Screaming From The Pyre, Chapter III. Collected Essays In Exile

Collected Essays in Exile:

1. Sabotage Began With A Wooden Shoe
2. The "V" for Victory or Peace:The Digitus Infamis?


1. Sabotage Began With a Wooden Shoe: About Rockets, not Rocket Science

In preface, I must first assure you in no uncertain terms:: to wit, I am not now, nor have I ever been a follower of King Ludd or a member of his merry band. Further, I may have taken country walks among the Thistlewood, but I have never lived or loitered on Cato Street.

Everything that I'm about to tell you can be fact checked, and would have landed me in a federal military prison for 30 years had I spoken of it before 1987. Maybe, I should have said "could" instead of "would" for accuracy's sake. (The conditional in English being a very curious mechanism, indeed).

I signed an oath before being discharged from the army in the early 60's that I would never utter a word about what I am about to say on the pain of imprisonment. Fort Leavenworth was actually cited as my possible home for the next 30 years should I breathe a word of what had been discussed. I signed a DD 638 (or 368, if you are interested look it up it's been 40 years since I looked at that piece of paper) which bound me to secrecy by oath..

What has haunted me all these years and which I had been forced to keep secret for four decades, was my admission that I had committed the worst case of peace or wartime sabotage in the history of the United States.

I was Young. I was stupid. I was scared. I knew, even at my age, that what I was being accused of, perceptually, might be construed as destruction of a very high order. The sabotage I was accused of committing, if sabotage is the operative word, here, was from total incompetence. It was the Peter's Principle run amok.

I was accused of destroying over 250 nuclear attack missiles (They were called rockets in those days). To be specific, 250 tactical Honest John rockets minus their nuclear tips. And, yes, in reflection, je suis responsable-- to an extent. Those who were supposed to have been supervising my work: sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, and Colonels-- all the way to the top-- were equally responsible. However, on that hot summer's afternoon as I stood at attention in front of my commanding officer, and one unidentified colonel, those thoughts never entered my head. Even if they had, I would have been too intimidated to utter them.

They brought up the fact that while in high school they knew that I had been a member of SANE (Founded, I believe, by Dr. Spock of "Your Baby and You," fame), an anti-nuclear organization which advocated civil disobedience when it came to participating in Nuclear Attack drills. Yiiiiii, we wore blue arm bands and refused to duck under our desks for protection when the bell announced a possible nuclear attack. I was amazed that they knew that piece of information. "They must have done a very thorough investigation in a short period of time," I thought. Later, I remembered that I had told several people in my unit, including the company clerk, the story of my activities with SANE.

If it sounds unbelievable to you, imagine how I feel. I have had to carry this burden alone all these years. About ten years ago, I wrote a short essay about it, but then had second thoughts about publishing it. I was still scared. Ask yourself how could a little Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx who could barely communicate in four languages suddenly emerge as the nation's worst case saboteur? I am fortunate that no one then was using the word "Terrorist," (except maybe my mother's neighbors), or they may have tried to fry me. But, after much time looking through the retroscope, I think that you will agree with me that other people were more afraid than I about the consequences. I had a friend named Leo, who was the first and only person for decades with whom I had confided. It was he who first pointed out that my actions reverberated so far up the chain of command that the pressure to silence me probably wore three or more stars.

I remember returning from Germany on the U.S.N.S, pleasure craft, Gen. Maurice Rose and musing for those 8 days on how such a wonderful military career had gone so awry. Where was my Honor? Where was my Glory?

"Grass WILL grow here, by order of the Commanding Officer":

It had all begun wonderfully enough: Basic at Ft. Hood, AIT at Ft. Leonardwood and a permanent assignment with Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 2nd Reconnaissance Squadron, 8th Cavalry, 4th Infantry Division, Ft. Lewis, Washington. It was part of what was then called the "Strategic Army Corp" along with the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions. Orders were never given: "Do this!" but, "You WILL do this!" Even the "Keep off the Grass" signs were not spared this STRAC mental outlook.

However, for me, it was a dream assignment, the details of which are not really germane to this story, but if any of you are old enough to remember the "Phil Silvers' Show" where he portrayed an army supply sergeant, then you have an inkling of what my life was like. I never saw my NCO supply sergeant or my commanding officer very often. I drove around the base in my C.O's jeep which had two small cavalry flags fluttering from the rear antennae. The S4, a Lieutenant, who must have had some money in civilian life because he drove around the base in a gray gull-wing Mercedes. I was usually alone; responsible for supplies of every description-- from coffee to ammunition-- at a battalion level. I was untouchable. I could do no wrong. I was as close to be divinely touched as one can get in the military.

A year later the bubble burst. A levy, that's military jargon for a draft of troops from a particular command, had come down for South Korea. Well, Korean wasn't one of the cultures I was too keenly interested in studying: so, I asked my commanding officer if there was any chance of going somewhere else. "There is a small levy for Germany," he said. I didn't ask what or where to, just, "can you fix it?" When he said, "Yes," I bought a German dictionary. Learning German, I knew, was going to be a snap.

Soon after, however, upon reading my traveling orders, the little voices in my head started to ask nervous questions: for starters, what the heck (self edit) was the 64th Ord. Co. SpWpnsMsl? I could figure out that "Ord" stood for Ordnance as in munitions (I didn't like that idea too much) and "Co." was, of course, the abbreviation for Company. In the army, you don't ask anyone else to decipher armyglese, you are supposed to figure it out yourself: eventually, I did... "Special Weapons Missile." I did not like that..... no, no, no, not one little bit. As young and stupid as I confess to have been, I knew that meant that I was going to be living and working in a first strike target area. Korea began to sound very good to me, but it was too late to do anything-- save rue.

"X" means Exclusion:

Situated near a burg called Fishbach on the French-German border the 64th, although part of the 84th Ord Bn was also attached to NATO. Charles DeGaulle, (remember him?) had ejected all American nuclear forces out of France in retaliation for U.S. refusal to share nuclear technology-- as we did with our other ally, the Brits. So, the army just moved everything right across the border. It was great: you could get drunk in France one night, and in Germany the next. German beer was better, but the French women slam-dunked the German frauleins. As a consequence, our pay was spent evenly in both countries.

I'm assuming that the T.O. 'n. E. (Table of Organization and Equipment) of this type of unit has been declassified by now. Therefore, let me give you a brief description of how it was structured. The unit was divided into two distinct operational groups with separate missions spread out over 1,000 acres. The nuclear warheads were housed in a special compound and protected with specially trained M.P.s. That sector was called the "X" (for Exclusion) Area. The buildings were air conditioned in summer and heated in the winter. The work in there was very clean, therefore attractive.

By contrast, the rockets were housed in large bunkers with grass and trees growing on top (Beginning of the environmental movement? I don't think so!) in order to confuse the Russians (right). The bunkers lacked heating in the winter and cool air in the summer. Free Polish guards in U.S. Army fatigues and weapons provided the bunkers with security. No one wanted to work in the bunkers where the work was hard, nerve-wracking and dangerous; not even one coffee machine.

As soon as I got to the 64th, I went straight (without being told) to the supply sergeant where I was unceremoniously turned away with a sneer ("we have too many supply specialists") he told me to report to the company clerk for a work assignment. I remember the company clerk. His name was Mike. He was a cheerful sort and we became and remained friends throughout. He was the first one to give me the heads up. Everybody, he told me, wants to work in the "X" area, but because it was also a NATO unit, one had to get a special NATO clearance before working in that zone. Since it took 60 to 90 days for the clearance to come through, all new arrivals had to work in the bunkers. That was it. I was going to the bunkers. "Doing what," I asked. "Rocket maintenance!" he said.

Nobody who has ever been in the army would raise an eyebrow to the logic involved. It is army legend that they train you for one M.O.S. (military occupational specialty) and assign you to a different "working" M.O.S. I was decidedly unhappy with the state of affairs but I was willing to tough it out. Hey, 90 days, after all, was not too long to wait.

Toiling in the Bays:

The Bunkers or Bays as they were more often called, were these huge cavernous warehouses in which approximately eight Honest John Rockets, in coffin-like crates about eight meters in length, were housed. The rockets were in the back half while the front half was used for "pulling" the maintenance on the rockets.

The Johns were tactical rockets which were meant to be used by our troops against opposing enemy troops who might be in a position to overwhelm our position. The rockets had a flying range of about 26 miles and the warheads, so-called 250s, had enough explosive power to take out a small area, say the size of Manhattan. (I'm not about to begin to second guess military logic at this point in my life.) The reliability of the John, its solid fuel grain, was also its greatest weakness. Hence, they had to be continuously lifted out and removed from their crates and placed on a special bed. All the work was done by hand with block and tackle "A" frames that you often see in a garage for lifting engines out of cars.

Once the rocket had been nestled securely on a specially designed dolly, the motor had to be detached. In itself, the motor did not seem to be anything spectacular. It had a cone shaped exhaust that any one who had seen a Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck cartoon would have recognized. The only significant part that I can recall, was a large heavy silver bar that ran across the diameter of the motor to insure "reliable electrical conduction" when the moment for ignition came. The motor was attached to the rocket body by 100 bolts that had to be removed by hand. Then, one by one, the four pieces of fuel had to be removed and checked for cracks.

You see, the fuels grains (they looked like large recessed cigarette filters) could, and did on occasion, develop cracks. That was the danger. If a rocket with a crack was fired, it would burn faster on the side where the crack was and fly off its programmed trajectory. Do you get the picture? They could veer off and hit our own troops, or, come right back from where they were sent resulting, in either scenario, into a military catastrophe.

The first two pieces of fuel were easy to pull out. The second two were secured to the front of the rocket with an "O" ring. Remember those? (Some years ago, I read how, in Germany, a U.S. Pershing Rocket, the evolutionary successor of the Honest John, accidentally misfired because of a problem with its O ring). Somebody had to crawl inside, into a space no larger than a sewer pipe, and remove approximately 80 bolts by hand using nothing more technologically advanced than a ratchet wrench. Which of the "expert technicians" got to crawl inside? First of all, you have to understand that no one in any of the crews had been trained for this job. All of us, myself included, learned from the men who had worked in the bays before us while waiting for their clearances to work in the "X" areas.

The individual who was there the longest was the boss. Nominally, we had sergeants and officers in charge of us but we rarely saw them. Why would they be in the bays when they could be hanging out in comfort somewhere else? N'est-ce pas? The individual with the least time on the work crews was the one who crawled in the rocket. The very first day I showed up, it was my turn.

Before going into the rocket, the standard procedure was to put on coveralls, take off our boots, remove all watches and rings (One spark from a watch hitting the skin of the rocket could ignite the two remaining pieces of fuel). A grounding wire was clipped on the back of the rocket to catch any static electrical charge (very reassuring). If the rocket had ignited, the people standing outside were not going to survive long either, but everyone knew that the one inside would be vaporized first. That's the thought that I took in with me the first --and every subsequent-- time I crawled into one of those rockets.

There is no keeping a Fool from his Folly:

It was during one of those plumbing episodes that I had my first epiphany as an adult. I was going about my work removing the bolts and placing them in a special soft bag, when the wrench slipped out of my hand and while I hysterically tried to grab it, fell to the bottom of the rocket skin. It was a very long nanosecond. I waited for the world to end and when it didn't, I asked myself-- and these were my exact words-- "What is a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx (I was born there, you know), doing inside a rocket in Fishbach, Germany?" It was a question that I could not readily answer. However, like Sartre's hero, Roquentin, in "Nausea" who, after spending his whole life bouncing off of walls and not knowing why, suddenly picks up a rock while sitting on a park bench and experiences his own existence. That day-- that nano-instant- I transcended myself, and I saw a fool. It was a painful revelation. I didn't know it then, but I had become a philosopher although I hadn't received my tin cup, yet..

After each piece of fuel was removed, it was placed on a curved dolly with rollers. I was shown how to inspect the fuel grains on the first day. With a flashlight in hand (Sorry, no computers, yet), the grain was turned slowly all the while shooting a beam of light down the side of the grain. I'm assuming that there have been some technological improvements since then.

If a crack were to be found, and one or two were found in the first month I worked in the bays, no chances could be taken. The standing orders were that the rocket was placed back in its box, sealed and the characters "CR6" written in large letters on the outside (I never learned what they meant. I assume "CR" meant cracked, but the "6"?). The rocket was then taken back to Ft. Meade in the States where it was destroyed --can't take any chances. I always wondered what happened to that silver bar, though?

Within a few months, I was the senior man on the crews and, within a week or so, I found my first crack. I showed it to everybody else (especially to any new guys. I've always been a teacher). It was a long black line running down the outside of the fuel grain.

I repacked the rocket, "CR sixed" it and felt very proud of myself. That sense of pride was re-enforced by the warm words spoken to me by my direct commanding officer, a certain Lt. Murphy and my company commander, Captain Brown. I was so pumped up after that, that I was resolved to continue doing professional and detailed inspections. Within a week, I had found another, several days later another. Soon, I realized that I was being passed over for the "X" areas. When I asked to speak to the company commander to inquire why I had been passed over, the company clerk Mike intercepted me and told me that the way things now stood, the C.O. believed that he had finally found someone in the bays who knew what he was doing. To further prove his point, he showed me a letter of commendation that was going into my 201 file (personnel file) signed by Capt. Brown..

Hey, I had my own jeep. I could drive into the base and hang out with my friends at the snack bar drink coffee listen to the country music on the juke box. With less than a year to go, I reasoned, I could tough it out. My inspections became more thorough. I was beginning to find two or three cracked rockets a week. Cracked ones would go out, new ones would come in. I began to receive frequent words of praise from Capt. Brown whenever I would pass by him. When I pulled the mandatory CQ (Charge of Quarters) duty at night, I would sit in company headquarters and read my 201 file. It had gotten a lot thicker. My battalion commander and his executive had each written a letter of commendation. I was treated by the company NCOs with respect. I was proud of the job that I was doing.

We were at war, I was constantly reminded, albeit a Cold War, but a war just the same. I was extremely conscious of security and made sure that I didn't get so drunk that I might blab in front of a spy posing as a beautiful girl interested in moi. (We were constantly being shown security films in which a beautiful damsel dupes a poor GI and pumps him for secret information.) That wasn't going to happen to me. I was a soldier's soldier.

Then, it rained on my parade:

Before very long, I was averaging one crack a day. If you figure that each rocket had a price tag of several million dollars (early 1960's dollars), and each had to be replaced, a lot of business was going on somewhere, but I never gave a thought to it. I was just doing my duty. Two hundred and fifty rockets later, a new man was assigned to our crew. He was a nice enough guy from, if I remember correctly, New Mexico or Arizona. What made him different was that he was the first person to come into my unit who had been trained for the job. I was happy to have him on my crew and just as happy to show him what I had learned from experience.

I wasted no time putting him to work. I found a crack on the first rocket I opened. "Let me see it," said the new guy in a "gee whiz" manner. I turned the grain around, expertly, and lined the flashlight along the crack. And, just as humbly and gee-whizzy he said, "That's not a crack, that's a seal. The fuel is rolled and that's where it's cut and heat-sealed."

There were too many witnesses for me to get away with his murder and I knew that there was no way that I could explain a massacre to anybody's satisfaction. That's when I had my second epiphany: my military career was over.

It didn't take long for the news to get around. The very next day I was called out of the bays to see the Company Commander. I wasn't sure what to expect. The first hint that things were going to go bad was when I walked into the Company Commander's office and Mike kept his head down avoiding any eye contact. "Go in, they are waiting for you," he said. I wanted to ask him who the "they" were, but I understood that he had been warned against speaking to me.

Two loud requisite knocks on the door: "Specialist Perez reporting as ordered, sir!" I barked as I had been trained to do.

A Swoon at Noon:

"Come in Private," was Capt. Brown's response. I was about to correct him on my rank, but reason flashed across my mind and I realized that the C.O. was way ahead of me on this. I stood at attention until he told me to stand "At ease!" Capt. Brown was sitting down behind his desk and a full bird Colonel, whom I didn't recognize, was standing stiffly next to him. The colonel never spoke a word. He just stared at me and the papers on the desk in front of me. I don't think that I had ever been that close to a Bird Colonel, before. This was strange.

The Captain began by stating that I could assume that this was also an "Article 15" hearing (usually lenient unit level punishment that often leads to reduction in rank.) But, "There were more serious matters to attend to," he said, "very serious matters." This time stressing "very serious." I lowered my head and looked down on the papers on the desk. On one side was my 201 file. Missing, were the Letters of Commendation. A sense of dread began to ascend my spine. Directly in front of me, there was a form with my name typed on it below a line where my signature would go. I couldn't make out what it said, but I could read the DD 638 in the very bottom right. My supply clerk training had gotten me used to look at the numbers on forms. I knew that Mike had probably just typed it up. He knew everything.

I like the word swoon. It's not often used any more unless it applies to a woman falling into a faint. But the Romantic poets, especially Coleridge used it a lot, sometime he would make a participle out of it, "Swound." He uses it in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," (lines 391, 392), "It flung the blood into my head, And I fell down in a swound."

I make this point because that is exactly how I felt. I was in a swoon (the manly kind, of course), with all sorts of words and images rushing past. (What was a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx doing here?). It was during this swound that I heard the words "30 years in military prison!"......"Ft. Leavenworth!".......(I expect that "Running Amok'" was in there too, but I don't remember hearing it)........"Sabotage!" "Sabotage?" I interrupted with more hurt than query. It is one of the verities of military life that one does not interrupt an officer when he or she is speaking to you. "Yes, Sabotage!" shrieked Captain Brown, "Probably the worst case in the history of these United States." I was dumbfounded. I looked up at the Colonel, his eyes repeated Capt. Brown's statement. I could find some relief in the words "30 years," that meant I was to be spared the firing squad.

I can't recall how long I was in the C.O.'s office: 30 minutes? An hour? More? I lost all sense of time. How it ended up was a surprise and a relief to me: a reduction in rank by one grade, required to sign an oath of secrecy that bound me for 25 years, I would receive an Honorable Discharge with all my veterans benefits and a chunk of cash upon my E.T.S. (End Term of Service). The only real negative stipulation was that I could not re-enlist in the Army. Accepting that clause never caused me any real difficulty.

In the two weeks it took to process my discharge, a Major was made Commanding Officer and Captain Brown was reduced to Executive Officer. We never made eye contact again during that period.

As I was wiling away my time on the U.S.N.S. Rose,-- not as in "wilding" the word the NYT incorrectly coined during the case of the assault on the Central Park Jogger a decade or so back The NYT reporter misquoted the teenage suspects, saying that they had said that they were "Wilding" "They actually said, that they were doing the "Wild thing." If you put a thick Jimmy Hendrick's twang to it, it comes out, "Wilthang." I have waited a long time to explain that to someone, so you will forgive me for taking this opportunity-- I reckoned to myself that I had in fact dodged a bullet and began to relax for the first time in what seemed to have been an eternity which, in reality, had been no more than a month.

I waited almost 20 years before I dared to tell any one this story and then, it was to my oldest friend, Leo. Leo had been a decorated Marine and had served in Vietnam. He was, at that time a Columbia trained economist. His views, he would often protest were left of Keynes, but in truth, he was a passionate conservative. Leo was the kind of friend with whom one could argue on any subject for hours. We often did just that --locking out anybody else who could not keep up. We could begin a typical conversation with an off hand comment about the weather and end up challenging each other on their knowledge of quantum mechanics and quantum theory in general. He was the guy to whom I first told my story... swearing him to secrecy, of course. I respected his opinion.

Leo's Wisdom:

After hearing the whole story, he said,

"Louie, you can look at this several ways. Every time one rocket had to be destroyed, another one had to be ordered. Ultimately, it meant that a procurement officer, a general of some rank, was sitting behind a desk or, more likely, at a business lunch with a representative of the manufacturer who, probably had been the general's senior officer the year before, and had sat in the same chair as the general was sitting in at the present time. The conversation might have gone like this

...... 'How are you doing Bill?" said the man in civilian cloths to the general, 'How are Mary and the kids? You know that we are looking forward to your coming to work for us when you retire next year. We are opening a new liaison office in Southern Cal., this year. It would be perfect for you, knowing how much you like to play golf.

'So, what can we do for you today?' said the man in the suit. 'Business has been really good recently. I think you gave us an order for 50 new Johns to replace some older models that suffered in those cold bunkers in Germany. The Army really has to do something to bring those bunkers up to snuff.' he said with a chuckle.

'What did you say, 40 more?” repeated the immaculately coiffured man. Well that's great! You know, since these are replacements, they don't figure into the budget but are paid for by a contingency account set aside for this purpose?'

'At least, it keeps the G.A.O. off the field,' chimed in the man in uniform, smiling broadly as he sipped on his bourbon on the rocks.

'Exactly,' said the man in the suit as he raised his Jack Daniel's to toast. 'To Business.'...' To Business.' said the other.'"

I remember after finishing his scenario, Leo looked up and said, "You know, Louie, they only had two options. The first was to try and buy your silence off with the benefits. You got V.A. money for school. Hospital care, if you need it. You can buy a home with a V.A. guaranteed loan. You can work for the government."

"What's the other option?" I asked with a sense that I already knew the answer. Leo looked up and smiled broadly.

Szia,
From Budapest

2. The "V" for Victory, Putting woof and warp back into the weft of my existence.

All things have a beginning, and this began while I was musing about D-Day and my father's presence aboard a troop ship that June morning in 1944, when, logically, (for me, logic has always had a quantum aspect to it) my thoughts turned to Winston Churchill and his "V" for Victory symbol which became his imprimatur during World War II. One can hardly think of wartime Winnie without evincing an image of him flashing two fingers, the index and middle fingers. The "V" for victory: N'est-ce pas? By the way, the two in Classical Latin are called the "Digitus Indicus" and the "Digitus Medius," the latter, often referred to as the "Digitus Infamis" (more about where I am going, here).

Between 1337 and 1453, Britain and France waged three wars known collectively as the "100-years War." It was during this period that the knight in shining armor disappeared off the stage. One could seriously question if these characters ever did shine, but that's ho-hum for another time. Continuing: It was the English bowman, more precisely, the Welsh bowman with his longbow that laid waste to French chivalry. In one battle alone (Poitiers, 1356), 25,000 French knights lost their nobility to the ignoble armor-piercing arrows of the Welsh longbow.

That fact was not lost on the French who, when they next captured a bowman, cut off those offending two fingers, index and middle, which the Welshmen used to pull back the bow string. The next time, however, when the two armies faced each other again, the Welsh (okay English, Edward the I's caprice, notwithstanding), would raise up their collective two fingers to indicate to the French that they still had their devastatingly powerful bow fingers. Do you follow me? They, also, meant to indicate some thing else. Can you figure out what?

As the centuries rolled by, Welsh and Englishmen, too, I presume, would flash those two fingers to any French person (or anyone else, I would imagine) who managed to transgress in some manner, i.e., on the motorway. Obviously, when they do that, they are not indicating a prowess in archery.

Okay, back to Mr. Churchill. When, Winnie raised his two fingers at the Nazi juggernaut, it was something every Brit could plainly understand. It had appeared as a symbol for victory during the First World War, whether it was Winnie who initiated it back then, too, I can't be sure, but he seems a likely candidate. The "V" for victory illusion could even bring a smile to the lips of the stodgy British monarchy and nobility, who were able to flash a socially leveling symbol that the common Englishman well understood to mean, dare I say it: **** ***!

For Americans, the historic and cultural symbolism was lost. It became simply, "V" for victory until the 1960s. During the Vietnam War, it was used, initially, by peace activists to mean victory in the struggle for peace, only after a few years did the "V" sign, then evolve to mean peace. You could pin the change in meaning, on the media. Who else? Sic transit gloria mundi.

"...Out out brief candle, life's but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," Macbeth Act: V; Scene: V.
Szia,
From Budapest