(RADM Dan Gallery’s account of life on the waves through the eyes of a Chief Petty Officer. I loved it as a young teen).
I have a couple chunks of the Mac Showers book ready to drop into the manuscript, and was going to take the discretionary time of the inter-holiday week to trot them out. I was flat on my back in the queen-sized pillow-top mattress thinking about that as my eyes blinked open in the pre-dawn in Arlington. I took a sip from the halfie cocktail that conveniently had lingered through the night, ice long melted, that rested on the bedside table and sighed. Boats had sent me a note that was going to require a mature response. As a retired Master Chief Bo’suin’s Mate, he knows how things really worked, and he had a scheme that Master Sergeant Earnest G. Bilko would have been proud of. I cursed on my breath and began the laborious process of emerging from the duvet and confronting the silent apartment.
I turned on the classical music station to break the stillness. No carols, thank goodness, we are now preparing for a new year. And Boats is trying to drum up enthusiasm for a new project. I threw some Neuske’s apple-wood cured pepper bacon in the general direction of the Lodge cast-iron skillet, punched the button to start the coffee in the drip percolator and retreated to bed to wait for things to come together. The best gifts of the season were liquid in nature- a gift certificate for alcohol at The Front Page, and four packets of Velvet Hammer ground coffee from the Dog Tooth Coffee Ship in Colorado. Puppy Uppers and Doggie Downers are really all I need to get across the arc of the sun’s progress across the winter sky and safely into my living room chair in the evening.
On the way to getting horizontal again, I turned on the desk-top computer. I will sometimes answer mail on my tablet, if it does not require a great deal of dexterity, but this response was clearly going to require more mature effort, and the problem was that I liked the idea. Boats had summed it up in his note, a teaser for the project he had in mind. I think you know that I hold the United State Coast Guard in the highest esteem- they pulled us out of a jam off Glochester harbor one time and I will never forget it. Dad, long after his wartime Navy days, joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary and would place his yacht the Annie C at the service of the Station down in Traverse City if needed. He was proud of his service, and delighted he could wear his ribbons from World War Two with the uniform.
Anyway, the germ of the idea started with the need to start creating a glossary of terms. For example:
Bilkoism: (Noun)The art of military logistics and acquisition by non standard means.
Bilkoized: Adjective, applied to assets obtained through unofficial methodologies.
Boonie Op: (Noun) Any military operation from disaster recovery to battle field preparation that occurs a long way from the standard military supply lines and is supervised by a relatively small group of relatively junior commissioned officers or senior NCOs. The boonie op may be modified by any variety of adjectives such as submarine as in submarine boonie op which may refer to any subsurface operation such as reef restoration or submarine timber recovery (sunken bald cypress, an actual merchant marine operation, including Law Enforcement action in submarine timber piracy suppression. )
“Secret Squirrel Boonie Op,” Any operation with Bilko-like logistics happening at the far end of the supply line and classified in nature.
Bilko:
(1) Noun, short for the fictional character Master Sergeant Earnest G. Bilko, USA, for whom the unconventional school of military logistics is named.
(2) verb as in “to bilko”, to apply non standard logistic or administrative methodologies in order to insure mission accomplishment many “bilko” methodologies are unconventional to the point of appearing to inexperienced as illegal. However actually doing anything illegal is a neo bilko tactic and is not condoned by the Bilko school unless the practitioner is absolutely sure it is the only way of accomplishing the mission and the chances of detection are very close to nil. In addition to a glossary we need to articulate the rules of thumb that emerge from these conversations like:
Important caveat: Never Bilko a matter involving weapons, appropriated funds, or classified material if there is any other way to get done what you need to get done. Use your best judgment.
Boats provided an example, drawn from the wreckage of the post-Hurricane Katrina disaster. A resourceful Coast Guard Auxiliary named Mike Howel made very creative use of some of the language in the statutes defining what constitutes a “Coast Guard Auxiliary Facility.” The result was the creation out of thin air of the Coast Guard’s first heavy trucking company, freeing all of the trailer movements post-Katrina of the USCG from Army transport services or commercial contractor hands. It was a stroke of genius, and reduced costs to next to nothing. The Coast Guard Auxiliary truckers are now approved s rolling USCG AUX “facilities,” civilian owned trucks made available with drivers to Coast Guard use for only the fuel expense. Plus, the trucks were fully covered for driver, helper and vehicle insurance purposes as if they were government property and active duty members, all using existing law. The Bilko part was Howel’s expansion of authority in taking the part of the law that failed to say he couldn’t do this and convince the right powers that actually meant he could.
Eventually the halfie next to me was gone, the coffeee was ready, and I managed to get out of bed and stay upright enough to type a response.
“Boats-
It is hard to beat Master Sergeant Earnest G. Bilko, for immersion in Service life and culture- it seems odd that such an iconic show only lasted from 1955-59:
From a nautical perspective, Admiral Dan Gallery is the first modern author to chronicle Navy Bilko-ism, and is dramatically different in tone and irreverence than the poignant aura of novels like “The Caine Mutiny” or “Mr. Roberts.” Gallery came by his written voice authentically- he was a sailor’s sailor, and his capture of the German unterzee boot U-505 was a triumph of boldness, which almost almost got him court-marshaled by hardass Admiral Ernie King for the potential compromise of the ULTRA Secret if word got out that the enigma coding machines (and codebooks) had been captured by the Americans. Nobody ratted the secret out, and now U-505 sits in Chicago in a very cool memorial.
Gallery knew how important the Chief Petty Officer’s role is in mission accomplishment, not to mention the maintenance of Good Order and Discipline. He did as nice a job as an officer can do of explaining the ways of Chiefs in his works of fiction, penned once he finally transferred to the retired list. The first of his books was “Now, Hear This!,” a book in the very edition pictured at the start of this that convinced me that if I was going to serve, I would go down to the sea in ships:
Now, Hear This! (Paperback Library, 1966)
Stand By-y-y to Start Engines (Norton, 1966)
Cap’n Fatso (sequel to Now, Hear This) (Norton, 1969)
Away Boarders (sequel to Cap’n Fatso) (Norton, 1971)
The Brink (Warner Books, 1973)
In parallel was Ernie Borgnine’s masterpiece of the small screen, “McHale’s Navy.”
Both of these streams of Service humor match the collective experience of millions of dog-faces who celebrated their draft and volunteer time in the biggest conflict in history, and the two saddest, Korea and Vietnam. Unless you get to the GWOT, or whatever the hell this conflict of civilizations is currently being called.
Navy has done well on the small screen throughout the period, mostly with non-seagoing lawyers (JAG) and civilian cops (NCIS, et al) but neither of these demonstrate the brilliance of using Bilko and Bilko-ism in explaining that life in the Service is a truly transformational experience, and that sometimes the regulations are merely advisory in nature.
There has been nothing like it since. Steve Martin did a reprise of the Sarge on the big screen in 1996, but the public never had much enthusiasm for it.
I think this is a brilliant time to recognize the USCG’s contribution to Bilko-ism. Think of the areas we could get into- rescue at sea, disaster relief, environmental response, First Responder cooperation with small town cops and firemen, courage and the inevitable bawdy ship-board humor. Some of that shone out in the stories contained in the email Boats sent this morning. I think it might be time to take a round-turn on Phil Silver’s classic original, filtered through Dan Gallery and Ernie Borgnine, and distilled in the Coast Guard’s motto of being ready for anything that man or nature can throw at it: “Semper Peratus.”
Which doesn’t quite mean what everyone says it means. But I digress.
I think it is a great idea. I wrote Boats back and told him so. I envision a project that combines the best of Huck Finn on the Mississippi and the epic film “Mothra vs. Godzilla.”
I see it with a screenplay as well! It will be something to do in the New Year, right?
Vic
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com