HARD MEN TEACH GENTLENESS, BUT IS IT ENOUGH

Hard men get that way by going through tough times. The good ones don’t let bad times turn them bad.

Instead, they use the suffering they experienced as a teaching tool.

The main lesson they teach? “Here’s what I did; here’s what I should have done.”

It takes hard men to turn Army recruits into soldiers, and some of the hardest are found on the training ranges.

Some of those guys looked like the lived alone in the woods, their daily task being to show goofy trainees how the Army wanted them to behave.

One of those guys was at the hand grenade range. I don’t recall his name, but he was as badassed as they come.

Part of Army bootcamp is learning the tools of the trade. One of the stops is the grenade range where they showed us how to throw a bomb.

The walk to the range was weird. We were in the middle of nowhere and heard a loud alarm ring. Then another. After the second we were herded into a clear area and locked into cages behind what looked like cement grandstands.

A torn American flag flew in the clearing, but not just ripped, it was shredded.

Another alarm rang, and the noise started. The alarms signaled the beginning and the end of grenade class, and we were next. The cages were a safety feature.

We heard the explosions and the sound of something whipping by overhead. What was it? Shrapnel, and it riddled the flag.

Hard Men Harder To Kill

My turn with a hand grenade came with about ten others after we were unlocked and followed a range master to the front of the range.

We walked down a line of ten stations divided by four foot cement walls on three sides, and a four foot trench by each wall.

Range guys stood in each station to welcome us. It was the sort of welcome you’d give to a stranger with the potential of screwing up and killing you. They were suspicious, we were spooked. It’s an odd combination.

The way it worked was like this: The Army wanted you to throw two live hand grenades at a stack of tires down range. There were three stacks out in front of the stations.

If the training part failed, if a trainee freaked out and dropped the grenade, the range master’s job was to kick it into the trench behind the walls to blow up.

My guy said he was new to the job last week when another instructor had a trainee so nervous that they dropped the grenade, didn’t get out of the way, and it blew them both up.

I didn’t run this new bit of information through my bullshit detector, instead I just nodded and kept eye contact so the guy knew I wouldn’t kill us. But he had some kind of death wish just the same.

Once we got the command to launch, I threw that thing and ducked behind the wall. My trainer stood and watched for what felt like way too long, then he took a knee next to my flat to the ground body.

“Nice throw. You’ve got a pretty good arm on you,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said into the cement floor.

I dropped the next grenade right on top of the tire stack. I know this because my guy told me while I was hugging the ground. Then we left and never went back.

A Gentle Learning Curve

The bombs detonating today come from history. Through video after video we’re learning police tactics and techniques. These are hard men doing a hard job.

It gets harder and harder to defend tactics and techniques when a few policemen forget to protect and serve and instead see their uniform as a license to choke, beat, and shoot for their own safety.

Before jumping up in outrage, who believes the man kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed man laid out on the ground, with fellow policemen standing witness, until he died, was protecting himself from a life or death threat?

For all of the good police work being done, the image burned into our brains are the bad examples. Hard men know the cost of violence, while wannabes try and prove how hard they are with their bad deeds.

In a world begging for Black Lives Matter to be heard in a meaningful way, hard men lead, while soft men look for a cushion to rest on while they spew meaningless platitudes.

The difference between the two is glaring, but how about those among us who don’t understand, who don’t get it?

The NFL guy who took a knee during the National Anthem was doing an American thing. He found a way to amplify the message that Black Lives Matter, but was seen by too many as disrespecting the flag. His small protest was a heads up moment, but it wasn’t the first.

In the Sixties two men stood on an Olympic podium and raised their black gloved fists during the National Anthem; the heavyweight champion of the world declined military induction. Over fifty years ago this blogger watched protests. Today’s message hasn’t changed.

What has changed is the whiners who revealed themselves during the covid lockdown, and their disdain for masks. The modern change against science and truth is not one you’ll find here.

Hot is still hot, cold is cold, and honesty still rings true in some circles.

Maybe yours?