When the world changed overnight

I know. I was there.

Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Two, Issue 64

Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

The Sunday Reader, February 4, 2024

Why do you want to kill babies?

She wasn’t kidding. Nor did anyone think she was being rude. Soldiers were baby killers; everyone thought that in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Everyone said it. And everyone there thought it was a perfectly legitimate question to ask me in 1982 when they learned I had joined the U.S. Army.

That’s just the way the world was, and had been for decades. The thousands in the streets protesting the war in Vietnam. My Lai. Kent State. No American would ever honor soldiers again.

Then the world changed. Overnight.

I know. I was there.

It wasn’t just New York journalists like the woman who asked me why I wanted to kill babies. The Army sent me to the 24^th Infantry Division at Ft. Stewart, Georgia. I saved up my money and went car shopping. I desperately wanted a Pontiac Fiero, a pretty little two-seat mid-engine sports car I could barely afford. I spent hours one Saturday going over the details with a salesman at the Pontiac dealer. We shook hands and I told him I’d see him Monday.

Monday came, and work ran late. Drove straight to the dealer with my deposit, and walked in.

Wearing my uniform.

The salesman just laughed at me. “We don’t sell to soldiers,” he said, and kicked me out. And that was that. Ended up with a little red Mustang.

Then one Sunday the world changed.

The 24^th ID was a mechanized infantry division. We had a dedicated 10,000-foot runway to launch Air Force C-5 Galaxy heavy lift aircraft loaded with our tanks, and 1/75^th Ranger Battalion to go and get us an airport to land. We could be on the ground with tanks rolling anywhere on the planet in 72 hours.

So when the dreadful news came down that Sunday that more than 200 American servicemen were dead in a terrorist attack in Beirut, it was no surprise that we were mustered within hours. So we grabbed our go bags and raced to our duty stations and...waited.

That’s the Army. Hurry up! Now...wait.

Word spread Sunday night that the Rangers had moved out. We settled down and waited for word to move out to Lebanon.

By Monday afternoon we were bored and hungry, and word spread that it was OK to send out food runs.

By Tuesday morning we were so bored we’d set up a definitely non-regulation TV in the Public Affairs Office bullpen. Soldiers are inoculated against the Army’s tendency to rush you places and then leave you there without explanation for some indeterminate length of time. Soldiers make do.

So we were making do watching the morning news when Dan Rather broke in. “We have just learned the United States has invaded Grenada.”

This brought the Sgt. Major out of his office. “Where in the !@#$!!! Is Grenada?”

It turned out to be an island nation in the Caribbean, and nowhere near Beirut.

And our Airborne Rangers were on the ground there with light weapons, fighting Cuban armor.

Details were few, and the press was frustrated. Rather said that unlike Vietnam where the press had free range, the US military had cordoned off Grenada. The press had nowhere to go.

After an hour or so of poking at a map of the Caribbean, Rather pulled up a map of the Southeastern US, with a big red arrow pointing at...well, us.

“We have just learned that the invasion of Grenada was launched from Ft. Stewart, Georgia.”

“Well, $#!%!!!!$%&*#@!@#$%,” said the Sgt. Major, once again demonstrating the colorful nature of infantry discussion.

All of our eyes swiveled to the office phone switchboard, which had been dead for days. We breathed in, and out, and in...

And every line lit up, and stayed lit for weeks.

The press couldn’t get to Grenada. They could get to Ft. Stewart, so off to Ft. Stewart they went. By nightfall we had crews from all three networks in our parking lots, reporters and photographers from every major publication, and more and more arriving by the hour.

All of us at the PAO were pressed into double duty. Those of us who worked for the base paper or the television show that ran on the local NBC affiliate had to continue providing coverage. We also had to chaperone the media mob.

Which was not happy about being chaperoned.

It was hard to tell who was angrier - the ones who had been in Vietnam, and acted like they were still there, or the ones who had missed Vietnam and saw this as their big chance. Either way, they were angry they were at Ft. Stewart instead of Grenada, and then even angrier they were herded into press areas and kept there. Not surprisingly, they took it out on their chaperones.

They were surprised it didn’t work. The army of draftees that fought in Vietnam had been replaced by the volunteer Army of professional soldiers. When shouting and swearing didn’t work they tried threats – “I’ll photograph Rangers and secret areas and put them out on the wire.”

We simply herded them away.

Then it got physical.

I’d set up my cameras in a corner of the roped-off press area waiting for the returning Rangers to get off their plane. A network crew came over and started putting their tripod and video camera in the corner.

On top of me and my cameras. They pushed and shoved unsuccessfully while I just looked at them. Finally the reporter said “Do you know who I am? Who do you think you are?”

Folks who know me say that the angrier I get, the more laconic I sound. “I’m the guy who is going to ram that tripod up your ass and use you as a boundary marker if you don’t get it off my foot.”

Coincidently at that very moment they noticed something interesting as far away from me as possible and rushed off. I turned back to the field and took this photo of a Ranger returning from Grenada to meet his child and his wife, who had gone into labor when she realized he was in combat.

Ranger returns from combat in Grenada; Pentax MX, SMC 200mm F4, Kodak Tri-X

Maybe the best news photo I ever shot.

That night we were released for the first time in the weeks since we’d mustered. We were tired and dirty and hungry, tired of sleeping under our desks and living out of our go-bags and eating stuff that came in boxes. So five of us from the PAO piled into a truck and stopped at the Chili’s just outside the base gates. We walked in, and the entire place stopped what it was doing, stood up and started cheering.

We were confused. The manager came up and shook our hands. The kitchen had just closed; he shouted back to fire up the grill. He sat us at a table, and said “Anything you want.” And when we started checking our wallets, added “Your money’s no good here.”

“There’s been a mistake. We’re not Rangers.”

“Did you do your jobs?”

“Of course.”

“Then put your money away.”

And then, for the first time, we heard something we’ve pretty much heard every day since:

Thank you for your service.

To this day, I still go to Chili’s.

Why tell this story, 40 years later? What’s the point?

Because we are a perverse species. We harbor our hurts, and immortalize them. It’s evolution: people who didn’t obsessively think about how Uncle Bob was eaten by the large cat with saber teeth probably also ended up as kitty chow.

Miracles won’t kill you, so we forget the miracles.

We forget that everyone thought soldiers were baby killers, and then everyone thought soldiers should be thanked for their service.

Or the Philippines. The dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos lasted decades. There was no way to end it without a terrible, bloody civil war. Then the People Power revolution started. Marcos sent the Philippine Army to crush it.

Then the nuns came.

The nuns knelt down in the street in front of the tanks. The tanks were ordered forward.

The Filipino soldiers thought about telling their mothers they had run over nuns and…went home. The Marcos government fell. There was no civil war.

I know. I was there.

We say Never Forget about the tragedies: 9/11. The Holocaust.

I am, by nature, and by nurture, an optimist. I say never forget the miracles.

And so as 2024 hits its stride, as primaries and elections fill our airwaves with attack ads and accusations and vitriol, I say remember how the Berlin Wall fell. Peacefully.

As others talk about another civil war, and war spreading across the world, let me instead remind you of those days when things that couldn’t be changed did change.

The People Power Revolution.

Thank you for your service.

I was there. So let me this day remind you, and gift you that thing with feathers:

Hope.

Next on Perfecting Equilibrium

Tuesday February 6th - The PE Vlog: We’re taking a couple of weeks developing marketing graphics for Feola Factory as an exercise to understand how and when AI tools are useful. This week we’re continuing to Photoshop the steampunk camera we built in Adobe Firefly. Fifth in a series.

Thursday February 8th - The PE Digest: The Week in Review and Easter Egg roundup

Friday February 9th - Foto.Feola.Friday