Month: August 2020

In the past day or two, I posted a picture of a young Staff Sergeant who has been selected as the U. S. Army’s top Drill Sergeant. Veterans all share a vivid memory of their 8 weeks in basic training when you make the transformation from a fun loving, carefree young person to a warrior wannabe. I am confident the rules have changed a bit over the years from the night that I arrived at Ft. Polk, La. soon to surrender my soul to one Senior Drill Instructor, Domonick Petrarca. I had been around the Army for my entire life however; being around it and in it are two vastly different things. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

Sgt. Erik Rostamo, the current reigning top Drill Instructor, is a master of all things necessary to being a warrior, capable of delivering small arms death from the comfort of a pair of US issue combat boots. He has to be very good to earn his current accolades. When you get off the bus, he represents an element of hell, who is generally displeased with your very existence. When he is through with you at the end of a cycle, he is remembered fondly. If you are one of the unfortunate ones that is destined to become a part of the current gunfight d’jour somewhere in the world, his lessons become critical to your survival. Sgt. Rostamo’ s image triggered memories of another remarkable Drill Instructor that I was introduced to in 1969, Senior Drill Sergeant Dominick Petrarca. It was hot in Louisiana in July but it was about to get one hell of a lot hotter on the sands of Ft. Polk.

I had not slept for 24 hours. The airplane ride from Dallas to Ft. Polk was rough, with unsettled weather pitching the Trans Texas airplane violently. The load of recruits, freshly sworn in, were busy filling the little paper bags with the last meal they had enjoyed as civilians. We landed and were bussed to a reception station where we were allowed a few hours sleep on sweat stained mattresses and pillows sans sheets and pillow cases. The sweat of thousands before us was our only connection with a rapidly fading past. Two days later, the training cadre showed up and the excitement began. We were bussed to the barracks, the old style wooden barracks with communal toilets and showers, decorated in the latest colors, that awful yellow paint and stained red floors. After being loosely formed up, in ranks, Sgt. Petrarca chose the biggest recruit in our company and ordered him to step in front of the formation. He then challenged the affable fellow to a fist fight while hurling invectives that would make Lucifer grin with glee. Thankfully the recruit, terrified, declined the invitation and the cycle began.

The food was prepared in a Company mess hall, not the big consolidated dining rooms in vogue today. We all took a turn as kitchen help under the guidance of the head chef (Mess Sergeant) and became adept at removing a layer of metal from the steel cookware that seemed to be everywhere you stood. You marched everywhere you went and the days were long and genuinely arduous. The military has long ago learned that repetition is the best way to train, and you got plenty of it. A Drill Sergeant seemed to be constantly in what used to be your space but had somehow morphed into his space that your borrowed from him. The training you receive is best chronicled in a book, not a blog, but for one aspect. I was assigned the task of fighting the biggest, meanest trainee that our company produced, one Anthony Roosakis, in the Pugil Stick drill. This training is supposed to teach you to fight with a rifle in hand to hand combat. You use log sticks, with padded ends to beat the hell out of one another. Roosakis sported a tattoo on his arm denoting that he “was born to raise hell” and I believe he was. He was braining me with the sticks, but made the mistake of slipping in the sand providing an opening for me to finish the match with him on his back. Were it not for intervention by a Drill Sergeant, I would have killed him. For many years as a trooper, I remained alert for the name Roosakis, but never again saw it.

At the end of the cycle, 99% of us realized that Senior Drill Sergeant Petrarca actually cared. Vietnam was a running gunfight and most of the trainees at Ft. Polk were destined to enter a hot war. He invested blood, sweat and tears in sending us into combat as well prepared for ground fighting as we could be. We were just as adept at putting a bullet into the enemies head as we were at providing first aid to one of our troops who had taken a shot to the head. Drill Sergeants introduce every one of their trainees to an orderly life, with structure, teamwork and a sense of loyalty to the country. These are rewards that follow you through life.

I will not forget Senior Drill Sergeant Petrarca, a man I knew for eight weeks, fifty years ago. He made a difference in my life that many are not privileged to enjoy. He was also the toughest SOB that I have ever known, and I have known quite a few tough guys.

Have a great weekend!

SR

God’s infinite wisdom is clearly manifested in this concept we call retirement. I am up this morning, coffee in hand, reflecting on an America that is wobbling like a dented top we played with as kids. There are many definitions of “retirement” but only one really matters. When you retire, you are no longer a problem solver on the world’s stage. You are no longer required to make a difference. Let me explain.

I am shaking my head at the police response today. To be fair, the generations before me were shaking their heads at the behavior of my generation when we were the gendarme. I have nothing but respect for the folks on the line today and a wavering respect for their leadership in many cases. It is good that my generation’s opinion on the tactics of today are no longer relevant, as we would be in jail or dead with the skills and tactics of yesteryear. The police are supposed to represent the society they protect, with norms and behaviors reflecting those demands. In the old west, bad guys were quickly dispensed with by the law, with lead or a rope. It was appropriate then, as action had to be taken quickly to prevent almost certain additional death. We have come a long way. When folks like Clyde Barrow and John Dillinger were unceremoniously gunned down, we clapped with glee and applauded the efforts of the police. There may have been an inquest, but it seldom took more than an hour, the graves were closed and the hunt was on for the next miscreant.

I began my career under the tutelage of troopers who handled things in a somewhat refined but definitive way. When our penitentiary erupted in a riot in 1954, the event was short lived. Troopers from all around the state began arriving, and control was quickly and with deadly consequences, restored with the prison population laying facedown, naked in the yard, afraid to move for fear of a swift and likely harsh response. Calm was restored and the prison population was exceedingly reluctant to buck the system for a long, long time. Today, we approach things differently, granting broad concessions to terrorist groups like BLM and ANTIFA, as they burn our cities down and loot the retail world. Previous police generations understood that force, sometimes with deadly consequences, was all that a certain segment of society understood. You cannot meet the rampaging hordes we are seeing today, with fresh water, verbal pleas and a promise of understanding while they burn, pillage and injure the officers that stand between them and honest, morally bound folks. To coddle them is to empower them, and that is exactly what we are doing. My generation of police commanders do not have the patience and wisdom to stand by while folks burn down towns, districts and threaten with impunity. We would be inclined to take the fun out of the riot de jour of today…

That is why I am writing about the sanctity of retirement. I am not expected to respond to the happenings of today. I am expected to sit back and converse with my retired contemporaries about what we would do if we were in charge. We are not and never will be again, and we offer our sincere best wishes to the sophisticated and well meaning current police generation and especially their leadership.

God built a period of decompression into our lives. It is the “golden” years, where talk of health, fishing and travel are the major concerns. We grouse, ruminate and criticize at will, but are expected to offer no solutions beyond the coffee table. My major concern today is Sharon’s ability to catch the big fish of the day and grin impishly at my chagrin. That being said, the thought of crushing the rioters and looters still makes me smile………knocking them out of their recently stolen tennis shoes is an option, or so it would seem.

The Golden Years…….back to fishing!

I am a serial reader. That is my confession, made unapologetically. I am hopelessly addicted to the feel, smell and comfort that words on paper provide. There are few pastimes where hoarding is respected and the collection of books is one of them. When life grants a pause, I choose to read, something, anything, rather than sit idly by with a brain in neutral. Let’s have a look at this addiction and think for a bit about the direction we are headed. We are at a fork in the road and must choose between technology and the way of the dinosaur. The antiquated Dewey Decimal system is slowly being replaced by a keystroke on a battery powered piece of computer technology. Technology is wonderful, but it can not replace a book.

The smell of a book is intoxicating. The bookbinders glue, fresh paper and the promise of something new and exciting is a part of the euphoria. My concern is that one day, our descendants will pick up an IPad rather than the family Bible to see who married whom back in the day. Already, our children are shopping for school with the latest in technology being the prime mover of the back to school shoppers. In the world of hard science and technology, a printed book is obsolete before the ink dries on a printed page. I understand this phenomenon, but still……

I am currently reading a wonderful book, written in a style that evokes true emotion in the reader. It is entitled “Tears In The Darkness”, authored by Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman. This book chronicles an event that history cannot erase, the Bataan Death march. I am a combat veteran, however my experiences were a walk in the park compared to the tribulations of those subjected to the inhumanity of the Japanese during this event. The authors are gifted with the ability to tell this story in such a way that you are profoundly and emotionally moved by the plight of our men who were compelled to surrender in the largest mass surrender in our military history. You feel the rage toward the Japanese and at the same time develop an understanding of the way they were trained and their reverence to the Emperor. The morphine induced euthanasia of our dying soldiers by our doctors, themselves dying from the conditions that defy human comprehension, is moving and enraging. The indignity of death, under these circumstances, is palpable. Forgive the comparison, but the faux rage expressed by the folks trying to tear our country down, is disgusting when you consider the hell these men went through to guarantee that privilege. These events would be lost to history were it not for the printed words of skilled writers who have captured the essence of this horror and placed it in a book. I will never again look at the jacket on this printed treasure without saying a prayer for those who were participants in this unspeakable tragedy. Such is the power of the printed word.

What about the fork in the road? I think it a disservice to not encourage the reading of books and other print media by the generations that are coming up today. Science aside, the world today belongs to folks who can communicate verbally and with the pen. What better way to master these skills than books, periodicals and other forms of print media. A newspaperman who I had great respect for once told me that print media is pure communication. The words cannot be taken back and live forever. You have done your job when the reader feels the point you make rather than simply sees the point.

I’ll take a book any day over a tablet or pad. When we hit that fork, I’ll be treading in the tracks of the dinosaurs, with a book in my bag and a smile on my face!

Have a good weekend!

SR

Pandemics, politics, civil disobedience and the economy tend to take our minds off what is truly important. Today I am writing about one of the true pleasures in life and why it is important. Borrowing from the excellent 1992 movie, “The Scent of a Woman” starring Al Pacino, let’s talk about what men take for granted and really don’t understand! These thoughts occurred to me at 2:00 AM this morning, when Sharon slipped into bed. More on that later!

Men are conditioned to respond to certain scents. Examples include black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, grapefruit, ylang ylang, lavender, patchouli and vanilla. These beautiful scents, when mixed with proprietary pheromones by the cosmetic industry are what is found in those little bottles that adorn your wife’s dressing table. They are designed to shift a man’s focus from politics to the lass that is sharing his space. A spritz of one of these little temptations on my pillow when Sharon was traveling, as a buyer for a gift shop, served as a reminder of how fortunate I really am. These little bottles of potion are ridiculously expensive and alert men can read the mood of his lady by the scent chosen for the occasion. Al Pacino, in the movie, played the part of a blind eccentric. Perhaps when we concentrate on the signal sent by the scent of a women, we can let go of the troubles of the day. Now for the “Fifty Shades of Gray” part of my missive.

Sharon put two beautiful chuck roasts on the Traeger at midnight last night. The air is heavy, with humidity at the top of the scale, and the smell of beef and hickory smoke combined, hung in the air around our home throughout the night. I am sure it stopped passing cars, if not for the smoke emitting from our deck, then from the promise of delectable smoked meats slowly coming to perfection on the smoker. You know the scent, like when you park in front of your favorite BBQ joint and begin salivating before you hit the door.

I was asleep when she began this cook, slumbering away when she slipped out in the wee hours of the morning to check the smokers progress. When she returned to bed, I was aroused from a deep sleep, not by the scent of one of our favorite colognes on the nape of her neck, but by the unmistakable scent of beef and smoking hickory pellets. Maybe it is my age, but the scent of the smoker on her PJ’s was every bit as intoxicating as the best bergamot and vanilla concoction that Paris or New York has to offer. Sharon no longer travels, but if she did, instead of a fifty dollar spritz on my pillow, just leave a smoked rib. It will work every time!

I will always appreciate the true scent of a woman, but have come to realize the smell of smoked meat will get you in a hell of a lot less trouble in life than a beguiling smile, little black dress and touch of Opium or my old favorite, Ciara. Al Pacino had it figured out and now I do!

Have a great weekend!

SR