978, more than 40 years ago? Why did I dream this up? You never know where the muse takes you – that bitch. This time it was back down to New Orleans.
One of his closest radio head friends was Mike, who was a wildcat trucker based out of McAllen, Texas, who drove a big refrigerated rig, with a sleeping compartment above the cab. Mike was a funny Italian guy – sort of like Danny DeVito. He was a frequent visitor even though he had to swing 20 miles south either way from I-10 to come see us. He genuinely loved my step-father, and the fresh seafood he would harvest out of Mobile Bay. You knew when Mike was in town when you saw his 18-wheeler pulled up on the side of the road in front of our house off scenic route US-98 in Point Clear.
It was late-December; the pool was closed, so I was otherwise unemployed that Friday afternoon when I drove down to our house on the bay. I saw the large truck parked on the wayside, and knew that Mike was there – stand by for fun. Mike grabbed me in his characteristic bear hug when I entered our house, and asked what I was doing. Not having much to do, basically nothing and I said so.
“How would you like to be a truck driver?”
I thought for a moment, and asked:
“What do you have in mind?”
He was ripe for adventure, and wanted some company.
“I’ve got a load of cabbage that I have to deliver to New Orleans, and then I have got to get back up to Georgia to get another load. I can come back here, if you want to go. But we need to get moving in about an hour.”
Well hell yeah? Not really thinking about what was to come but caught by the idea of a new experience, I was all in. I packed a small go-bag, and then we mounted the beast.
“You’re driving, I’m talking – just do what I say.”
So shit, there I was. I had graduated from a glorified golf cart to a dump truck, and now an 18-wheeler. Yikes! Be careful of what you want, because you will surely get it.
Mike handed me the key, and I fitted it into the ignition switch, disengaged the clutch with my left foot, and fired that sucker up.
I got her going without dumping the clutch which was a good omen, and we were off to see the Wizard.
Roll on highway, roll on along
Roll on daddy ’till you get back home
Roll on family, roll on crew
Roll on momma like I asked you to do
And roll on eighteen-wheeler roll on”
It was around sundown, so we had a long night to deal with to get to NOLA. Mike never touched the wheel on the way there, but coached me through how to drive. An 18-wheeler is a curious work of automotive art – there are three transmission modes to choose from, and six forward gears; there is only one in reverse. It is diabolically hard to remember what gear you are in, much less what transmission you chose. You bikers out there know about this since you have the same challenges with riding an 18-speed model – it is a little different with three buttons on a single gear shift lever with 750 pounds of turbo-charged horse power and a 40,000 pound load swinging back and forth on your ass.
After navigating a series of country roads, we regained I-10 and turned west to bore into the long sunset. Under Mike’s tutelage, I turned into a double clutchin’ mother-fuckin’ road warrior. He taught me all of the trucker’s etiquette, or at least all that he wound reveal, like turning your lights off for a brief instant when getting passed by another truck to let them know that they had cleared your bow, tooting the horn at good-looking women, and how to communicate with hand gestures and not the bird – the latter is too easy. For long-haul truckers, it’s all about respect.
We made Slidell in a couple of hours, and then had to pull off the road at a truck stop for a break, since there was a moratorium window for allowing trucks to go downtown deep into the Vieux Carré, which was the destination to deliver our cabbage cargo.
Mike crawled up into his overhead to sleep, and I had to make do between the two front seats – hell, I was young so contorting myself into impossible positions of slumber was not the issue that it is today. After about six hours, we continued our journey, taking the skinny old two-lane Lake Ponchartrain Bridge into the city, which was and still is the direct route. In a curious turn of events, I had driven down that bridge just the weekend before with my South college bud Michael Mark. His parents were out of town so we had quickly decamped Mobile to take advantage of staying at their house in the Garden District to party – fate is strange, and visits itself upon you in most unexpected ways.
True to his word, Mike let me wind our behemoth down to the Quarter, where we awaited our turn to drop off the produce at the central market, a place where tourists don’t normally go, but the living, beating culinary heart of the city. While I sat idling in line, Mike went out to find the small coffee shop that catered to early-morning deliverers, and bought back a steaming hot white Styrofoam cup of coffee with chicory, and some scrumptious powder sugar-coated beignets ensconced in wax-paper cones – it was messy but delicious. It was sort of incredible to believe that I had been there a few days earlier enjoying the same at the Café du Monde off Jackson Square.
When our turn came for off-loading, it was a brisk and efficient process. The land-stevedores sporting their hand-trucks quickly unloaded us, and we were out of there, since we had to clear downtown before 0800 by law.
I drove back to Slidell but yielded the helm then to Mike for the ride back to LA. He dropped me off at home, and I headed straight to the rack while he went to Georgia to pick up a load of cucumbers to haul back to Houston, and then home to the Rio Grande for Christmas.
That was one weird 18 hours, but I learned a hell-of-a lot about long-haul trucking in a short amount of time. When next you get cross-wise with an 18-wheeler, get out of the way with no hurt feelings. They are on a mission, much like an attack pilot – trying to deliver a payload on target on time – and they also are consumed with your safety on the Interstate of life.
Merry Christmas and Roll On.
I remain your faithful servant
Copyright 2019 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com
[1]Source: wikipeida.com
Point Loma: Mayhem, Like Meigs
Editor’s Note: Christmas Eve and the hope for peace, and memories of The Long
War.
– Vic
24 December 2019
Mayhem, Like Meigs
I’ve written about the air war during Desert Storm, now I will bookend it with my recollections of the ground war and the almost 20-year aftermath – and how it has come back to haunt us as a job not finished. It is still a sucking chest wound for the nation.
I worked for a lot of great guys during my career, and Meigs was hands-down the best. He hooked me during a phone call when I was hesitating about accepting the Army’s offer to join the G-2 and becoming a part of JIEDDO. After 30 seconds, I knew I was fucked. The man operated at a level of genius that I still can’t comprehend, even more than a decade later. He was unconventional, and I felt honored that he had reached down to Key West and selected an obscure nobody on the road to retirement to be his Intel officer. Meigs was an intellectual and a historian – he wrote a great book about how we had applied brainpower and technology to defeat the Nazi’s U-Boats in WWII titled Slide Rules and Submarines – I have a signed copy. We had an interesting relationship, and after we really got to know each other, he would tell me things that I know he didn’t trust to tell to the rest of our senior staff, since he knew I wasn’t going to run off and tattle on him to the Army. Even before the All-State commercials, Meigs was mayhem – he just committed it in a different way.
He had a reputation and track record for brilliance and achieved four stars; a hell of a career, rising to command USAREUR, and NATO STABFOR in that difficult war in Bosnia. But he was really an academic at heart – a warrior-scholar with a PhD and cast much in the mold of Thucydides, Julius Caesar, and George S. Patton, Jr. He was named after his great-great-great grand-uncle, who as the Quartermaster of the Army of the Republic, and among other great works constructed Arlington National Cemetery on the former bounds of the Lee-Custis estate, and the iconic National Building Museum – itself a marvelous work of 19th Century engineering art. And by the way, he finished the Capitol – you can go see all three when in the Imperial City. And oh by the way, he also built Ft. Jefferson in the Keys.
The National Building Museum
Meigs was born half an orphan; his father was
a tank brigade commander who was killed in action in Alsace-Lorraine during WWII, a month before he was born. His family had a life-long record of service to the nation. His grandfather was a retired Navy Commander and surrogate father, which I think gave him a certain affinity for us salt-water types. Oddly enough, he didn’t choose to be a Jr. or the 3rd, and he never introduced himself as Doctor, although he could. Like his father before him, he chose to be an armored cavalry guy after graduation from West Point – I think he was chasing the legacy of the dead father that he never knew.
After retirement, Meigs was safely ensconced back in his academic uniform as a PhD professor of history at the Maxwell School up in Syracuse. As I wrote in my companion piece to this – Heart of Darkness and in quoting Trotsky, “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you” and it got straight to him before he was even in the cradle, and pursued him relentlessly. After getting to know him, he told me the story about why he came out of retirement to take on JIEDDO. We were getting our asses kick by the Mujahedeen in Iraq at the time, and the CENTCOM Commander John had gone before Congress advocating for a “Manhattan Project” to take on the very real IED threat – it was as bad a situation as it was during the Vietnam War – pictures of bloody, maimed and dead troops were breathlessly reported upon by the MSM who hated W with a passion every fucking evening on the nightly news, and it was glaringly obvious that something had to be done. One autumn day, Monty got a phone call from then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul, who painted him nicely in a corner: “The Secretary would like you to come down to DC to discuss how we can go about saving the lives of our soldiers, Marines, and airmen” as if he had an option to say “no.” I realized after hearing this recitation that he had used the same trick on me. Then, he created mayhem that still resonates to this day.
Meigs dutifully put back on his now-symbolic but very real four stars, and went to work. We had shorthand for GOs in the Army, and his was M4. He had a few demands for returning to service – there was a time limit, he had to have unlimited budget authority, and that he could select five people detailed to him for one year to make it work (I was not one of them, just a replacement part). He then went on to surreptitiously construct a unique, forward-leaning and innovative brigade-sized operations, training, technology, and intelligence organization that, as Duke Ellington would have put it, was beyond category. The obscuration of our internal workings was deliberately intended to befuddle critics – and it worked. For example, our offices in the old Polk Building in Crystal City were not gold-plated, but furnished with battered junk furniture from DRMO – that was intentional. It was only after the Army was able to, in their own unique and doggedly determined manner, re-exert control and then the end was near and that’s when I quit – the fun and adventure were over. The last time I visited there, the offices were sleek and spiffy, and the sight of that turned my stomach. I remember from my days as the Executive Assistant for the CNO Strategic Studies Group when we worked on innovation for the Navy and about the same time the Army came out with a chilling statement “We are going to capture innovation.” Well, they did…
One of the five people he asked for was Maxie, who had been his G-2 in Bosnia. Maxie had sought me out, at M4’s bidding, to find for him an Intel officer who didn’t delve in group-think and succumb to the whims of the thought police. He was the one who came down to Key West to see firsthand what we were doing in fighting the drug war. For that, I will be forever grateful – for what came next I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Maxie is sadly gone, and I intend to write a paean to him one day, since no one else will do it. I’m still searching for the theme and I think I’ve found one, but it will take time to get it right.
My indoctrination into the Army was fairly innocuous. I reported to the G-1 senior officer affairs office in the basement of the Pentagon, filled out the paperwork, and was sworn in. At that point, my former comrade in arms and J-5 counterpart from Key West Jeff showed up to surprise me – it worked. He said “We’ve been expecting your arrival on board, and Terry wants to meet you, now.” I didn’t know who Terry was, but got rudely educated “He’s the deputy G-2 – get a goddamned clue Point.” Fuck, I was in the Army now.
We went upstairs to the G-2’s E-Ring office spaces, and were shepherded into Terry’s office. It was obviously a debutante moment for me, and I managed to pass muster. Terry suggested that we go grab a few minutes of the G-2’s time. We checked in with his exec, who said we had maybe 15 minutes, and were ushered in. The G-2, also named Jeff, was a gracious and great guy like Terry; we hit it off like gangbusters – that 15 minutes turned into two hours of story-telling and getting-to-know-you. In an earlier age or something out of a WEB Griffin novel, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had pulled out a bottle of Scotch to seal the deal. Really fucking great guys are just that – fucking great. They knew all about my background – that I was not an Academy grad but had a real-life college education and was an OCS product. They awarded me an Army call sign which I have never used or disclosed until now – Dark Blue. It was their rip on the Navy’s counterpart to the Air Force’s Checkmate.[1] On departing, they gave me two charges – always make your decisions based on what’s best for the soldier on the ground, and that I had to root for Army in the Army-Navy game. At his seat at the round table in his office, Jeff pointed out to me a sheet of typing paper that he had taped down on it that spelled out in bold characters “No More Marplots.” His unstated message was clear – don’t be one if you want to be in the G-2. I had no inkling of what a Marplot was but I wasn’t about to betray my ignorance there in his office while caught up in that dick-measuring contest – you only get one chance to make a good first impression. You can bet that I looked it up when I got back to my office in Crystal City. I will leave it up to you gentle readers out there to go research that term and what it means for yourselves.
This piece is ultimately about ground combat in the Gulf War and it is complicated; I’m just taking a round-about way of getting there, so let’s flashback nearly 29 years ago to the eve of the ground war in Desert Storm.
Midway was the Battle Force Flag ship, and we were plain-near exhausted after six months of deployment and six weeks of nearly non-stop combat operations. Our flight deck had been de-nuded of non-skid, planes loaded with ordnance were sliding all over the place just taxiing in the humidity of the Persian Gulf winter – it was becoming down-right dangerous; and collectively we were just plain-dog tired out from lack of meaningful sleep. To keep us in the fight, we had to take a week off at anchor at the Bahrain Bell so crews of technicians from the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard could come out and perform some emergency repairs, and ensure we could exert our weight in the ground war. For us, it was a well-needed combat pause.
We had gone from two strikes a day to four, then six, eight, twelve, and finally fourteen. The relentless metronome of war was clicking; summoning us all to do its bidding. The force was roaming the battlefield, big time. Now rejuvenated and as the fateful day of the kick-off for the ground war approached, my CVIC counterpart Van and I summoned our troops for a short meeting. Our message was simple – the ground war is coming, and will be even more demanding. We are hoping for the best, but if it goes south, then it will be all-hands on deck, so get ready to learn how to load bombs. Get out there and volunteer your services to the Gunner to get acquainted with doing that and fuck Intel, we will all be ordies.
I went out a couple of times and participating in the back-breaking chore of loading bombs. Thank God it was the winter in the Gulf – I can’t imagine how excruciating that would have been in the sweltering summer conditions we enjoyed there on my next cruise in that garden spot.
The night before the ground war started, the Marines sent a delegation out to the flagship to brief us on their scheme of maneuver, and implored us to do-all to support them. They had been “honored” to be the first across the line – mainly I think to see if Saddam would use chemical weapons against them – they were going in MOP-4. The Marines had developed a brilliant scheme of maneuver. They had an Army brigade of M-1A1s backing them up called the Tiger Brigade, who would swing out right or left to flank any forward resistance encountered during their advance – the Marines would fix the enemy up front, and the Army would come in and obliterate them. They delineated their Fire Support Coordination Lines (FSCL) so we would know where not to bomb. Their mantra was “Speed and Violence.”
I can still see the haunted looks in their eyes – they were going to roar into the Valley of the Shadow of Death in less than 24 hours from then. For once, the flight deck above us was eerily quiet – we were frantically servicing aircraft and taking the forward landing gear doors off of the A-6s off so they could carry more bombs. The ordies had amassed pallets and carts of built-up MK82 500-pounders on the hangar deck below us – the real fury of Desert Storm was getting ready to be unleashed.
The rest is heroic and historic. The Marines cut through the Iraqis like shit through a goose, and constantly exceeded their self-designated FSCLs – it was hard to keep up with their speed of advance. They detonated the barbed wire, and used combat vehicles with plows to bury alive the Iraqi front-line martyrs on either side of their salient. Unlike us on the carrier, they were allowed to use napalm and Fuel-Air-Explosives (FAE) to “soften up” the enemy. The Air Force did them one better and pulled some BLU-82 Vietnam War-era Daisy Cutters out of the ammunition depots and dumped several on the heads of the bad guys, and also provided AC-130 Spectre gunships working with the Marine FACs, who killed everything in the backfield. They also had their own Intruders and Hornets dealing death from above alongside the weight of ordnance our four Gulf carriers could deliver. The hardest part was sorting out the mega death. I begged for a night KA-6 tanker hop so as to watch the mayhem being delivered from a vantage point on high, but safely offshore – yeah, right.
Out to the west, the great engine of the Army VII Corps was revving up, and delivered their left-hook hammer blows to the bad guys. It was a route, and my future boss M4 was there in command of the 2ndBrigade of the 1stArmored, committing mayhem of his own. His intelligence officer at that time was a guy who later as A4 became a good friend and willing co-conspirator. He told me that they had a run where they destroyed 100 tanks in less than ten minutes – that’s got to be a record. Then, there was the Highway of Death.
The Highway of Death
Figuring out that they were fucked six ways to Friday, the Iraqi Army decided to bug out, and retreated en masse up Highway 80 to Basra, as if that was going to be a sanctuary. Our J-STARS friends quickly discerned the movement of a large body of armored vehicles heading north from Kuwait City; the order came out from General Schwarzkopf – which was basically to Unleash Hell.
It was a Dark and Stormy Night, and I pity the fools in the Iraqi Army who died doing what they believed was their duty – ours was the Heart of Darkness personified. The weather was terrible; flight ops were tough since we were caught up in the maelstrom of a Shamal – a living metaphor for a perfect Desert Storm. It was raining like hell on the ground, and the bad guys had hell reigning on top of them from above. We had B-52s and F-111s and F-15 Strike Eagles and F-16s and Brit Tornados and Intruders and Hornets, oh my; bombing the fucking shit out of those assholes. Note in the picture that there are no craters – we all used contact fuses for max frag effect. It must have been a nightmare for the bad guys – as if we gave a shit.
Imagine if you will – there you are an Iraqi conscript in miserable conditions, scared shitless from what you have already witnessed from American and Allied firepower and feeling guilty and fearful for the retribution coming for what you had done to the civilians of Kuwait as an occupying force. Now you have fire and fury reigning down upon you like divine vengeance delivered from on high for raping and brutalizing Kuwaiti civilians and abusing our POWs – it sucks to be you so cry me a fucking river.
Of course, some political staffer ass-kisser came up with the bumper sticker for GHWB and sold him on “The 100 Hours War” so we were stopped just short of total victory – just one more day, one more fucking day to completely annihilate the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard. We were on the cusp of ending that shit over there and it would have saved us from what is now almost 20 years of future trouble. Still, we departed theater to return to Japan thinking it was over – we’ve learned the hard way that nothing is over. Now let’s get back to JIEDDO.
M4 had that battlefield quality like you see in the movies about Patton and MacArthur – he knew the bad guys couldn’t even put so much as a scratch upon him. We used to chuckle at how avidly he would put on his pot and body armor, and then could hardly wait to stride effortlessly and confidently into a war zone – unafraid. It was a great thing to see a supreme warrior in his element. I realized then and there that he hated DC and the BS we had to endure there even more than I did.
On our theater visit, we had a WaPo media imbed alongside us for the ride, Rick, who I later learned was a Pulitzer and Pritzker prize winning author and reporter. He was the guy standing next to Dave (later known as P4) on the cusp of Desert Storm and captured his immortal question “Tell me how this ends?” We still don’t know.
Rick got an appointment to West Point, but turned it down since he wanted to pursue a literary career, but one spent chronicling the military. Some aficionados of Ayn Rand would call him a “second hander” but I didn’t see that in his character. He just chose a different way of serving by telling the story of our brave heroes.
I style myself as a Finnish redneck since my father was a pure Finn whose parents had emigrated from the old, cold country to Massachusetts. My mother on the other hand was pure DAR, and her mother’s mother’s last name was the same as Rick’s – her ancestry went back to George Washington. Rick and I figured out that we were probably cousins, since there weren’t that many of that ilk in the country, much less us Pt. Lomas. In an ironic twist of fate, one of my distant family relatives and forbears on my mother’s side, Frank Hatton, used to own the WaPo once upon a time back before the turn of the 20thCentury, so go figure. Rick met up with us at the airport in Kuwait City, and was a great guy – smart, witty, and humble. He could be opinionated, but it was never about him. I liked him immediately.
After our first meeting with Rick, M4 called me aside and told me that he wanted to include him in all of our meetings, and asked me if I had a problem with that. I told him that since he was the head of an independent DoD organization, he had the authority to determine who was in, and who was out for all things GENSER. We agreed that if we got into anything SCI or SAP, then Rick was going to be asked to vacate the room, since we didn’t control those accesses. Rick attended all of our meetings, and M4 made sure to tell our hosts who he was and why he was included as part of our team. Some gave us dirty looks, but went along with it – fuck, he was a four-star and unafraid, after-all. Rick later went on to write an award-winning multi-part series in the WaPo called “Left-of-Boom” – you can look it up.
I don’t appear in it, so don’t think I am blowing myself. JIEDDO had been suffering a lot of bad press about being a waste of taxpayer dollars and subject to corruption and abuse by defense contractors – and it was partly deserved. One of my first charges was to get rid of that shit. But we did some great things that will never be recorded in history – things that I can never talk or write about ever. I realized around day-three of the trip that this was M4’s way of getting ahead of history and he was using our visit to do just that, with Rick as his witness. He may have been a tanker, but he was a fighter pilot at heart – he who gets to the chalkboard first after the dogfight wins. He had a touch of Navy inherited from his grandfather and caused mayhem, indeed; now, back to the narrative.
Since M4 was a four-star, even retired, CENTCOM gave us our own private C-17 to jet around theater. We staged out of Ali al Salem Airfield in Kuwait, which ironically was one of our targets on night one of Desert Storm – I did check for any trace of our BDA. On boarding the aircraft, I knew from past experience from MAC flights in the Navy that there was a great, comfortable jump seat in the C-17’s cockpit, which afforded a panoramic view, and beat the shit out of the otherwise uncomfortable paratrooper seats in the cargo hold. I asked the ground crew if it was available, and it was. Ordinarily, I would have just taken it, but as a courtesy, I told M4 about it and asked him if he wanted that seat for the ride to Afghanistan. I had only been onboard for about a month, so we didn’t really know each other that well yet. He gave me a very interesting look since he had no idea that it was an option for him, and why I was offering him a gift ride. He thought for a moment and said “I never knew about that and yes, thanks.” I think that sealed our deal.
Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
We flew south and out of the Gulf to go around Iran, and then hugged the border heading north over Pakistan to arrive in Bagram, where we made an extreme combat descent for landing.
Afghanistan is a god-forsaken place. It’s said that it is where empires go to die – like the Brits, Soviets, and now us. From what I could see, there ain’t a there there – God knows I never want to go back. But it’s important somehow. My best memory of it was when we were flying in an SH-60 back to Bagram from scary Kabul, executing evasive counter-SAM maneuvers and popping flares over every ridgeline of a brown, featureless landscape dotted by an endless series of mud-brick compounds with their brick-firing kilns. I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of that Dodge.
But before we get back to the fun, here’s a literary hold-short; we should examine why Afghanistan might be important. Let’s see, it is three times the size of Iraq, with a population of 34 million, and most of them males under the age of 18 – and most of them have now grown up hating America. There still are remains of ancient cultural artifacts and places that haven’t been totally destroyed by the Taliban. It also produces something like 90% of the world’s heroin supply and was the once and probably future home of Al Quaida. Yeah, we should probably pay attention to that place, as much as we may hate that thought.
When we departed for our return flight to Kuwait, I once again asked M4 if he wanted the cat-bird seat. He acceded to me since he wanted to concentrate on his notes, so I took it. From my vantage point in the cockpit, it was a pretty interesting, high-G departure. Since we were light-loaded, the Air Force pilots pulled our Globemaster nearly vertical upon clearing the runway and soared into the wild blue yonder above the Hindu Kush – off we went. As a quasi-trained A-6 B/N, I was intent on watching the flight instruments as much as looking at the awe-inspiring terrain surrounding us. We attained a 50-degree up angle, maintaining 220kts indicated air speed in the climb out, and the altimeter was winding pretty quick. At 17,500 ft ASL, I glanced out of the cockpit and saw that we were almost nearly co-altitude with the mountain peaks – fuck.
Once leveling off at FL360, the rest of the hop was uneventful; I even got invited to sit in the right seat as co-pilot for about an hour after we banked south of Iran over the Strait of Hormuz to head back northwest over the Persian Gulf.
We recovered in Kuwait to rest up overnight for our next destination, Baghdad. There, we got to meet with P4 and O3, and I got to go to the Perfume Palace to see my former SOUTHCOM overseer and good friend L2 who had lured a few compadres out of Miami to accompany him – a homecoming of sorts. The troop surge was coming, and they asked that we re-double our efforts as if you can work more than 15 hours per day without going insane – we did. The pace we endured in DC after we got back for a while afterwards was merciless, but we were in DC, and got to go home every night. Baghdad was excruciatingly hot, something like 135 degrees in the shade and dangerous as all get-out, so who were we to deny those engaged in combat our utmost when back at home? To this day, I still marvel at how our troops endured and still endure it. That’s why they deserve our best efforts, respect, and why we should continue applying all of the lessons learned from M4 on how to employ cutting edge technology to enact all of the mayhem we can to hammer down on the heads of bad guys who desperately deserve it. Bang Bang – you’re fucking dead.
I was crushed when I found out M4 was leaving – I came to work for him, not the Army or DoD per se. In his characteristic low-key fashion, he eschewed any big departing extravaganza, but did agree to a small, quiet award ceremony at the Pentagon in the SECDEF’s offices – I was one of the few invitees.
Senator John Warner, R. VA
While M4 was the honored guest, the real star of the show was John Warner, former SECNAV, five-term Senator, and sixth husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor – that’s a pretty impressive resumé. Before SECDEF Gates got there, Senator Warner’s charisma entered the room 10 seconds before he physically arrived, and everyone turned to the door in expectation. Even though he was nearly blind, with the aid of a human seeing-eye dog he determinedly sought out every one of us in attendance to introduce himself and shake our hands. Like his lefty-leaning politics at the time or not, he knew how to work a room – a consummate politician. The man had presence so you can see what Liz saw in him. Shortly thereafter, Bob Gates was able to disengage himself from whatever crisis-of-the-day he was dealing with, and entered the conference room to execute the short award ceremony. He started out by thanking everyone there, and then turned to the Senator – I will never forget his simple words:
“Senator Warner, we are honored by your presence and your dedication to taking care of our troops, as you always have.” Wow.
The ceremony was brief, and M4 departed. I did get to see him a few times after that, but not recently. That man changed my life. Mayhem – I’m still dealing with it.
I remain your faithful servant.
_____
Copyright 2019 Point Loma
http://www.vicsocotra.com
[1]After 9/11, the Navy created a think-tank group called Deep Blue, named after the IBM computer who defeated then world chess champion Garry Kasporov – Checkmate.
Point Loma: The Quarterdeck
The Quarterdeck
No one who worked in the Pentagon on 9/11 thought that war would blaze itself into their lives that bright and lovely Tuesday morning. And I’m pretty sure that no one at NAS Pensacola had any idea of what was going to happen to them last week. And now we learn that it was a gun-free zone – that worked out pretty well, didn’t it?
Ensign Josh Watson was the OOD of a training building not a warship, but it’s important to understand what that meant in this situation. I hearken back nearly 40 years ago to OCS in King Hall at Newport. We had a formal Quarterdeck with an OOD and watch team. There was ALWAYS an armed Master at Arms (MAA) standing by, sporting a nasty-looking piece on one side of his arms belt, and a Billy Stick on the opposite side, much as it was on ships. The Quarterdeck ceremony was intended to indoctrinate and re-inforce the ritual procedures and protocol we inherited from the Royal Navy. We don’t just let any shit-head on our ships, but if you are legit, we will treat you with respect; and if you are important, then we will render you honors with bells, as well. Josh had that responsibility, and executed it in tragic spades.
It was a simple and still for me a proud tradition – you approached the Quarterdeck, stood to attention, saluted, announced your presence, and requested permission to come aboard. The OOD and watch team came to attention, returned salute, and assuming you weren’t some sort of Islamic terrorist would answer with “permission granted, welcome aboard.” Not so much a tradition at shore establishments these days I’ve noticed of late, which probably the root of the problem at NAS Pensacola last week, but it was very much so in the training commands like OCS Newport back in the day.
Old Ironsides in Combat Action
The proper way to approach the Quarterdeck is an ingrained habit; I executed the same this summer when visiting the USS Constitution. I mounted the brow, stood to attention, faced and saluted the ensign flying from the stern, and then turned to the watch, saluted smartly and loudly barked out my presence and intent ”Officer of the Deck! Request permission to come aboard, sir.”
There was my family and a line of visitors behind me that I was holding up but goddamnit, I was a Navy Captain visiting the oldest commissioned warship in our fleet and not just another tourist, so fuck your momentary inconvenience – I WILL render honors and uphold the traditions which were permanently branded into my psyche back in OCS. The OOD took immediate notice – this dude in shorts, flip flops and T-shirt was a whole ‘nother cat. He rose to attention, saluted and hollered out “Permission granted, welcome aboard.”
I later chatted with him before we left and he asked me what rank I had held in my prior service. I told him that I was a retired Navy 0-6, so he offered me bells – well Hell Yeah, and got them upon my departure – which I executed in the same perfected manner; saluting and requested permission to go ashore. After the OOD called attention on deck, I saluted him and the flag of the nation of which we serve, and was bonged off. I had earned those 15 seconds of fleeting fame – four bells and the parting homage “Captain, United States Navy Retired, departing” by virtue of 27-years of service. A small reward maybe, but honors are honors after all, so why not collect them when offered? The funny thing is that while we were walking back down the pier to return to downtown Boston, I heard bells being rung for another retired officer behind us, who must have heard mine.
When coming and going to and from King Hall after normal daytime working hours, you had to report departures and arrivals via the Quarterdeck, since they locked the side doors after dark. And, part of the OCS catechism was that you also had to perform at least one formal watch as the Officer Candidate OOD aka the OCOOD. There, you learned to develop an instinct on judging people and how to handle difficult situations – and you had an armed backup if it went south on you.
While in OCS, I had developed a friendship with this SEAL Chief in our company who was pursuing a commission via the NESEP program. He was a funny, short, and balding guy in his mid-30s, but more so a larger-than-life character and a huge liberty risk. He was our Deputy Company Commander and an all-around good guy. For some reason, he took a liking to me – just some callow Finnish redneck from LA. He had a rack of super-duper ribbons earned in Vietnam that was pretty incredible – Silver Star, Bronze Stars, Purple Hearts, etc. He was a true stone cold-blooded killer – let’s call him Pete. I still don’t know why we got to be friends, but maybe he saw in me a quality that I didn’t know I possessed at the time.
We had a JO Club in Newport back then called the Datum (I’m trying hard to find a picture of it but it seems none exist on the Internet), which is where we went first on Friday nights for Happy Hour, and maybe stayed too late on occasion. No one above the rank of LT was allowed in, and it was pretty raucous. In addition to us OCs, we had the doctors, nurses and lawyers going to Officer Instructional School (OIS) to mix with who we termed “Oysters.” They went through a six-week course in officer etiquette, since they were already professionals and not eligible for command-at-sea. The Oysters lived in Nimitz Hall cattycorner from the parade ground to the lower left from King Hall, and were assigned single rooms. Unlike us, they could come and go as they pleased, and sometimes lightning would strike -you knew it was already going to be a good liberty weekend when struck.
Around 2300 at the Datum, and after about 2011 beers, Pete would get this strange look on his face, like he was back in the Mekong Delta somewhere, face-to-face with Charlie. He would take a long, hard, knowing look at his beer glass; take a bite out of it, and start chewing it up. The first time it happened, I was a little taken back, but got used to him doing that as I realized it was his way of coping with personal demons – there was a part of his soul left back there in the jungle environs surrounding Saigon. He would normally eat about half a glass and that was okay – but one chilly Friday night, he ate two.
The Datum closed down at 2400, and then we had one hour to stumble our way on the mile-or so long walk back to King Hall and officially report ourselves back aboard to the OCOOD on the Quarterdeck before liberty expired at 0100. Once aboard – you could always sneak out later… like making a date over in Nimitz Hall, but this was not one of those nights.
Pete that evening was obviously experiencing some extreme flashbacks, and was not as assiduous as he should have been in chewing up the broken shards of beer glass – his lips were bleeding – and God only knows what was going on deep inside his innards. They flashed the lights at midnight, and then we were shooed out of the Datum. He was pretty well fucked up so, I grabbed his arm and ushered him out the door. It was late October and no Uber to come to the rescue. It was freaking cold and we were drunk; with a long way to walk – survival was foremost on my mind, and we were stuck in extremis conditions of our own dumbshit making. If we didn’t show up before the witching hour on what was now Saturday morning, we were going to get administratively fucked come Monday.
It was an ordeal – the Datum stood atop a steep hill above the harbor, and getting down that was just the first obstacle to navigate. Imagine dragging 175-pounds of solid but wandering SEAL muscle through that hilly trek and maze of roadside ditches encircling Coddington Cove to get back to King Hall. Naval Station Newport had a series of above-ground 2ft-diameter steam lines that snaked around the base along the roadsides which constantly vented at the seams, so in the near-freezing conditions that October night, it was dark, damp and dank, and there was this mist of vapor floating around us like something out of a cheap horror movie – surreal. Pete wasn’t much help, and would collapse without warning on the ground either laughing or crying.
I had sobered up pretty much around 0040 when I checked my watch; we were behind PIM (Point of Intended Movement) getting back to King Hall, so I realized that we needed to get mission-oriented. I picked him up, wrapped an arm around him, and we limped back together – I was calling cadence like a drill instructor. “Yo’ left, yo’ left, yo’ left right left.” It may sound like a stupid idea, but it worked like magic upon him at some innate level, and we arrived there with five minutes to spare.
You learned early on in OCS to check the watch bill to find out who the OCOOD was going to be on a liberty night in order to avoid dealing with known assholes. You could always do an end-around by knocking on someone’s window to get them to come open one of the ground floor doors where our company was located, but that was a risky proposition – and there were roving security patrols to deal with or avoid. During the warm summer nights, we used to designate a door at one end of the ground floor passage ways (P-ways) that was going to be propped open, but not when it was cold as shit. This night, the OCOOD after midnight was a good guy from our company who I knew wouldn’t fuck us up in front of witnesses – as long as we were on time, so we were probably going to be safe.
We shambled up to the glass door Quarterdeck Lobby in front of King Hall, and I took a minute to straighten up Pete, whose lips were still bleeding. He was one sodden mess from his encounters with the ground, but he was my shipmate and I was his wingman. We entered the vortex of official Navy-dom and sort of made it to attention since Pete was reeling and I had to keep an arm on him. I announced our presence and requested permission to come aboard – what a sight that must have been. My OCOOD buddy took a long look at us while Pete was swaying back and forth and drooling blood, suppressed a smirk, and granted us permission to come aboard. All the while, the MAA was standing to the side with side-arm holstered but ready – we weren’t much danger to anyone besides ourselves.
While dragging Pete towards the main P-way and the sanctuary of our Quarters, for some strange reason I stopped short – and still don’t understand why.
Star Trek Communicator – Who would have thought?
I mimicked taking out a Star Trek-era communicator out of my pocket and flipping it open. I spoke into the palm of my fake communicator hand – “Point Loma to Alpha Company, beam us up Scotty.”
Decorum on the Quarterdeck collapsed into laughter – that was the old Navy.
They closed down the Datum as a cost-cutting measure for MWR (Morale, Welfare & Recreation) a couple of weeks later and at the same time, deprived us of our civilian clothes-on-liberty privilege, probably for good reason. Pete was on a different program than us regular OCs and was commissioned shortly thereafter and went on later to command SEAL Teams; I never saw him again.
I was commissioned a few weeks after he left so the Datum closing was not a big deal although we did have to endure the boring Happy Hour nightlife of the main O’club over on Coaster’s Harbor Island next to the Naval War College, where proper decorum ruled. There are more stories about life in OCS and Newport that summer and fall there that are best left untold. Surviving OCS was hard; the Fleet was easy after that.
If Josh Watson had had an armed MAA on his Quarterdeck, he and others of his watch team may still be alive. It hurts to think that the new Navy eliminated armed MAAs as a cost-cutting measure, and most likely public displays of side arms and other weapons so as not to offend anyone’s sensibilities. War?
Good God Y’all.
This whole unfortunate situation is sad beyond belief, and has crushed the souls of many of us here in Annapolis. His family and those of the other victims deserve and are getting their share of sympathy and respect for their now dead sons and friends, but there’s more to it. While defending the sanctity of his Quarterdeck, that incredibly brave young man died as much a hero as anyone else who has done so throughout our history while serving on fleet warships or rolling in on target – we are at war and there is no difference in my mind.
He was on watch, performing his duty as the OOD and saved countless lives – take a knee, and say a fervent prayer for the departed.
The Navy has taken a beating in the press lately – a lot justly deserved. There’s a long way to go to right the ship of public opinion and while tragedy should never be taken lightly, it offers opportunity for a restart.
Here’s what I propose, so now hear this: First, immediately award Ensign Josh Watson with whatever Naval Aviator wings he wanted to wear, because he earned them – they are Angel Wings. Second, you also have to award him the Navy & Marine Corps Medal for heroism as well as the Purple Heart for wounds suffered in battle. Do the right thing – because anything less in my view is unacceptable. If I were still large and in charge, the paperwork would already be in my in-box for signature; make it so.
To date. the administration (outside of the FBI) and MSM have refused to describe what happened as an act of radical Islamic terrorism – GMAFB. Assuming the watch is a solemn event. On a warship at sea or in a training command ashore, the OOD is legally in command, not the Captain, who remains legally responsible – there is a distinction. Regardless of circumstances, however, the orders you are going to issue and actions you take are legally binding and final. Once comfortable that you understand the situation and are ready to assume the watch, and thereby command, you approach the current standing OOD, salute and state:
“I am ready to relieve you, sir.”
The OOD salutes back and says:
“I am ready to be relieved.”
“I relieve you sir.”
“I stand relieved.”
“Very well.”
Still holding salute, the fresh OOD then turns to his watch team:
“Attention on the bridge – this is LTJG Point Loma and I assume the watch.”
That act never failed to fill me with awe at what I was doing. And if you don’t understand the solemnity of that, then get your mind right, because now it’s your turn, for better or worse. Our dead ship-mates Josh, Cameron Walters and Mohammad Sameh Haitham understood that, and deserve better. They had the deck, Josh was in command, and they defended it until the very end.
I remain your faithful servant.
Copyright 2019 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com
Point Loma: Heart of Darkness
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Navy SEAL Chief Edward Gallagher
“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”[1]
I’ve been watching this drama with great interest from afar – as much as one can within the beltway of the Swamp. It has fucked up everyone from the President right down to the SOF deck plates. Who’s wrong and who’s right? It has so far claimed the career and legacy of the former SECNAV, who should now shut the fuck up, since he is playing a loser’s hand, and will go down in history as just one more stupid shit fired for going behind the back of his boss. The NCIS and Navy JAG prosecutors are in the same boat – exposed in this story if you dare follow the link:
https://www.navytimes.com/opinion/2019/11/27/op-ed-navy-corruption-and-the-gallagher-case/
It doesn’t paint a flattering picture of the Navy, much less the PC culture of our leadership. And this also goes for the three Army guys who were also exonerated by Presidential fiat.
A couple of weeks ago, I was staying up late writing and decided to take a break, flipping through the channels, and came upon the long director’s cut of Apocalypse Now, which was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s tale of a 19th Century journey up the Congo River in Africa, to wit:
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa. Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow’s story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between what Conrad calls “the greatest town on earth”, London, and Africa as places of darkness.[2]
Central to Conrad’s work is the idea that there is little difference between “civilised people” and those described as “savages”; Heart of Darkness raises questions about imperialism and racism.[2]
It inspired a lot of debate at the time about the moral imperative of the British Empire, and was the inspiration for Francis Ford Copolla’s epic, which 40 years ago explored the psyche and morality of the Vietnam War; eerie parallels here – and it never lacks for searing drama.
Martin Sheen did a great job of playing the lead character of Captain Benjamin Willard in channeling Charles Marlow as both the narrator and chief protagonist, matched up against the immortal Marlon Brando as Kurtz the antagonist. But the conundrum remains and even after the end you still have to wonder – who was the more moral man living in the Heart of Darkness?
As I have stated earlier, it is my goal in writing these opinion pieces to educate and entertain, and then try my best to relate my own personal experience and render opinions for the benefit of our younger Socotra readers. I thought long and hard about finding a seam in the Gallagher tragedy and I think I found it; darkness is harbored in the hearts of every upright sapient being that currently inhabits or has ever walked the planet Earth – if mercy and goodness are the yin, then inherit cruelty and sadism are the yang of human nature, and nothing brings out the latter so much as war.
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I swore up and down that I was not going to really write about the Gulf War. Not that it was bad, but some things that go on cruise definitely need to stay on cruise. The Chief Gallagher saga has ripped off that scab, and what it reveals about all of us. I will now admit that the Heart of Darkness syndrome became a part of my DNA –and there is a thin line between being a stone-cold professional, and a raving, blood-thirsty fiend and maniac – so here goes.
War sucks, plain and simple – there may be glory to be found, but success in that endeavor is gained at the incredible mental and physical pain caused by committing acts of blood-letting and savagery. That’s why we now have a clinical acronym for it – PTSD. I don’t think that I have it, since I don’t really feel any remorse or guilt about what we did, but I may also be lying to myself. There’s a dichotomy in all of us self-styled warriors – we can be the nicest people you will ever meet, but don’t cross us when we have the proper ROE. I saw that quality in the people I worked with from Delta and Team Six when laboring for SOCOM – they were great guys, but also cold-blooded killers. One of my favorite satirical short poems sums it up pretty nicely:
“Roses are red,
Violets are Blue.
I’m a schizo,
And so are we.”
Harkening back to my War College days, we used to love using dead guy quotes in our papers. Trotsky had a great way of putting it: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” That hit home when we saw our now dead friends murdered in the Pentagon on 9/11 in real-time on TV. Stalin had another favorite of mine: “…a single death is a tragedy – a million deaths is a statistic.” But here’s the Master of War, On War:
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Carl von Clausewitz characterized war as (and I paraphrase here since I can’t find the actual quote) “…a mystical force which roams the battlefield, seizing control of the hearts and souls of even the most moral of men, and bending them to its will.”
I’ve been there, done that, and it is fucking scary – an out-of-body experience. War makes you do superhuman things, like staying up 10 days straight after H-Hour trying to sort out the targeting for four carrier air wings and maybe sleeping two hours a day during down times between launches, normally sitting in your chair in the carrier’s intel center; getting woken up to be fucked with by the CARGRU staff,[3] signing strike reports (MISREPS) tucked under your arm while napping, and when not chain-smoking Marlboros and sucking down stale black coffee, you were eating box lunches and dinners delivered to you by your troops who were concerned about your well-being.
I only took time off to take an occasional shower and change my grungy khakis; I lost 20 pounds in the process. Don’t get me wrong; despite the fact that the experience almost killed me, I still look back on the ordeal and I never felt more alive. I loved combat ops – it was surreal; terrible but enthralling. I finally got some down time for a day, and slept through most of it until we got called to GQ when we thought we were under Exocet attack by the Iraqi Air Force. Danger definitely got my full attention and in the end took a large chunk of my as, so maybe we do have PTSD, after all.
Ergo, I learned the hard way that war is a bad business – once you are there and possessed or cursed with living the dream or nightmare depending on your point of view, then it demands your all, so you better damn well fight like a demon since you don’t know when or how it is going to end. After things settled out and we could see how it was going, then our blood lust really manifested itself. There is nothing better than kicking the ever-living shit out of an enemy, and avenging all of the casualties suffered by our brave warfighters.
Since we were the Battle Force Flagship for all four Persian Gulf carriers, I took every combat loss of our pilots (none from Ma Midway thanks to the fates) to heart. The best way we had to get revenge was to stick our biggest and most precise weaponry to the bad guys as we could, and the bigger the better – the cold, grim and legal application of superior firepower. In doing so, I felt like an avenging angel, aided and abetted by my super senior chief Pappy, who was an imagery analyst par excellence. Our air wing strike pilots awarded him with the moniker “The Eye of Death” and we wielded the virtual sword of justice in pursuit of the mission without mercy.
I grew up as an Intruder guy and we owned the night, but it was our Hornet pilots who dominated the day. I had participated in the Hornet Air Wing compatibility OPEVAL back in the early-80s – we told Big Navy not to buy it – too late. It was Desert Storm that made me a believer in how awesome a weapon it had become when it was full of gas, which was always an issue. The first good Gulf War was one where gas was not that much of a big deal, since we were assigned to be up front on point in Carrier Operations Area One (CVOA-1) because we had 18” armored battleship sides, and were otherwise considered to be expendable. There were plenty of Air Force tanker orbits to suck off of, so It was advantageous for us since our mostly Hornet air wing on Midway was closer to the target.
I’ve always said I was born forty years too late, and wish I could have fought in WWII in the Pacific. Being on Midway in Desert Storm was the next best thing. The first night launch with Intruders, Hornets, and Tomahawks zorching majestically off into the heavens was a thing of beauty. That Air Force Major in Riyadh said it best on CNN “This is a night that none of us will never, ever forget.”
F-18 Rolling In on Target
Midway at the time was a bad-ass bitch full of strike aircraft – three squadrons of Hornets and two of Intruders. Our flight deck crew and ordies were the best. Pound-for-pound, we over-matched even the most modern of our Nimitz-class counterparts when it came to delivering hard punches and sustained body-blows to the bad guys. We got our share of special missions assigned to us since we were good at what we did, which was blowing the fucking shit out of high-profile targets. The Air Force didn’t like a lot of things we did, but that was the Midway.
We always carefully assessed our targets and assigned weapons suited to the task working with our Strike Ops guys. Our Air Force overseers in Riyadh who controlled the Air Tasking Order (ATO) were wise enough to allow us leeway on what ordnance we would drop after our fight over targets-that-count. They called it //BEST// in the format section where ordnance was specified. For us in fragging the Hornets, it was four Mk-84 2000 lb bombs for “visually pleasing BDA.” When assigned a large target that needed to be blown away, we would load four Mk-84s per Hornet, and assign four aircraft to a strike – followed up by a couple of 2000lb Walleye glide bombs for BDA and mop-up duties – 36k pounds of good bombs on target on time was Maxwell’s Silver Hammer coming down upon the heads of the bad guys; Bang Bang! You’re fucking dead.
We took great pride in seeing our aircraft trap without any ordnance on board – we dropped or shot everything but air-to-air missiles. Every once in a while, a Hornet or Intruder would hang a piece of ordnance, which couldn’t be returned to the carrier, so the pilots would bingo to the Marine air field we had in Bahrain, where they could download the bomb and get serviced before returning home. One of our squadron COs, Randy, had that happen to him and had a great story to tell about that, so bear with me.
During his attack run one fine day, Randy hung a bomb on an outboard weapons station, so there was no way he could recover on the ship. Since ordnance was an issue and we were running low on the big stuff, he diverted to download the Mk84 so the Marines could employ it later. He landed in Bahrain, downloaded the bomb, got refueled and field-launched to get back to Midway and trap on board during the next recovery cycle. Randy was a tall cowboy from Texas, and a great gentleman. As the Strike Leader, he came straight to CVIC still wearing all of his flight gear to debrief. He told us something that I have never forgotten, delivered in his signature Texan twang:
“I saw a lot of our bombs hitting the targets, the three I got off were okay, and I heard later from the Walleye guys that we pretty much killed everything we were after – is that what everybody else said”
I told him that we had seen most of the tapes, and that was what we were going to put into the report, just needed his input.
“Well shit hot – now here’s the funny part.”
An aside: there is an age-old aviation tradition of ordnance men (aka ordies) to paint or chalk epithets on weapons aimed at our enemies. Our ordies on Midway were particularly notorious in that respect. Here’s where it gets really good.
“I landed in Bahrain, was directed to the pits for downloading and servicing the aircraft. The ground crew was a bunch of female Marine enlisted gals, and they were cracking up laughing when I pulled in. I thought it was because I was just an old fart getting out of his bird to go take a real piss, but then I saw the hung bomb.”
An ordie had chalked on it “I like bald pussy.” Randy was pretty embarrassed.
“Dang, I would have had to hang that fucking bomb.”
We were rolling on the deck laughing – damn, a new acronym – ROTDL. War is serious shit, but not without its comic moments. You can’t make this shit up.
Later on in my career both in the Navy and then in the Army, I once again got the chance to administer extreme unction to drug dealers, by locking them up and destroying their networks and taking their money, and later roadside bomb makers, by enabling our troops with the means to kill them dead while they were trying to get their Jihad on. No one died in the drug war, but I took every combat loss personally in my last job. I hated to read about casualties in the SIGACTS every morning – fuck, it was depressing, but made me even more determined to win. While there is a grim satisfaction one can take in dealing death to assholes who desperately deserve it, there is no true joy there, and it takes a toll on your soul. During the course of a career, you have to assume many personas – my last was as a well-dressed man dispensing destruction on our enemies while wielding policy, backed up by a healthy checkbook.
I had to travel a good bit back then. In various airports around the country, I saw our troops coming and going to and from theater, and was eye-witness to some honor flights – moving experiences, but never ever a good thing. I would seek out our soldiers in the smoking lounges and over sharing some cowboy killers, ask them what their experiences were – how many times were you hit by IEDs, how many friends did you have killed – tell me about it? What worked and didn’t work? What can we do better, what do you need? I always parted ways by reassuring them that “I am in a position to make a difference, and I guarantee you that we will seek out and destroy all of the motherfuckers who injured you and killed your friends.” I always came away both inspired by their courage, and with a dark heart filled with terrible resolve.
Early on in my last tour, I got to go to theater to see for myself what our troops had to deal with – inhuman living conditions, enduring terrifying and chaotic conditions in both wild and urban environments, faced with a cunning enemy where life and death were split-second decisions or chances of fate. I marveled at what they had (and still have) to deal with in almost impossible situations that mere normal humans couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I only spent a week over there, and the nicest place we went was Bagram, where we heard gunfire and bombs detonating on the perimeter every night, punctuated by SOF helos launching on their seek-and-destroy missions. It was the same in Baghdad. Eddie Gallagher had to eat that shit sandwich every day, going mano-a-mano with the bad guys as a volunteer and professional serving eight tours in the Heart of Darkness, and he was persecuted for his decision making during the chaos and heat of battle? – Good God Y’all.
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The decision to go to war, and rightly so, is best left up to the civilians. If it were up to us military guys, we would kill every perceived enemy of our country without mercy if left unchecked. The scariest ever radio transmission you would hear in a Combat Information Center on an American warship is “weapons red and free.” God have mercy on the poor souls of the people who we have now been ordered to send to meet Allah. Yeah, there’s a moral dilemma with all of that, even if you have a clear conscious.
Talk is cheap with some of the political assholes we have to deal with, but once that decision is made, the civilian leadership needs to back out, since they don’t know jack shit. Life and death are black and white in battle and there’s only one primal choice – survival. It’s the shades of grey that get you, as in being later judged by abstruse legal standards when you are asked to justify how you applied the law-of-the-jungle.
War is different, even special. There are some pretty strict bounds and we are obliged to abide by both national and international law, like the Geneva Convention. However, the over-aweing force of nature that governs it, the triumphs and tragedies on the battlefield, the pure bloodlust and desire for revenge after watching your friends getting blown away alongside you trump (pun not intended) everything else. If you haven’t been there or experienced it firsthand, then shut the fuck up; you don’t know a goddamn thing about it.
Our troops are being asked to execute an incredibly crazy policy in crazy situations, expected to be letter perfect in mission execution with no emotion or passion involved, and when things don’t go according to Hoyle be subject to judgement by a higher standard courtesy of a bunch of REMFs,[4] like the JAGs, former CNO, and SECNAV in the Gallagher case who never went over there for even a courtesy visit to see the conditions for themselves – GMAFB. The President’s instincts are right in shielding Chief Gallagher and the three other pardoned Army guys against a vindictive, Obama-era policy egged on by the sycophantic mainstream media. Lesson learned? – don’t put our troops in harm’s way and then demand that they measure up to impossible pre-conditions, and instead back them up you craven cowards.
Those of you out there who would judge our warriors should look inside of yourselves to see if you have real bravery and then show some compassion. Where the real Darkness resides is clear, and it is not in the Hearts of our troops, but in the ravening mob who would otherwise tear down and devour those who defend truth, justice, and the American way.
I remain your faithful servant.
Copyright 2019 Point Loma
www.vicsocotra.com
[1] Credit Walter B. Gibson, pulp fiction hero of the 1930-40s.
[2] Wikipedia.
[3] Falcon Code 107 – “you might not like the fucking staff, but the staff likes fucking you.”
[4] I can’t resist – REMF = Rear Echelon Motherfuckers, aka pussies.
Point Loma: Raquel
The Famous Fur Bikini
I just saw some clickbait ad that said Raquel Welch will turn 80 this year in September – 80. She is still one of the most beautiful women to have ever graced the Planet Earth and for most of us, she never really got old – but here we all are. I remember well going to see One Million Years B.C. on opening week back in 1967 at the old Fairhope Theater since there were lots of rumors that the picture was going to be banned for excessive displays of female sexuality – old Bama was not ripe territory for fur bikinis back then. It was well worth the $1 price of admission, and she was a 10-year old’s wet dream of a woman. I think she had three speaking lines in the entire movie but it was the fur bikini that sealed the masturbatory deal. Wow. I think it was only Farrah Fawcett who came along 10 years later who came close to rivaling that immediate poster notoriety. Next to Jurassic Park, it is the best pre-historic themed movie ever made, not counting Clan of the Cave Bear, in which Darryl Hannah invented blow jobs.
Raquel in Lime Green – Sex Sells
So, in keeping with my eternally escapist persona and as a way to avoid the awful reality of what is transpiring in stark Darwinian terms around the world, I was up working on an older piece that I had written for Vic several months ago, and then stumbled across this awesomely bad spy-action movie that Raquel made around the same time which was called simply “Fathom” after the name of her character – only one of three female secret agent types that came out of the 60s, and by far, the best looking.
Fathom itself was a romp of campy fun shot in the south of Spain in Andalucia, with lots of urban and countryside landscapes and video vistas familiar to us who have toiled in the Bull Ring crucible of FOSIF Rota. Besides all of the revealing shots and costuming of Raquel’s matchless figure, the sights of a Spain long gone by were hypnotic. Fathom was made around the same time as my favorite Peter Seller’s movie also set in Spain (Barcelona) called “The Bobo.” It’s even more obscure and really hard to find but worth watching for its pure comedic value, and great shots of a sexy young Britt Eckland.
Yeah, it was a bad movie (both are) if you are a critic, but that was the 60s, and who really gives a fuck about that today – it was silly fun and God knows we need a lot of that now. So, here’s the plot:
“Fathom Harvill, a beautiful skydiver, is in Spain with a U.S. parachute team. She is abducted by a man called Timothy and taken to see Douglas Campbell, who says he is a Scottish agent working for NATO and wants Fathom to help him find a triggering mechanism for a nuclear weapon that has gone missing in the Mediterranean.
The device is hidden inside a figurine known as the Fire Dragon. In hot pursuit of it is an Armenian man named Serapkin who is working on behalf of Communist Chinese interests. Fathom skydives into the villa of a second man, Peter Merriwether, who has a trusted Chinese assistant Jo-May Soon, and is also searching for the figurine.
Fathom discovers that the Fire Dragon was stolen from a Far East museum by a Korean War deserter who is now being tracked by a private investigator. Campbell is one and Merriwether the other, but Fathom needs to find out for certain which is which.
After fending off a Serapkin knife attack and another from a harpoon, Fathom finds the figurine in a makeup case. She concludes that Campbell is the trustworthy one and boards a plane with Timothy and him, who promptly attempt to toss her from it. Merriwether arrives in another plane. In the confusion the bad guys fall out of the plane and Fathom decides she’s not cut out for a life of crime.”[1]
It almost reads like something out of an A.J. Tata novel, but I digress. It’s all about the T&A, after all, and Raquel was built for being that kind of action figure. You can find it on Verizon FIOS, Amazon, or YouTube I’m sure. Tune in and suspend your willing sense of disbelief – it’s a helluvalot better and more fun than contemplating the reality of the unseeable wolf we all have at our doors these days. And if you care to take the time that I know you have on your hands, then read up on Raquel’s background and what she has done in her life beyond just being hot – a pretty interesting and accomplished woman. Being incredibly good-looking is just icing on her birthday cake.
I remain your faithful servant.
[1]Source: Wikipedia.com
Copyright 2020 Point Loma
http://www.vicsocotra.com