I’ve waited a few weeks to comment on the events at Ft. Hood in which Maj Nadil Hasan gunned down his fellow soldiers in a processing center there. The inevitable gnashing of teeth, finger pointing and the “how could this have happened?”elicit a big “Duh” from me. For anyone who has served not only in the military but in any other public/governmental agency, it is no surprise: political correctness.
Personnel in Maj Hasan’s chain of command were aware of his radical Islamic leanings, but no one did anything. Why? Simple, it was a matter of self preservation. Had anyone complained about him, his career would have been over. He/she would have been branded racist and if not summarily dismissed, would have been referred to sensitivity training and the resulting comment on their records would have prevented any further advancement.
In the American military, one cannot remain, say, at the rank of captain even if that is the level he or she is most comfortable or competent. All must stand for promotion and if not selected, they are removed from active duty. So absurd is the system that promotions are often based on a mandatory full length picture of the applicant. If one “does not look like a major,” that person can be denied promotion. Thus a comment on one efficiency report can finish a person who has rendered good and faithful service for many years. The easiest way to kill a person’s career, it is said, is to “condemn with faint praise.” Only water walkers need apply.
And what about Maj. Hasan himself? His performance had been described as “inadequate” but he was nevertheless promoted to the rank of major. There are many former officers not promoted thus, simply because it was noted that 12 years before as a brand new lieutenant, their uniforms did not fit exactly as the rater wanted. This in spite of the fact that their service had been exemplary. Again to not promote someone in a minority group would be career suicide for someone.
I often wonder what has happened to our meritocracy, when promotions can be made based on racial quotas rather than skill and quality of performance. Discrimination against any group is wrong. In this case the political correcting of our society has ended the lives of 14 good people and ruined the lives of many more.
Showing posts with label Ft. Hood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ft. Hood. Show all posts
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Value of Cooking
My road to becoming a self sufficient cook has come by many stages. After leaving college and joining the Army, instead of a promised trip to Germany, I was sent to the back of the beyond at Fort Hood, Texas. There I was installed in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, which at the time offered a square, cinderblock room painted institutional green and furnished with a chair and bed, upon which were generations of cigarette burns reaching back to the Korean War. A common refrigerator in the hall was placed for the convenience of the BOQ rats, who stole everything desirable, someone else placed in it, such as beer. So I purchased a toaster oven in the exchange and stocked up on the cheap TV dinners available in the commissary at a cost of four for a dollar. Each of them consisted of a dollop of wall paper paste, three or four pathetic, dried kernels of frozen corn and something that was supposed to resemble either a piece of fried chicken or beef something or other.
As soon as I could, I made the acquaintance of some other single lieutenants in my battalion, and we rented a house. Those who cooked were exempt from doing the dishes, and so I learned to prepare my first delicacy: French fries. I made these by cutting up potatoes and throwing them into a pan of boiling vegetable oil, and served with some sort of fried or broiled meat, and, of course, beer.
Tours at Fort Hood for second lieutenants were mercifully brief, it being situated in the middle of the dry belt of Texas with no social life within a four hour drive. The buildings at the time were still WWII vintage yellow wooden structures which stretched out for miles. I was told Vietnam would be an improvement, and in some ways it was. At least the married guys couldn’t get any either.
Being in the infantry we subsisted on C-rations, various meals served in olive drab cans, with a fairly decent variety. One can consisted of the main meal such as “Ham and Eggs, chopped.” In the field cooking was accomplished with small bits of C-4, which we all carried. That’s right, the very C-4 which is still very much a part of the Al Qaeda basic supplies. It has the consistency of dried up marshmallows and is safe unless mashed into a combined space and ignited quickly. In the open it burns at a temperature about three times the surface of the sun. This was proven by one, who, after heating his coffee water, decided the right thing to do would be to douse the flame, and stepped on it. The result was that it melted a hole through the bottom of his boot. Since re-supplying the infantry with footgear was of rather low priority with the rear echelon folks, he stomped around the jungle with a hole the size of a fifty cent piece (ever seen one of them?) in the bottom of his boot.
My favorite recipe, taught to me by a self proclaimed Hill Billy from Kentucky was to take the can of beans and franks and the can of cheese, something akin to Cheez-whiz and melt the latter into the beans. The water crackers which accompanied the cheese were broken up into the mess, and as with all recipes, anointed with hot sauce. I still make it, only my wife makes us eat it off dishes, and not out of cans, the way it is supposed to be consumed.
Ham and Eggs, chopped, combat quiche, were generally eaten cold. That was a meal you either liked or detested. On one occasion, as a reservist, I was assigned to a regular army battalion at Ft. Knox. Trying to be a good guy, I volunteered to take them. The response was quick: “Get in line, bucko.” I happened to get into a unit of Ham &Eggs, chopped aficionados.
Stationed in Germany, I learned to make French onion soup from the French wife of a fellow unit member, and to cook chicken in beer from a civilian military intelligence officer. I kept all this knowledge, because I knew that a man, who can cook, is sexy…Even if he is a dork.
On our first date, I cooked my wife an eclectic mix of kilbasa soup, potato pancakes and shoo-fly pie. It was love at first bite. It certainly wasn’t my looks or money.
I have since learned that cookbooks are only guides and after a while you learn that you can mix things like ground chicken and nutmeg. And as my favorite painter, the late Bob Ross, used to say, “Let’s get crazy.”
Tonight my wife said she was going to cook pork chops in barbecue sauce. She said I didn’t sound excited. I replied her cooking was predictable.
Mine evokes fear. When my girls would come home from school and ask, “What are we having?” Heather, the oldest, would tiptoe into the kitchen and report back, “One of Dad’s creations.” They would look at each other with wide eyes and very uneasy faces.
Now, Heather eats sushi, that which commercial fishermen would refer to here in Maine as “bait,” or “gurry.” She recently offered me a piece, and said, “Try this, it tastes like the smell of Dick’s Lobster Wharf.
Yup, it did.
As soon as I could, I made the acquaintance of some other single lieutenants in my battalion, and we rented a house. Those who cooked were exempt from doing the dishes, and so I learned to prepare my first delicacy: French fries. I made these by cutting up potatoes and throwing them into a pan of boiling vegetable oil, and served with some sort of fried or broiled meat, and, of course, beer.
Tours at Fort Hood for second lieutenants were mercifully brief, it being situated in the middle of the dry belt of Texas with no social life within a four hour drive. The buildings at the time were still WWII vintage yellow wooden structures which stretched out for miles. I was told Vietnam would be an improvement, and in some ways it was. At least the married guys couldn’t get any either.
Being in the infantry we subsisted on C-rations, various meals served in olive drab cans, with a fairly decent variety. One can consisted of the main meal such as “Ham and Eggs, chopped.” In the field cooking was accomplished with small bits of C-4, which we all carried. That’s right, the very C-4 which is still very much a part of the Al Qaeda basic supplies. It has the consistency of dried up marshmallows and is safe unless mashed into a combined space and ignited quickly. In the open it burns at a temperature about three times the surface of the sun. This was proven by one, who, after heating his coffee water, decided the right thing to do would be to douse the flame, and stepped on it. The result was that it melted a hole through the bottom of his boot. Since re-supplying the infantry with footgear was of rather low priority with the rear echelon folks, he stomped around the jungle with a hole the size of a fifty cent piece (ever seen one of them?) in the bottom of his boot.
My favorite recipe, taught to me by a self proclaimed Hill Billy from Kentucky was to take the can of beans and franks and the can of cheese, something akin to Cheez-whiz and melt the latter into the beans. The water crackers which accompanied the cheese were broken up into the mess, and as with all recipes, anointed with hot sauce. I still make it, only my wife makes us eat it off dishes, and not out of cans, the way it is supposed to be consumed.
Ham and Eggs, chopped, combat quiche, were generally eaten cold. That was a meal you either liked or detested. On one occasion, as a reservist, I was assigned to a regular army battalion at Ft. Knox. Trying to be a good guy, I volunteered to take them. The response was quick: “Get in line, bucko.” I happened to get into a unit of Ham &Eggs, chopped aficionados.
Stationed in Germany, I learned to make French onion soup from the French wife of a fellow unit member, and to cook chicken in beer from a civilian military intelligence officer. I kept all this knowledge, because I knew that a man, who can cook, is sexy…Even if he is a dork.
On our first date, I cooked my wife an eclectic mix of kilbasa soup, potato pancakes and shoo-fly pie. It was love at first bite. It certainly wasn’t my looks or money.
I have since learned that cookbooks are only guides and after a while you learn that you can mix things like ground chicken and nutmeg. And as my favorite painter, the late Bob Ross, used to say, “Let’s get crazy.”
Tonight my wife said she was going to cook pork chops in barbecue sauce. She said I didn’t sound excited. I replied her cooking was predictable.
Mine evokes fear. When my girls would come home from school and ask, “What are we having?” Heather, the oldest, would tiptoe into the kitchen and report back, “One of Dad’s creations.” They would look at each other with wide eyes and very uneasy faces.
Now, Heather eats sushi, that which commercial fishermen would refer to here in Maine as “bait,” or “gurry.” She recently offered me a piece, and said, “Try this, it tastes like the smell of Dick’s Lobster Wharf.
Yup, it did.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The journey of the book
Writing Where is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him? has been a long journey. While taking ROTC in college I was advised to enlist in the Regular Army, for doing so, would guarantee my first assignment and branch choice. Majoring in German, I thought Military Intelligence and a government sponsored trip to Germany would not only be a great way to avoid Vietnam, but would be a good time. I took the advice and was commissioned as a Regular Army second lieutenant with a branch of MI. Then the shoe dropped: Regular Army, non-combat branch officers, had to serve a year in the infantry, but not to worry, I would still go to Germany where my then fluent knowledge of German would be put to good use. I could envision myself gliding up and down the Autobahn in my new Porsche.
On the day of graduation from the Infantry Officer Basic Course, my orders were changed to Ft. Hood, TX. That base, needless to say, had not been on my choice of places to go. From November 1968 to April of 1969 I was a platoon leader in the 1st Armored Division, commanding a platoon of Vietnam returnees, many of whom were suffering PTSD, and many of whom were escaping the crushing boredom and loneliness of the place with drugs.
In April of 1969, I received orders late one Sunday afternoon advising me that I would be going to the Jungle Operations Training Center in the Panama Canal Zone en route to the RVN with a Military Occupational Specialty of 1542, small tactical unit leader. Needless to say the dreams of the Porsche evaporated.
Realizing that, for better or worse, I was about to embark upon something far larger than myself that would appear in history books in the future, I began to keep a journal. The opening paragraph of Where is Crusader, is a verbatim copy of what I wrote shortly after taking off from Oakland, CA. I maintained the journal until the constant soaking from river crossings and monsoon rains destroyed the remaining pages.
In 1973, now out of the Army and teaching school, I began to reconstruct the journal and what I remembered. For four years I typed it all down on the back of scrap paper I rescued from the school’s trash bin. Once it was done, it made several moves and eventually it was dragged out of the attic and put on a computer disk.
My daughter, Heather, decided that I should publish it, and for Christmas 2008, presented me with the first copy.
Everything in this book actually happened. However, I have changed the names, even though in some cases I had permission to use them. In some cases, several people have been morphed into one character, but it’s all true, folks. It is my hope that the good men, and the majority were super, that I served with will see themselves and take pride in what they were able to accomplish and adapt to.
On the day of graduation from the Infantry Officer Basic Course, my orders were changed to Ft. Hood, TX. That base, needless to say, had not been on my choice of places to go. From November 1968 to April of 1969 I was a platoon leader in the 1st Armored Division, commanding a platoon of Vietnam returnees, many of whom were suffering PTSD, and many of whom were escaping the crushing boredom and loneliness of the place with drugs.
In April of 1969, I received orders late one Sunday afternoon advising me that I would be going to the Jungle Operations Training Center in the Panama Canal Zone en route to the RVN with a Military Occupational Specialty of 1542, small tactical unit leader. Needless to say the dreams of the Porsche evaporated.
Realizing that, for better or worse, I was about to embark upon something far larger than myself that would appear in history books in the future, I began to keep a journal. The opening paragraph of Where is Crusader, is a verbatim copy of what I wrote shortly after taking off from Oakland, CA. I maintained the journal until the constant soaking from river crossings and monsoon rains destroyed the remaining pages.
In 1973, now out of the Army and teaching school, I began to reconstruct the journal and what I remembered. For four years I typed it all down on the back of scrap paper I rescued from the school’s trash bin. Once it was done, it made several moves and eventually it was dragged out of the attic and put on a computer disk.
My daughter, Heather, decided that I should publish it, and for Christmas 2008, presented me with the first copy.
Everything in this book actually happened. However, I have changed the names, even though in some cases I had permission to use them. In some cases, several people have been morphed into one character, but it’s all true, folks. It is my hope that the good men, and the majority were super, that I served with will see themselves and take pride in what they were able to accomplish and adapt to.
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