(Mac at Willow on the first Summer Suit Day of Spring. Photo Socotra.)

It was a busy year, Mac’s last one on the planet. This particular encounter was a great day for weather and a mixed day for my personal interaction with the First Amendment. We had temperatures in the low eighties and sun in Arlington, and people were literally floating along the sidewalks with goofy grins, welcoming the coming warmth.

I had to take the Bluesmobile- my P71 Crown Vic police Cruiser- to the repair shop yesterday to have the air conditioning fixed- again. I have run the numbers, and recent winter voyage repairs have run into a few thousand dollars- or the equivalent of a fairly hefty new car payment.

We may be on a tipping point, automotively speaking, and I thought about it on the hike from garage up and over the hill to the West Falls Church Metro stop. It was a pure delight to be on foot in the sunshine, and though I had left my smokes on the driver’s seat of the cruiser, the perfect urban vehicle, otherwise it was hard to feature a better day.

As I walked through the Kiss N’ Ride lot at the West Falls Church Metro station I was ambushed and interviewed by a crew from a Polish TV network. They asked me about Goldman-Sachs and the dramatic resignation of that 33-year-old broker who almost brought down the industry.

I said: “Those assholes were all criminals and they should have been prosecuted and jailed. I said that long before the Occupy Crowd did.” I hoped the folks in Warsaw got my comments.

Later, back at the office, I was listening to the local NPR outlet show with noted scientist Michael Mann, the guy who devised the “Hockey Stick” depiction of climate doom. He was so sanctimonious that I actually called WAMU to make an on-air comment, it seeming to be a media day.

I told the screener at the station that I just wanted to talk to the self-righteous jerk on the air. They hung up on me.

I think that was the morning I decided to stop donating to the NPR membership drives. It’s a mixed day for free speech, I thought, but so far we can say what we want at the Willow Bar.

Mac agreed to come out and enjoy the weather, and he was seated near the apex of the Amen Corner as I finished the dodge-em run crossing Fairfax Drive at rush hour. I slid onto the stool next to him and looked at him expectantly.

“It was Nard Jones,” said Mac triumphantly, but without preface. “LTJG Nard Jones.”

“Who was?” I said, hanging my briefcase from the little hooks screwed into the wood under the bar.

“The Public Affairs Officer- PAO- who I worked for at the 13th Naval District in Seattle. He was the spokesman for the commander, RADM Charles Freeman.”

“Oh, right,” I said, fishing out my pen and notebook. I flipped to the page where our last conversation had petered out.

“I lost a bet to Nard. I bet that Singapore would never fall to the Japs.”

“Did Nard ever collect?” I asked.

“No, the Gibraltar of the East did not surrender until the middle of February, 1942. I was already on the way to Pearl Harbor then. Nard was the son of the publisher of the Oregonian, so I doubt if he needed the money.”

“OK,” I said. “Let me warm up by going through your tours and see if we stumble across anything new.”

“Fine by me,” said Mac. “The surrender of Singapore was a stunner. We assumed that when the war came we would have a cake-walk over the Imperial forces. We significantly underestimated them. We talked about that at Elliott Carlson’s lecture about his book at the National Archives this afternoon.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said. “How was it?”

“There were more than a hundred people there to listen and ask questions about Joe Rochefort, our Boss at Station HYPO.”

“That is a great turn-out,” I said. “Wish I had been able to make it.”

“Afterwards there was a book signing. Elliot and I both signed copies for people who bought the book.”

“Oh, yeah, you wrote the introduction, didn’t you?” Mac nodded. “The fall of Singapore was the largest capitulation in British history- 80,000 surrendered in the city after a battle that went on for just seven days.”

(Surrender at Singapore, 15 February 1942. Photo Imperial War Museum.)

“Damn,” I said.

“They joined 50,000 who had already surrendered in Malaysia. It was incredible.”

“How many survived the war?” I asked.

“They say the ones from Changi Jail did better than most. Overall, about 27% of Allied POWS died.”

I wrinkled my forehead, trying to do the math. “That amounts to something like 37,000 dead. Might have been better to fight it out.”

“Maybe. But like I said, we underestimated the Japanese. That did not last long.”

“I don’t imagine anyone asked the troops about it, did they?”

Mac shrugged. “There was not a great deal of freedom of speech in the ranks, and then, after the surrender there was none at all.”

(British POWs at Changji Jail in Singapore. Photo Imperial War Museum).

I nodded in agreement and smiled at Liz-with-an-S and pointed in the general direction of my tulip glass as she passed, bringing Jon-no-H a replacement for his iced-tea and vodka. “Ok,” I said. Now, let’s start with your tours after the war….”

We went a long way down the road that delightful afternoon. Completely free to talk about whatever we wanted.

(Jon-no-H’s raspberry vodka iced-tea. Photo Socotra.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com