PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

My father was a United States Marine, and served as Gunner's Mate on the Battleship Nevada.  He was scheduled to have been in the first group of the first batallion to invade Japan, had President Truman chosen invasion instead of the atomic bombing.  The Nevada was only three days' sailing time from Japan at the time the bomb was being loaded aboard the Enola Gay.  My father's best friend from the rural village in which they had grown up was pulverized, literally vaporized, when a Kamikazi plane slammed into the Nevada's side.  My father was protected by a steel bunker into which he had been sent to fetch more shells for the gunner he was assisting.

   My father despised Drill Instructors; and, at a reunion of his group, he bodyslammed a Drill Instructor who was demonstrating drills to the guests, and happened to get in my father's face and called him a profane word.  My father received an apology from the Commander; the Instructor received a reprimand during his several weeks in traction in the hospital.

   While I was a history major. my father refused to answer any questions about specific experiences of the war; although, several months prior to his death, he invited my daughter and her then boy friend to his home where he told them some fairly blood-curdling stories.

    In my direct lineage (of my father's family), my ancestors served in the Revolution and the War of 1812.  None participated in the Civil War (due to age or premature death) or the First World War (my grandfather, a farm boy, was prevented from enlisting by his father, who had obtained an exemption for him as being essential personnel on the family farm).  Two of my mother's brothers, themselves sons of a German immigrant mother, nearly lost their lives in the Battle of the Bulge---which, as I understand, was the Housepainter's last thrill of victory.

    One of my distant cousins is still considered to be one of the foremost experts on the Battle of Gettysburg.  Although a scholar who never served in the military, his massive monograph on the battle is still sold in the Museum's bookstore; and, they tell me, applicants for ranger positions in the park must be testable on any sections of the book---and it runs, I believe, to seven hundred and some pages.  I bought a copy years ago, which is in storage, because I was never able to get through it.  He was a professor, not a poet, and his style is dry.

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  In what I would call the popular view, the Marine Corps is treated as a separate branch, and not as an adjunct of the Navy under the authority of the Secretary of the Navy.  I believe it is time for the Corps to have its own Secretary, of the same rank as the other service Secretaries.  I believe this position should also be restricted such it is open to civilians, but not to anyone who attained officer rank in any of the services, or was what is considered to be "career military."

   In 1980, I had the misfortune to hear a lecture given by an instructor at the Air Force's Officer Training school in Lackland, TX; in which that officer told his audience, all officer candidates, that they were superior to the taxpayers who paid their salaries and to the civilian population they would later swear to protect; and that he only paid lip service to the concept of civilian ascendancy over the military.

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   Although I am not ashamed to have voted for Joe Biden in the Presidential election (I would never, ever, ever have cast a vote for the Innkeeper and never will), I think he made a serious error in judgment by appointing a former ranking general as Secretary of Defense.  I wish that Congress would enact statutes to restrict any military officer, or career military of any rank, from serving in any of the Defense/Service Secretaries or as executives (deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries) in those services.  I do not mean this in disrespect to our excellent military personnel, but in utmost respect to the Founders' belief in Civilian Ascendancy over the military and all of its operations.  Tom Skerrit's speech, in Top Gun, about the difference between the making of policy and the execution of policy is quite germaine to this discussion, and should be heard by all who, like me, fear a military dictatorship, especially if we are damnably foolish enough to allow the Innkeeper to be even a write-in candidate.  (Please, somebody . . . charge and convict that man of inciting a riot, or tax evasion, or any of the other things he is said to have done, so that he is qualified from holding any office higher than poop-scooper on the dog catcher's staff.)

Starward