LOSER LIFE? DON’T BE A SUCKER FOR THAT DEAL

What is a loser life, and who gets permission to judge one from another, the winners and losers?

It starts by agreeing with the sharp people who define winners and losers.

If it’s not a coach, a judge, or your mom, then a loser life is just an opinion, even if it comes from a highly placed individual.

I don’t blame anyone for their military status, or lack of military status. It’s a go, or no go, thing. Either you did the grind, or you didn’t. So move on.

But it’s never that easy, that plain and simple.

Some people reach middle age, late middle age, and early old fartness, and can’t get over what they feel is the holy military experience. For them, their life is not complete without some HOOAH.

They yearn for the missing years, the time in rank, the comradeship, the order instilled by experts.

After seeing the first wave of the all volunteer Army up close and personal, I’ll tell you some of the guys should have skipped the whole thing.

One trainee couldn’t do the monkey bar race because his shoulders popped out of joint with too much stress. But that didn’t get him discharged early. He got out because he was unfit for duty. The unfitness came from wetting the bed every night.

I don’t remember if his lower bunk mate complained, but he probably did.

Another man was a thirty-five year old first time trainee. We had a few prior service guys, but he wasn’t one of them. He looked old to a bunch of guys hovering around the age of twenty. He looked older after each day in bootcamp until he wasn’t there anymore.

That was how it was in 1974 at Fort Ord, and none of us looked back.

An Honorable Loser Life

A kid I know from town here graduated from college and decided on the hard core life. He chose one of the most extreme hard core paths.

At one point in their training cycle the instructor said he didn’t have room in the next phase for everyone under his tutelage. Two people needed to drop out. The kid I knew had two friends drop out. He finished and found his place.

A few years later the two guys called him for advice. They had gone to Officer Candidate School and wanted to resume their earlier training. Which was upsetting to my guy.

“They are demonstrated quitters, but now they’re going to lead men into situations that normal people would never do. How are we supposed to trust officers who quit the first time around? When will the push cause them to quit again? If that happens they’ll take others with them.”

In their line of work, death is a distinct possibility. That’s why they train the way they do.

The older men who dream of all they could have been usually see themselves as officers. The image includes dress blues and lots of ribbons and medals. Sometimes they even buy uniforms to play dress-up.

The Hard Part Of A Loser Life

This is the part where keeping the story straight makes the biggest difference.

A man I met said he was an Army captain in Vietnam. He said writing letters to the families of the fallen were the hardest part of the job. Not running the jungle and setting ambushes, but writing condolence letters.

He said it with the sort of emotional power that would convince anyone. To top it off he showed his uniform in the closet. It was a dandy.

After talking to his adult kids, and saying how proud they must be of their daddy, they said he was never in the army, never in Vietnam, and ruined the whole fantasy.

I don’t know if this was a case of stolen valor, but it was something weird as hell.

My Commander In Chief Gerald Ford

What are the chances Navy man Gerald Ford’s opinion on military service and war dead matches Mr. Trump?

Not likely. He served a couple of years as president, around the same time I served. I didn’t re-up in ’76, he didn’t win his election. When the time came to vote, I threw in with Jimmy Carter. This is his service pic:

And don’t forget the guy before Ford and Carter, Nixon.

Six Navy men have been president, all officers.

Only one president out of the twenty nine with military backgrounds was a private, James Buchanan.

When the British invaded neighboring Maryland in 1814, he served in the defense of Baltimore as a private in Henry Shippen’s Company, 1st Brigade, 4th Division, Pennsylvania Militia, a unit of yagers. Buchanan is the only president with military experience who was not an officer. He is also the last president who served in the War of 1812.

Private Buchanan’s run as president serves as a window into today’s president:

Americans have conveniently misled themselves about the presidency of James Buchanan, preferring to classify him as indecisive and inactive … In fact Buchanan’s failing during the crisis over the Union was not inactivity, but rather his partiality for the South, a favoritism that bordered on disloyalty in an officer pledged to defend all the United States. He was that most dangerous of chief executives, a stubborn, mistaken ideologue whose principles held no room for compromise. His experience in government had only rendered him too self-confident to consider other views. In his betrayal of the national trust, Buchanan came closer to committing treason than any other president in American history.

Why does treason sound so familiar? Make voting plans early, we don’t need a treason challenge to Buchanan.