(Looking forward toward the Amen Corner at the Willow bar. Photo Willow.)

Ok- so it’s Armed Forces Day. I assume you are partying your brains out to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the announcement by the second Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, that henceforth “Armed Forces Day” would replace separate Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force Days. I would be OK with separate days if they each came with a holiday, but the holiday was intended to signify the importance of the unification of the Armed Forces under the Department of Defense.

(Second Secretary of Defense, the Hon. Louis Johnson. Photo DoD).

Certainly that was a challenge for Mr. Johnson, and it isn’t completely fixed yet. But all days have their challenges. For me, yesterday, it was the nail in the front right tire of the Panzer. It was sort of interesting. I knew it was low, but figured it could wait until the appointment yesterday. Then, the tire pressure hit 28 psi (Panzer apparently prefers 35), and the instrument panel went red and locked up the display in a very stern and forthright manner.

I hate it when the car yells at me like that. It is very Germanic, or like living in New York City. It is for my own good, after all.

I sighed after I turned the key and had exactly zip-nada happen. Had I left the lights on when I got back from Willow? I glanced down and the switch was in the vertical position: “off.”

Battery failed? Crap. I was going to get to the rest of the car issues this week. It appears the priorities list is going to get changed around. I just bought a new battery last year- they are supposed to last for at least three years. I remember installing this one- it was from the Ft. Myer service center. Where the hell are my jumper cables?

It is nice to have a back-up vehicle, at least until the primary and the backups are simultaneously disabled, which shows you the vulnerability of a unified force. And expensive, which is something else I have to consider these days.

We were talking about that at Willow. The regulars were limited to Old Jim, me and Jerry-the-Barrister. Sometimes Fridays are like that- thin on regulars- and sometimes it is packed. I would have gone down to the farm in the afternoon, but Panzer did not get liberated from the shop until late. A nice lady asked him if she could take the two stools closer to the window, which stumbled into one of Jim’s pet peeves, which is that you can’t reserve barstools like you do tables, but it turned out she was a recently deployed Army light Bird, who did not have an easy deployment.

She had some troopies killed, the front of her building got blown up. You know, the usual.

“The private companies don’t understand what our resumes look like. They don’t understand the acronyms.”

“Why not just say you worked for a company with a half trillion dollar budget, a worldwide footprint, an intermodal logistics network that is industry standard and has a license to kill?”

We laughed, but there was a slightly haunted look in her eyes. She had been working for the Joint IED Defeat organization- JIEDDO- an organization for which I have a lot of respect. Well, the mission, anyway.

“I hate IEDs more than I hate snipers,” I said. “And I hate snipers.” Actually, she had just been laid off as a contractor from the place as the Army basically shut the place down. Pity, really, since we never did defeat the infernal things, and now that the wars have been declared over, there is no need for all those people trying to stop the slaughter, the consequences of which I saw way too closely in the number of stumps I saw at the Ortho clinic at Walter Reed two summers ago.

There are hundreds of analysts out of work at JIEDDO as of two weeks ago, and I am not sure what the effect is going to be for the DC job market, except that it looks like nothing good for anyone nuts enough to have a mortgage or a family.

Beyond Jerry-the-Barrister to my right (Army, Vietnam, then Navy Intel) was an Air Force pilot, just retired, and his lovely raven-haired wife who was a Senate staffer. Actually, she was on the Veteran’s Affairs committee- and you can imagine how that got everyone wagging his or her tongues.

I cleared my throat as she said where they stood on the bogus waiting lists and the Vets who had died waiting to see the doctors. “I heard Press Spokesman Jay Carney on the television not talking about it. He said they were investigating themselves vigorously and would tell us if they found anything but he couldn’t comment because the investigation is incomplete.”

“Aren’t they all incomplete?” laughed Jerry, putting down his fork. He was tucking into the duck breasts with the hoisin sauce and coarse-chopped veggie medley. “Mr. Holder is still investigating stuff from 2009.”

That sparked a vigorous dialogue which veered over to a discussion of the merits of the individual service elements, and eventually the whole corner was holding up their retired military ID cards and grunting “ooo-rah!” in unison.

Army, two Navy and the Air Force covered the Bigs. If Jarhead Ray had been there, we would have been complete except for the Semper Peratus crowd, and in the spirit of the unified Armed Forces, I raised a glass of Happy Hour White to my pal Boats, the Master Chief Bo’sun’s mate from the Coast Guard.

We had a rollicking food time until the “you gotta drive” warning light began to flicker in the back of my reptilian brain stem. I bade Jim a pleasant good night, and chatted with the Colonel on the way out.

Turns out she lost her company health plan when she got laid off, just like I did last year. That could leave us to fall back on the safety net of Veterans Affairs, which was a disturbing notion.

The whole idea of depending on the VA for health care is enough to make you sick.

Happy Armed Forces Day- it is a modest holiday for those of us who are still living. Next week there is a much more important one in which we honor the dead.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303