{"id":29535,"date":"2010-06-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/WP-IMPORT\/2010\/06\/04\/shrapnel\/"},"modified":"2010-06-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T03:00:00","slug":"shrapnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/shrapnel\/","title":{"rendered":"Shrapnel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


(Bit of cold steel, shredded in 1966)<\/p>\n

<\/strong>We were at Willow- it is the Admiral\u2019s first venture out since his left arm has turned back to a normal color. We secured the little sitting area at the end of the bar and relaxed.<\/p>\n

There was a lot to catch up on. The Admiral is still a player, even if he is ninety years old- he just hosted four women at his condo across the street at The Jefferson.
\u00a0
\u201cIn my experience,\u201d I said owlishly, peering through he heavy leaded glass of my Absolute and cranberry \u201cThe number of women any guy can make happy is .8.\u201d
\u00a0
The Admiral chuckled. \u201cThese women were my daughter, two granddaughters and on of their friends,\u201d he said. \u201cMy odds were better.\u201d
\u00a0
Jake and Dave bantered about business stuff, since there is an attack looming on our business sector. Dave is with one of the think tanks that provides a holding pond for the once-great of the Community, and Jake leads our merry band of beltway bandits.<\/p>\n

Peter-the-bartender kept the table topped up with Bloody Mary\u2019s, beers and vodka as Willow\u2019s dark paneled bar filled up with people after work.
\u00a0
Dave cleared his throat. \u201cI heard Secretary Gates announced that he is going to tell OSD and the Military Departments to identify a bunch of money in the existing program to pay for the Iraq close-down and current operations in Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I sat in on the VTC with Kabul this morning at the Pentagon,” I said. The Bad Guys are trying to disrupt the Peace Jurga with suicide bombs and VBIEDS.”
\u00a0
Dave leaned forward and lowered his voice. \u201cThat is not all that is under attack. I heard that the goal in the FY-2012 POM is $7 billion in cuts and efficiencies, rising to $37 billion at the end of the FYDP in 2016.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cJeeze,\u201d I said. \u201cThat is bigger than what the whole intelligence community budget was ten years ago. Where are they going to find that kind of money.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cHe will run another BRAC round, closing and consolidating military bases, and cancel a handful of weapons systems,\u201d said Jake.
\u00a0
\u00a0\u201cThe point is to save enough money in management overhead, personnel policies and logistics to guarantee 3% percent real growth each year, beyond inflation, in the Operations and Maintenance accounts,\u201d Dave said. \u201cthey are only forecasting one percent, after inflation in the current plan.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cThey are going to go after management and personnel, overhead, logistics and base operations, and support missions,\u201d responded Jake slowly. \u201cI don\u2019t know if intelligence will take it directly on the chin, but you can bet the Military Intelligence Program is going to get hit pretty hard, since it is not protected from the OSD Comptroller like the National Intelligence Money that funds the Big Four agencies.\u201d He frowned. \u201cThere is going to be a fight about that, too, but it is a separate issue.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cUs retirees are one of the most expensive parts of the overhead,\u201d I said bitterly. \u201cSo stand by. This is going to hurt our health care and commissaries along with the F-35 and the ship-building programs.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cHealth care costs are eating the Department alive,\u201d said Jake thoughtfully. \u201cBut this was a deal we made when we signed up. There is going to be hell to pay if they shred our benefits just when I actually will need them.\u201d
\u00a0
The Admiral chuckled again, clearly happy to be retired from three careers, two of them paying jobs and one as a volunteer. He pulled something from his pocket and put it on the table.
\u00a0
\u201cI have been meaning to give this to you,\u201d he said, as Dave and Jake discussed the details of the 25th anniversary of our little professional organization.
\u00a0
I looked at the dark twisted bit of steel. It had wicked sharp little claws in the folds, and it had clearly been exposed to great heat and violence.
\u00a0
\u201cShrapnel?\u201d I asked slowly, marveling at how something so small could be so sinister.
\u00a0
The Admiral nodded. \u201cI used to travel to Saigon frequently for TDY in the years before Tet. US troop strength had risen to around 236,000 that year. I found this in the wreckage of the Victoria BOQ in April of 1966. The VC detonated a bomb at the entrance in Cholon a couple blocks from where I was staying. It happened just as people were coming down for breakfast. The first three floors were shredded. Estimates the bomb must have been around five hundred pounds, the size of a Mark 86 aerial bomb. Three Americans were killed, along with three White Mice.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cHoly smokes,\u201d I said. \u201cYou have had this all these years?\u201d
\u00a0
The Admiral smiled enigmatically. \u201cWhen I hear that things are bad, I always look at this bit of shrapnel and consider that things can always be worse.\u201d
\u00a0
We all nodded, and decided to have one for the road.
\u00a0

(Victoria BOQ, Cholon district of Saigon, April 2, 1966)
<\/strong>
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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(Bit of cold steel, shredded in 1966) We were at Willow- it is the Admiral\u2019s first venture out since his left arm has turned back to a normal color. We secured the little sitting area at the end of the bar and relaxed. There was a lot to catch up on. The Admiral is still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}