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Authors: Roy Blount
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prisoners whose sudden salute I tried to return while pedaling, balancing, and holding on to some papers. I and the papers fell into the leaves. The prisoners remained at attention. “Let’s all desert!” I felt like saying, but I was in no position to.
What you were supposed to say when you ran into a knot of enlisted men who were engaged in the accomplishment of their mission was “Carry on.” I didn’t like the sound of it. Even when not climbing out of a pile of leaves, I tried to give “Carry on” a tongue-in-cheek twist, but then it seemed to imply too racy an authorization. What if some specialist 4, caught body-painting a general’s daughter, were to exclaim, “But this lieutenant said I was to carry on”?
What really bothered me, though, was being saluted by a topkick or a sergeant major who looked as if he might have served with John Wayne at Iwo Jima. Clear as it was to me that the army at the upper levels did not know what it was doing, it was just as clear that this sergeant was my superior in years, training, job responsibility, and devotion to duty. He would signal himself officially beneath me with a salute snappy enough to cut ice, a salute that, however, leaned over backward not to contain any hint of “You mooncalf, sir.” I tried to develop a wry return-of-salute, but that is difficult.
I was myself required, of course, to salute superior officers — not as an oppressed person, which would have fit my mood, but as an accomplice. Here I showed some sixties spirit. Once, I saluted a major who was using one hand to take a last drag on a cigarette and the other to hold his hat on against the wind. A colonel would just have nodded, but this major, a young one, lost his hat and bit through his cigarette. Even a full bird colonel could be made to feel overacknowledged, I found, if saluted from fifty yards away, or while he was playing golf, or while the saluter was having a tooth filled.
A general, on the other hand, could not be made to feel that he was being shown undue respect. A general could seldom be made to feel that he was being shown anything. On Governors Island, New York, where I was stationed for a year, it was my good fortune never to serve as officer of the day, in charge of emergencies. A friend of mine named Swardlow drew that duty on the day of the big blackout of 1965, when electrical power went out all over New York City and its environs. Governors Island lies just below the downtown tip of Manhattan. Swardlow looked out his window, saw the Wall Street skyline go dark, and immediately heard the phone ring. “Brief me,” said the voice of a general.
Swardlow was at a loss. “We still have phone communications, sir,” was all he could think to say. The general was outraged.
In saluting a general the trick was to wait, perhaps humming tunelessly as he bore down, until the last split second before he could legitimately bring you up on charges of ignoring him. Since a general didn’t want to admit the possibility that it would enter into anyone’s mind to ignore him, you had a certain amount of slack to work with. It was bracing to feel that you had frustrated a general for even a moment.
You could also say to a general, “Good morning, sir,” quite confidently, at, say, 1900 hours. I found that a general so addressed would never exclaim, “Good God, Lieutenant, it’s getting dark!” If some general had, I could have looked at him blankly and said, “Yes, sir,” and I doubt he could have made a case stand up against me in any proper court-martial.
That’s the way I handled generals at Governors Island, where in those days (the coast guard has it now) First Army Headquarters was based. Because so many generals came and went there, and because I never had to brief any of them, their effect was like that of Norse gods on someone raised a Methodist: entertaining. For the second half of my tour, however, I was transferred to Fort Totten, New York, in Queens, where there
What you were supposed to say when you ran into a knot of enlisted men who were engaged in the accomplishment of their mission was “Carry on.” I didn’t like the sound of it. Even when not climbing out of a pile of leaves, I tried to give “Carry on” a tongue-in-cheek twist, but then it seemed to imply too racy an authorization. What if some specialist 4, caught body-painting a general’s daughter, were to exclaim, “But this lieutenant said I was to carry on”?
What really bothered me, though, was being saluted by a topkick or a sergeant major who looked as if he might have served with John Wayne at Iwo Jima. Clear as it was to me that the army at the upper levels did not know what it was doing, it was just as clear that this sergeant was my superior in years, training, job responsibility, and devotion to duty. He would signal himself officially beneath me with a salute snappy enough to cut ice, a salute that, however, leaned over backward not to contain any hint of “You mooncalf, sir.” I tried to develop a wry return-of-salute, but that is difficult.
I was myself required, of course, to salute superior officers — not as an oppressed person, which would have fit my mood, but as an accomplice. Here I showed some sixties spirit. Once, I saluted a major who was using one hand to take a last drag on a cigarette and the other to hold his hat on against the wind. A colonel would just have nodded, but this major, a young one, lost his hat and bit through his cigarette. Even a full bird colonel could be made to feel overacknowledged, I found, if saluted from fifty yards away, or while he was playing golf, or while the saluter was having a tooth filled.
A general, on the other hand, could not be made to feel that he was being shown undue respect. A general could seldom be made to feel that he was being shown anything. On Governors Island, New York, where I was stationed for a year, it was my good fortune never to serve as officer of the day, in charge of emergencies. A friend of mine named Swardlow drew that duty on the day of the big blackout of 1965, when electrical power went out all over New York City and its environs. Governors Island lies just below the downtown tip of Manhattan. Swardlow looked out his window, saw the Wall Street skyline go dark, and immediately heard the phone ring. “Brief me,” said the voice of a general.
Swardlow was at a loss. “We still have phone communications, sir,” was all he could think to say. The general was outraged.
In saluting a general the trick was to wait, perhaps humming tunelessly as he bore down, until the last split second before he could legitimately bring you up on charges of ignoring him. Since a general didn’t want to admit the possibility that it would enter into anyone’s mind to ignore him, you had a certain amount of slack to work with. It was bracing to feel that you had frustrated a general for even a moment.
You could also say to a general, “Good morning, sir,” quite confidently, at, say, 1900 hours. I found that a general so addressed would never exclaim, “Good God, Lieutenant, it’s getting dark!” If some general had, I could have looked at him blankly and said, “Yes, sir,” and I doubt he could have made a case stand up against me in any proper court-martial.
That’s the way I handled generals at Governors Island, where in those days (the coast guard has it now) First Army Headquarters was based. Because so many generals came and went there, and because I never had to brief any of them, their effect was like that of Norse gods on someone raised a Methodist: entertaining. For the second half of my tour, however, I was transferred to Fort Totten, New York, in Queens, where there
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