11 August 2010
Fish and Chips
(Willow Miniature fish and Chips from the Neighborhood Bar Menu, with Mac's Collossal Olive. Photo by Droid Smart Phone via Socotra)
There were a ton of people from the Company at Willow. They clogged the passage past the near end of the bar.
They were not my division, so I didn’t know any of them, and they seemed happy enough probably not knowing what Secretary Gates effectively did to the whole vendor community this week.
I don’t imagine they are going to realize until a couple quarters down the road, so I smiled thinly and edged my way through the crowd.
Mac was already seated at one of the little tables across the aisle from the bar. I snagged the seat next to him.
“Someone from your company must have let the cat out of the bag,” he said with a merry twinkle in his eyes.
“Face it, Admiral,” I said. “You are a rock star!”
We laughed, and he handed me a pad of note paper.
“I thought you might like this,” he said. I looked at the letterhead, which read: “United States Senate” in the fancy old English script, sub-headed “Committee on the Armed Services” with tiny letters at the upper left, saying “Strom Thurmond, Chairman.”
I gave a low whistle. “I met the Chairman a few times. He would cruise around on his own, even when he was in his late 90s. I introduced him to my parents one time when I had credentials to be on the Hill and played the big shot when family came to town.”
“He was an active fellow. I swiped the pad when I was testifying up there on the years ago. You know that he landed at Normandy at D-Day in one of those gliders. He was authentic, regardless of what you thought of his politics.”
“I heard in his later years he would go to the buffets and put meatballs and shrimp in his pockets. His staff was appalled. I didn’t see anything leaking the last time I saw him, though.”
Mac laughed, and I saw the long line of people he had known and with whom he had interacted. He handed me a pen to go with the pad.
“I thought you could use this instead of napkins,” he said.
“Thanks.. I am still a little fried from the hours on the road.” I blinked from fatigue and the oppressive heat outside. Mac looked cool and crisp as always.
“Let’s see, I wanted to talk about 1943, and the last quarter of the year as things changed. We landed on Guadalcanal two months after the battle of Midway with that asshole Richmond Turner in command of the amphibious forces. You don’t mind if I call him an asshole, do you?”
“I do myself,” said Mac. “The Marines still hate him. We lost access to the JN-25 code right around the time of the landings, and we had no warning to pass when the Japs came down the slot. Turner took off and left the Marines behind, not even waiting to unload the cargo ships with the supplies the Jarheads needed. They don’t forget that he cut and ran on them.”
“I suppose he had a good argument,” I said. “Hard times and hard choices.” I waved at Jim, who brought a delightful bottle of Spanish white and a tulip glass that he filled halfway up. I asked him if he could possibly put in a request for the $5 neighborhood bar menu of the miniature fish and chips for us. He said he would think about it and floated off into the crowd of earnest company people.
I gestured at his retreating back with the pen that Mac had given me. “There is a lot of stuff that is going to change around here. I heard on the radio that they are talking about $3.5 billion in defense contract cancellations in Fairfax County alone,” I said.
Mac nodded gravely. “That is what happens when things end. He produced a truncated copy of an ancient typed memo. “You asked one time what we did when we got back from Guam after the war ended. A guy writing a book found this in the archives. I don’t recommend you go there. All that paper will just suck you in.” He gazed at it before sliding it over. “This was in RG-38, Box 94 in the Naval Security Group Archives.
I looked at it curiously. It was dated 8 September 1945, and was addressed to the Flag Secretary, and the subject line was “Report of additional Orders and Plans destroyed by Burning.” It contained the list of things Mac had made disappear in fire:
1. G-2 Estimate of the ‘Enemy Situation in Kyushu 25 April 1945
2. Com3rd Fleet Standard instructions, 1-45 Part one only
3. Command 2nd Carrier Task Force Pacific and TF 38 OpOrd #2-45, 25 June 1945
4. Secret Operations Instructions #88 SW Pacific Area
I whistled. “This is all Operation Olympic stuff, right, the real deal.”
Mac nodded. “That is what the few of us that were left did when we got back. Everyone else went home as fast as they could. We destroyed stuff.”
“Were these the only copies?”
“No, but I have no idea where or if it was all kept. That is why people have been arguing about everything ever since. Trust me, you don't want to be in the middle of all those boxes of ancient papers."
“I heard there was only one guy left at the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area,” I said. "Twelve hundred people down to a Lieutenant in a couple months.”
Mac smiled. “That was Wendy Furness,” he said. “He was left with two rooms of captured materiel. Pistols, binoculars, Samurai swords. He was told to get rid of it all and lock up an empty building.”
“What did he do with it all?”
“Don’t know. I got a set of binoculars, though.”
“Well, that is a good thing about winning a war. Everyone gets a souvenir, even if it is just your life.”
“We are in the process of surrendering in the ones we are in now,” I said glumly. “And we are so stupid as a nation that we cannot even recognize when someone is building a victory monument in our greatest city that took the biggest hurt.”
“What do you mean, Vic?”
“They want to call that new building in New York the Cordoba Center, which was the capital of Islamic-occupied Spain. It is like putting the middle finger up at us and we don't even recognize it." I took a sip of the Spanish wine. "I was listening to an interview with one of the survivors of The Battle of Britain on the BBC this morning. Seventy years on from when he was a junior pilot launching against the Nazis, he is phlegmatic about his role in changing the world, just like you are.”
“Well, they lost their Empire,” said Mac. “I suppose we have to get used to it as well, and hope to do it with the same sort of grace.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Putting up with a Mosque at Ground Zero dedicated to the last conquest of Europe seems pretty damned tolerant, don’t you think? Insh'allah.”
Mac just smiled, and shook his head.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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