Vic Socotra

14 June 2009

In for a Penny

Blades Trilogy, Part Two

(Cadet with President Bush 2006; Midshipmen in formation, graduation 2006)

(U.S.Naval Academy)

I got a note from a pal I respect yesterday, which is not to say that I have pals that I don't, but this is an association that goes back a long way. He gently called me out. Not in a bad way- he is a trained analyst, like me, and a poet, so when he writes, I listen. It wasn’t a challenge, per se, though his point stung like the sharp point of an intellectual epee.

“Hey,” he said, “With all respect, what made you think that swords are part of the graduation uniform at the Naval Academy?”

Apparently he actually conducted the due-diligence that I should have. He looked at photos from the Bush years, and the graduating young officers do not have their dainty blades affixed their belts. I bridled a little. For God’s sakes, I thought, someone must have been told not to wear swords.

In for a penny, I thought, in for a pound.

The story was in a real newspaper for goodness sake, not some “please sent this on” e-mail from a fevered viral list.

Wouldn’t the Commandant be in full dress? The Commander of the Brigade, and his class officers?

I had to go back and think the thing through, since I am no Academy ring-knocker. I am proud that I went to college, not trade school.

I did have my Imperial Navy samurai-style blade with me in Ann Arbor- I named it Mikasa, after Togo’s flagship at the victorious battle of the Tsushima Straits- but I never took to wearing it in public.

I don’t know if the original owner had a name for it when he had it, or whether it was ceremonial for functional in nature when he took it to his last duty station in Okinawa, before the Americans came.

Times being what they were for my blade, being armed in public was something that Washtenaw County Doug Harvey would not have permitted. The sword was an interesting thing, falling somewhere between an agricultural implement like a wood-splitting axe and a varmint rifle- clearly just an implement somewhere on a long spectrum of dual-purpose tools.

That would place the Naval Officer’s sword in the branch of costume jewelry, and I looked up the formal language for the uniform-of-the-day for graduation. If the students were instructed to be in Service Dress White, that is the Navy equivalent of the business suit- and no executive, except maybe at IBM or EDS in the old days, would be wearing a sword except as a concealed weapon.

The blade is reserved for what the Navy calls “Full Dress,” which is “worn for ceremonies such as changes of command, retirements, commissionings and decommissionings, funerals, weddings, or when otherwise appropriate.”

Full Dress is similar to Service Dress, but “ribbons are replaced with full-size medals above the left breast pocket, with ribbons worn on the opposite side for decorations without corresponding medals. Swords are authorized for wear by officers, and required for Lieutenant Commanders and above.”

Of course the Midshipmen would not be wearing swords- they are not even required to have them in their sea-bags. That would be a metaphorical duffle, of course, since the blades are pesky enough to carry all by themselves.

Anyway, when the kids practice their sword-drill, the Academy provides them the blades, just as they did for us 90-day wonders at Pensacola, which is where I discovered that the standard issue steel was brittle and suitable only for the cutting of cakes, not impromptu barracks swordfights. They have a distressing tendency to fracture.

I can only imagine what the Marine Drill Instructors must have thought when the thin shards of shiny shattered metal dropped out of the scabbards. I’m glad I was commissioned and gone by the time they were required again, and that is the reason my sword is the more expensive, but fully functional Toledo steel.

That is not Toledo, Ohio, but the one in Spain, where the subtleness of the Andalusian swordsmiths remains in the whip-like flexibility of their modern blades.

Anyway, the question of whether the bulk of the Midshipmen were disarmed appears moot. They are not required to own a sword, and the uniform of the day does not require it.

The question that remains is whether the honor guard and assorted Naval dignitaries were advised to not wear their swords is thus a technical one; I looked and there is precedent for the presence of the swords at previous graduations at West Point and Annapolis, albeit in a purely ceremonial role with the honor guard.

One cadet is shown embracing the last President with his blade at his hip; but the times are different now in a way that makes me feel uneasy.

The question is more about the nature of what is going on in the body politic. There is an acceleration in social change, a tectonic shift that is consolidating so much that was undigested in the years of boom and plenty and the explosion of personal communications.

The Iranian opposition, mild though it might be, was undermined in the charade election by the Mullah’s suppression of their text messaging capability.

We are all part of it, this willingness to accept what is baldly asserted. Effective propaganda has to seem plausible, and have a ring of truth to those predetermined to find it believable.

There is a lot of that abroad in the land these days, and the apoplectic purveyors of the apocalypse are whipping things up in a way that panders to the paranoid.

There is enough to be concerned about, and I despair at having to fact check everything to find the kernel of the truth.

It is quite distracting. I had intended to discuss those who find the zen of the edged weapon, like my pal’s daughter, who is practicing twice a week with the cross-hilted, bell-guarded epee, a blade right out of “The Three Musketeers.”

It is going to have to wait, along with an account of a working cutlass in the hands of a doughty Coast Guard Bo’sun, or my associate who was nearly adopted by a Japanese sword polishing can in an attempt to save an ancient art.

Never did find the truth in the story about the Navy blades, either, except that it was certainly not what it seems.

That is the problem with propaganda. We will have to get to the fun stuff tomorrow.

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