GAYS IN THE MILITARY

First, a short resume.  When I was in the 6^th grade, a rumor got started that I was queer.  I had to look it up in the dictionary, which said, “odd or unusual.”  I could live with that, so I ignored the rumor.  I have never known where or how it got started, but for the next 7 years, I was harassed, tormented, beaten up, robbed, shunned, isolated, and almost totally friendless.  Anyone who was friendly with me got caught in the blast, including girls.  The fact that I had no female associations only strengthened the rumor.  It drove me to spend about two hours one night,  staring down the barrel of a pistol, but I never could pull the trigger.  The next day, I enlisted in the Marines, who were feeding a meat grinder in SE Asia at the time, and I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble finding some cat in black PJ’s to do the deed for me.  (For you youngsters, the Viet Cong, part of the enemy order of battle, generally wore black, baggy clothing that resembled pajamas.)

The thing is that I have never, ever had the faintest homosexual impulse.  In fact, after pulling liberty in San Diego, which was an absolute flesh pot compared to Albuquerque, I discovered to my relief that I was actually a roaring, raging heterosexual.  However, the travails of my youth gave me a very unique perspective on the prejudice and discrimination leveled at homosexuals.  (If there were any transsexuals then, I never knew of it.)

The Marine Corps does not have its own medical branch.  Instead, we rely on Navy Corpsmen, or Hospitalmen, universally called, “Doc” by the Marines for whom they care.  There exists between the Navy and Marines an intense rivalry that involves a lot of smack talk and jaw-droppingly crude, inappropriate teasing.  One of the more popular themes of that teasing was that all Sailors were queer, and the Corpsmen were the queerest of the lot.  We knew it was baloney, of course, but that didn’t keep us from hoowrawing them about it.

I spent about 6 months in an MP company on Okinawa in 1970, and to my surprise, there were three or four queer Marines in that company, and 8 or 10 queer Corpsmen on the staff at the battalion sick bay – around a dozen or so altogether.  I found out about them when I went on liberty (that’s the term for off-base recreation) with some of them, and after a few drinks, tongues were loosened, stories told, and passes made.  At me.  I was flabbergasted because I’d had no idea!  The fact is that I’d never known a homosexual, or rather, I’d never known if I had known one.  It was all quite hush-hush and private, but the level of discrimination, hate, and too often, violence made it necessary.  When they found out I didn’t swing that way, they simply accepted me as a friend and comrade, and that was that.

When they were on duty, they were first-class Marines and Corpsmen.  No man could have found fault with their performance of their duty.  But off base it was a different story.  They rented a few apartments in the village just off base, and conducted their personal lives there.  But there was a HUGE problem.  They were the most promiscuous set of men I’ve ever known.

A typical month would begin with all of them paired off into couples, with all the emotion and passion of junior high kids.  A week or so would pass, and someone would notice someone checking someone out, or making extra eye contact with someone, someone and someone and someone, and it spread like pink eye throughout the circle.

Then came the breakups, complete with spats and quarrels, drinking binges, overdoses, over-stayed leaves, missed duty, crying jags in the barracks, and a few suicide attempts.  There were even occasional lapses of discretion with straight Marines, which sometimes led to black eyes and genuine bad feelings.

Then, after a week or 10 days of that, we saw the resignation to lives of sadness, loneliness, and celibacy.  Some of the affectations of martyrdom were actually hilarious, or would have been if they weren’t so corrosive to the morale, discipline, and effectiveness of the unit.

The last few days of the month would witness the formation of new relationships and romances – all as eternal and endless as had been those of the previous month – and the company bathed in an atmosphere of joy and sexual compatibility.   Then came the next week.

I’ve heard men say they could never serve with gay comrades because they’d be afraid the guy would crawl into the bunk with them.  I can honestly say I never saw the slightest hint of that kind of behavior.  In fact, when my own proclivities were made known, they were all scrupulously respectful and discrete toward me, and, as far as I know, every other man in the company.  And I repeat:  on duty, they were outstanding Marines and Corpsmen!

But the unending, cyclical emotional turmoil was devastating to the unit’s cohesiveness, morale, and efficiency.  That was the only such situation in which I found myself during my enlistment, but I have heard similar tales from others, and I have seen, with my own eyes, the same sorts of things among circles of homosexuals in factories and offices.

I do NOT approve of or condone any sort of harassment of anyone on the basis of sexual proclivities – and for the record, I have been badly treated and bullied by homosexuals in the workplace.  However, I do support the President’s prohibition on gays in the military, at least as part of integrated units.  It’s not that they can’t do the job!  (One of the deadliest men I’ve ever known once told me, “The only thing I like better than killing Commies is… [Censored].”)

Neither is it that straight men can’t function around gays, as long as the latter stay totally focused on the duty.  If, at some point in the future, the gay community can straighten itself out, that will change.  But one thing we must all learn is that the duty comes first, last, and always.  One should never hear, “I’m a gay soldier,” or, “I’m a female Marine.”  And that nonsense should never come from others, either!  A unit must be all Marines, or all soldiers, or whatever, with no gender-related or race-related adjectives.  Hopefully, we will reach that point, but we aren’t there yet.  Hell’s fire, we’re still taking about [adjective] Presidents!

For the record, transsexuals are a totally different story.  The confusion of roles and capabilities would be far more devastating to a unit than would be any gay angst.

 

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

JOHNNY AND ME – AULD LANG SYNE

Some time before embarking on the 130^th anniversary reenactment of Banks’ Red River Campaign, in Louisiana, I had a dream.  In that dream, my company was formed on the left of the battalion line.  (For those not steeped military tradition, the left of the line is reserved for the second senior company. It is a critical post in the line of battle.)

I saw the battalion line extending  to the right of our company, between the ranks of large pines, with a little-used road before us.  The battalion commander, Colonel Scott Swenson, a Texan and a very fine infantry officer with whom we had served before, rode out in front of us, beside the color guard.  He spoke loudly enough that the entire battalion could hear, of the task before us, of the many tasks behind us, and what an honor it had been to command us.  His voice cracked when he said, “You are the finest group of men I have ever been blessed to serve with.”

I was fighting back the tears in my dream when a man up on the right began to sing “Auld Lang Syne” in a strong, accented baritone.  Within a few seconds the entire battalion – about 150 men – picked up the song, and the Colonel placed his hat over his heart and joined the singing.  It was achingly sad and poignant .  I woke just then and felt tears on my face.

A few weeks later, we had broken camp for the last time.  We carried nothing but our rifles, ammunition, bayonets, canteens, and haversacks with such breakfast leftovers as we figured could stand the trip.  We’d been pared down to the nubbins, as they say, with nothing extraneous or unnecessary.

We had been together for 5 days, and had marched more than 50 miles from Natchitoches almost to Mansfield and back to Pleasant Hill.  We’d eaten rations dumped onto a poncho from a commissary wagon, slept in rain-soaked uniforms with no blankets or tents, and tangled with exuberantly aggressive Yankee cavalry off and on the entire way.  The day before, we’d slugged it out with a numerically superior foe at Mansfield and driven him from the field.  We were as bonded as we were tired and filthy.  Every man knew the coming action at Pleasant Hill would be the end of our campaign. We’d shake hands – assuming we weren’t so badly scattered we never saw our comrades again – and go back to…what?  Real life?  Maybe

We were in that mental state where the men we really are and the men we pretend to be seem to have been playing sort of an emotional shell game, and we weren’t quite sure which was going to be under the shell when the rifles stopped and the smoke had blown away.

The call came to fall in on the colors.  My company was formed on the left of the battalion line.

I saw the battalion line extending  to the right of our company, between the ranks of large pines, with a little-used road before us.  An overwhelming sense of déjà vu almost staggered me.  The setting was exactly like my dream.

The battalion commander rode out in front of us, beside the color guard.  He spoke loudly enough that the entire battalion could hear, of the task before us, of the many tasks behind us, and what an honor it had been to command us.  His voice cracked when he said, “You are the finest group of men I have ever been blessed to serve with.”

I was fighting back the tears when a man up on the right of the battalion began to sing “Auld Lang Syne” in a strong, accented baritone that I had heard before.  Within a few seconds the entire battalion – about 150 men – picked up the song, and the Colonel placed his hat over his heart and joined the singing.  The song ended, the color guard assumed their post in the center of the battalion, and the orders came that sent us through the woods, across a bog, and into what turned out to be as intense a battle as I ever experienced.

But that moment in the woods, surrounded by comrades in Gray, the song, the Colonel’s words, and the confused emotions will be with me until I die.  Perhaps “haunt” is the word, but only if spirits of the living can visit us while they are yet living.  (I’ve wondered many times if perhaps we’d awakened Johnny, and he’d come to call, first in my sleep,  in anticipation, to prepare me, and then in comradeship, and even – Oh!  May it be so! – in recognition and gratitude.)

Deo Vindici

 

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque, NM

Hypocrisy, Harris, and Reparations

The staggering hypocrisy of the Left is on display in the fact that Kamala Hariss’ family owned slaves. However, making an issue of this fact reveals equal hypocrisy in everyone who has spoken against slavery reparations. If we are not responsible for the actions of our ancestors, neither is [the thoroughly despicable] Mrs. Harris.

Knock if off. There are plenty of grounds on which to incinerate her without making fools of ourselves.

 

Wess Rodgers – Rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque