Blind Pigs

The Economic Stimulus package

2009-03-02T16:33:00.001-08:00

In classical economic theory markets are supposed to be self-regulating. Individuals pursuing their own self-interests are believed to promote the general good of the whole community by a process Adam Smith dubbed the “invisible hand.” While the idea is sound in principal and when applied to “ideal markets” in practice, when applied to real markets, there are problems with the theory that some economists believe can only be addressed by the government through the tools of fiscal policy.

According to this theory the tools that the government in a market economy has at its disposal fall into two categories, monetary policy, which includes such things as tax measures, bank reserve requirements, interest rates and fiscal policy which means government spending. The term “economic stimulus” refers to the use of these tools to help support or revive an economy in recession.

For our purposes a recession may be defined as a condition which exists when supply exceeds demands. In recent years the government response to such a “slow down” in the economy has centered on lowering interests rates and cutting taxes, both of which increase the supply of money available to the consumer and thereby stimulating demand.

In the current crisis, however, such a policy is not believed to be workable. The Federal Reserve Bank has already cut interests rates to almost zero, so there are no further cuts possible. This situation is known as a “liquidity trap.”

In such a situation some economists believe that the government must turn to its other economic tools, specifically fiscal stimulus which, according to the New York Times, the Congressional Budget Office defines this way; “Fiscal stimulus aims to boost economic activity during periods of economic weakness by increasing short-term aggregate demand."

The belief is that in the short run more government spending on goods and services will increase demand, prevent layoffs and stimulate spending by the private sector.

The way this is supposed to work is that spending on public works creates contracts for firms who in turn provide short to medium-term employment. An additional benefit is that once the infrastructure projects are complete they provide business with improved communications and lower transportation and energy costs.

Investment in scientific research and technological development are believed to foster innovation and develop new industries, which in turn employ new workers.

It is the intent of the current stimulus package, known as the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill, is to use a combination of monetary and fiscal policies to stimulate employment in critical sectors of the economy and to increase consumer spending. It allocates $550 billion for spending on new projects and $275 billion in tax cuts.

Specifically, the bill intends to do this by putting “…people back to work today and reduce our dependence of foreign oil tomorrow” by spending to transform the energy transmission, distribution and production systems, increase spending on scientific research and expand broadband internet access, repair and modernize roads, bridges, public transit and waterways, expand spending for public education, cut taxes on middle income earners and small businesses, lower healthcare, extend unemployment coverage and increase funding for food stamps.

Otto Von Bismarck observed that “politics is the art of the possible.” While the theory behind the stimulus seems, sound the harsh reality of partisan politics in Washington, combined with President Obama’s attempts at bipartisanship, which have been dramatically spurned by the Republicans, has had a deleterious effect on the final bill that passed the House and Senate and was signed into law.

For one thing, it is far too small and too much of it has been wasted on tax cuts in an effort to woo Republican support. While $787 billion seems like quite a bit of money it is inadequate to plug what Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman calls a “well over $2 trillion hole” in the economy.

For another thing an unduly large portion of the bill has been “squandered” on tax cuts which are likely to have very little impact in the short run in stimulating consumer spending or in stimulating the economy. According to Moody Investor’s Service, tax cuts are among the least simulative part of the bill with each dollar in tax cuts generating only $1.02 in stimulus compared to $1.59 for infrastructure projects and $1.79 for food stamps.

As if that were not bad enough it would appear that many Republican lawmakers are using the current crisis to score partisan political points. Although the Republicans had a hand in crafting both the House and Senate versions of the bill, House Republicans voted unanimously to reject it and only three “moderate” Republican senators could be persuaded to sign on to that version.

One can speculate as to their motives for such behavior. It has been suggested that this tactic was based on a belief that the bill would pass with or without their votes and by voting against it Republicans were positioning themselves to claim, in the event the bill succeeds in stimulating the economy, that “natural market forces” were the real cause for the recovery, and if the plan fails they can claim that they had been right all along.

It would appear that not only are Congressional Republicans using the current economic crisis to make political hay, but that many Republican governors are likewise adopting obstructionist policies predicated on short term political gains at the cost of the long run welfare of their constituents. Governors like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Mark Sanford of South Carolina have vowed to turn back money to help pay unemployment benefits for their state’s growing jobless population.

They justify this behavior by claiming that new federal rules that come with the money are aimed at extending unemployment protections to jobless low-income workers who are currently shut out of compensation, would place an “undo burden” on the state’s taxes once the money runs out in three years.

Thus far, these tactics do not appear to be working in the Republicans’ favor. After a month in office President Obama’s poll numbers are still in the high seventies while Republicans have seen their numbers go into freefall in recent weeks. A recent New York Times/CBS News survey found that 8 out of 10 Republican voters disapproved of their lawmakers behavior and believed that “the party should be working in a bipartisan way.”

The consequences of the stimulus package are dire for the American economy, at least in the short run since we can expect to see unemployment rise and, as a consequence, demand fall even further. Bankruptcies, home foreclosures, and failing businesses will all follow in the train of stimulus failure. As America goes, so goes the world, which would mean that the failure of the American plan would reverberate throughout the world economy and might, possibly, trigger an even deeper world wide economic crisis.

Win or lose, however, the stimulus will further increase the national debt and raise the risk of foreign debt default. President Obama is well aware of this and of the long term threat to the American economy of maintaining the current massive debt load that America currently labors under.

Those who say that sooner or later the natural forces of the economy will “fix the problem” are right, up to a point. Demand has not ceased during the current crisis, it has only been deferred. While Americans are not currently buying cars in any great numbers cars, eventually wear out and will need to be replaced, as will household appliances, clothes, housing stocks and all the other goods and services that go to make up the current “American lifestyle.”

Sooner or later the economy will begin to grow again on its own. However, sooner would be better than latter and, flawed though it may be, the current stimulus package provides our last, best hope for a speedy recovery.

When that happens it will be vital to pay down the national debt, which is a major drag on the economy and an important culprit in the current tax rates, which could be lowered if we did not have to service the interest on the debt.

Politically the success of the stimulus would cement the Democratic majority in Congress and strengthen the Democratic hold on the White House, with all the social and political consequences that implies. Failure, however, while bad for the average consumer, may not have the political effects many Republicans hope.

Since their actions in opposing the stimulus bill have been seen by most voters as obstructionist, and their behavior in general as partisan in the face of a President who has gone out of his way to be bipartisan, rightly or wrongly failure of the stimulus could be laid at their feet. One can imagine Democratic pundits saying “the bill would have worked but for Republican obstruction.”

However this plays out the next few years should be very interesting for students of economics. Interesting, but stressful. The Chinese scholars knew what they were saying when they cursed someone by saying “may you live in interesting times.”

A Christmas Carol

2008-12-16T15:25:00.001-08:00

The “Holiday Season” had come to San Francisco, cool gray city of love, bringing with it thundering rains and icy blasts from off the Pacific. I had been working the Yerba Buena Housing Project, known to its residents of the “Pink Palace,” for almost six months, part of a “special detail” put together in an ad-hock sort of way by the San Francisco Housing Police as an excersize in public relations. What in the Army we use to call “eye wash.”

It helps if you think “Police Academy” meets “New Jack City.”

Poorly trained, poorly equipped and barely supported by the city’s thirteen other police departments, our chief goal was to go home alive after our shift each night. Just how little support we could count on was dramatically demonstrated to me the first week I was on the job. I had heard gunfire and called in a report.

The dispatcher seemed more than a little offended at having his time wasted by such a trivial matter and hotly informed me that I was not to bother him again unless I had a dead body on the ground. Come to think of it I don’t think he used the term “body.”

I don’t know why many of my fellow officers were there; some were barely distinguishable from the gang bangers we had to deal with. One guy was a pimp, and proud of it. He would show up for work in a gold colored Cadillac with his “ladies” (again, memory fails me but I don’t think he used the term ladies) and they would set up business in some of the abandoned apartments that riddled the housing project.

After a while I got to understand what was important and what was not. Robbery and assault? Important. Drugs and prostitution? Not so much.

I was there in the hopes of putting together a photo portfolio that would help me break into documentary photography. I always carried a camera slung by a strap under my armpit and hidden by my windbreaker. I had made a point of explaining to the residents why I carried it and that it was not worth a whole lot of money. I would make up 5x7’s or 8x10’s of my better pictures and give them out to the people I had photographed, in part to curry favor and in part so that they would know I wasn’t trying to bust anyone. I got to know a lot of the more prominent citizens of the project on a first name basis and had a nodding acquaintance with many of the rest.

There was one old man who in no way stood out from the others, other than he seemed a little more lonely and a little more friendly than most of the others. He would smile at anyone who would smile at him, and many who would not, and if you weren’t quick on your feet he would corner you and try to strike up a conversation. He was a bit of a bore and to my shame I cannot remember his name.

The upper floors of the Pink Palace were a jungle where most of the apartments had been abandoned and crime was rampant. It wasn’t as though there was any lack of applicants to live in the apartments; the city had long waiting lists of people who were desperate for housing. However, the Housing Department had strict rules that forbade any apartment from being rented until it was up to code. The city’s Public Works Department also had strict rules as to who could do the work to bring those apartments up to code, their people and no one else.

The trouble was that they could only spare enough workers to fix up one or two apartments at a time, and the work would usually take days to complete. However, there was a large constituency for keeping these apartments abandoned, made up of drug dealers, prostitutes, homeless people (who could sneak in at night for a warm place to sleep) and kids who just wanted someplace to play where adults weren’t watching them all the time.

These people saw to it that just before work on an apartment was completed it would be thoroughly vandalized and work would have to start again at square one. The whole thing was a bureaucratic perpetual motion machine

However, some people did manage to live in this wilderness of abandoned apartments, crack houses and dens of prostitution, and one of them was that friendly old fellow. One day as I was patrolling the upper floor balconies that served as hallways for the housing project I noticed that he had decorated his window for the holidays.

He had whited out the window and painted “Seasons Greetings” and “Peace” surrounded by crudely drawn bells, stars and other seasonal decorations. What caught my photographer’s eye was not the quality of the decorations but the incongruity of such a message sheltering behind iron security bars, so I pulled my camera from under my jacket and took a few shots. Later I developed the pictures and filed the negatives away.

Christmas and then New Years came and went with only a few drunken brawls and one knifing. After the holidays I was able to get two weeks vacation, which I badly needed by then.

Mrs. Heurea (her I remember) was one of the “movers and shakers” of the Pink Palace world, a perpetual squeaky wheel who was always clamoring for more oil. Like the rest of my fellow officers I avoided her whenever possible but on the day I got back from my time off she cornered me and demanded that I investigate a bad smell in her apartment.

I could smell it as soon as I walked in. It smelled like a rat had crawled into the walls and died. I knocked on a few doors of the surrounding apartments and sure enough everyone could smell it but most of them had not bothered to complain. These were the projects, after all, and bad smells were pretty common.

I went up a floor and went into some of the abandoned apartments thinking that if we were lucky the rat had died in one of them, which would greatly simplify the cleanup process. Finally I came to the door of the friendly fellow and knocked. I knew I was getting close because the smell was getting really bad.

There was no answer. I knocked again. Then I asked some of the residents if they had seen the fellow around lately. They had not. I did not like the suspicion that was beginning to form in my mind.

I called my watch commander on my radio and he told me to kick in the door. I did, and had to stagger back as a wall of stench hit me like a two by four between the eyes. From inside came a roaring buzz from flies and other insects. Holding my breath I stepped in the front door and saw him sprawled on the floor in the middle of the living room. Decaying flesh and puddles of oozing liquids left no doubt he was dead. My partner Violet, walked in, took one look at what was on the floor, walked out to the balcony and threw up over the side.

Well I had met the criteria that had been laid down in my first week and I called for City Police back up. From then on it was out of my hands.

Christmas is often seen as a time for family and friends, for parties, presents and celebrations, but for many it is the loneliest time of the year. Each year, as Christmas approaches, I dig out that old photo of the window, put on that “cheesy song” by Band Aid and read what I find are some of the most moving lines in the Bible, Matthew 25:31-46.

You can read the rest for yourself but I will give you the kernel of the nut:

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

And with that I wish “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.”

Brainy art hiding inside a Michelangelo classic

2008-01-25T15:57:00.001-08:00

Understanding art is often a matter of seeing the symbols that the artist uses to convey their message and perhaps the inside jokes he or she are playing on their audience. Scientists have found the image of the brain in a classic art piece.

Many who have looked at Michelangelo's "creation of Adam" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel have thought that the drapery behind the image of God bore a suspicious resemblance to a human brain.

Now four respected scientists are claiming that the shape is not just decoration but rather an artistic representation of a cross section of the sagittal section of the brain.

This idea was first suggested by FL Meshberger but he has since been joined in this hypothesis by Antonio Belli, Alessandro Paluzzi, Peter Bain and Laura Viva. They have also suggested that Michelangelo was not the only artist to have played this trick on their audience.

Explaining how he came to this conclusion Alessandro Paluzzi said:

"The idea came to me while looking at Raffaello's Transfiguration. Being a neurosurgeon I could immediately see a brain in the painting"

What the general public sees.

What Paluzzi and his colleagues think that they see. The right hand photo is a cross section of the human brain.

The scientist claim to have found many other examples of the human brain hidden in Renaissance art. It has long been known that Michelangelo, like many other artist of his time, often took part in dissections of human corpses, a practice frowned on by the church.

It is the opinion of the four scientist that many of these artist were enthralled by their scientific discoveries but, given the hostility of the church to science, had to hide their discoveries from the general public. Such discoveries were sometimes even seen as heretical. Galileo was hauled before the Inquisition for his claim that the earth circled the sun and many early scientist were put to death for their intellectual curiosity.

Many, however, could not resist the temptation to smuggle these images into their work as a sort of inside joke for the amusement of those who knew what they were looking at.

The "mind of God?"
If we compare the drapery behind the figure of God in Michelangelo's famous painting to a modern cross section of the brain we can see that there are some undeniable similarities.

This is your brain. Any questions?

Many art aficionados, down through the centuries, have noted the incongruous fact that there is a naked woman, whom most agree is Eve, under the left arm of God. What is she doing there at the time God is creating Adam?

If we accept, for the moment, the theory that the drapery represents a brain then it becomes possible that this is suppose to be the "mind of God" and that Eve is therefore present in God's mind, or plans, even as he is creating Adam.

We will most likely never know what was in the mind of Michelangelo when he painted this work but the idea that he was using his knowledge of human anatomy as a sort of inside joke, while at the same time making a profound statement about his deeply felt religious beliefs, is a useful tool for understanding this famous and intriguing art work.

It's still the economy stupid--How to fix Bush's mess

2008-01-25T15:53:00.000-08:00

As the worst administration in American history limps and shuffles to its ignominious conclusion the country is waking up like a frat boy from its long drinking spree to discover that once again a Bush has driven the economy into the ditch.

Seven years of the disastrous "borrow and spend" policies made famous by Ronald Reagan, and dubbed "Voodoo economics" by his vice president George Bush senior, has once again run up the national debt to record levels and raised the deficit into the stratosphere.

Although Republicans have struggled valiantly to pretend that nothing was wrong the announcement Thursday of a $150 Billion dollar "stimulus package" has demonstrated that even the normally oblivious Bush has finally awakened and smelled the recession.

Of course being a Republican, and above all a Bush, our Clown Prince has chosen the wrong package and has loaded it down with tax breaks for the rich. Even the tax rebates for the working class, not scheduled to kick in until May, is too little too late.

Like Uma Thurman's character in "Pulp Fiction" our economy is laying on the flood suffering from an overdose and needs a shot of adrenaline directly to the heart and needs it now. Instead Bush has chosen to roll bandages.

So what should the political paramedics do to save the patient?

Step One
As anyone who has studied macroeconomics knows the best way to stimulate the economy is to pump some cash into it. This acts just like a shot of adrenaline. But just like in the movie it is important to get the shot in the right place and it is vital to get it there quickly.

The right place to inject the money is in that part of the economy that is going to spend it quickly. Money is not real, it is simply a token symbolizing the goods and services generated by an economy. The more goods and services an economy produces the more money that economy has for everyone.

Give a dollar to a rich man and the chances are good he will simply save it or pay off a few debts. If he does decide to invest it there is no guarantee that he will decide to invest it in his own economy, he might get a better return on his investment overseas.

However if you give a dollar to a poor mother struggling to feed her children she will spend it immediately and she will spend it in the economy. For the hard hearted in the audience who dislike giving money to the "undeserving poor" think of it this way. You are not giving money away you are saving your own assets.

This is because that dollar does not simply disappear. Let's say she buys a quart of milk with that dollar. The grocery clerk gets part of that dollar in her wages and the store owner gets part of it in his profits. So too does the farmer whose cows produced the milk and the truck driver that carried the milk to market and so on through the entire economic chain.

But it does not end there because all these people will take their share of that dollar and buy things with it themselves and the dollar will move on through the bloodstream of the economy generating more goods and services and therefore more money as it goes.

This is called the "multiplier effect" and it is one of the foundation stones of modern economics. The principal works regardless of whether one is buying airliners or simply paying poor people to dig holes and fill them in but it works better the lower down the economic totem-pole one injects the dollar.

So how do we get that dollar into the hand of that mother that is going to save us all? The quickest and most certain way is to raise food stamp benefits. This has two major economic virtues.

First it insures that the money goes directly back into the economy since the stamps can only be spent to buy groceries. Even if those groceries are flown in from overseas there will still be Americans in the economic chain and the money will go through American pockets before being shipped abroad.

Second, it can be done quickly. We don't even have to wait until the next time the stamps are issued. The president could announce tomorrow that effectively immediately all stamps are now worth twice their face value. This has the virtue on not even requiring any changes in the current arrangements in the bureaucratic chain of command.

Step Two
Increase Veteran's benefits. Just as with the food stamp program this "quick fix" will pump money into the economy quickly. But there is an added advantage to this step, it will give money to those who deserve the best from their country, those who chose to serve it.

Step Three
Now for some more long term stimulus. Repair America's crumbling infrastructure. America's roads and bridges are falling apart and a long term program to rebuild and repair them will not only help the economy by putting dollars into American worker's pockets it will help the economy by improving the transportation and utilities that business needs to be competitive.

Unlike programs to cut corporate taxes or allow capital investments to be written off quickly repairing our infrastructure keeps most of the dollars in the American economy where they belong. A corporate tax break may be all that is needed to help that corporation to "outsource" more American jobs overseas while writing off capital investments could mean that the companies will be buying more Chinese made machinery, labor saving machinery that will put more workers on the street.

Step Four Cancel Bush's tax cuts for the rich. All this is going to cost money and while the Republican thing to do is to "put it on the credit card" the responsible thing to do is to ask those who have benefited from the Bush kleptocracy to pony up the money to pay for the Frat Boy in Chief's drunken spree.

You want tax cuts? Fine, then raise the level of income at which poor people start paying taxes. Remember they are the ones that are going to save us, not the plutocrats that got us into this mess in the first place. Follow that up with tax rebates to the working class. Now we got some money pumping in the economic veins of the county.

Step Five
Solve the sub-prime mortgage crisis. One of the major factors dragging the economy down is the recent rise in predatory lending practices coupled with imprudent housing investments by people poorly equipped financially to maintain those investments should the housing prices drop, which they have.

The debacle is not the fault of the lenders or borrowers. They were only doing what Americans have always done, looked for a way to "get rich quick." The real blame lies with those who were stupid enough to think that deregulation was a good idea.

Deregulating lending and borrowing is just about as dumb as deregulating the roads and highways. While it is true that many, perhaps most, people will still drive as safely as they can there will inevitably be those who think it is fun to drive through a school crosswalk at a hundred miles an hour and then there will be tears. Laws aren't made for the wise they are made for the foolish and when it comes to money most people can be foolish if given the opportunity.

There is a puritanical streak in the American psyche that demands that if something goes wrong that someone be made to "pay for their mistakes" but in this case this would be cutting off our collective noses to spite our faces. Sure they are a pack of pirates and fools. So what? The ship is sinking and this is no time to be trowing people to the sharks, we need all hands at the pumps.

The government needs to step in, fix interest rates at a level low enough to ensure that most people do not lose their homes, while at the same time guaranteeing those loans so that the lenders do not lose their money, even if they don't make as much as they had hoped.

They say that a "rising tide raises all boats." Conservatives, in their panting desire to give to the rich, forget that the tide rises from below and the economy is the same way. To lift all our boats we need to pump the money into the economy at the lowest levels.

From The Barrel of a Gun

2007-11-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun
Mao Tse Tung

Noted socialist historian C.L.R. James was correct in observing that armies do not simply fall from the sky but are rather the product of the culture that spawns them. However, being innocent of military history, he was wrong when he insisted that an army is “a miniature of the society that produces it.”^{^[1]} On the contrary, armies are often dramatically different from the societies that produce them. For example, democracies often have armies, but armies are seldom democracies. Although armies are often separate from, and sometimes hostile towards, the society from which they spring, they are nonetheless the product of that culture’s institutions and core values. In times of war or revolution those institutions and values are refracted through the prism of the military. Ultimately, it could be argued, the outcome of a revolution depends more on the nature of the military fighting it than on the ideology articulated by the revolutionary leadership or the inarticulate yearnings of the masses. This effect can be best exemplified by examining four different revolutions: the American; French; Haitian; and Mexican, each of which organized its armed forces differently, and seeing what, if any, effect these differences had on the final outcome of the revolutions.

After the ravages of the Thirty Years War and the series of religious conflicts that had rent Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, the emerging absolute kings of the Eighteenth Century sought for a less socially, and, more importantly, a less politically disruptive method of settling their disputes. They found it in the concept of “limited warfare,” which became the dominant military paradigm of the age.^{^[2]} Under this model the only people used in war were those who did not contribute to the economic well-being of the state, mainly the landless poor, the criminal, the aristocrat and the foreigner. With this in mind, raids into neighboring countries to “dragoon” men into a nation’s military became a vital source of troops, while another potent store of soldiers was found in literally recruiting them off the gallows, it being discovered that a man’s willingness to join the army increased dramatically when there was a noose around his neck. ^{^[3]}

Such standing armies had great advantages and disadvantages, both for the governing class and for the governed alike. The rulers got small, relatively inexpensive militaries that followed orders and stayed out of politics while the people were more or less freed from the hardships of military service and allowed to get on with the business of their lives. The disadvantage, for the rulers was that such armies were, of necessity, small and rather rigid. They had to be brutally disciplined and constantly watched to prevent desertions which of course precluded such age old military practices as skirmishing or foraging since these operations allowed too many opportunities for soldiers to either escape or turn their weapons on their officers. Since their forces could not forage, commanders were tied to their supply lines and the mere threat to those lines would force a general to order a retreat. This resulted in the rather dance-like quality of 18^th century warfare which saw armies advancing and withdrawing from one another, often without firing a shot.

The disadvantage of such armies for the average member of society was that, since the soldiers took orders without question, they formed the ruler’s chief bulwark against the ruled, thereby strangling political discourse in its crib. Liberal political philosophers were well aware of this, and the pages of the 18^th century philosophes are awash with invective against standing armies. If the pen really were mightier than the sword then the18^th century political intellectuals would have slain standing armies outright, but they found, to their chagrin, that institutions do not melt in vitriol and had to content themselves with epigrams..

There was, however, one group of thinkers whose opinions did have a bearing on the matter -- military intellectuals. While the economic and political philosophers of the 18^th century were building their airy Utopias or their virtuous republics defended by stout yeoman militia, the practical men of war were undergoing their own philosophical revolution. Just as in the better known wrangles of the political and economic thinkers of the day, military thinkers fired salvos of books and pamphlets at one another in an fervent and often rancorous debate. Chief among these military philosophes were the French, whose armies had been rather roughly handled by the other armies of the day and who were itching for payback, and the most successful of this lot was the Comte Jacques de Guibert (1743-1790).^{^[4]} Although trained as a soldier from childhood and proud of his profession, the young nobleman was an ardent disciple of Montesquieu and, understanding full well the linkage between the military system of a country and its civil order, dreamed of making over the military, and through it France, in accordance with the ideals of liberty, equality and “natural” society. Towards this end he wrote his Essai general de tactique in 1772 which laid out the tactics for a nation in arms.^{^[5]} Judged by its impact on the outcome of the French Revolution it was one of the most important books of the era.

In in the finest traditions of the European coffeehouse intellectuals, from whom they drew the bulk of their ideology,^{^[6]} Colonial American rebel ideologues had no use for standing armies and firmly believed that, come the revolution, the American masses would rise up spontaneously and form themselves into effective militias which would easily sweep the hireling slaves of the British before them.^{^[7]} Feeding this fantasy were legions of homespun militia units which every town of any size or pretensions could boast. These units, whose members were often prominent in local politics, would meet sporadically, elect officers occasionally, bicker constantly over uniforms and pay and sometimes even drill.^{^[8]} In the first flush of enthusiasm that accompanied the outbreak of hostilities these Hectors turned out in fairly substantial numbers, but the novelty of the war quickly wore off and most discovered urgent matters that needed their attention elsewhere.^{^[9]} Writing from the perspective of the British Army, who had to face such soldiers, Sir John Fortescue notes that:

…so long as the quarrel with England meant no more for the Americans than town-meetings, demolition of houses, tarring and feathering of defenseless individuals, assaults on soldiers who were forbidden to defend themselves, and even shooting at convoys from behind walls--so long every man was a patriot; but when it came to taking as well as dealing blows the number of patriots was woefully diminished.^{^[10]}

Indeed, so scarce had patriots become that Washington was forced to beg Congress repeatedly for the funds to raise a traditional 18^th century style standing army, the Continentals, recruited from the lower socio-economic strata of colonial society.^{^[11]} While it is true, as Charles Royster argues, that “poverty and revolutionary ideals were not mutually exclusive categories,”^{^[12]} it is equally true that affluence is also no bar to patriotic principles but, on the whole, the well-off seemed to have been better at resisting the temptation to act on those ideals, at least when it came to serving in the army.^{^[13]}

Far from being the miniature replica of society that C.R.L. James would have us believe, the Continental army was composed of America’s outcasts, and lead by its elite, with scarcely any representatives of the great middle. The chief sacrifice that the average yeoman farmer or small town tradesman was called on to make in support of the revolution was coming up with the money to pay someone else to fight it for him.^{^[14]} By 1778 the majority of the Concord militia, one of whose members most likely had fired the famous shot that started the war in the first place, was composed of out of town urban poor and blacks, drawn there by the prospect of pay.^{^[15]} The alienation of most Americans from “their” army is best exemplified by the sorry spectacle of Valley Forge where the unhappy soldiers were forced to starve and freeze in the midst of a countryside brimming over with food and warmth, none of which was offered to them until a timely loan from the Morris brothers of New Jersey allowed them to purchase what most revolutionary peoples throughout the world provide their defenders for free.

Fearful of what they came to call “this armed monster,”^{^[16]} those espousing Whig libertarian theory hoped for a quick victory because they mistrusted a standing army and were eager to disband it.^{^[17]} The soldiers, embittered by what they saw as the common people’s shameful hostility towards, and neglect of, the troops saw themselves as being alone in the struggle and solely responsible for the final victory. When that victory was at last won the soldiers were peremptorily dismissed and sent home, cheated of their pay, leaving their masters, the Colonial elite, to reap the fruits of the victory won with their blood and even robbed of their fair share of the glory that their sacrifices had bought.

Drawing on the rhetoric of the Great Awakening, republican apologists sought to depict the victory as providence’s vindication of America as the new Israel, a land chosen by God for greatness. The true hero, according to this ideology, was the native genius of the Americans, a spirit which enabled the people, ennobled by their civic virtue and natural martial prowess, to triumph over trained professionals. Whig libertarians, drawing inspiration from English Commonwealth political tradition, developed a hatred for the army that was not merely ideological but emotional. Disgusted by the brutality and commonness of army life, most republican idealists preferred to remember, with advantage, the contributions of the militia, whose importance to the war they inflated out of all semblance to reality.^{^[18]}

The practical effect of all this was that the American War of Independence was the most conservative of all the revolutions of the era. Although there was no shortage of populist sentiment among the lower classes and the rural poor, it had no voice since there was no nation in arms to compel the elite to share power, the populace had not been mobilized, and the pathetic and long suffering soldiers, few in numbers, despised by their countrymen and lacking any voice in shaping the country they had built, were quickly absorbed back into the underclass whence they had sprung. Even the attempt by some officers to capitalize on their service by forming the Society of Cincinnatus was quickly quashed. Since then the myth of the Minuteman has become an article of faith for most Americans and, despite the Founding Fathers’ well known antipathy towards standing armies, from Valley Forge to Baghdad, the majority of American wars have been fought by such forces.

American mythology aside, most military historians date the dawn of modern warfare, and modern political ideology, to 1793 and the wars of the French Revolution.^{^[19]} Like the other monarchs of the era, Louis XVI had a typical 18^th century army of long- serving professionals, most of whom had been press-ganged into the service, or foreign mercenaries. Unlike other kings however, his was an army in turmoil. Ignominiously defeated by all and sundry during the various wars of the century, and starved for funds by the straightened circumstances of Louis’ finances, the soldiers were disaffected and the officers were intellectually galvanized. When the crisis arrived many soldiers went over to the revolution, and those officers who did not flee, helped form the core of the new Army of the Republic, using the writings of the Comte de Gilbert as their guide.^{^[20]}

The importance of this last point cannot be overemphasized. There had been popular armies in the past, armed rabble who were contemptuously swept from the battlefield by the discipline and mass firepower of professionals and forced to take to the hills and woods as guerrillas or bandits, but this time things would be different. For the first time the ardor of the masses could be harnessed by simple but effective tactics which made the most of the raw soldier’s strengths while minimizing his weaknesses.

Armed with slow loading, inaccurate, smoothbore flintlock muskets, most armies were forced to rely on precision-drilled troops maneuvering slowly in cumbersome lines to maximize firepower, protect against cavalry charges, and maintain discipline. Skirmishing was out of the question, not only because skirmishers were vulnerable to cavalry but because all but the most trusted soldiers, freed from the supervision of their officers and N.C.O.s, would take the opportunity to desert. Besides, the inaccuracy of the musket made the whole exercise rather pointless and wasteful of manpower.^{^[21]}

The French, on the other hand, with manpower to burn, and a motivated soldiery who could be relied on to return to the ranks when called, advanced in narrow, fast marching columns which required a minimum of drill to learn, behind clouds of skirmishers who, if they did not often hit the enemy, nevertheless obscured the advancing columns from the enemy in billows of gun smoke while making the enemy officers nervous since they were the chief targets. When the advancing columns arrived at the enemy position they would deploy into line, fire a volley, and then close with the bayonet. As often as not the excited troops would forget to fire and simply charged in with cold steel.^{^[22]}

Accustomed as we are to the accuracy of modern rifles it is often hard to appreciate how ineffective the musketry of the day was. Throughout the latter half of the 18^th century the Prussian army conducted a series of tests in which massed units would fire volleys at close range into canvas panels six feet high and a hundred feet long and then count the number of hits anywhere on the panel. Despite the targets being considerable larger than a barn door most units were lucky to hit with 20 percent cent of their shots, which made getting shot a matter of bad luck more than anything else^{^[23]}. Under these circumstances the bayonet, or any other pointed object, was quite as effective as a musket, and many early revolutionary units were equipped largely with pikes. Armed with these, and their enthusiasm and numbers, the armies of the French Revolution swept the professional armies of Europe into the dust bin of history. Since they depended on the support of the people, the one thing absolute kings could not count on, this type of army could not be replicated by other European powers until they made the social reforms necessary to enlist the support of the masses. The only country to realize this, and act upon it in time to have an impact on the wars of the era was Prussia, whose magnificent army had been the envy of 18^th century Europe. Ignominiously chased from the battlefield of Jena, the warrior nobles of Prussia applied themselves to figuring out what had gone wrong and fixing it. From 1806 until 1815 Prussia underwent a revolution as thoroughgoing as any of the era, but unlike the other revolutions this one was from the top down and it was by fiat.^{^[24]}

Whereas America’s war for independence was fought by a small, politically insignificant army of social outcasts, France became a nation in arms, the first one in modern history, and this, more than any ideological wrinkle, explains the radical nature of its revolution. Not only were large masses of the people actually in arms but, given the broad demographic sweep of the army, the bulk of the population not in the military knew someone who was and this sense of a shared struggle helped weld France into the first modern nation-state.^{^[25]}

With the whole population involved, to at least some extent, in the struggle, politics became a participatory sport in which anyone could, and often did, become involved. Revolutionary leaders could lead only for so long as the direction they were going was the one the people wanted to go in. If not, their careers tended to come to a sharp conclusion. While the revolution was busy chopping its head off, the army, in no way a miniature of the society, although indisputably a product of it, was just as busy crushing the armies of the crowned heads of Europe. In common with their American cousins, French intellectuals feared the growing power of the army, but unlike their American counterparts, they were powerless to do anything about it. Not only was the army the shield of the Republic against a hostile Europe, they performed a vital economic function as well by removing large numbers of men from the work force, thereby driving up wages for those who remained, while at the same time their conquests filled France’s coffers with booty. Finally there was the problem of reigning in the passions of a nation in arms. Once the genie was out of the bottle it was very difficult to put him back in.^{^[26]}

Like the American army of the War of Independence, the French revolutionary army saw themselves as being solely responsible for their victories, but unlike their American counterparts, they had the numbers and means to intervene in the political process. With France’s political process collapsing on itself, it was only a matter of time until the army, as the only functioning institution in being, stepped in to sort things out.

Fearing the loss of his power the Abbe Siryes was on the look out for a successful soldier to be his sword in the battle to remain on top. He had chosen and rejected several likely candidates before the luck of the draw fell to Napoleon. While Bonaparte had undeniable talents, it is equally clear that anyone short of a complete incompetent could command French armies of the day to victory and the war had a way of sorting out incompetents and bringing talented men into positions of power. Although the details would no doubt have been different, there would have been the Napoleonic wars, with or without Napoleon and the legacy of the French Revolution would have remained largely the same. If, as Hobsbawn assures us, the 19^th century was largely a struggle for or against the principals of 1789 or the even more incendiary ones of 1793, it was the army, which came into its own in 1793,^{^[27]} and not the philosophes, which by giving voice to the masses, assured the survival of those principals and carried them to every corner of Europe.

When we move to Haiti we find a very different sort of civilization than that of colonial America, or France under the Ancien Régime. A slave society, ostensibly built for the capitalistic purpose of making money, Haiti had, by 1791, metastasized into a pathological society in the grip of a collective psychosis. There have been slave societies since the dawn of recorded history and, while all are based to some extent on violence or the threat of violence, most have not been gratuitously cruel. Slaves, being valuable property, were generally accorded at least some measure of rights and were not generally subject to capricious or unnecessary violence.

In Haiti, however, racism combined with boredom, self indulgence and moral degeneracy to produce a singularly sadistic culture filled, with pointless violence, most of which was economically unjustifiable and seemed to have been more directed towards amusing the masters than chastising the slaves.^{^[28]} No matter how inexpensive slaves were, and they were not all that cheap, shooting apples off their heads during drunken parties, or filling them with gun powder and blowing them up,^{^[29]} could have had very little positive effect on the remaining workforce, and fails capitalism’s chief ideological goal, which is to maximize profits while reducing costs. As Carolyn Fick points out, by 1789 the whole social fabric of the colonial regime was disintegrating, providing fertile ground in which revolutionary movements could take root.^{^[30]}

Although both the American and French revolutions were triggered by acts of popular violence, no doubt in part directed by low-level revolutionary organizers, and to some extent sustained by them, both ultimately had recourse to their countries’ military institutions to defend their insurrections and carry them to fruition. The slaves, however, had no military institutions to fall back on and had to create their own from scratch. Lacking the cultural infrastructure to produce or sustain conventional armies, they raised unconventional ones instead built around the natural leaders of their society, the commandeurs or slave trustee overseers, and the Maroons who were runaway slave desperados whose clandestine societies had existed in the hills and jungles of Haiti for generations. In a sense, as Fick points out, marronage became the movement of the masses.^{^[31]}

Guerrilla wars are a nightmare for conventional armies to fight, since they no sooner smash one revolutionary head than two more rear up somewhere else. But if this hydra-like quality makes this type of revolution difficult to fight, it also makes it difficult to lead since the lack of structure which is its strength in war is the chief impediment to the formation of a united revolutionary ideology upon which to build the peace. As the war rages on, each guerilla band and local commander is actuated by a different image of what victory looks like. In Haiti, some early leaders were willing to barter away the freedom of their followers for the enfranchisement of themselves and a few hundred of their cronies while the Platon insurrectionists would settle for nothing less than their own kingdom.^{^[32]} Many other guerillas started out, and no doubt remained, nothing more nor less than simple bandits motivated by no ideology more lofty than taking what they could grab.

But the guerillas were not the only forces in the field. Various interested parties such as the Spanish, the French Royalists, the British and the mulattos, to name but a few, raised and equipped more conventional uniformed armies with traditional chains of command, which were trained and equipped like other armies of the day and had their ranks filled with paid full-time professionals. While some of these units fought for the revolution and others against it, they all fought, ultimately, for their commanders and would, if ordered to do so, fire on whomever they were told to.^{^[33]}

Politics, no less than nature, abhors a vacuum, and it was only a matter of time before these warlords began seizing the reigns of power. Although the inarticulate cravings of the people for land of their own could, through the medium of the guerilla resistance, shape post revolutionary Haiti’s economic future, it was the Praetorianism of the warlords which dictated its political future.^{^[34]} Toussaint could, with the help of his army, make himself ruler of Haiti, but when he tried to send the former slaves back to the plantations he lost their support and, lacking that, lost his freedom and ultimately his life.

After Toussaint was gone and the French tried to reassert their control of Haiti, there arose one of the greatest “natural” revolutions of modern history. With almost no central command, and lead for the most part by nameless local commanders, Haiti won its independence. While in no way discounting the courage of the Haitian people, who fought heroically, the deciding factor in the war was undoubtly Yellow Fever, which probably accounted for more enemy soldiers than all of the rebel bands combined.^{^[35]} The French had demonstrated in the Vendee^{^[36]} that they knew how to fight guerillas, and on an island the size of Haiti, which, unlike Spain, could be isolated from outside help, they would have eventually won had it not been for the disease.

When the battles were over and the smoke had cleared, most of the revolutionaries happily went home to their newly-won plots of land, and left politics to others. The regular forces of the black generals, being the only military forces still in the field as well as being the only functioning social institutions going, seized power for their leaders and set Haiti on the path of military dictatorship which it has followed more or less, ever since.

The Haitian Revolution had two built-in ideologies to sustain it: ending slavery and providing land for the landless, which needed no revolutionary class to propagate. Mexico was not so lucky. A deeply divided culture, the Mexican revolutionary armies were as fragmented as the society from which they sprang and shared little in the way of a common ideology. In some ways it is fair to ask if Mexico even had a revolution or merely a breakdown of law and order and how one could tell the difference.

Following the disasters of the Seven Years War, Spain decided that its American colonies needed to be better protected and therefore ordered the creation of local armies capable of warding off foreign invaders. In Mexico the plan was to raise militia units composed of all castas, or racial groups, except Negroes and Indians, but local racial attitudes forced the authorities to raise segregated units instead. To add to the recruiting officers’ troubles, most upper-cast men had no wish to serve in any sort of militia, segregated or not, and therefore inducements in the form of exemptions from the civilian justice system, and from paying tribute, were proffered.^{^[37]}

While some Mexicans, usually drawn from the ranks of the petty criminals, trouble makers and nare-do-wells, falsified their race in order to get into militia units and thereby avoided the civil justice system and the payment of tribute many others, usually those with good jobs, used the same racial prejudices to avoid military service by claiming to be members of the pardos, coyotes or other traditionally exempt casts.^{^[38]} In this they were often abetted by their employers. In an effort to impress Madrid with their thrift, most viceroys had, from the outset, kept the military chronically under-funded, even for such necessities as pay and weapons, which led to disaffection among the officers and men. The resulting military was brutal, lawless and corrupt, and quickly collapsed in the face of the Hidalgo Revolt.^{^[39]} Had New Spain had a more efficient military in the first place, it is likely that the revolt could have been nipped in the bud, thereby saving Mexico ten years of pointless warfare and lawlessness.

Although historians can cite the moment the “revolution” began, and the leader who struck the spark that set Mexico ablaze with insurrection, the underlying causes remain obscure. There had been droughts and poor harvests in the years leading up to 1810 as well as social injustice of all sorts, and each social group had long lists of grievances, but these things had been going on for years without causing a revolution and would continue to go on long after the revolution was over. Besides there were no unifying ideologies or shared principles to unite the rebels as there had been in the other revolutions we have examined. Each group seems to have been out solely for what it could get for itself and one is tempted to believe that the uprisings occurred when they did simply because they could.

Just as a power vacuum had been created in Spain by Napoleon’s conquest of the country, which was filled by the guerillas, one was created in Mexico by the attempts of the autonomists to use the imperial crisis to further their own interests.^{^[40]} Into this vacuum stepped Father Hidalgo and his ragtag band of Indians. What ever the good father’s goals might have been it was clear from the first that a good part of his following was there for the looting. According to Christon Archer:

By 9 October 1810, the Marques del Zaral del Berrio, commander of Calleja’s advance guard, sighted an insurgent force of 40,000 to 50,000 against San Luis Potosi. They came by roads and through the barrancas loaded down with booty from robberies like a “swarm of ants” determined to incite the countryside to rebellion.^{^[41]}

Although the bulk of the insurgents were, at first, drawn from the ranks of the peasantry and workers as Virginia Guedea tactfully puts it:

Many of those who for one reason or another had not found a place within the social structure of New Spain--the marginalized of every class and condition--joined the insurgency and made their own imprint on the armed movement. These differences caused important contradictions within the insurgency.^{^[42]}

Although the Watts riots of the 1960’s or the Rodney King riot of 1992 may have had a political spark, once things got going the looting and burning was largely apolitical. While no doubt many Mexicans abhorred Spanish rule, robbing one’s neighbors seems a curious way of expressing that abhorrence. In Mexico City crime increased dramatically during the years of war, and murders, rapes and robberies of all sorts abounded in the climate of social disorder that the insurgency fostered.^{^[43]} In Jalapa, which boasted walled fortifications, the majority of plebeian inhabitants lived outside the protected precincts and fell easy victim to the “freedom fighters.”^{^[44]}

If law and order was ever to be reestablished Mexico was going to need an army, but the Army of New Spain, which had been build in the years leading up to the insurrection, had melted away in the face of the insurgent bands or had gone over to them en mass. The Mexican army, as opposed to the army of New Spain, was created by Viceroy Marques de Branciforte when he implemented a new policy calculated to appeal to the vanity and thirst for office of the wealthy merchants, miners, hacendados and other powerful men by allowing them the privilege of donating large sums of money to raise militia units in exchange for military commissions.^{^[45]}

Ten provincial militia brigades were established whose commanders had full charge of all military units in their districts, the power to mediate conflicts with the civil authorities and the right to appoint officers. This made the brigade commanders a powerful new force in regional politics and administration. With all the difficulties of communication that operating in a land controlled by guerillas entailed, these local commanders became increasingly autonomous and began following their own agendas. While some remained loyal and sought to create strong regional bases in order to suppress insurrection and maintain Spanish rule, others used their offices to grow rich and welded their troops into robber bands by distributing the booty of their raids to their men without reporting it to the civil authorities.^{^[46]}

Lacking any coherent political agenda, the guerilla bands had, by 1819 degenerated into little more than raiding parties dedicated to the theft of cattle and horses.^{^[47]} However the Royalists forces were in decline as well. In 1816 Spain stopped sending European troops to help stiffen the morale of the exhausted and discouraged Mexican units and this, combined with financial troubles which led to the Government failing to pay or equip the troops, further degraded morale.

The end, when it came, came suddenly. Ordered by the Viceroy to crush yet another rebellion in the south, the local commander, Colonel Agustin de Iturbide, a royalist officer, entered into talks with the guerillas instead and persuaded them to declare independence from Spain. Soon rebel cities and towns began flocking to join in the Plan of Iguala, as the Colonel’s independence program came to be called, and before long all major insurgent groups were united behind Iturbide.^{^[48]} Sensing the change in the wind, many royalist commanders quickly joined the new movement in order to protect their positions of power.^{^[49]} Faced with the new consensus the Spanish bowed to the inevitable and in July, 1821 Spain’s representative made things official by signing the Treaty of Cordoba which recognized the independence of the Mexican Empire with Iturbide as the new emperor.^{^[50]} His glorious reign lasted until 1823 when he was forced to abdicate and flee to Italy.

After ten years of fighting Mexico had independence and very little else. None of the social or economic problems which may have prompted the rebellion in the first place had been solved and, to make matters worse, the military system that had grown up to fight the insurgents became the defacto government of the country. Mexico became a culture of violence and instability with the people sunk in poverty and despair. Over the next century governments would come and go in Mexico City with bewildering rapidity leaving the day-to-day administration of the provinces in the hands of the caudillos, or military strongmen, a perfect case of the revolutionary actions of the people being refracted through the prism of the military institutions which in turn colored and transformed the civil culture.

Although a society’s military organization is dictated by its civilian organization and values it is not by any means a miniature version of that society. On the contrary, as we have seen, it is often radically different from the parent culture and has values and goals decidedly different from the society. Each of the revolutions we have examined sprang from dramatically different cultures and were fought by the military that those cultures produced. In turn, those militaries, by their natures, shaped the final outcomes of each revolution.

In America, which relied on a small professional army the results was a revolution, largely in the hands of the elite while in France, which rallied a nation in arms the revolutionary leaders lost control to the masses and eventually to the army. In Haiti the final victory was won by small professional armies backed up by the masses of part time revolutionaries who, once the victory was assured, returned home and left the professionals in possession of power. Mexico’s deeply divided culture produced either a deeply divided revolution or a chaotic period of lawlessness, depending on one’s point of view. With scattered bands of guerrillas in the field, the army had to become a scattered force of semi-autonomous personal armies leading to a culture of chronic decentralization and the rise of Cauldilloismo, the rule of locally powerful warlords. Each different sort of military producing, by their very natures, very different outcomes.

^{^[1]} C.R.L. James The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, (New York: Vintage Books, 1938) p. 306

^{^[2]} J.F.C. Fuller The Conduct of War, 1789-1961 (U.S.A.:, Minerva Press 1961) p. 15

^{^[3]} Fuller, p.18

^{^[4]} Robert S. Quimby, The Background of Napoleonic Warfare: The Theory of Military Tactics in Eighteenth Century France, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957) p. 106

^{^[5]} Quimby, p. 108

^{^[6]} Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge Massachusetts, London England: The Belknap Press Harvard University Press, 1992) p. 34

^{^[7]} Bailyn, p. 62

^{^[8]} Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World, ( New York: Hill & Wang, 1976) p. 60

^{^[9]} Gross, p.147

^{^[10]} J. W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (Macmillan and Co., Limited: London, 1911) Vol. III p. 200

^{^[11]} Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character 1775-1783.(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), p. 34

^{^[12]} Royster, p. 234

^{^[13]} Royster, p. 235

^{^[14]} Gross, p. 151

^{^[15]} Gross, p. 141

^{^[16]} Royster p. vii

^{^[17]} Royster p. 233

^{^[18]} Edward Countryman, The American Revolution, (New York: Hill & Wang, 2003) p.135

^{^[19]} Fuller, p. 30

^{^[20]}Quimby, p. 106

^{^[21]} Quimby, p. 118

^{^[22]} Charles Oman, Studies in the Napoleonic Wars, (London: Methuen & Co. 1929) p.87

^{^[23]} Peter Paret, , York and the Era of Prussian Reform 1806-1815, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), 21

^{^[24]} Paret, p. 103

^{^[25]} Fuller, p. 36

^{^[26]} Fuller, p. 37

^{^[27]} E. J. Hobsbawn, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1948, ( New York: Mentor Books, 1962) p. 74

^{^[28]} James, p. 30

^{^[29]} James, p. 13

^{^[30]} Carolyn E. Fick The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution From Below. (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1990) p, 238

^{^[31]} Fick, p. 242

^{^[32]} Fick, p. 243

^{^[33]} James, 279

^{^[34]} Fick, p.250

^{^[35]} Fortescue, Vol. IV, pt 1 p. 565

^{^[36]} Peter Paret, Internal War and Pacification; The Vendee, 1789-96. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961) p. 78

^{^[37]} Christon I. Archer, “Pardos, Indians, and the Army of New Spain: Inter-Relationships and Conflicts, 1780-1810,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 6, n. 2 p. 233

^{^[38]} Archer, “Army of New Spain,” p. 253

^{^[39]} Archer, “Army of New Spain,” p. 255

^{^[40]} Virginia Guedea, “The Process of Mexican Independence” American Historical Review Feb. 2000, p. 117

^{^[41]} Archer, “‘La Causal Buena’: The Counterinsurgency Army of New Spain and the Ten Years’ War” in Rank and Privilege: The Military and Society in Latin America (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1994). p.88

^{^[42]} Guedea, p. 119

^{^[43]} Archer, “La Causa Buena” p. 100

^{^[44]} Archer, “La Causa Buena” p. 99

^{^[45]} Christon I. Archer, “ The Army of New Spain and the Wars of Independence, 1790-1821,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 61(4) 1981 p. 706

^{^[46]} Archer, “La Causa” p. 102

^{^[47]} Archer, , “La Causa” p. 102

^{^[48]} Guedea, p. 129

^{^[49]} Archer, “Wars of Independence” p. 713

^{^[50]} Guedea, p. 130

Military Organization and Social Change: A Study of the Chinese Army From the Rise of the Shang to the Fall of the Han

2007-10-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

One of the more perplexing problems confronting the historian is how to find fresh vantage points from which to get a better view of the past. Towards this end such diverse subjects as art, literature, economics and religion, as well as many others, have been employed. Each brings useful and illuminating information to the table. One approach that is often overlooked is military history. Perhaps because it is often seen as the preserve of professional soldiers, or the realm of hobbyists, or perhaps because of the natural aversion that many feel for such a sanguinary topic, the insights that military history have to offer are often ignored. By military history we are not now referring merely to the recounting of battles and campaigns, nor to the study of weapons and uniforms. The most useful sort of military history is that which seeks to understand the ways in which armies were raised, equipped, disciplined and employed and what, if anything, such information tells us about the society at large. Campaigns, battles, weapons and the like are only useful in so far as they help to illuminate the broader topic. There is a belief among many historians pursuing the topic from such an angle that the way that a country organizes itself for war is linked to how it organizes itself for peace, and that changes in one must either cause or be caused by changes in the other.

To test this theory, we will examine the military history of China from the beginnings of recorded history in the Shang Dynasty to the end of the Han Dynasty, at which point the main outlines of the Classic Chinese Imperial system had taken form.

The Shang Dynasty, which stands at the dawn of Chinese history, was a semi-pastoral civilization, which relied almost as much on hunting and herding as it did on farming to survive. Its social structure was theocratic, and the state’s power, and ultimate legitimacy, rested on the relationship between the king and Ti, the high god. The people believed that it was Ti who granted good harvests, successful hunts and victory in war, and that the king’s dead ancestors could intercede with Ti on the king’s behalf, if they were provided with a suitable incentive. This incentive was in the form of sacrifices, both animal and human, and securing a steady stream of suitable victims for these sacrifices was a major part of kingship. A hereditary military nobility aided him in this job.

And an enormous job it was, considering the huge numbers of sacrificial victims needed. For a single ceremony of ancestor worship, more than three hundred people were put to death, while for the construction of a single house, more than six hundred victims were dispatched.# Several times a year the king and his nobles would undertake massive royal hunts to provide meat for the table, horn, bone and hide for the workshops, and humans for the sacrificial altar. These hunts were organized like military expeditions, and indeed it would appear that the distinction between hunting and war was somewhat blurred. Apart from imposing royal suzerainty or reminding recalcitrant subjects of the king’s power, the chief war aims of the Shang were mainly concerned with seizing riches for the king to distribute to his loyal followers and in rounding up captives to serve as slaves or as sacrifices. To insure that there would be future opportunities for plunder and captive taking, the enemies of the Shang were often intentionally left unconquered.

The army for these expeditions generally numbered around three to five thousand men, though it could reach as many as thirty thousand in emergencies. The backbone of the army was the royal guard, a force of about a thousand troops, mainly heavy infantry clad in leather armor and equipped with polearms. To this core was added a feudal levy of chariot-riding nobles, and a loosely organized and poorly equipped infantry conscripted from the class of peasants privileged to live within the walls of the cities, mainly clansmen of the nobility. The country-dwelling agricultural peasants, who were often slaves, or at best, serfs, were not permitted weapons and were conscripted only for manual labor. Kings normally commanded the army in person, assisted by a rudimentary military bureaucracy, although there are records of Kings’ wives commanding troops and of maintaining military forces of their own.

Since one of the major aims of these expeditions was to take prisoners for both sacrifice and for use as slave labor, the lethality of war was thereby greatly, and intentionally, reduced. Nothing demonstrates this factor more clearly than the types of weapons used. The weapon of choice for both nobles and commoners was the ko, or dagger axe, so called because of its dagger like blade which was affixed at a right angle to the top of a long wooden shaft. The weapons of nobles had bronze blades while those of the commoners were of stone or bone. In combat, the ko was swung down or to the side and then pulled forward, hooking the enemy and perhaps inflicting a cut. Wounds would not normally have been fatal. This seems to have been the goal since true axes and spears, while known and used in hunting animals, were apparently not highly favored in combat.

The other weapon of choice for the Shang noble was the light two-horse chariot. This seems to have been introduced to China from Western Asia by way of the Central Asian Steppe Nomads. In common with the Hittites and Central Asian types, the Chinese chariot carried a three-man crew. This consisted of a driver, an archer who stood to the left of the driver, and a third man equipped with a ko, who stood to the driver’s right. The commander of the chariot could be any one of the three, depending on his tastes. All three men wore stiff, inflexible, two-piece armor, made of lacquered leather, either bull or rhinoceros hide, which covered them from shoulder to foot but left their arms unencumbered. This armor would have made dismounting from the chariot very difficult. They also wore bronze helmets and carried large wooden or leather shields.

In battle the opposing armies would line up facing each other with their chariots in front and the infantry to the rear. The chariots would advance in open order, with broad gaps between each vehicle, the archer firing as they went. As the enemy chariots passed one another the warrior with the ko would perform a sort of joust with their opponents, trying to hook them out of the chariot cabs. The infantry, following behind, would gather up the prisoners.

Apart from the royal guard and a few nobles who fought on foot, the majority of infantry were unarmored and equipped only with stone or bone-tipped kos. Since the ko, was swung in combat, and since swinging such a weapon in close formations would have led to the weapons interfering with one another, the infantry must have fought in loose open formations which left them vulnerable to chariot charges. This made the well-equipped chariot riding noble very powerful relative to the peasants.

The theocratic nature of Shang warfare, combined with their limited war aims and intentionally reduced lethality, led to a very formal, ritualistic style of combat that produced a strict code of chivalry between the nobles. This put them at a great disadvantage when they came up against people who didn’t play by the same set of rules. Those people were the Chou, a seinocized group of steppe barbarians originally from north, who were forced to move south into the Wei River valley by more aggressive neighbors. Once there, they found matters scarcely better than they had been in the north since, instead of being harried by northern herder barbarians, they were now harried by western ones. In the struggle to survive, the Chou developed their own unique culture, which combined elements of their nomadic barbarian neighbors with the high culture of the Shang. This culture had a strongly military flavor to it, and unlike the Shang, war was not a game or ritual, but serious business.

One of the first changes the Chou made to war was to increase the horsepower of their chariots by the simple expedient of increasing the number of horses pulling them from two to four. They also improved the chariots themselves, reducing the decoration and improving the quality of construction. The wheels were made bigger, with more spokes and were dished outward from the hub for added strength. They also increased the numbers of chariots used and improved their tactical employment.

The chief advantage that the Chou had over the Shang, however, was their abandonment of the theocratic and ritualistic basis of warfare. Since they were not looking for prisoners to sacrifice they were more than willing to kill. Unable to adapt to the new realities of warfare in time, the Shang were ultimately destroyed.

Faced with the problem of ruling their new domains the Chou rulers developed a formalized type of feudalism. First, they set up four great duchies under native leaders, but gave them Chou titles. To insure their continued loyalty, members of the ruling families, plus thousands of other Shang noble clans, were forced to emigrate to the capital, where they could be more easily watched and controlled. The rest of the land was divided into seventy-one fiefs, with fifty-five going to members of the Chou royal clan.# To keep everything under the king’s control, a standing army of six royal corps, of 12,500 each, was maintained in garrisons throughout the realm. This was augmented by a further eight corps of Shang troops, which were also maintained by the central government. Finally, there were feudal levies which could be called out in times of emergency.

The basis of the army was the chariot-riding nobility. The numbers of chariots increased and tactical employment improved throughout the period. Although the three- man crews still included a man with the ko for close combat, the ritualistic jousts were abandoned and much more emphasis was placed on chariot archery as the decisive factor in winning battles.
Although infantry continued to serve mainly as a support for the chariots throughout the Chou and well into the Warring States period, it did show considerable improvement in its equipment and tactics. Unlike the Shang, whose infantry were for the most part unarmored conscript peasants with makeshift weapons, the Chou’s infantry were drawn from the lesser nobility, known as the Shih, and were well equipped. While they still lacked metal armor, which did not appear in any great quantities until the Ch’in, they did wear a sort of laminar armor made of small rectangles of leather strung together on thongs and arranged in overlapping rows. This provided protection while allowing for mobility. Their weapons improved as well. The ko, while still lacking a point, did develop an improved cutting edge and grew in length to around eighteen feet. The lack of a point is significant since it means that the weapon still had to be swung to be effective, limiting the troops to loose formations.

Since the actual fighting continued to be done by men of rank until the end of the Western Chou there was a certain degree of mutual respect and deference shown by the combatants to one another. There was a reemergence of chivalry and for a while war became again a game played by noblemen with elaborate rules as to how to offer or accept battle. Battlefields were chosen with an eye to the needs of the chariots.

Battles were preceded by a ritualistic series of duels and skirmishes between champions. At one battle a chariot crewed by a group of noblemen was chased by an entire squadron of enemy chariots, both sides exchanging archery fire as they went. Suddenly a stag leaped up in front of the fleeing chariot and without hesitation the archer killed it with his last arrow as though he were on a royal hunt. Halting their chariot the noble crew made a present of their kill to their noble pursuers who, impressed with the panache of the gesture, accepted the gift and ended the pursuit.

But it couldn’t last. As the Chou slid into the Spring and Autumn and then the Warring States period the lethality of combat increased, as did the size of the armies. Nobles could no longer make up the numbers needed and peasants began to be allowed to join the ranks, particularly of the infantry. The habit of mutual respect and deference that had marked the old style war began to fade and those nobles who remained often found little to choose from between the noble gesture and suicide.

After only four generations the central power of the Western Chou began to erode. Plagued by barbarian threats from the West and North the central government had to scramble for support. One time tested method of garnering support, the granting of tax exempt fiefs, only made matters worse by impoverishing the crown and fragmenting the administration. The central government was further weakened about this time as the dynasty suffered a series of weak or incompetent kings. Finally, in 771 B.C.E., the sacking of the capital of Hao by the Jung barbarians forced the Chou to move their capital east to Loyang.

With the central government distracted by barbarian threats and bad kings, the royal vassals gained in power and became more concerned with protecting their lands and less concerned with their national obligations. This led to the rise of regionalism and an a marked increase in the number and ferocity of wars between the various noble families as each sought to increase its holdings at the expense of its neighbors. This almost chronic state of war eventually led to the virtual extinction of the nobility. Not, however, to the wars. They continued as the noble fiefs coalesced into independent states, which vied with one another for supremacy.

As the nobles disappeared, their place in the ranks was taken by the rising class of freehold farmers, and upwardly-mobile professional soldiers. So great were the opportunities for social advancement in the military that by the fifth century C.E., generals of peasant origins were becoming common.

Starting around 650 B.C.E., China experienced a population boom. By the end of the Chou, the population had grown to almost 40 million. Of necessity, army size grew and the need for more soldiers led to the wholesale recruitment of peasants. At the beginning of the dynasty, Chou armies had consisted of several hundred to a thousand chariots supported by about ten thousand infantry, but by its end a strong state would typically field as many as four thousand chariots and more than forty thousand infantry. It was about this time that the venerable ko began to develop a spear-like point in addition to its axe-like one, making it into a slash and thrust weapon with a greatly enhanced killing ability. It also allowed tighter formations, which enhanced the infantry’s effectiveness against chariots, as did the new fashion of marching in step.# New weapons such as the sword and crossbow also began to appear, which further enhanced the effectiveness of infantry.

As the importance of peasant infantry to warfare grew, the social and political institutions began to reflect this fact. The Book of Changes uses the metaphor of hidden water under the earth to emphasize the strength of the peasants. It also stresses the need to deal fairly with them to retain their loyalty. Since the enthusiasm of the common people was now considered important for war, the rulers began consulting popular assemblies before making policy.

As armies increased in size, securing a bigger economic surplus to support them became more and more vital. Rulers who realized this and who did something to increase the surplus, survived, while those who did not, perished. To oversee water projects, land reclamation, and the general running of the state and its economic development, extensive bureaucracies became essential. With survival on the line, and the nobles dying out anyway, the abilities of the bureaucrat was of more importance than his lineage, and the competing states vied with one another to find and develop the best talent available, even going so far as wooing able men from other states. A whole class of itinerate bureaucrats and military officers grew up to support this need, and the training of these men was one of the roots of the Hundred Schools movement from which Legalism, Confucianism and Taoism developed.

But bureaucrats weren’t the only ones whose talents were sought. Agriculture was the engine that ran everything and that engine ran on the work of good farmers. Generations of incessant warfare, however, had taken its toll. The landed aristocracy was gone and the bonds that held the peasant to the land had broken down. Free to go where they wanted, most peasants went where they could own the land for themselves instead of working for a landlord, so the bureaucrats weren’t the only itinerate class roaming China at this time.

All this moving about, seeking for a better life, or merely seeking to avoid losing one’s life to rampaging armies meant that most states had more farmland than farmers to work it. It became necessary to woo peasants from other states and prevent one’s own peasants from being wooed away. Tax reductions, a respect for the rights and needs of the peasants, and above all, land reform, became a matter of survival for the rulers. As a result of such measures a large class of freehold peasants grew up in China for the first time in its history.

One dynasty that failed to grasp this was the state of Ch’i. As a result of heavy taxation, a harsh penal code and an indifference to the plight of the peasants during a famine, the state was on the point of collapse when a ministerial family named Ch’en ousted the old regime and sized power. They were able to get away with this because they had carefully curried favor with the masses through a policy of generosity, fair dealing and famine relief. This story was repeated, with slight variations, many times throughout China in the late Warring States period. The common thread that unites these incidents is that the new rulers came from the rising class of educated administrators known as the shih. The name of the class was descended from the petty nobility, and later, upwardly-mobile commoners who had followed behind the chariots of the early Chou lords.

The change in the nature of war led to a change in its aims. Whereas the Shang had fought primarily for loot and prisoners, and the Chou had fought for family and honor, the Warring States armies fought mainly for land. To protect the land, rulers built long walls and fortifications. Though the Great Wall is the most famous of these, Warring States China was filled with many other long walls on the borders of the various states.

In the early Chou all armies had been professionals of noble birth. Then peasants were admitted to the ranks, but still as professionals. But as the arms race between rival states heated up, the need for bigger and bigger armies finally outstripped the numbers of professionals available to fill the ranks. Besides, if everyone became a soldier who would grow the food? Maintaining large standing armies became impractical for most states. It was necessary for the majority of soldiers to return to their farms when not needed for combat and yet be able to form effective armies when called upon to do so. The result was a system of militia units built around a core of drilled and disciplined professionals and commanded by corps of highly trained officers. To this professional framework drafts of conscripts could be added at need. These were drawn from the freehold farmers.

Under the Shang, most agricultural workers had been slaves or, at best, serfs. It would have been dangerous for the nobles to arm such people for fear that they would turn on them. But when every farmer was a free man who owned his own piece of land, it was in his best interest to defend the state that insured his freedoms and contained his land. Since part time soldiers could never hope to match long-serving professionals in military skills, the quality of the officers who welded the militiamen together with their professional cadres was vital. This led to the rise of a class of professional officers which mirrored the rise of professional bureaucrats in all essential points. Like the bureaucrats, the soldiers developed their own body of professional literature, which, like that of the bureaucrats, would eventually form the core for written examinations leading to promotions. In any event, the turmoil of the Warring States, and the practical needs of national survival, led to that general rise in scholasticism of all sorts that earned itself the name of “The Hundred Schools.”

When the dust of the Warring States era finally settled, one state stood supreme, the Ch’in. Like the Chou before them, the Ch’in came out of the Wei River Valley, and, like the Chou, their culture was a unique amalgam of barbarian and Chinese elements. The dynasty traced its origins to a fief granted to their ancestors in return for their services in providing horses for the royal army. It was also hoped that they would provide a buffer between the Chou and the Jung barbarians. This they did, by absorbing the Jung into their state sometime around 400 B.C.E.
Although most Chinese states regarded the Ch’in as little better than semi-civilized barbarians, it was this very primitiveness that was the source of their power. With less tradition behind them, they were not as averse to trying new things and accepting foreigners into their service. They had also been at the forefront of the social reforms that had resulted in the shift from serfdom to freehold farming which was the necessary precursor to the development of conscript armies.

Starting around 390 B.C.E. with the reforms of Kung-sun Yang, known to the West as Lord Shang, the Ch’in had pursued a systematic policy of state-building that included irrigation projects of unprecedented size and scope, land redistribution and legal reforms allowing peasants to buy and sell land. They also included the suppression of the remaining remnants of feudalism and a system of civil and military promotion based on merit. This produced a highly efficient bureaucracy, able military commanders and a soldiery that quickly became the terror of their neighbors. Like the other states, the core of the Ch’in army was a militia of freehold farmer- soldiers, differing only in that they were more highly motivated than were their opponents. Ch’in was also at the forefront of the move away from chariots and towards horse cavalry.

Much has been made, particularly by Confucian-inspired historians and those who have learned of Chinese history through them, of the draconian laws that governed Ch’in from the time of Lord Shang until the demise of the dynasty. No doubt they played an important role in the discipline and motivation that animated Ch’in armies. From all accounts they were brutal and uncompromising. However, this in no way contravenes the notion that conscript armies must be based on the support of the people. Harsh laws, provided they are administered fairly and equally, are no bar to public support. In the era of the Warring States, Ch’in’s internal stability and national security must have been very attractive to many people. The degree of public support enjoyed by the government is apparent by the high number of peasants, soldiers and bureaucrats who chose to immigrate there.

Even the Grand Historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien, no fan of Legalism, as this policy of harsh laws coupled with merit based rewards is known, admits that within ten years of the onset of Lord Shangs’ reforms: “Nothing lost on the road was picked up and pocketed, the hills were free of bandits, every household prospered, men fought bravely on the battlefield but avoided quarrels at home, and good government existed in both towns and villages.” The era of state building and social engineering inaugurated by Lord Shang continued for another four generations and finally bore fruit when a man of dark genius, King Cheng, came to power in 247 B.C.E.

Though only thirteen when he ascended to the throne, once he reached adulthood the young king swept through China with fire and sword, and by 221 B.C.E. had brought the whole of it under his control. It was the first time that the whole country had been united under one rule, and a new title was devised to acknowledge the fact, huang-ti or emperor, and the young king became Ch’in Shih-haung-ti, the First Emperor of China.

Once in control of the whole of China he set about remaking it in the image of his native Ch’in. All of the old feudal states were abolished, the country was divided into administrative districts called commanderies, and the governance of the whole country was turned over to a nonfeudal, nonhereditary, bureaucratic administration.# From a military point of view his most important reform was to make the policies that had given rise to freehold farmers in Ch’in standard throughout China. Militia units were set up in every district and farmers conscripted to fill them.

This policy proved to be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it provided China with its first national army, one of such size and effectiveness that it was able to extend the country’s borders into the Liotung Peninsula in Manchuria and to reach the sea near Canton.# On the other hand, it gave China a large population of men with weapons training and the habits of military discipline. This proved disastrous to the dynasty when, following the death of the first emperor, popular discontent boiled over into open revolt.

The small garrisons of professionals that had been scattered throughout the land to enforce the emperor’s will proved no match for the hordes of angry peasants who were able to defeat them in detail and then equip themselves with captured arms and armor. Some rebels went so far as to loot the tomb of the First Emperor and take the weapons that had been in the hands of the famous terracotta figures. The land dissolved into chaos of huge warring armies. The turmoil did not last long, however, and by 202 B.C.E. China had a new dynasty, the Han.

The new dynasty founded by Han Kao’tsu, a man of lowly birth, understood the plight of the peasants, and the new emperor emphasized the doctrine that government exists to serve the people.# Since his reign was short and he was distracted by the necessity of putting down revolts among former allies, Han Kao’tsu was not able to do much changing of the basic political and military machinery that the Ch’in had built. He did, however, moderate the harsh punishments and lower the tax rate with the result that China prospered.

Like its predecessor, the army of the Han was built around a core of long-serving professionals supplemented by a conscripted militia. Under the early Han all males were drafted at age twenty-three and served on active duty for two years. Thereafter they were in the active reserve until the age of fifty-six. In the eighth month of each year, following the harvest, a nation-wide military inspection was held during which all personnel, regardless of rank, were tested. Commanders of units that failed to measure up were subject to severe penalties.
Even convicts were liable for military duty in one of two capacities. Common prisoners serving out their sentences were used as labor brigades digging latrines, building fortifications and the like. The Ch’ih-hsing were a special class of trustees who volunteered for combat in return for avoiding execution for their crimes. They tended to be very fierce fighters since distinction on the battlefield could lead to a pardon.

The ideal in early Imperial China was a prosperous free peasantry governed by a scholar elite, and for a time this system worked very well. The Early Han was marked by a high degree of patriotism and martial spirit, but as time went by the weakness of the militia system began to become apparent. While it worked well for local defense, long campaigns placed a severe strain on militiamen whose farms and businesses suffered by their prolonged absences. Soon, draft-eligible men with the means to do so were being allowed to pay “substitute money” to avoid service. This money was used to pay “volunteers” who quickly became long-serving professionals. The expansive campaigns of Emperor Wu-ti accelerated the process of professionalization, as did the shift of population from north to the south that took place in the late Han. Since the main threat to China lay in the north, the shift of population to the south meant that the militiaman’s term of service was usually up by the time he had marched to the seat of war.

Added to this was the rising importance of cavalry. Although the Ch’in had been at the forefront of the shift from chariots to cavalry, their horsemen had been mainly mercenary barbarians with a sprinkling of peasant conscripts thrown in. When the chief opponents had been Chinese states with little or no cavalry of their own this had been sufficient, but as the empire grew, the main threat shifted to the north where the Hsung-nu, ancestors of the Huns, were all cavalrymen. It was therefore necessary to match them in horsepower, and mercenary barbarians were found to be the best way to do this.

As the role of the militiaman declined in warfare, so to did his political status. For so long as a prosperous, freehold farm population was necessary to the defense of the state, the state saw to it that farmers were fostered and protected. With the rise of mercenaries that protection waned. The usurper Wang Mang tried to reverse the process, but after his fall, the process accelerated. The government began allowing distinguished generals to raise their own armies. Soon, wealthy landowners were doing the same, and with no militia to confront them, quickly had whole districts under control.

Driven to desperation by the excesses of the great families the peasants revolted in 184 C.E., calling themselves the Yellow Turbans. The generals charged with putting down the rebellion and commanding mercenary armies loyal to them, became warlords instead. Their struggles for personal power eventually doomed the dynasty and plunged China into another prolonged period of disintegration and internal strife.

Looking back over the almost two thousand years from the rise of the Shang to the fall of the Han, some patterns become apparent. As each change in the military technology or practice took place, a corresponding one took place in the culture at large. Chariots and bronze weapons combined with theology gave the Shang their unique form of warfare. Although the Shang are often called feudal, their culture retained many elements that were closer to the tribal one of their Neolithic predecessors. Their deliberate use of the ineffective ko when more lethal weapons were at hand demonstrates how military considerations can be trumped by social ones.
The Chou abandoned the theocratic basis of Shang warfare but kept their weapons and, particularly the expensive chariot. The expense of maintaining the chariot combined with the long training necessary for its effective use, caused the rise of a class of warrior nobles, which in turn resulted in a system of feudalism. As the Chou disintegrated into the Warring States, simple survival demanded new approaches to warfare. States that could not raise chariot forces, or whose terrain precluded their use, were forced to develop their infantry. Under the Chou, the power of the state was reckoned by the number of chariots it could field and as a result, the political power of the chariot-driving class was supreme.

When the balance of power shifted to the infantry, the need to raise large armies led to social changes that favored the class from which the common foot soldier was drawn--the peasants. Social and legal changes, coupled with land reform, led to a class of freehold farmers with a major stake in the defense of the realm. For so long as the militia remained the shield of the state, the state shielded the rights of the militiaman, but when mercenaries and the shift to cavalry armies reduced the importance of the militiaman, his political clout waned. The militiaman’s loss was the rich man’s gain. With no effective force to stop them, the wealthy gained power and eventually were able to raise their own armies and set up as “great families” and warlords. As such, they were able to take the peasant’s land and force them into serfdom. The downward spiral eventually ended in the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the collapse of the Dynasty. It is significant that when order was finally restored under the T’ang Dynasty they quickly restored the militia system. For so long as the militia remained strong, the T’ang enjoyed prosperity and stability, but eventually the same forces that had doomed the Han militia destroyed that of the T’ang. Thus, it would appear that the thesis works. As the Chinese changed the way they fought, their society changed. Conversely, changes in the society at large forced changes in the way that wars were fought.

Love in a time of war

2007-09-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the 13^th century the Mongol hordes burst upon the world like a thunderclap. From relative obscurity they went, in little more than a generation, to a world bestriding empire sweeping with fire and sword from China to the very door step of Medieval Europe. In the midst of all this blood and misery a man was born in a remote part of modern Afghanistan whose poetry and philosophy of peace, love and the brotherhood of all humanity would continue to exert a powerful influence on the world long after the last echoes of the Mongol empire had faded away. His name was Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī but the Western world knows him simply as Rumi.

At the time of Rumi’s birth his home town, the city of Balkh, was part of Greater Khorasan in the eastern territories of what was left of the Abbasid caliphate. Internal conflicts break away kingdoms, border wars and battles against the Crusaders had reduced this once mighty empire to little more than Persia and a few outlying provinces. Despite its straightened circumstances however the Abbasid caliphate was still one of the great intellectual powerhouses of the world. In Baghdad the Bayt al-Hikma or “house of wisdom” was one of the largest, most well stocked libraries in the world. Its mission was not to simply warehouse books but to translate and disseminate knowledge from a wide variety of sources. Originally charged with translating Persian manuscripts into Arabic it soon added the translation and perseveration of ancient Greek and Roman works as well as offering refuge to scholars persecuted fleeing war or persecution regardless of religion or national origin. In this great bastion of learning Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, men and women worked side by side in the service of knowledge united by the honored title of scholar.

Rumi came from a famous family of famous scholars, jurists and teachers and claimed descent from Abu Bakr, companion of the Prophet and the first Caliph of Islam. Both Rumi’s father and grandfather were renowned intellectuals and his father was so widely acclaimed that he bore the title Sultan-ul-‘Ulama “King of Scholars. Rumi was a worthy successor to this heritage and showed great promise at a very early age.

The story is told that Rumi’s father, who had made a dramatic speech in the Great Mosque of Balkh attended by the king and the local people, predicted the coming of the Mongols and the destruction of the city He then packed up his family and fled to Anatolia (modern Turkey) ahead of the invading armies. On the road the family met Farid al-Din Attar, one of the most famous mystic poets in Persian history and author of the Conference of the Birds, a story that is still famous in the West.

The great mystic saw Rumi’s eminent father walking in front of his teenaged son and exclaimed “Here comes a sea followed by an ocean.” One wonders if the old mystic had any idea of just how prophetic his remark was for the young man he was greeting was destined to write more than 3,500 odes, 2,000 quatrains in addition to the monumental six volume Masnavi-ye Manavi (Spiritual Couplets) regarded by Sufis as only slightly less important than the Qur’an itself in spiritual matters. Before they parted Attar gave Rumi a copy of his book Asrarnama a philosophical work which was to have a great influence on the young man’s spiritual development.

While it might seem a great coincidence for such celebrated scholars to meet by accident on the road it must be remembered that the 13^th century of the Common Era was a time of great turmoil in the Middle East. Not only were the Mongols a gathering storm in the East but dynastic struggles and border wars wracked the whole area, staining the map with internecine bloodshed pitting Muslim against Muslim and weakening the fabric of Islamic society in the face of the growing threat. In 1212 the fabled city of Samarkand fell to the armies of Khwarizm and there is evidence that Rumi, who was no more than five at the time, had been present at the time of the siege.

In the West the Crusaders were still active, though waning threat to Islam but in 1204 they managed what Muslim warriors had not yet archived and sacked the Christian city of Constantinople, causing many Orthodox Christian scholars to flee to Islamic countries to avoid persecution by the Roman Catholics. Wherever one looked there was war and the rumor of war and the roads were filled with refugees, many of them scholars looking for a quite corner to pursue their studies.

For many that island of peace in a sea of war was the city of Konya in the north of modern Turkey. A legend popular in the city holds that long ago two angles, one coming from the west and the other from the east, each looking for a suitable place to call home, met in the air above site of the future town. Descending to ground level one angel asked the other “Shall we sit down? In asking the question he used the word Konya which means to sit down. Not to be outdone the other angle replied “Do sit down,” using the word Konayim which has the double meaning of to sit down and to perch as birds do. No doubt pleased with their puns the two angles decided that this was a good place to found a city.

And a great city it turned out to be. Under the name of Iconium it had once been the capital of the Eastern Empire but it was also central to the rise of the Seljuqs and indeed became the capital of their empire as well. Being situated on the main trade-routes from Syria, Iraq and Iran and Constantinople it boasted not only an affluent citizenry but a rich blend of cultures for the caravans that carried the trade goods that made the city rich also carried the books, scholars and ideas that made it great center learning.

After several years of wandering which took Rumi, his illustrious father and the rest of the family first to Nishapur, and then to Baghdad, where they met many of the famed scholars and Sufis of the city, to Hejaz from where they preformed the pilgrimage at Mecca. At long last, perhaps at the invitation of the ruler of Anatolia the family settled in Konya where, except for a few trips, Rumi was to spend the rest of his life. Once there Rumi’s father set up a madrassa which immediately began to attract a large group of students.

By this time Rumi was a young man of perhaps twenty-three and in only two years his father died, leaving him in charge of the school he had founded. Although ostensibly the head of the school Rumi continued his religious training under the tutelage of one of his father’s most learned disciples for the next nine years until the death of his teacher left him in true command of the school.

This was sometime around 1240 and at the time the Mongol armies known as the “Blue Horde” under Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan were rampaging through Poland, Hungry and the Balkans. In 1244 Rumi met a man who was to dramatically change his life.

The dervish, or mendicant ascetic, Shams Tabrizi had been traveling far and wide through the Middle East praying to find “someone who could endure my company.” In a vision a voice asked him “What will you give in return?” To which he replied without hesitation “My head!” The voice then told him “The one you seek is Jelaluddin of Konya.” The two men formed an immediate and powerful bond which, while brief, was to have a lasting impact on Rumi’s life. One night some four years later the two men were talking when Shams was called to the back door. He went out and was never seen again. He may have been murdered by some or Rumi’s pupils, jealous of the hold the dervish had on their master and there is even evidence that Rumi’s own son may have been involved in the plot.

Although devastated with grief at the loss of his friend Rumi consoled himself with a veritable flood of music, dance and poetry. Some forty thousand of his verses, mainly odes, eulogies, and quatrains, were collected together to form the Diwan-e Shams-Tabrizi in honor of his lost friend. This is considered by many a masterpiece of the Persian language although it also contains poems in Arabic and even a few in a mixture of Persian/Greek and Persian/Turkish dialects, a testament to Rumi’s eclectic learning.

Following rumors that Tabrizi had been spotted in Damascus Rumi journeyed there but failing to find him and finally resigned to his loss he wrote:

Why should I seek? I am the same as

He. His essence speaks through me.

I have been looking for myself!

Returning home Rumi began to live in ascetic life of seclusion and abstinence practicing a rigorous regimen of three periods of forty days each, eating little, talking little and sleeping little.

Rumi was well known for his love, compassion and tolerance. It was virtually impossible to provoke him and he cared little for petty differences in creed. He was even kind and considerate towards his enemies. Famed as a teacher as well as a poet he assembled about him a devoted cadre of students who gathered to hear him teach his philosophy of love and toleration.

One day as Rumi sat in his madrassa in deep meditation, surrounded by his students, a drunk staggered in off the street shouting. Stumbling he fell on top of Rumi who did not seem to notice. As a body Rumi’s students rose in wrath and there is no telling what they would have done to the offending man but the master waved his hand and silence descended on the room. Smiling, and in a gentle voice he said: “I had thought that the intruder was drunk but now I see that it is my own disciples who are drunk.”

So great was Rumi’s fame by this time that kings and princes vied for a place in his company and many were welcomed but he preferred to spend most of his time in the market place discussing mystical love with its denizens and his followers included merchants, butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, painters, goldsmiths, and prostitutes. It is said that it was the rhythmical tapping of the hammer of Rumi’s friend Salah al-Din Zerkub, a goldsmith that established the cadence of Rumi’s ecstatic dance.

In his great work the Manaqib al-Arifin Rumi writes of the spirit which compelled him to proselytize his message of love and tolerance: “The first Cause…has brought us from Khorasan and sent us to Asia Minor…so that we might generously spread the philosophical stone of our mysteries over the copper of the existence of its inhabitants, in such a manner that we shall transform them alchemically, and they shall become confidants of the world of gnosis and companions of the mystics of the entire world.”

One of the major appeals of Rumi’s philosophy was its latitudinarian approach to religion believing that God cares more about the moral state of a person’s soul than in the finer points of dogma. Rumi, and the order founded by his followers appealed directly to the religious sensitivity of common people by means of music, dance, poetry, and the use of the vernacular language of their converts. This was in strong contrast to the stuffy legalistic wrangling of the Ulema, the community of legal scholars of Islam and the Sharia and was instrumental in the wholesale conversion of many Central Asian Steppe Nomads such as the Seljuqs and, eventually, even the dreaded Mongols themselves.

When Rumi’s light passed from the world, at sunset on December 17, 1273 CE and his body was placed on the litter a crowd Muslims drawn from the great and humble alike gathered and, weeping marched in procession to the cemetery. To their surprise they were joined on the way by crowds of people of every description, Christians, Jews, Greeks, Arabs, Turks in solemn convocation, each group bearing their sacred scriptures before them, singing Psalms or reciting verses from the Gospels or the Pentateuch, crying in lamentation each according to their customs.

A disturbance arose and the sultan, summoning the chief religious leaders of each group before him, demanded that they explain what possible connection they could have with this funeral. They replied:" In seeing him we have comprehended the true nature of Christ, of Moses, and of all the prophets. . .such as we have read about in our books. If you Muslims say that our Master [Rumi] is the Muhammad of his period, we recognize him similarly as the Moses and Jesus of our times. Just as you are his sincere friends, we also are one thousand times over his servants and disciples.”

One Greek priest spoke for all the men and women who have basked in the beauty of Rumi’s poetry and his message of love down through the centuries: "Our Master is much like unto bread which is indispensable to all the world. Has a hungry man ever been seen to flee from bread ?”

Kalokagathia--Why Schools Should Not Play Sports

2007-08-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

The Greeks had a word for it -- kalokagathia, which descried a noble human being as one possessing the perfect union of body and soul.

The term was also used to celebrate the equality of all citizens and the ideal national unity that transcended any differences in class or wealth.

This concept was central to all that it was to be Greek and explains why gymnasiums were not simply exercise centers but also centers of advanced learning—the high schools and colleges of the ancient world. Indeed many of our terms used in academia, including academia itself, come from Greek gymnasium terms. The akademeia was the gym that Plato taught at!

Amateur sports were an important part of this concept but to be admired a person could not simply be a champion of one thing, he much be a master of many different and mutually balancing skills. A one trick pony, someone who could only run fast, or lift heavy weights, or box or any of a dozen other skills, was an object of mild contempt.

A well rounded athlete.
Most people today know that the Greeks gave us the Olympics and think that the modern games somehow resemble the ancient ones but the fact is that Ancient Greeks would have been horrified by such a gross and disgusting spectacle. For one thing sports were only one small part of the true Olympics, poetry and music were equally important events and the writer of the best poem or most accomplished armature musician was often far more highly honored than the person who only won a race or wrestling match.

The Greeks admired a strong body but they knew that mules and oxen were far stronger than the best athlete and yet lacked kalokagathia since they were only dumb animals who lacked poetry, music, art and philosophy. In other words they lacked souls.

The most highly respected athletes were all rounder, people who combined in themselves many different, and mutually balancing, abilities which is why the pentathlon (five competitions) was the quintessential Olympic event. These five events were the stadion (a short foot race) wrestling, long jump, javelin throw and discus throw and one had to do well in all or most of them to win. A hulking, muscle-bound freak may have been able to win the wrestling but might not have been as fast as a lean runner or as agile a jumper or as coordinated as the discus thrower and would have been merely a laughing stock. He would also have been a loser if he were out performed in the other events.

This emphasis on mental and physical “balance” is what was celebrated in the athletic sculpture of the Classic era. This was the golden age of the amateur, in the original French meaning of the word which can be translated as "lover of", reflecting the amateur's motivation to work as a result of a love or passion for a particular activity. To compete in an athletic or artistic competition for money was considered something contemptible and utterly lacking in kalokagathia.

All this changed, however when Greek culture was taken up by non-Greeks during the Hellenistic period following Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia. These new “Hellenizes” were not quite clear on the concept and started viewing athletic competition as a form of entertainment instead of a way of developing a balanced mind and body in order to become a worthy citizen of a democratic state.

The results were predictable. Soon money grubbing athletes moved away from kalokagathia where winning was an honor to professionalism where winning was the only thing that counted. Instead of well rounded human beings these sports prostitutes (as the Greeks themselves called them) transformed themselves into single purpose freaks.

The 18th century Enlightenment, which gave us the American Revolution, was based on a revival of Classical ideals and among the values that were revived was amateur sports as a means to achieving kalokagathia and better citizens of the "New Athens" they dreamed of building. But the Classically trained gentlemen of the era knew what had happened to Greek culture once the taint of money touched sports and were determined to prevent this degradation at all costs. One of the chief arguments they made in their battle to have sports made part of the curriculum in high school and colleges was the belief that sports would help build character, that they would help build kalokagathia.

That is why there are rules designed to prevent professionalism in school sports, rules that are today routinely flouted. High School and College sports, or at least the high-stakes, high-profile sports, have become merely a method of training what the Greeks would consider “sports prostitutes.”

The modern professional (and to a very large degree Collegiate) athletes have become single purpose trained, drug enhanced, over specialized freaks who lack in true health or physical fitness and whose artificial lifestyles and training often lead to a post career life of pain, ill health and even early death.

The Classical Greeks considered watching a sport that they could not play or had not played in their youth, pathetic and it was not at all uncommon for a heckler from the audience to be invited to come out onto the field, strip down and show everyone how to do it better. If the person was not at least willing to try he was ejected from the game. Could you imagine that happening with today’s couch potatoes sports fans? The stands would be empty. The simple fact is that modern “athletes” play at a level far beyond the capabilities of all but fellow over specialized freaks.

It is time to admit that the noble experiment of the 19th century amateur sports boosters has failed beyond all hope of redemption. The only reason we have sports in schools at all is because these idealist believed that they would teach kalokagathia (all educated people of the day at least read Greek and Latin). They do not. If some people wish to play sports, or if the sports/entertainment industry wants its employees trained, then both parties should pay for them themselves and not siphon off much needed educational dollars for their own ends.

Although Robert Heinlein was not an Ancient Greek he did understand their concept of kalokagathia and summed it up memorably:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.”

Who Cares?

2007-08-21T22:39:00.001-07:00

Who we care about and why we care about them tells other people a lot about who we are and what kind of morals we have. I am not referring to personal family, lovers and friends. I mean, who does a person invest their moral and political passion in?

I was thinking about this today as my Army buddy Tom and I walked around the festivities in Golden Gate Park held in honor of the annual AIDS walk. Thousands of people had turned out, many carrying placards bearing pictures of a loved one they had lost to the disease and others bringing panels for the AIDS quilt, a section of which was displayed on “Hippie Hill” near the Haight street entrance to the park.

Tom seldom talks about his brother Michael, whom he lost to the disease, but today he did. In a voice thick with emotion he said “If Michael had come to live with me here in San Francisco back when he wanted to he would probably still be alive. Here in the city he would have had access to information on AIDS prevention and even if he had still gotten it there is a large network of medical and social services available that he could never have found at home. Saint Paul killed my brother.”

As Tom described his part of the Twin Cities the place was a sinkhole of prejudices and enforced ignorance back in the 1980’s with virtually no awareness programs and no medical support for the Gay community of any kind. “The way they see it,” Tom said, “is if you are Gay you can just go right ahead an die. It’s your fault even if you have never heard of AIDS in your life.”

Perhaps he is right, I don’t know, but I do know that my Aunt Kathryn was one of the nicest, most caring people I have ever known, a pillar of her church and a ready volunteer for any good cause that needed her help. She would be well into her 70’s by now but she died of AIDS in the early 1990’s contracted from a blood transfusion after a minor operation. The same governmental indifference and political infighting over what was considered the “Gay disease” killed her just as surely as it killed Michael.

To this day I still encounter people who consider themselves to be kind and moral people who remain indifferent to the plague because it “only kills those people,” as though one’s sexual orientation was sufficient cause for a person to die.

Each year 3.1 million people die from HIV related causes, 20,000 of them in this country alone and yet there are a lot of people to whom the deaths of an estimated two to three thousand damaged fetuses is a cause for deep concern and violent emotions while the deaths from AIDS are only a statistic.

Why should this be? Why is one group of more importance than another? I believe it is because, for some people at least, it isn’t about the lives of “real” people at all but rather it is about how they feel about themselves. For example there are many people who do not like the sort of women who break with their “traditional” roles and these people seek to punish those women for being different. For this sort of person the hypothetical life of a possibly deformed or mentally retarded fetus, who may not even survive birth in any event, is secondary to the chance to impose their values on the hated group.

That is why they so stridently ignore any evidence that the D&X procedure is necessary to the life or health of the woman. Who cares? They don’t know them or their “child” and will most likely never meet them. If someone hadn’t told them that these people even existed they would have no way of finding out but now that they do know about them they are able to feel smug and morally superior to someone else, a wonderful compensation for their normal feelings of inadequacy.

I met and worked with Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher” when I was working the docks as a summer job back in high school. A totally self educated man he was considered by many intellectuals the best read and most learned man of his generation. Before he died many famous universities granted him advanced degrees based on his writings alone.

In his book “The True Believer” he dissects the sort of person who passionately advocates a cause and refuses to be swayed by facts or rational argument. As he put it “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.”

Those sorts of people who passionately proclaim that nothing you can say and no facts that you can show them will change their mind have all but admitted that the question is not about truth at all but about what they WANT to believe. As Eric put it “Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.”

How we see others is often only a reflection of how we see ourselves so when someone tells me “There are an awful lot of irresponsible, self centered, selfish women out there…” I get the distinct impression that they believe that they will see one of those women if they look in the mirror. That is not, by the way my opinion of them, I believe however that it is their opinion of themselves.

For others it is the sense of striking back at the world that they see as mocking and persecuting them that is the lure. “A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.”

This fills me with a great sadness. I have come to like some of these people very much and have seen their good and bad sides just as they have seen mine. They are, at heart, good and loving people who feel deep passions and who often hurt so much precisely because they care so much.

The world has not always been kind to these people and has bruised them with its rough edges. Being passionate and intelligent people they have perhaps felt these bruises more deeply than less passionate or intelligent people might have and this has shaken their faith in the world and in themselves. I don't know who said it but is true. "A cynic is a disappointed optimist.

A lot of their anger at the world and at the people who they see as wicked and immoral is really them projecting their feelings for themselves onto others.

How we see others is a very good indication of how we see ourselves.

The Year of the Cat

2007-07-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

The airport public address speakers crackled to life. The cultured woman’s voice first gave the message in German and then switched to English.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Lufthansa flight one-six-three from Frankfort to New York is now boarding at gate twenty-seven. Please have your boarding passes ready.”

Sergeant Michael Wilson turned to the woman beside him.

“That’s our flight honey, let’s go.”

The woman looked at Michael and smiled.

“Ready when you are dear.”

---------------

Michael awoke to the gray light of dawn and the sound of smoky saxophones floating through the silent building. Normally he didn’t sleep in the barracks but he had drawn fire-guard, two hours on and two off throughout the watches of the night and he had been catching some rack time. Following the sound he came to the source, a young Private sitting on his foot-locker polishing his boots and listening to a gigantic boom-box. The private told him the name of the song and that morning, after he got off duty Michael went to the P.X. and bought Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” tape. He smiled as he popped the tape into his stereo at home. Settling back in his chair he listened as Stewart sang;

“On a morning from a Bogart movie…”

---------------

In a country where they had turned back time, two strangers walked together through crooked cobblestone streets and narrow alleyways. It had been a golden day. Michael and the woman he had met on the bus had shopped for souvenirs in the blue-tiled stalls of the open-air bazaars and sampled olives and fresh strawberries in the farmer’s market of the tiny medieval walled city of Tossa de Mare.

As evening approached, they had kicked off their sandals on the beach and let the warm waters of the Mediterranean caress their bare legs. Then they had chosen a little patio café, shaded by trellises of fragrant flowering vines, where they could watch the light of sunset burnish the yellow stones of the old castle and turn them to gold in the fading light.

The cobalt sky was dusted with the first stars of dusk as Spanish fishermen, hiking up from their garishly painted boats on the beach, offered their choicest catch to the restaurant’s diners from which to choose for their paella. The couple talked as they waited for their dinner and shared a pitcher of iced Sangria. It was the earnest conversation of two strangers who meet on vacation and are drawn to one another. They tell each other everything--and nothing at all.

Later that evening they walked on the battlements talking, and listening to the surf pounding on the rocks far below. Somewhere nearby someone played a guitar and the flamenco music echoed through the maze of ancient streets. A full moon hung low over the tiled roofs like a gold doubloon carelessly tossed onto black velvet.

They stood for a while listening to the music and the surf. The bustling streets of the ancient city had been abandoned by their human inhabitants and replaced by a population of cats. Dozens of cats, of every size and shape, the nighttime citizens of the town, sauntered the moonlit cobblestones on their secret errands.

The couple continued their stroll and followed a winding stairway from the castle’s walls up to the ruins of a medieval church perched high on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. Although the evening was balmy, Michael put his arm around his companion’s shoulder to keep her warm. She snuggled against his side and looked up at him with moonlight in her eyes. His knees grew weak; his blood throbbed loudly in his ears.

Leaning down to within inches of her lips, Michael waited to see if she would respond. She did, and they melted together in a deep, lingering kiss. The night air was filled with the sounds of surf and Spanish guitars.

She was small, warm, and curvaceous; Michael was tall, with a body hardened by years of soldiering. Sweeping her up in his arms he carried her to the broad marble altar of the ruined church and gently laid her on it. The roof of the ancient building had fallen in centuries ago, so they made love under the blazing stars of the Spanish night.

---------------

Taking his seat on the airplane, Michael sat gazing hungrily out the window, clinging to his final moments in Europe. He had loved the continent and had traveled it as widely and often as his military duties and finances had allowed. He would have stayed if he could have, but that was impossible--his time in the Army was ending and he had waited too long to apply for a European out.

His throat thickened and his eyes grew moist as the plane left the ground. With his face pressed to the window, Michael watched Frankfort disappear into the clouds below him. Shutting the window shade, he leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes and thought of Europe.

---------------

Dawn smiled across her desk at Michael. Since moving to Crailsheim, Germany and taking the job of base councilor with the U.S. Army she had been almost out of her mind. It was nice to finally have someone of her own intellectual caliber to talk to.

The man on the other side of the desk was near her age, late twenties, and just under six feet tall. He had the lean muscular body of a soldier and intelligent dark brown eyes that crinkled with good humor and met hers with open admiration and honesty.

From where he was sitting, Michael saw a tall, shapely woman, dressed with style and sophistication in the latest European fashions. Long blond hair framed a delicately chiseled face and cerulean eyes.

They had spent the afternoon discussing art, books, and music and were sharing a laugh over some witticism one of them had made when the door opened and a tall, gaunt, middle aged man with receding hair walked in. He leaned across Dawn’s desk and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. Pulling up a spare chair he joined them around the desk.

“So what are you two giggling about?” he inquired with mild interest.

“We were just discussing that special exhibit of paintings by Gustav Klimt we saw in Munich last Saturday,” Dawn replied.

Michael smiled at the older man. “Too bad you couldn’t have joined us, Howard. It was the biggest collection of Klimt’s paintings outside Vienna.”

“Sounds hilarious,” said Howard looking bored. “Sorry I missed it but I was snowed under getting the books ready for the yearly visit of the Inspector General.

“That was a great movie,” said Michael.

“Danny Kay was a genius,” Dawn agreed, and they both dissolved into shared laughter again.

Howard looked annoyed.

“I have no clue what you two are snickering about. This was the real U.S. Army Inspector General, and his visits are no laughing matter. The rest of the accounting staff and I were up ’till all hours the week before he arrived making sure every last bean and bullet on the Kaserne was properly accounted for.”

Howard glanced at his gold Rolex.

“You guys about done? I have made reservations for five-thirty at the Jaegerhaus for dinner and we had better get going if we hope to get there on time. You are welcome to join us Michael if you like.”

Dawn crinkled her nose in disgust but Howard missed it. Michael knew she hated that place.

He smiled at Howard and shook his head.

“Thanks but it is almost time for retreat and I have to make formation around the flagpole before they will release me for the night. Then I would have to change into civvies. I would make you guys late.”

They all got up and moved to the front porch of the World War 2 vintage building while Dawn locked up her office.

“Have a great time. Dawn, I will drop by tomorrow unless I get caught for some detail. Good night you two.”

Michael watched Dawn and her husband walk towards where Howard had parked their car and smiled.

“You may have her body, Howard,” he thought, “but I have her mind.”

Still smiling he sauntered off towards the flagpole.

---------------

When the stewardess came by with the drinks cart Michael ordered himself a Chartreuse. Opening the tiny airline bottle he poured the sticky green liqueur into a glass and savored the aroma of pine needles. A faint smile creased his lips as his mind went racing back.

---------------

The September weeks danced by in a warm sensuous haze of wine, moonlight, and romance. The two lovers took water taxies to Barcelona for Bullfights or for long walks down Las Ramblas, the city’s broad, elegant street of sidewalk vendors. They would stroll hand in hand from the harbor all the way to Placa de Catalunya or would lose themselves in the warren of ancient buildings and winding streets just off the great boulevard, hunting for exotic, out of the way restaurants. At times they would find little cafes with tile patios and fountains where they would drink fino sherry by candle-light and gaze into each other’s eyes.

Once, in a festive mood, they ordered the house’s ’special Sangria,’ fortified with brandy. Recklessly they followed that with tall-stemmed glasses of Chartreuse that they joked were big enough to act as birdbaths. Inhibitions pleasantly melting into a green fog they whiled away a blissful hour kissing, the aroma of pine needles from the powerful liqueur scenting their breath.

Walking in an opulent, pine scented, haze to the beach, they would have made love on the sand but for the intervention of a pair of stern-faced Guardia Civil in their comical black bicorn hats who ordered them to get dressed and gravely warned them not do such things in broad daylight in a Catholic country.

Fighting to keep their faces straight, the lovers gave their promise to behave, and then glided off down the beach hand in hand, racked with laughter.

---------------

Emerging from the Neue Pinakothek, Michael and Dawn strolled down Barer Straße towards the Munich train station discussing the large collection of French Impressionist paintings they had just seen. Taking a detour by way of Konigsplatz they stopped at their favorite Konditorei for coffee and the lightly sweet dry-cheesecake the shop made better than anyone.

Surveying the formal elegance of the shop, with its stiff white tablecloths and sparkling chrome coffee pots, Michael smiled at his companion.

“They sure take pastry seriously in Bavaria. I’m sorry Howard couldn’t join us.”

Dawn smiled archly. “Are you indeed?”

They exchanged guilty glances and went back to discussing art.

----------

The two people boarded the bus that would carry them home to Germany still pretending. After three weeks of adventure and glorious romance Michael still did not know his lover’s last name. He knew her first name was Sabrina but he had no idea where she was stationed, and had not tried to find out. He assumed that she was in the military because she was on an Army Tour bus, but aside from that he knew nothing.

Oh he knew her favorite color and the name of her cat back when she had been in high school. He also knew that she loved raw oysters live on the half shell, and long massages and that being kissed on the back of the neck always made her smile.

They both seemed to know how to make each other happy in bed but each had carefully avoided other, more intimate, subjects.

Most importantly, Michael believed, each knew that what they had shared had been a delicious fling, one that both would cherish, probably for the rest of their lives, but nothing more. They continued to talk like lovers all the way across France, but their conversation became more stilted as the bus crossed into Germany. As they neared Crailsheim, his stop, Michael noticed that Sabrina began to fidget nervously. Finally she reached into her purse and slipped a gold ring on to the third finger of her left hand.

---------------

The lights in the passenger cabin had been dimmed. Michael got a blanket and pillow from the stewardess, covered the sleeping woman at his side and, easing her head off his shoulder, placed the pillow under it.

He then settled back and let his mind roam.

----------

Entering Dawn’s office Michael noticed immediately that she wore a stricken look on her face and he felt his blood run cold. Sitting down numbly, knowing what he was about to hear but dreading it just the same, he smiled bravely.

“Is it what we thought?”

“Yes.” She was ashen faced. “Howard has gotten his promotion and we will be moving to Stuttgart by the end of this week.

“Stuttgart is not so bad. Only ninety-eight kilometers. It says so on the sign just outside the front gate. We can still get together on weekends or you can come visit me.”

Dawn shook her head. “Howard thinks that we should not see so much of each other.”

Michael felt his face grow warm.

“Howard knows perfectly well that we are just friends. Furthermore, you and I both know that we have never done anything he could object to. He has no right to complain simply because we enjoy each other’s company.”

A pained look crossed Dawn’s face at this.

“Michael, he is my husband and I owe him so much. He was there for me during a very difficult time in my life and I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

Michael started to say something but Dawn shook her head. “No Michael, my mind is made up. Howard wants it this way so that is the way it is going to be. If our friendship means anything to you, you will not make this any harder than it has to be. Goodbye Michael. I will always treasure the wonderful times we have had together. Please don’t try to see me before I go.”

Their eyes met, and each could see the pain in the other. Finally, Michael simply said goodbye and walked out of the office. As the door closed behind him, Dawn put her head on her desk and cried.

Outside, Michael walked aimlessly. A passing sergeant started to say something to him but saw the look on his face and thought better of it.

----------

When the bus stopped, Michael hung back, fiddling with his luggage, and let Sabrina get off first. She was greeted by a stocky man in the uniform of a senior sergeant. From the badge on his cap Michael could tell the man was part of the artillery battalion that shared the Kaserne with the First-of-the-Fifty-First Infantry, his outfit.

Sabrina hugged the man and he helped her get her bag from the bus’s luggage bay. Michael took his time exiting the bus and had started to walk towards the front gate, heading for his highly unauthorized off base apartment, when he heard Sabrina’s voice calling his name. He turned in astonishment and saw Sabrina leading the sergeant towards him.

“Honey I want you to meet my friend Michael. We met on the bus to Spain.”

The big man offered his hand.

“Michael I would like you to meet my husband, Al.”

The two men shook hands.

“I would like to thank you for looking after Sabrina,” Al said. “I wish I could have gone on the trip but I just made Motor Pool Sergeant for my Battalion and was anxious to get things squared away. You know how it is.”

Michael agreed that he did indeed know how it was and the three stood chatting amiably for a few minuets before Al went to fetch the car. When he had gone Michael whispered urgently to Sabrina, “Are you out of your mind? What is he going to do if he finds out what we were up to in Spain? Oh and by the way it would have been nice if you had mentioned the tiny little fact that you were married!”

Sabrina gave Michael a strange look. “What difference would that have made? Neither of us thought we would ever see the other after we left Spain. Why spoil things?

Michael was too dumbfounded for words.

“There are people on the bus who may have seen us together in Spain and although I think it is unlikely that anyone will gossip to Al, it is better if we acknowledge that we were friends just in case. Don’t worry. Al trusts me.”

Michael was starting to feel sorry for Al when the sergeant pulled up in the family’s Mercedes. “So Michael where are you headed? Can I give you a lift?”

---------------

Michael hadn’t done any traveling for a long time after Dawn had left. The unit had gone to the field for two weeks, but even after he got back he simply went home to his apartment in the evenings and moped around Crailsheim on the weekends.

Finally, in late August his friend Claude had persuaded him to take three week’s leave and go with him to Spain. As things turned out Claude got left to his own devises after Michael met Sabrina, but since he was left with their room all to himself he didn’t complain.

---------------

Michael had found an empty table in the mess hall and was reading a book while eating lunch when he noticed someone sitting down opposite him and looked up to find Al with a tray of food smiling at him.

“Hi, I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” Al said. “What are you reading?”

Michael looked embarrassed, “Oh it’s just a book of poems,” he said dismissively. He had received endless ribbing from other soldiers for reading poetry, but Al looked interested.

“Find any you like?” he asked.

“There is one called Dover Beach…”

Before he could finish Al had closed his eyes and began quoting:

“Ah, love, let us be true to one another! for the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; and we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.”

He opened his eyes and smiled. “I love Matthew Arnold.”

In spite of himself Michael found the thickset motor pool sergeant fascinating. It turned out that he, like Michael, was something of an oddball by Army standards. Like Michael he had gotten his Bachelor’s degree before joining, but while Michael’s was in History, Al got his degree in English Literature.

The two men had been happily discussing poetry for a while when Al glanced at his watch and gave a low whistle. “Where did the time go? This has been fun but I have to get back to the motor pool.” As he left the table Al looked Michael in the eyes and smiled. “I will tell Sabrina you said hi.” he said and then left to turn in his tray.

---------------

Al and Michael started having lunch together on a fairly regular basis. Michael quickly grew to like the man he had unknowingly wronged, and it seemed to him that Sabrina’s husband returned the feelings. Michael felt terrible guilt, but Al didn’t seem to notice.

One day, however, Al sat down at the table and gave him an apprehensive look.

“Michael I would like to talk to you about Sabrina,” he said

Michael felt his stomach tighten.

Al forged ahead as though anxious to get it over with.

“Michael, I like you and think you are an honorable person so if you give me your word on something I will accept it, no questions asked. Do you understand?”

Michael nodded but said nothing.

“My unit is going to the field on Monday and we will be gone for two weeks. Sabrina and I rent a house in out near Lobenhausen, miles from any other Americans. She use to stay with her friend Regina but she and her husband have moved to Fort Hood.”

Al looked extremely uncomfortable. “The thing is that Sabrina has asked me if she could stay at your place. If it is all right with you that is,” he added hastily.

Michael was stunned.

“I did some checking and found out that you live within walking distance of base. She could see her friends during the day and maybe go to the movies in the evening.”

Al was starting to perspire heavily. “Look Michael I am no fool. I know Sabrina is a beautiful and desirable woman. I am sure that a lot of people wonder what she sees in me. But I really love her and want her to be happy. If you give me your word that nothing will happen I will believe you.”

Somewhere in the back of Michael’s mind the beast of desire, which had been too long banished to its kennel, raised its head and snuffled the air with interest.

Michael looked in Al’s worried eyes and felt ashamed. He told himself that he hadn’t known, but that didn’t help. He was silent for a few minutes but finally he looked Al square in the eye and said, “Nothing will happen Al. You have my word.”

In the deepest part of his soul he knew that this was the truth.

---------------

Sunday evening, when Al dropped Sabrina at Michael’s place things had felt very awkward. Finally, however, Al kissed Sabrina, shook Michael’s hand and, looking worried, left.

Michael showed Sabrina to the bedroom and, picking up a pile of blankets and pillows that he had ready, wished her a good night and turned to head back to the living room.

“Where are you going Michael.”

“You’re my guest so you get the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Don’t be silly, Michael, we shared a bed for three weeks in Spain,” Sabrina said petulantly.

Michael rounded on her with eyes blazing. “That was before I knew you were married!” he snapped. Good night.”

Before she could say anything he stormed off towards the living room.

“I gave my word to Al and I intend to keep it,” Michael thought as he flopped down on the couch. He gave his pillow a fierce punch, as though it had offended him by simply being. Then he closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep.

Silently Sabrina closed the bedroom door.

---------------

Over the next two weeks Sabrina waged a relentless campaign of seduction, wielding her uninhibited carnality like a weapon, but to no avail. Michael would arrive home in the evenings to find her beautifully dressed and made up, waiting for him with candle lit dinners.

Sabrina’s considerable charms could have tried the chastity of a saint and Michael was far from saintly. To make matters worse, memories of Spain filled Michael’s nights. He slept fitfully and awoke sweating from dreams of surf and guitars, but this was a question of honor and his resolve was adamant.

As the nights passed and Sabrina failed to detect any weakening of Michael’s resolve, dresses gave way to diaphanous negligees, and one evening he arrived home to find soft music, a candle-lit table, and incense perfuming the air. When Michael called her name Sabrina emerged from the kitchen carrying two glasses of wine, wearing a big smile and nothing else. Michael walked the five miles back to base to find a bunk in the barracks, but he couldn’t sleep.

One by one the sleepless nights ticked by.

---------------

When Al’s unit returned from the field Michael went over to the artillery motor pool to find him. Al emerged from under the hood of an armored personnel carrier covered in mud and grease but Michael walked up to him smiled and shook his hand.

A look of relief washed over Al and his grimy face split in a huge smile. He returned Michael’s handshake with warmth.

---------------

Over the next few months Al and Michael became good friends, often getting together after work for a beer and a game of chess at the local Ghasthaus. Sabrina occasionally tagged along but more often than not she got bored and went to the movies instead.

The next time Al’s unit went to the field Sabrina stayed at Michael’s again but she had apparently learned her lesson and this time she behaved herself.

When he got back from the field and dropped by to pick-up Sabrina Al noticed how sparse the furnishings of Michael’s apartment were and made it his business to scrounge up unwanted stuff from his married friends. Soon the place acquired a far more homey atmosphere.

---------------

One Saturday afternoon in early March Michael was home alone. The snow had turned to slush, but Al had taken Sabrina to Garmisch for some late season skiing in the Alps. There was a knock on the door and Michael opened it to find Dawn standing on his doorstep. Her stylish outfit was soaking wet and mud splattered her bare legs. She gave him a shy smile. “Hi, I was in the neighborhood and thought I would drop by.”

---------------

Dawn emerged from the bathroom showered and with her hair wrapped in a towel. She was dressed in one of Michael’s sweaters, a pair of his fatigue pants and sweat sox. Michael had scraped most of the mud off her cloths and had hung them near the radiator to dry. He went to the kitchen and returned with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

She sat on the couch with her feet tucked under her sipping the chocolate and smiling at Michael over her mug. “I missed you,” she said simply.

They talked until early evening without Michael finding out the reason for her visit. He had asked but when she gave an evasive answer he didn’t push. Instead, he let her tell him about Stuttgart, her new job and all the books she had read recently.

They laughed together as she recounted the saga of her drive to pay him a visit, filled with wrong turns, icy roads and the climax--a broken fan belt. When she told him how she had repaired it with her pantyhose they both laughed until their eyes sparkled with tears.

Dawn joined Michael in the kitchen as he fixed them a simple pasta dinner and they talked long after dark. Michael offered to make up the couch for himself if she would consent to stay the night and not risk the icy roads but she insisted that she needed to get home.

Dressed in her dry clothes Dawn said good-by to Michael at the door. “You are a really good friend Michael,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you that and thank you for…I want to thank you for being you.” Without warning she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and then disappeared into the night.

---------------

Al seemed upset when he and Sabrina returned from skiing. He still greeted his friend with a big smile but Michael could tell something was on his mind. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it so Michael let it go.

---------------

In early June Michael was surprised to receive a letter from Dawn. He knew that she was an excellent writer and was surprised to find her letter rambling and formless, filled with vague pleasantries and humorous anecdotes about life in Stuttgart. It ended with a casual mention of the Rhine A’Flame cruise that they had so often talked about back when she was in Crailsheim.

Michael knew that it was a once a year event when castles and cities along the Rhine river between Bingen and Ruedesheim put on fireworks festivals. A fleet of cruise ships would sail down the river and provide their passengers with wine, gourmet dining, music and dancing under a pyrotechnic sky. He and Dawn had talked about going for months before the one last year only to have Michael get weekend duty at the last minute.

The letter ended almost shyly with a mention that she had taken the liberty of booking two rooms for them in a hotel in Bingen and passage on the Nibelungen, one of the better cruise ships.

Michael looked for a return address on the envelope but either by accident or design there was none. He had no way of letting Dawn know whether, or even if, he could be there. The trip was scheduled for the first weekend in July and without a moments hesitation Michael went to headquarters and used up a week of his dwindling supply of leave days just to be sure of having the date free.

Then, he waited.

---------------

The morning of the cruise Michael arrived at the Bahnhof almost an hour early for the train. Once aboard he tried to read but found that he couldn’t concentrate. He spent the trip gazing out the window at the passing scenery.

He found a room in his name waiting for him when he arrived in Bingen, but no sign of Dawn. After checking in he showered and dressed in a Blue blazer with gray slacks. At the last minute he decided to add a red necktie.

Boarding the ship, Michael spotted Dawn, coolly elegant in an off the shoulder white lace dress, standing by the railing gazing out over the river. Her normally straight blond hair was worn in a cascade of ringlets. A single cornflower, pinned in her hair, brought out the blue of her eyes. Her smile, when she saw him, was like a shaft of sunlight shot through the gloom of a cloudy sky.

---------------

Somewhere over the darkened Atlantic the stewardess with the drinks cart passed again. Michael ordered a bottle of Rhine wine. Opening it he was glad that he had chosen to fly on a German airline. This was a true Rhine wine, as light as a harpsichord concerto with a bouquet like strawberries and wildflowers. He closed his eyes and inhaled the fragrance, calling back the memories.

---------------

The Rhine gleamed like gold in the light of the setting sun as the Nibelungen sailed between steep banks rich with vineyards and crowned with castles. Amber wine twinkled in crystal goblets and the orchestra filled the evening air with Viennese waltzes.

The months of their separation melted away and their conversation was as light and sparkling as the wine and the music. After dinner Michael and Dawn went up on deck and danced under the gathering stars.

When the sky had grown completely dark a single scarlet rocket blazed across the blackness. It must have been a signal, for suddenly both banks of the river for as far as the eye could see in either direction erupted into a fountain of flame as thousands of fireworks soared into the heavens and exploded in an inferno of colored lights. Volley after volley thundered skyward until it seemed as though they were sailing down a tunnel of fire.

Michael and Dawn paused in the middle of their waltz to observe the spectacle, their arms innocently still around one another in the postures of the dance but, as the sky continued to burn, each turned to the other and gazed into love filled eyes. Wordlessly they melted together in a kiss.

---------------

The next morning Michael awoke to find Dawn asleep beside him, her warm body pressed against him, her head on his shoulder and her blond ringlets tumbled across his bare chest.

---------------

After breakfast they walked together through fields of red poppies, pausing now and again to kiss or simply gaze into one another’s eyes. Michael wanted to talk about what it all meant but when he tried Dawn withdrew inside herself. He let it pass, afraid to spoil the moment. There would be time later to make plans. For now it was sufficient to treasure the day.

The time passed all too quickly and before they were ready the moment had arrived for them to part. He had no phone so she promised to write him and let him know when they could see each other again. She also promised to send him an address where he could write her.

Although she had admitted that her marriage to Howard was a hollow, loveless sham, and that she would be filing for a divorce very soon she reminded Michael that her husband had always been kind to her and she owed him much. She didn’t want to hurt him any more than was necessary and asked Michael to give her time to let Howard down easily. Michael agreed and kissed her goodbye and then stood on the platform and watched her train disappear from sight.

---------------

Anger, pain and confusion warred in Michael’s soul. Anger won.

Dawn’s letter, when it arrived, was blotchy and wrinkled with dried tears. She swore that she did not regret one second of their time together but she felt that she had to put a stop to things before they got out of hand.

She owed it to Howard, she wrote, to give their marriage one last chance and she couldn’t do that if she was thinking about Michael. Their friendship was too distracting and it would be better for all concerned if they didn’t see one another again. Tears had made the last line illegible.

Michael felt as though he had been gut shot. His body went cold and numb and he heard a ringing in his ears. Eventually the shock passed and tears of pain and rage filled his eyes.

He bellowed like a wounded animal. “Friendship! Friendship! She calls it friendship?” Sudden pain shot from his right hand up to his shoulder. He looked down in wonder at his bleeding hand and realized that he had just punched a hole in the wall.

---------------

. Michael’s hand was still in a cast a week later when Al came to see him about Sabrina staying at his place again. Ever since Al and Sabrina had returned from their ski trip it had seemed to Michael as though the big sergeant had been avoiding him. He was still friendly enough when they met but he seemed troubled. Michael had been troubled himself lately so he didn’t give the matter much thought. He gave his spare key to Al and told him to tell Sabrina to let herself in.

---------------

Sabrina had made dinner when Michael got home, but he wasn’t hungry. He seated himself in an overstuffed chair next to the stereo and simply sat there drinking white wine, playing waltz music and staring off into space. With real concern in her eyes Sabrina asked how he had injured his hand but all she could get out of him was that it had been a stupid accident. Reluctantly she gave up trying to make conversation and went to bed. After a few days of this Sabrina gave up even trying to talk to Michael and simply left him alone with whatever was bothering him.

---------------

The two weeks passed Michael by almost without him noticing them. His cast had come off but other than that not much had changed. He still walked around in silent misery and talked only as much as was necessary to get through the day.

On the day Al was due to return, Michael walked into his Company’s barracks on an errand. He barely noticed the burly, squashed nosed, soldier slouching against the wall in the entrance hall with his muscular arms folded across his broad chest. He recognized him as Mitch, the battalion boxing champion, and vaguely wondered what he was doing there since this was not his barracks. He was about to walk past him when the big man straightened up and said, “Al sends his regards.”

Then he punched Michael in the face with enough force to send him flying across the hallway and into the Coke machine which smashed when his body hit it. Michael looked up from the floor to see Mitch in a fighting stance with the Platoon sergeant and a few other soldiers watching from the stairs nearby. He expected the Sergeant to intervene but he apparently was in on the matter because he told Mitch to drag Michael into the latrine and finish him off.

Deep wells of rage burst in Michael and poured out their pent up anger. He came up off the floor like a wild beast and launched himself at the startled boxer. Mitch had the advantage of size, strength and training but none of that mattered. Michael had every intention of killing the man with his bare hands, or ripping his throat out with his teeth, he didn’t much care which. He also didn’t care if he lived or died in the process and that fact blazed in his eyes.

Mitch could see his own death in those eyes and his courage deserted him. His best punches had no effect on the madman before him. Michael’s face was a mask of blood and still he came on, snarling and snapping like a rabid dog. When the M.P.s arrived it took four of them to pull Michael off the boxer and hold him down until some semblance of his sanity returned.

There were enough witnesses to clear up the chain of events for the authorities and finally Michael was excused from duty for the rest of the day and told to report to the infirmary while Mitch and the Sergeant were led off in handcuffs. Michael didn’t bother with the infirmary but headed straight for home. Mitch had admitted to the M.P.s that Al had paid him to attack Michael but couldn’t say why.

When he got home Michael found his place a shambles, furniture overturned or broken and a lot of it missing. He found Sabrina in the bedroom crying. She looked up when Michael came in and he could see she had a black eye and swollen lip.

She told him that Al had shown up unexpectedly at the door with a group of other soldiers and an Army duce-and-a-half truck and had started moving out all the furniture that he had given to Michael. While the other soldiers moved furniture, Al had taken Sabrina into the bedroom and beaten her, calling her a whore and yelling that she could stay here with her lover, he had no further use for her. Then he had left.

---------------

Michael didn’t know what made him angrier, the fact that Al had done all this or the fact that neither he nor Sabrina had done anything since Spain to deserve it. He really didn’t care though, he was angry and he was going to have blood, no mater what it took to get it.

What he couldn’t get over was the fact that Al had come with an Army truck and a work detail. He knew that the Army was not in the habit of passing out trucks and soldiers to sergeants for the purposes of settling domestic disputes. There was only one person in the battalion with the power to do that, the Colonel. Al was an outstanding motor pool sergeant and was key to the smooth functioning of the battalion. Michael was certain that the Colonel had authorized the truck and work detail to keep his prize NCO happy. He couldn’t prove it, but for what he was considering it didn’t matter. The simple accusation would be enough.

Michael knew enough about how the Army functioned to know that taking his hunches to the proper military authorities was useless. The chain of command would simply sweep the whole thing under the carpet, which was exactly what Al and the Colonel were banking on.

However this was Germany. A sovereign country with its own laws. True, the German police didn’t have any jurisdiction on U.S. Army bases but this crime had taken place in his home, which was off base, making it their business.

Michael didn’t have a phone but several of his neighbors had heard the noise and seen the truck and he had little difficulty persuading one of them to call the police. When they arrived he swore out a complaint against Al and his Colonel and then sat back and waited for the fur to fly.

---------------

Al’s court-martial took place at an astonishing speed. Michael had been right in his belief that there was nothing quite like the prospect of an arrest warrant to help clarify a Colonel‘s priorities. Michael had agreed to drop the charges against the officer once the matter was resolved.

At the trial Al confessed that he had acted out of jealousy. He told the court that ever since she had returned from Spain Sabrina had been distant and withdrawn from him and the men of his unit had laughed at him for being stupid enough to leave his wife with another man.

Al, Mitch and the Platoon sergeant were all found guilty, reduced in rank and sentenced to be sent back to the states in chains. As Al was leaving the court Michael tried to tell him that he had been true to his word and not touched Sabrina, but either Al didn’t believe him or didn’t care because he simply walked by without even acknowledging Michael’s words.

Before Al left for the States however he had at least a little revenge. Although he had filed for divorce, that would take time and Sabrina would still be his wife until it was final, but he signed a certificate of abandonment, which meant that Sabrina lost all her privileges as a military dependant. She didn’t have a place to live, money for food or even air-fare back to the States. She was trapped.

Michael agreed to let her stay with him until she could sort things out. That night they made love for the first time since they had left Spain.

Afterwards Michael lay awake staring at the ceiling. Sabrina slept with her head on his shoulder, her warm body nestled against his side.

“After all,” he told himself, “love and lust aren’t all that far apart.”

----------

Something had broken inside Michael when he had gotten Dawn’s letter. Whatever it was it had been as delicate as a soap bubble, but it had left shards like razors that cut his heart out from the inside. Sunsets and poetry no longer had any meaning for him. Beauty, adventure, romance were all just ashes in his mouth. He decided that Mathew Arnold had been right and there really was no joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain and since his love was not true to him what did it all matter?

There may be no love but at least there was sex. It didn’t solve anything but it made the pain go away, at least for a little while. Sabrina was a beautiful and sensuous woman and an inexhaustible well of solace. Perhaps he could drown his dreams in her arms.

He had been wrong about Spain. He may have thought that what he and Sabrina had shared had simply been a glorious fling, but she had fallen in love with him, deeply and hopelessly in love. It was tragic that he could not return even one tenth of the love she felt for him, but at least he could be kind. He knew all too well the pain of having one’s heart ripped, still alive and bleeding, from one’s chest and flung on the ground, and he vowed that he would never give Sabrina the sort of pain that Dawn had given him. The same sense of honor that had kept him from Sabrina’s bed all this time also assured that he would not fail in his duty to protect her.

Sabrina was a simple soul at heart. A creature of appetites, devotion and sensitivity. Unlike Dawn she was not an intellectual but she was by no means stupid. She possessed a sort of innate, cheerful wisdom that Michael found touching.

More-over she was absurdly easy to please. All she needed was a little attention, some tenderness and respect and she was blissfully happy, and that made Michael happy, or at least less unhappy, which was good enough.

He set himself to pleasing her in all sorts of little ways. He would bring her flowers unexpectedly or leave tender notes tucked into the pages of her favorite books. She loved massage, so he bought a book on the subject and studied it until he was expert in every technique. He bought a white Flokati rug, and at night he would fill the room with candles, incense and soft music and work on her for hours until she practically purred under his figures.

Once he secretly bought her a music box that played her favorite love song and left it playing beside the bed one morning just as he left for work so that she would wake to its melody. Her eyes shone like diamonds for days after whenever she looked at him.

As Michael’s time in the Army drew to a close she chatted brightly about him meeting her parents. Without it ever being said out loud it had somehow become understood that they would marry once her divorce was finalized and they got back to the States. He had once carelessly spoken about when he got out in such a way as to suggest going their separate ways, and her heartbroken sobs had torn him apart inside.

Well, he thought, why not? It wasn’t as though he could ever love again anyway. He refused to even consider the idea; it was just too painful to even think about.

Besides, it would make her happy.

---------------

The months passed, and if they didn’t exactly dance past in a warm sensuous haze, at least they didn’t crawl past at a funereal rate either. And there was wine, and moonlight and romance--well, sex, which was almost the same. It was enough.

The day to leave finally arrived. Sabrina was as excited as a child at Christmas and the sight of her happy face kindled a small fire in the icy chamber where Michael’s heart had once dwelt, warming the hollow space just a bit.

The new Platoon sergeant had offered to give Michael and Sabrina a ride to the Bahnhof. She and the sergeant were waiting by the car parked outside Battalion headquarters while Michael finished up some last minute paperwork. A clerk caught up with him in the hallway to tell him that there was a phone call for him.

This was such an unusual event that he was gripped by a sudden sense of dread. He feared that something was wrong with his parents; maybe they were sick--or dead. When he arrived at the phone he was breathless from running up a flight of stairs. He took the receiver with trembling hands prepared, he thought, for the worst. But he wasn’t prepared for this. A soft woman’s voice spoke his name.

“Michael. Michael, is that you? This is Dawn.”

Ice water flooded through Michael’s veins and he sat down heavily in a nearby chair.

“This is Michael. May I help you?” He sounded insane, even to himself.

“Michael, oh Michael please. This is Dawn. I have filed for divorce. I am free! Howard took a plane back to the states last night. I need you. Can you come to Stuttgart and stay with me? Michael, I love you.”

Michael felt numb. The noise of a busy military headquarters faded from his hearing, replaced by the pounding of his heart. Images of Dawn standing at the railing of the cruise ship assaulted him and he felt as though he should be crying. Tears should be streaming down his face but his eyes were as dry as flint. There was flint in his voice as well.

“I am sorry Dawn. I can’t make it. I am getting out of the Army today. I was just leaving for the airport when you called.”

Pain filled Dawn’s voice. “Please Michael, I need you. Michael, I love you.”

Visions of Dawn were replaced with those of Sabrina’s happy, trusting eyes. He could not, he would not, see those eyes filled with tears. He would not be the cause of her heart-broken sobs.

He knew he loved Sabrina. A little. Maybe. If he was even still capable of love.

All that didn’t matter. Dawn had had to give Howard one last chance. Michael knew that--now. He realized that, now, even as he realized that Dawn must have known, even then, that she didn’t love her husband. It was a question of honor. It was a question of character. You didn’t hurt those who had been kind to you. You didn’t return trust with pain.

It was what made her who she was just as Michael’s honor and sense of responsibility was what made him who he was. If either of them had changed, or wavered, on such a principal, they would not have been who they were. They would have been someone else, not the person that the other had fallen in love with. He knew that--now.

“I am sorry Dawn. I can’t tell you how sorry I am but when I got your letter I…”

Michael’s voice faltered.

“Dawn, there is someone else. I am sorry.”

He could hear her sobs as he put down the phone. He thanked the clerk and walked, mechanically, to the door. He was dry eyed and composed. When he got to the car he smiled at Sabrina.

“Time to go honey.” he said.

Her bright eyes filled with joy. The car left the front gate of the Kaserne and Sabrina turned towards the window to get a last look. Michael tenderly brushed her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck. She turned to him with a delighted smile and kissed him. All the way to the train station she snuggled against him.

This is enough, Michael told himself. Really, this is enough.

---------------

Michael looked down at the sleeping face of Sabrina, softly illuminated by the dim light of the aircraft cabin. He pulled the blanket up around her shoulders, protectively, and brushed a stray lock of raven hair from her face.

Then he reclined his seat, turned off the overhead light and, putting on the headphones of his Walkman, turned on what had been his favorite piece of music for the last year, Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat.”

As the smoky saxophones of the last bars swelled towards the end of the song he turned his head into the shadows near the window and finally let the warm tears streak his face.

Traveling Soldier

2007-06-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

The air thrumbed. If the unit chaplain had been here he would have said that Satan’s legions were marching up from Perdition to deliver a judgment upon all mankind. Sergeant Wright didn’t know about that. To him it sounded more like a squadron of Apache gunships warming up.

Sergeant Tom Wright had been up since “O’dark-hundred” getting the platoon ready, but he had a moment to himself now and he leaned against the UH-1H ‘Huey’ chopper and watched the sun rise in flames against the dust-filled sky.

A wicked black shape detached itself from the ground, rose some twenty feet into the air and then hovered there, silhouetted against the dawn. A moment later, five more insectoid shapes joined the first, and the whole unit hovered and bobbed for a few seconds in the crimson sky like a swarm of dragonflies from Hell before flying off into the sunrise.

Sergeant Wright, who was fond of reading Civil War histories, remembered his favorite quote from Robert E. Lee; “It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.”

Reaching into the breast pocket on his flack vest he extracted a faded and cracked photo and looked at it. A pretty blonde high-school girl in butterfly braids smiled back at him.

The milling blades from the idling choppers blew dust into Tommy’s eyes causing them to tear up.

From three choppers away the outfit’s brand-spanking-new Lieutenant cupped his hands and bellowed:

“All right people, saddle up!”

------------------------------

The girl had been watching the boy for the best part of a half an hour. It wasn’t as though he was all that good looking. He was painfully young, and all rough edges and elbows in his baggy green Army Class A’s. He had a pair of ears like the handles on a 4-H trophy, but there was something about his eyes.

Tommy had been sitting out by the bus stop, watching her through the plate glass window of the diner, and pretending not to, for most of the same half hour. Finally he got up the nerve and walked in.

The head waitress, Mrs. Denny, who was old and fat and never saw anything at all, met the boy near the cash register and, taking a menu out of the hopper, led him straight back to the girl’s section. She seated him in a booth near the back. For just a second the girl could have sworn that Mrs. Denny had given her a quick wink, but that was impossible. She was old, and fat and never saw anything. There was no way she could know.

The girl busied herself rolling silverware into paper napkins until she saw that the boy had finish looking over his menu and laid it aside. Pulling her order book out of the pocket on her apron the girl approached the boy’s table with a bright smile.

“Hi! My name’s Donna-Sue. May I take your order?”

------------------------------------------

Sunlight glinted off the water in flooded rice paddies scattered here and there in isolated clearings as the company’s choppers flew low and fast over the jungle canopy. As far as he could see in every direction Sgt. Wright could make out boo-coo choppers, all racing in the same direction. Higher-higher had said that it was going to be an ‘eagle flight,’ a battalion-sized op and it looked it.

Leading the formation, a half dozen loaches were fanned out line-abreast, the tiny egg-shaped choppers jinking and bobbing, hoping to spot Charlie before Charlie spotted them. When Charlie was spotted the scout choppers popped smoke on his ass and a pair of Cobras would streak in to fire up the A.O.

Sgt. Wright, sitting in the door of the slick, wondered how things were back in the World.

-----------------------------------------

Donna-Sue was beginning to worry about the young soldier, afraid he was going to drown in coffee. She had topped off his cup five times, but every time she came to his table with the pot and offered him a refill he had looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes, smiled sweetly and bobbed his head in affirmation.

It wasn’t as though there was anyone else in the place at this hour, Donna-Sue thought as she strolled towards his booth again.

“I’m just going to see if he wants any more,” she told herself.

He looked up at her in bright anticipation as she approached with the pot for a sixth time. There was something about his eager smile that tore at her heart. He looked so damned lonely! She favored him with a big smile.

“Can I git you anything else Private?”

The Private thought she had the sweetest Southern drawl. His big ears burned red with embarrassment.

He returned her smile with a lopsided grin. “I am afraid that if I drink any more coffee I am going to float out of here.”

They both smiled awkwardly at each other for a moment and then the Private dropped his eyes to the table.

“I was wondering,” he mumbled, “if you would mind sitting down for a while and talking to me? I’m feeling a little low.”

The Private sat, eyes down, waiting for her to laugh at him but after a moment, when she didn’t laugh, he risked a glance in her direction and was greeted by a warm smile.

“I can’t sit with customers.” she said, “Its against the rules.”

The Private felt his heart sink into his stomach. His eyes fell back to the table in embarrassment, but then he felt a delicate touch on his shoulder and looked up again. He was greeted with a radiant smile.

“I git off in an hour,” she whispered. “I know a place we can go.”

------------------------------------------------

Rainbows danced in the spray off the paddies, thrown up by the blades of a half dozen choppers. From the tree line on the right and a small village on the far side of the clearing white tracers stitched the air, crisscrossing in an L shaped ambush.

“Great!” thought Sgt. Wright. “Just what I need when I am so short. Another fucking hot L.Z..”

“Lock and load people,” he yelled to his squad.

He stood on the runners of the slick as the chopper hovered low over the paddy. When they were close enough to jump, Sgt. Wright yelled to his men, “Alright ladies, un-ass this chopper, didi mau!”

He jumped with his M79 held over his head to keep from smacking himself in the face with it when he landed..

Tommy came to rest knee deep in the paddy and immediately crouched down. Bullets hummed like angry hornets close overhead.

Sgt. Wright saw the El-T and his R.T.O. about ten feet away on his left and called to him.

“Sir! We need some air support A-SAP!”

The butter-bar smiled vacantly at him and bobbed his head.

---------------------------------------------

Donna-Sue had run home and changed into a pretty little pink and white gingham dress and dabbed perfume behind her ears before meeting Tommy in Princess Park. She had tied up her butterfly braids with matching pink bows and was carrying a wicker picnic basket.

She found him with his elbows on his knees and his head down sitting on a bench next to the Confederate Memorial. Donna-Sue called his name and his head popped up, a look of happiness and relief washing over his features.

“Hi there,” she said as she came up to where he was sitting. “Been waiting long?”

Tommy jumped to his feet.

“Oh no, not long at all.” He swallowed hard, “Actually I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

She gave a little laugh, “I said I was coming, silly.”

Tommy thought she had the sweetest laugh he had ever heard.

“Its just that I am stationed at Fort Polk and I have been up here to Shreveport a couple of times on leave and most of the nice girls in town cross to the other side of the street when they see me coming.”

He suddenly realized what he had said and shot her a worried glance. He felt all warm inside when he saw that she was still smiling at him.

“Maybe I am not a nice girl,” she said.

“Oh no!” said Tommy a little too emphatically. “You’re the nicest girl I have ever met.”

He looked down at his spit-shined shoes.

“I guess it’s the uniform and the haircut. I tried wearing civvies, but most folks would take one look at my haircut and know what I was.”

“And what are you?” asked Donna-Sue. She reached out and took his left hand and held it in both of hers.

“I’m a soldier,” Tommy stammered.

“Oh I think you are a whole lot more than that,” said Donna-Sue. “Why don’t we go for a walk and you can tell me about all the other things you are.”

Tommy looked in her china-blue eyes and wished he could drown in them.

---------------------------------------

Sgt. Wright felt as though he were drowning. Although the water was only knee deep, his unit was still crouched in the L.Z. with the paddy water up to their noses while they waited for air support to arrive. The choppers were gone and Charlie was keeping up a steady fire on their position.

Finally a couple of ‘Flying Dumptrucks’ arrived.

“Thank God it’s the Navy,” thought the Sergeant. He knew that the Air Force’s idea of close air support was to drop two 500 pound bombs and then fly home with a feeling of accomplishment, but the Squids came strapped, packing enough ordinance to fuck up Charlie’s whole day.

Tommy fed a 40mm smoke grenade into the chamber of his M79 launcher and fired. A plume of bright red smoke appeared right next to the Charlie M.G. that had them pinned down.

The Navy A-1 Skyraiders must have seen the smoke because one of them broke off and maneuvered to line up on the signal. The big single-prop plane lumbered in low over the treetops and let loose a cigar shaped canister which ruptured on impact, painting a swath of flaming napalm across the village. A half dozen hootchs burst into flames.

----------------------------------------

The boy and girl walked down Texas street to where it ended at the Red River. Turning right they strolled down to the rusty old Kansas City Southern Railroad bridge.

Donna-Sue led the way out onto the bridge, skipping from one cross tie to another as nimbly as a goat. Tommy followed along behind trying not to look down to where the Red River flowed thirty feet below them.

“Won’t we get into trouble being out here?” asked Tommy?

“Oh I come out here all the time,” said Donna-Sue happily. “Nobody cares. Trains haven’t used this bridge in years.”

Reaching the midway point she produced a terrycloth bath towel from her basket and spread it on the grimy railroad ties.

“Now we can sit down without getting soot on our clothes,” she announced. Taking off her shoes she sat on the towel with her slim legs dangling over the edge of the bridge.

Tommy sat beside her. The towel was barely big enough for two and he sat with his hands firmly in his lap afraid that an accidental touch might be misinterpreted. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the river until Tommy found his voice.

“Not many girls can tell Army ranks. Do you have any brothers or a…” he paused and started again. “Do you have any brothers in the Army?”

Donna-Sue looked at him sideways and smiled. “Why don’t you just ask me if I have a boyfriend.”

Tommy went scarlet and cleared his throat nervously. “A pretty girl like you? I’ll bet you got a boyfriend, but I don’t care. I am shipping out for California day after tomorrow for Advanced Infantry Training.”

He stopped talking and stared at the river for a while. Without turning his head or looking at her he said, “I got no one to send a letter to. Would you mind if I sent one back here to you?”

Without a word Donna-Sue took Tommy’s hand and the two sat in silence watching the sun set over the Red River.

---------------------------------------------

Sgt. Wright watched the sun rising behind the burning village. It seemed like an eternity but really it had only been about a half hour since his unit had hit the L.Z. The Navy had finished its bomb runs and the El-T gave the signal to advance.

The unit waded ashore and spread out in open order to search what was left of the village, which was not very much. The whole first row of buildings nearest the paddies had been leveled and a few grizzly corpses of indeterminate gender smoldered in the blackened remains of the burned out hootchs. Behind the ruins of one building the scorched remains of a pig lay, the smell of burning Barbeque filling the air.

------------------------------

Donna-Sue opened her basket and produced a roll of paper towels and a baggy filled with cold Barbeque ribs. Smiling, she passed the bag to Tommy.

“I swiped these from the fridge,” she said. “Don’t worry, momma don’t mind. They’re leftovers from the church social yesterday. I thought you might be hungry. You didn’t eat very much at the diner but you sure drank a lot of coffee.”

They both looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

“Well it was mighty good coffee,” said Tommy

They both laughed again and then Donna-Sue grew pensive.

“So Private. Tell me tell me all those other things you are that are not a soldier.”

---------------------------------------

Sgt. Wright was a very good soldier. He had made corporal just out of A.I.T. and had received a battlefield promotion to Sergeant after only six months in country. He was conscientious and careful, very careful.

The ten men of his squad were deployed into a pair of four-man fire-teams with the cherry Lieutenant and his radio-man diddy-bopping along in the rear. Twenty paces behind them the second squad followed along to police up the prisoners, should there be any. Weapons squad had set up in the rear to guard the back door.

Each fire-team advanced through the smoking ruins of the village in bounding over-watch, two men rushing forward a few yards while the other two stayed put, ready to provide covering fire, should it be needed. When the first pair had finished their bound they would freeze in place, ready to provide cover for the other two as they bounded past them a few yards.

Each time the leading pair of soldiers approached a hootch they would shout “Chieu Hoi, Chieu Hoi,” informing any possible residents that their surrender would be welcomed with “open arms.” If they got no reply they would toss a grenade through a door or window, wait for the blast, and then step through the door to see what was left.

From time to time an elderly man or woman, or a very young child, would creep out of a hootch waving their hands frantically in the air and shouting, ‘Chieu Hoi.’ The pair of soldiers in the lead would frisk them and then force them to sit on the ground with their hands on their heads until second squad could come up and take charge of them. Soon a small knot of prisoners began to collect at the edge of the village nearest the L.Z.

Sgt. Wright was beginning to think that there was no one left in the village except the very young or the very old. Just before the platoon finished its sweep of the village a lovely young Vietnamese girl calmly stepped out of the door of a hootch and advanced steadily towards him with her hands held at shoulder height, a sweet smile on her face, calmly declaring ‘Chieu Hoi.’

As she approached she slowly brought her hands down to the sash that held together the crossover front of her short black jacket. Removing the sash she opened the jacket to reveal delicate pale skin and lovely breasts.

Tommy thought, “she can’t be any older than Donna-Sue.”

In a sultry voice the young woman murmured, “Hey G.I. Go boom-boom?”

---------------

Donna-Sue shivered slightly. Her pretty pink dress was demure enough to wear to a church picnic but it had been designed for muggy Louisiana summer afternoons and so it featured an open back and bare shoulders. The couple had been talking for hours and the torrid heat of the day had given way to the chill of evening.

Tommy noticed the shiver and was immediately filled with remorse for so failing in the gallantry department. He had been so lost in their conversation that he had completely failed to notice the night growing cold. Removing his heavy wool Class A jacket he draped it solicitously over Donna-Sue’s shoulders.

With firm self-control Tommy declined to take the opportunity to drape his arm over her shoulder along with the jacket. Politely returning his hands to his lap he contemplated the galaxy of electric lights reflected in the smooth surface of the Red River. Donna-Sue quietly took Tommy’s hand and draped it over her shoulder. Resting her cheek on his shoulder she whispered, “Tommy, tell me about your dreams.”

---------------

“Dung lai, dung lai!” Sgt. Wright yelled, ordering the young woman to stop.

Smiling sweetly and exposing her beautiful body the young woman continued to advance.

In a voice like crimson and cinnamon she murmured, “Hey G.I. Go boom-boom?”

---------------

The glare of the squad car’s searchlight blinded the young couple. An amplified voice announced, “This is the police! You are trespassing on private property.”

Donna-Sue peeked out from behind Tommy’s back. “Is that you Carl?” she called.

To Tommy she whispered, “Its O.K. That’s Carl. He dates my sister Daisy.”

“Donna-Sue?” Carl’s amplified voice echoed across the water. “Girl what in the Sam-Hill are you doing out here on a school night? Yo momma and daddy are beside themselves with worry. Girl you better git on home!”

Holding her shoes in one hand and clutching the uniform jacket closed in front with the other, Donna-Sue followed Tommy off the bridge.

When they got to the squad car Carl turned out to be a nice looking young man in his early twenties. He was wearing a well fitting brown police uniform and looked like he had probably lettered in football.

Donna-Sue met Carl’s stern look with quite self-confidence. “Don’t worry Carl, we were just talking.”

Carl eyed Tommy suspiciously. “You want me to give you a ride home Donna-Sue?”

“That won’t be necessary officer,” said Tommy in a firm voice. “I will walk the young lady home.”

Carl shook his head. “Either you got a lot of guts soldier boy or your plum crazy. Donna-Sue’s daddy’s the football coach over to the high school. He played tackle in college and he will take you apart if you’ve laid a finger on his baby girl.”

---------------

“What’s going on sergeant?”

“Stay back sir,” called Sgt. Wright to the young lieutenant who was approaching from his rear. “I’ll handle this.”

Slipping a flechette round into his blooper he brought the weapon to his shoulder and sighted on the young woman.

“Dung lai!” he screamed.

The young woman stopped and stood motionless, still exposing herself.

---------------

There had been quite a scene when they got to Donna-Sue’s home. The young people had been escorted to the parlor and seated in separate chairs. Donna-Sue’s daddy turned out to be a large, balding man in dark trousers held up by a dark leather belt and flowered suspenders. His white shirt had the long sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing ham-like hands attached to powerful forearms.

He conducted the interrogation in a voice like a sonic boom.

Donna-Sue’s mother brought hot-chocolate. Tommy could see where Donna-Sue got her looks from.

Finally, the ordeal was over and Tommy was escorted to the door. Donna-Sue’s mother had packed a small bag lunch “for the bus ride back to base.” Although he continued to eye him suspiciously, her daddy shook Tommy’s hand at the door.

Tommy had reached the foot of the porch when he heard Donna-Sue’s mother, in a voice that carried a warning to daddy not to interfere, say “Donna-Sue, you go tell your young man good night but I want you back in here in five minutes. Ya hear?”

“Yes momma.”

A moment later the front door opened and Donna-Sue appeared. With delicate grace she ran down the steps and stopped a foot away from Tommy looking at him with upturned, smiling face.

“Promise you will write me every week?” she said pressing a slip of paper into hand.

Tommy felt his throat grow thick but managed to say, “I promise.”

Looking down at her upturned face in the moonlight he thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

Reaching up and wrapping her arms around his neck she pulled his face down to hers and gave him a long, slow, sweet, awkward, kiss. Tommy returned the kiss, awkwardly, but with all his soul. Neither had ever kissed before but both young lovers were prepared to swear than no kiss in the world could ever have been better.

---------------

“Sergeant lower your weapon!” the El-T commanded. Can’t you see you are frightening the young lady?”

“With all due respect sir,” said Sgt Wright with not the slightest trace of respect, “I think you had better let me handle this.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see the dumb butter-bar advancing on the woman with a big grin on his face and his hands out to his sides in a non-threatening manner.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the El-T. “It is plain to see she is unarmed.”

---------------

Tommy had written Donna-Sue twice a week for the three months he had been in California before shipping out for Nam After that he always carried pen and paper in his butt-pack and had worked on letters to her every chance he got, pouring out his heart, his soul, his fears and his dreams to her.

Donna-Sue had been just as diligent. Every mail-call had brought Tommy a small pile of pink, scented envelopes, each one carrying the precious cargo of a young girl’s dreams. After about the third week in California she had sent him her high school yearbook picture and since then he had never been without it.

---------------

The young woman stood smiling, her open jacket revealing delicate flesh and lovely breasts, their dark nipples hardening slightly. She met the young lieutenant’s hungry stare with a bold, knowing stare of her own.

Cocking her head to one side she whispered, “Hey G.I. Go boom-boom?”

The El-T walked as though in a trance, his unblinking eyes never leaving her exquisite body.

“Sir!” roared Sgt. Wright, “Get your fucking ass back here.”

The El-T had just turned his head to admonish his N.C.O. when the woman drew a small pistol from the waistband of her trousers and shot him through the temple. She then turned to face the sergeant, pistol in hand and body bare to the waist. The smile never left her lips.

Tommy’s finger tightened on the trigger of his grenade launcher and forty-five steel needles slashed through creamy flesh and left ground meat where a lovely young woman had been only a moment before.

---------------

Donna-Sue could hardly contain her excitement. Tommy’s last letter had announced the end of his tour. He would be home in little more than a week.

--------------

Someone in the squad yelled for the medic but Tommy could see that it was pointless. The El-T’s West Point-trained brains lay scattered all over the ground.

“Dinky dau motherfucker.”

He waved the R.T.O. to his side. “I guess that leaves me in command,” he told the radioman. “We’re done here. Call for an evac.”

--------------

Donna-Sue had been carrying Tommy’s last letter around with her for weeks. In it he told her how much he loved her and how he couldn’t wait to see her again. He had warned her that he would be out of touch for a little while as he went through the mustering out procedure so she wasn’t worried, but she did miss his constant stream of letters.

Well it wouldn’t be long now, she told herself, and in the meantime there was the big game Friday night to look forward to.

--------------

The sun was setting behind the palm trees by the time the evac choppers arrived. The sergeant was overseeing the loading of the El-T’s body when Corporal Williams came up to him. “What should we do with the prisoners sarge?”

Sergeant Wright looked at the forlorn knot of old people and children. “Let them go,” he ordered. “This whole op has gone totally FUBAR. Get everyone aboard.”

Tommy climbed into the chopper and called up to the pilot. “Let’s un-ass this A.O.” He smiled at the pilot, “The next flight I am on will be a Freedom Bird carrying me back to the World!” he announced.

He took out Donna-Sue’s picture and sat smiling at it as the chopper left the ground.

A small girl, maybe nine or ten, ran up to the chopper and tossed something through the open door.

--------------

Everyone had told her she was pretty enough to be a cheerleader but Donna-Sue didn’t like the idea of dancing around in a short skirt in front of a bunch of strangers. Besides she liked playing the piccolo and was proud to march in the school band.

--------------

Tommy looked down at the object that had fallen at his feet.

--------------

Pastor Robertson had finished leading the audience in the Lord’s Prayer and the Band had finished playing the National Anthem. The teams were preparing to take the field when the announcer’s voice called for silence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you kindly bow your heads and join us in a prayer as I read this week’s list of our local Vietnam dead.”

--------------

A small green ball rolled past Tommy’s feet and his eyes went wide with terror when he saw what it was.

“Grenade!”

--------------

Donna-Sue’s mother went looking for her daughter the moment she heard the news. She found her under the bleachers holding Tommy’s letter and sobbing.

--------------

Twelve thousand miles away the cracked and faded picture of a pretty blonde girl in butterfly braids floated on the water of a rice paddy near the burnt out carcass of a Huey.

As the sun sat the waterlogged picture slowly sank out of sight.

Guardians of the Palace

2007-06-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

Burt stood to the right of the door with his back flat against the grubby wall and waited until his heart stopped pounding. The nearest working light on the open balcony of the housing project was a cracked florescent fixture ten feet away that flickered and buzzed weakly, casting an evil greenish light.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, he held his breath for a count of three and then exhaled slowly through his mouth, mentally commanding himself to relax as he did so. Finally he was ready. Reaching out cautiously he knocked on the apartment door with the butt of his nightstick. He was proud to see that his hand wasn’t trembling a bit.

Instantly the door was flung open and a hulking giant of a man stood wedged in the opening, silhouetted against the room light. He was wearing stained and rumpled khaki trousers and a dingy T-shirt. Burt noticed that the wan light of the living room, combined with the flickering florescent, rendered the black slabs of the giant’s face in sinister chiaroscuro. Yellow eyes regarded him balefully.

It was at times like this that Burt wished he had stayed in art school instead of joining the police force to “learn about life.”

“Sir, would you please step out into the hall? I would like to ask you a few questions.”

Without warning the giant began blubbering like a naughty boy caught in the act. “I should’na done that to that por’ little girl,” he sobbed.

Jerking his pistol from its holster Burt pointed at the monster.

“Sir! You have the right to remain silent! You have the right to an attorney. If…”

“Is this the fucker?”

Out of the corner of his eye Burt could see the head of a small black woman appear in the stairwell and grow into the uniformed figure of his partner, Violet. From two floors below the sound of women wailing came floating up the stairwell.

“…you can not afford one…” Burt doggedly continued reciting, determined not to give some shyster lawyer a loophole to get this bastard off because he had not followed proper procedure.

The giant wasn’t listening. He kept crying and detailing just exactly what he “should’na done” to that little girl with gut-twisting specificity.

“So much detail!” Burt thought, suppressing a shudder.

Locked away in a tiny garret in the back of Burt’s mind the artist in him noticed how the long streams of tears glittered in the flickering light against the ebony backdrop of the giant’s face. “What in the hell am I doing here?” the artist wailed.

From a long way off Burt heard his voice finish the Miranda warning and announce, “You are now under arrest.”

Looking like a tiny tugboat trying to maneuver an ocean liner, Violet turned the giant to face the graffiti-daubed wall and, taking care not to step between the prisoner and Burt’s gun, cuffed the monster’s hands behind his back, and then began frisking him.

“The ambulance driver said the girl is probably going to live, what’s left of her.,” said Violet. “More is the pity. I’ve radioed it in and dispatch says that city detectives are going to meet her and her momma at the hospital. As usual, they left it for the Housing Police to take out the garbage.”

More to distract himself from the lurid details the giant kept spewing than for any concern for the monster’s rights, Burt started reciting the Miranda warning again.

“So many horrible details!” he thought.

He’d gotten to the third recital by the time Violet finished her frisk and turned the cuffed giant around to face her. Stretching up to the limit of her reach, the tiny woman grabbed the monster’s ear and pulled his face down to within inches of her own.

“You good for nothing nigger,” the little black lady hissed, “If yo momma knew what you been doing she would turn over in her grave.”

“My momma ain’t dead,” sniffled the giant.

Whack! The giant’s head snapped back from the recoil of Violet’s openhanded slap.

“This’ll kill her!”

Violet radioed in the arrest on her shoulder mike and then, with wordless agreement, the two officers started walking their prisoner towards the stairwell. Although it was thirteen floors to the parking lot they didn’t even consider taking one of the project’s two antique elevators.

Reeking of every effluent the human body was capable of, the elevators were moving death traps. His first week on the job Violet had explained to Burt how children of the project would often pry the doors of the shafts open one story above the elevator and then ride up and down between the floors on top of the cars.

It was also a favorite haunt of the more daring young hoodlums in the neighborhood who would jump back and forth between the moving cars as they passed each other and watched through cracks in the ceilings until a lone victim got in. They would then trigger the emergency stop between floors, open the escape hatch and jump into the car to rob or rape the occupant.

By now the whole housing project was buzzing like an angry beehive with the news of what had happened to the little girl The Yerba Buena Plaza Annex, or “Pink Palace” as the residents called it, was a huge squared-off horseshoe of a building, and the nameless architects who had designed it had decreed that instead of hallways their masterpiece of urban planning would have open balconies.

From where the two officers were standing, on the topmost story of the side facing the inner courtyard, they could see sullen knots of muttering residents gathered on every floor. Although most of the residents would rob their neighbor’s apartment in a heart beat or club a friend in a dark stairwell for their welfare check, there were some crimes that even they would not tolerate and the giant had committed one of them. Burt and Violet knew that they, and their prisoner, were safer out in the open.

Holstering his gun, Burt took hold of the chain linking the cuffs with his left hand and placed his right hand on the prisoner’s shoulder to him steer with.

“Let’s go.”

As they approached the rusting, paint-flecked iron pipe-railing of the balcony Violet turned a wild look on Burt. “Let’s throw him over,” she said.

Burt forced a chuckle. “That would be a quick way to get him to the parking lot but the paper work would be hell.”

“All you have to do is say that he tried to make a run for it and tripped.”

Startled, Burt looked his partner full in the face. “Surely you are kidding.”

Burt waited, a forced grin on his lips, for Violet to finish the lame joke with their traditional, “Don’t call me Shirley,” line, but instead he felt ice slide down his spine as he looked into her eyes and realized that she most definitely was not kidding.

Still trying to keep things light, Burt nailed the fake grin firmly in place but his eyes knew he was lying and refused to play along.

“I don’t know if you have noticed these nifty blue suits we have on, Violet” he quipped, “but we are police officers. You know--the good guys? We can’t go around flinging people off buildings simply because we don’t like them. Before you know it people would start to talk.”

Little happy-go-lucky Violet, the only officer on the force who wore pink butterfly berets in her hair while on duty and carried a bottle of soap bubbles complete with bubble wand on her gun belt to entertain the neighborhood children, gave the giant the sort of look a mongoose gives a cobra just before the two step outside and finish things.

With a voice that could etch steel, the single mother of three girls said, “This nigger is a complete waste of skin. He’s got no business breathing the same air as decent folks. We would be doing him a mercy to put him down like the rabid dog that he is.”

Burt’s grin faded in horror. “You are out of your fucking mind,” he whispered. “I don’t plan on going to jail just because you are feeling maternal.”

Violet rounded on him like a rabid Chihuahua.

“Who in the hell do you think you are you fucking goody-two-shoes white boy? This is all just a game to you ain’t it? You come up in here with your suburban values and your fucking artistic soul thinking you are going to play tourist in the ghetto for a few years, see life in the raw for a while, and then go back to the ’real’ world with a bunch of interesting stories for your artistic friends and inspirations for your paintings. Well, I got news for you motherfucker! This ain’t Tahiti and you ain’t Van Gogh! This is my real world and these are my people and we ain’t playing.”

Burt stepped back from Violet’s fury as though he had been slapped. Despite himself, he felt tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. He had always considered Violet more than a partner. He thought she was his friend.

When he had started in the projects all the residents treated him with naked hostility and fear, but Violet had quietly had a word with some of the more important women in the building and soon hostility changed to wary acceptance. Burt knew better than to relax his vigilance, but he at least felt he was making progress.

He and Violet had spent many long, cold hours of the night in conversation as they patrolled the filthy corridors and reeking stairwells. Burt had tried to talk of art, and books and the world of ideas while Violet had tried to teach him the difference between “book smart” and “street smart.” Although she would have, as she put it “slapped the taste out of his mouth” if she knew he was thinking, it he had always considered her his Virgil, his “native guide” to the various rings of hell that were the projects.

“You ain’t seen what this fucker done or maybe you would grow some balls and act like a man,” Violet screamed. “You don’t gotta’ live in a place like this neither. When you’re done playing at being a cop you can chuck this job and go back to you nice, safe, white neighborhood in the suburbs with nothing but a few memories of the quaint colored folks you met.”

Violet’s angry words poured in a searing torrent over him. After a while she ran out of breath and just stood with her fists on her hips glaring at him.

Burt turned the giant around and, pointing him in the direction of the stairwell, started walking him towards it. The giant obediently shuffled along in the direction he was pointed, chin on chest, muttering lurid details of his crime to himself. His huge, callused bare feet made slapping sounds on the damp concrete of the balcony.

“Gauguin,” Burt muttered.

“What?” screamed Violet. “What the fuck did you say?”

“Gauguin. The painter that went to Tahiti was Gauguin, not Van Gogh.”

The frosty night air grew colder. For a moment Burt was afraid of what Violet might do in her current state of mind. Looking over his shoulder to where she stood he could see her hand had drifted to rest on the butt of her nine millimeter service pistol. The skin between his shoulder blades itched in anticipation, but nothing happened. Violet just stood there with her mouth half open, staring at him in utter disbelief. Finally she heaved a disgusted sigh.

“You’re fucking unbelievable. You know that?”

Taking his right hand off the giant’s shoulder Burt opened the door leading to the stairwell and held it with his foot as he steered the giant through the opening. Like most of the light bulbs in all the stairwells of the building this one was missing, no doubt removed by some enterprising mugger in order to help stimulate business.

It was standard procedure for the other officer to go ahead of the one in charge of a prisoner and light the way with a flashlight, but, given Violet’s mood, Burt didn’t think reminding her of this was such a good idea. Pausing halfway through the doorway, Burt called back over his shoulder to his partner.

“I know you are upset Violet, but I am serious. We can’t just take the law into our own hands. What kind of a world would it be if people went around taking the law in their own hands? Everybody his own judge, jury and executioner? It would be chaos!”

Silence!--He waited a minute for Violet’s reply but she just stood where she was, glaring at Burt as though he was something nasty she had just discovered on the bottom of her shoe.

The giant kept adding gruesome details to his confession but Burt tried not to listen. It wasn’t as though the City Detectives would even look at any “evidence” collected by a Housing Authority cop. The City and County of San Francisco boasted fourteen separate police departments, each with its own structure and chain of command. They ranged from the exalted heights of the State Police and S.F.P.D. down the line through Sheriff’s Department, Transit and Park Police down and down to the lowly officers of the Housing Authority.

“Taking out the garbage,” thought Burt angrily. “That is all they think we are good for.”

He knew that the S.F.P.D. thought of their “brother” officers in the Housing Police as little better than glorified security guards and contemptuously dismissed any efforts they made at “solving” crimes. Burt grew angry as he thought about it.

“We are up to our necks in the shit every day, sudden death waiting for us around every corner, and they come in here and look at us as though we were cockroaches!”

Violet still hadn’t said anything. Burt sighed and pushed the giant towards the stairs letting the battered, paint-flecked-metal door swing shut behind him.

Instantly, the stairwell was plunged in darkness. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, Burt could see a gibbous moon peeking out from behind the gilded splendor of City Hall’s dome that reared in massive splendor only a few blocks from the forlorn squalor of the Pink Palace.

“Gibbous moon,” thought Burt. “That’s just the sort of thing Violet would dismiss as ‘artsy fartsy bullshit.”

Not for the first time, Burt felt anger at having to hide his education, not only from the residents of the housing project but even from his own partner!

“I shouldn’t have to apologize for my education! It isn’t as though she couldn’t pick up a fucking book if she wanted to!”

The watery moonlight didn’t so much illuminate the stairwell as to simply give the darkness a little form and texture. Like a blind man trying to navigate a strange room without his cane, Burt groped his way forward through the blackness towards the deeper blackness of the stairwell. The giant’s bare feet had no trouble finding the steps and he started down them without hesitation, Burt inching along behind him.

The door behind him was flung open. The faint glow of the damaged florescent cast a wedge of illumination that seared as bright as a searchlight in the darkened stairwell.

“It would be a world a whole lot like the one you’re in right now,” Violet called down the steps towards Burt’s receding back. “My world!”

“What did you say?” called Burt over his shoulder.

Violet flicked on her MAGLite and followed her partner down the stairs. The huge police issue flashlight was heavy enough to serve as a truncheon and bright enough to pinion a suspect in its beam from a block away.

“You asked what sort of world it would be if people went around taking the law into their own hands, and my answer is that it would be a whole lot like the one you are in right now. It would be the sort of world where people are crammed into giant housing projects like cattle in a pen to stew in their own misery. It would be a world where the cops don’t come until you got a dead body on the ground and even when they do arrive all they do is clean up the mess and mutter to themselves about ‘the projects.’”

“That’s not true Violet.,” Burt protested. “After all; we are here.”

“That fucking proves it!” snapped Violet. “You can tell what kind of justice Black folk get by fact that it is only you and me here to deal with this monster. If it had been a white girl he hurt we would have S.W.A.T. on the roof plus five patrol cars and three news-crews in the parking lot down below and you fuck’n know it!

Look at that white college girl that gone missing on that island. She was on the news for a goddamn year! A black girl her same age went missing from this fucking building about the same time and it didn’t even make the local papers! Black folk don‘t get justice unless they take it for themselves.”

Burt stopped and turned his head to look at his partner but kept a firm hold on the giant‘s cuffs.

“You know something Violet? I have had a bellyful of your whining and blaming other people for the plight of Black folks! You might think I am some sort of artistic dilettante playing at being a policeman, but I have spent almost every night of the last year risking my life patrolling the hallways of this stinking dump so that the residents could be safe and you know it! How many nights have I patrolled this place alone because you wanted to stay by the heater in the guard-shack and keep warm?”

“You’re always whining about the white man this and the white man that but it’s not the white man that makes this project the stinking hell hole that it is. The people who live here do that all by themselves!”

“You can blame a man for knocking you down but you can’t blame him if you choose to stay down,” Burt said with the triumphant air of a Poker player slamming down four Aces.

Violet’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Nice line Professor. Who wrote it for you, some candy-assed white philosopher who learned about life out of books?”

“It was Malcom-X, which you would have known if you had read that book I gave you.”

The giant had been standing, sunk in a dull stupor, his chin on his chest, still mumbling lurid details of his crime. Without waiting for Violet to reply Burt gave his prisoner a little shove to get him going and continued down the stairs.

He was burning with anger at the blatant unfairness of Violet’s remarks. She never gave him credit for anything! He may have had other motives when he had joined the force but he had seen and done plenty since then.

Night after night he had stood alone for hours in some murky stairwells that reeked of urine and vomit just so he could bust a drug dealer. He had waited in the stygian tunnel leading from the front parking lot to the inner courtyard so that he could catch the purse snatchers who had mugged tourists up the hill in Japan Town and then streaked down here on stolen bicycles to dispose of the evidence.

Once he had been severely injured trying to break up a domestic spat when the woman he was trying to save had jumped up off the floor where her boyfriend had been kicking her in the stomach, grabbed a knitting needle and stabbed him through the hand.

How dare Violet say this was all just a game! He wasn’t playing at being a policeman. Once he had faced down a knife-wielding junky who had been crazed on P.C.P. and he had broken up more fist fights than he could remember.

He had walked for hours in the icy rain whipped off the bay by chill winds or stood in the gloom of some upper floor balcony watching tendrils of pearlescent fog coiling around the Beaux Arts dome of city hall. He had patrolled on nights when the moisture from the damp air condensed into little ice crystals on the rusty, paint-chipped railings to the balconies as the moonlight trapped in their facets had made the smelly old building blaze as though it had been powdered with diamond dust.

He had..He had…He had just noticed that Violet was speaking again.

“You know as well as I do that this nigger ain’t never go’na be worth shit. If we’re lucky and they put him straight away he will do a few years in the can and then he’ll be back on the streets looking for another little girl. Animals like him don’t never change.”

Burt and his prisoner reached the bottom of the first flight of steps and turned right to start down the next one. As they did so the shadow cast by Burt’s body shifted and the beam from the MAGLite blazed silver on the cuffs pinning the prisoner’s enormous ebony paws. Was that dried blood under his nails?

The giant remained oblivious to Violet’s tirade. He dully shuffled along in which ever direction he was pointed, lost in his own world, mumbling his confession.

“The chances are that if we take him in tonight he will be out on bail before we come on shift tomorrow. And then what? He ain’t coming back here--them ‘men’ in the neighborhood would kill him…”

Burt couldn’t fail to notice the way Violet emphasized the word ‘men,’ and suppressed an angry retort.

“…but he will hole up somewhere. He’ll lie up in some alley or sewer or break into some abandoned warehouse. He don’t care. He can sleep in a hole in the ground and eat garbage or rats, and not give a damn cauz there’s only one thing he’s living for. And in a day or two he’s gona go hunt’in again. He’s a sick, twisted motherfucking animal and he has got to feed his hunger, just like any other junky--only thing is, this scumbag’s ‘fix’ is little girls.”

“You don’t know that,” Burt snapped. “You have never seen this man before in your life and yet you talk about him as though you knew him personally. Hell, we don’t even know if he’s guilty! All we have is circumstantial evidence.”

“Circumstantial evidence!” Violet screamed. “Circumstantial evidence! The motherfucker ain’t stopped confessing since we arrested him! Shit, he’s still confessing right now!”

“That only proves he attacked this one girl; your just making all the rest of that shit up so you can feel self-righteous about wanting to kill him.”

Burt and his prisoner reached the landing of the twelfth floor, turned to face the next flight of steps, and stopped to wait for Violet to catch up.

“You know something college boy? You’re plum et up with dumb ass! You think just because you survived in the ghetto for a year you know the ghetto, but you don’t know shit! You is only alive because I got your back.” Violet was working herself into a fury.

“You think you seen some shit but you ain’t seen nothing! You didn’t have a sister snatched out her room at night or seen what was left of her after some animal had his way with her for three whole days! If you had you wouldn’t let an monster like this live any longer than it took to put a bullet to him.”

Suddenly the beam of Violet’s flashlight stopped moving and Burt looked up to see his partner holding the big MAGLite backhanded in her left hand with her right wrist crossed over the top in the regulation combat shooter’s stance. In her right hand nestled the blue-grey bulk of her service automatic--pointed at his prisoner.

Burt felt his blood go cold. The giant stood, dully oblivious of his surroundings, between Violet and himself, partially covering Burt with his huge bulk. Burt’s gun-hand was blocked from Violet’s view by the giant. He released his hold on his prisoner’s cuffs and gripped the butt of his pistol, loosening in its holster.

It was only then that he realized what Violet must have worked out for herself. Although the stairwell they were in was open to the outside it was blocked from the view of the people in the inner courtyard. The three of them were alone. There were no witnesses! Burt fought to keep his voice steady.

“Violet.” he said, speaking very slowly, in a non-challenging tone, as though talking to a crazy person he didn’t want to spook. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, college boy. You ain’t gotta do nothing. Just step away from him and let me do what’s gotta be done. We’ll just say he tried to make a run for it.”

“I can’t do that Violet.”

“Sure you can. You don’t need this Burt. You ain’t a for real cop, you’re just playing at being a cop so that you can go back to the suburbs with your stories to impress your brainy friends and acting all worldly. You don’t want to die in some dark and stinking stairwell protecting some lowlife nigger. You just want to be legend in your own mind, back in your studio painting pictures and fucking college girls. Now step away from that animal so I can put him down.”

There was ice in Violet’s voice. The glare of the flashlight hid her eyes, but he could feel them boring into him. He fixed a steady stare where he thought they ought to be. “Not going to happen, Violet. If you want to shoot him you’re going to have to shoot me too.”

Burt’s heart stopped as he heard the metallic rasp of Violet thumbing back the hammer. Burt could not believe that Violet would really shoot him but he realized that he had pushed her into a corner and there was no way her pride would let her back down now. The problem was that Burt was in a corner too. He had meant what he had said. Violet might call him “artsy fartsy” or a “ghetto tourist” looking for experience, but what she was doing violated every principal he believed in. Who said artists were cowards?

The two officers stood frozen for what seemed an eternity. Burt had all but forgotten about his prisoner in his concentration on his partner, but suddenly the giant broke into a shambling run.

There was the crunch of glass as the giant’s bare foot came down hard on the shards of a broken beer bottle. His body convulsed in pain and he staggered sideways, hitting the rusted iron pipe railing with his full weight.

The pipe tore loose and, with his hands cuffed behind his back and no way to catch his balance, the giant tottered on the brink and started to roll over the side of the balcony. Wide yellow eyes stared back at Burt in frozen terror.

Without pausing to think about it Burt’s hand snaked out and caught the giant by his grubby trousers. With a grunt he heaved the big man to safety.

“Damn it Burt,” Violet roared “all you had to do was not catch the bastard. You didn’t even have to stain your lily white soul by acting like a man, you just fucking didn’t have to catch him and you even fucked that up!”

With a disgusted sigh Violet shoved her pistol back into her holster. “Fine, have it your own damned way, but mark my words, the next little girl this monster hurts is on your conscience!”

Burt took hold of the giant’s cuffs with a trembling hand and they started down the stairs again. Violet trailed behind, keeping a disgusted silence but lighting the way with her flashlight.

Flight after flight as they wound their way into the stinking darkness the giant kept up his droning catalogue of his crime. Burt tried not to listen, but now that Violet was maintaining a stony silence he could not avoid hearing what his prisoner was saying and he was starting to feel sick at all the details. Maybe Violet was right and the world would be a better place if they had just tossed this piece of garbage off the top floor.

It was all just too much.

“Too much,” thought Bert, “That’s it! There is just too much detail!”

How could one person possibly do that many horrible things to another person? It would have taken days to do all that!

Burt was so excited at his epiphany that he turned to say something to Violet but the words froze on his lips when he saw her sullen glare.

In the parking lot they found the “Mobil Assistance Patrol” van waiting for them.

The driver, a middle-aged black man with iron gray hair and the uniform of an S.F.P.D. sergeant took one look at Burt’s prisoner and snorted with disgust.

“You again!”

Burt could feel Violet’s icy stare on his back.

“You mean he’s attacked little girls before?” Violet said triumphantly.

The driver laughed.

“Shit no! Old Billy here wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Burt carefully avoided showing his partner even the hint of triumph.

“But he confessed!” sputtered Violet. “All the way down the fucking stairs he wouldn’t shut up, he just kept confessing!”

“Yeh, he does that,” said the sergeant removing Billy’s cuffs, “don’t ya, big fellow?”

He slapped Billy affectionately on the back.

“You see Billy here is what they call ’special.’ You know, a little short in the brains department? Well, some twenty years ago the city scraped some money together and sent Billy and a bunch of kids like him up to Yosemite for one of them special-ed nature camps. A bunch of retards and a couple of counselors ‘communing’ with nature for a week. Billy must have been about twelve at the time.”

Billy looked around at his surroundings dully, wiped his nose on the back of his arm and then stood with his chin on his chest and his arms hanging limply at his side.

“While he was gone some sick bastard raped, tortured, and murdered his little sister. Billy took it real hard. You see he figured that it was all his fault because he should have been there to protect her. That’s crazy of course, but ever since that, whenever he hears of some little girl getting attacked he immediately confesses to the crime. I don’t know where he comes up with all the details he throws in. I think he must watch cop shows on T.V.”

Gently raising the big man’s chin with his thumb the driver looked him in the eyes and said, “Now Billy, I want you to go on home and wait till your momma gets back. Do you hear me?” Billy nodded dumbly and shuffled off towards the stairs trailing a streak of blood behind him from his injured foot.

“And Billy you show that cut on your foot to your momma when she gets home so she can put a dressing on it, you hear?”

Billy didn’t look back but he waved his hand to show that he had heard.

“Billy’s momma owns that little barbecue joint over on Kearney. Works late most nights. Mrs. Russell’s a real nice lady. Always feeds cops half price so they will look out for her boy. You ought to check it out sometime.”

With another toothy grin he climbed into the van and drove away, leaving Burt and Violet alone in the darkened parking lot. They stood in awkward silence for a while and then Violet looked up sheepishly.

“You want to go 10/20M and grab some coffee?”

Burt looked his partner square in the eye for a long moment.

“You’re buying.”

So Cold!

2007-06-14T10:33:00.001-07:00

It was almost midnight. The shift would be ending soon. Burt and Violet had finished a sweep of the building and were kicked back in the tiny watch shack when a frantic young girl ran up and started pounding on the bullet-pocked safety glass window near the front door.

Violet opened the door a crack, reluctant to let the feeble warmth of the space heater out. “What you pounding like that for girl?”

“My sister said you gotta come quick, her baby’s sick.”

There was a wild look in the little girl’s eyes which caused Burt and Violet to jump to their feet and sprint after the child who had run up a nearby flight of stairs. By the time they got to the third floor, both officers were panting for breath, but the little girl ran with frenzied energy to door a about half way down the dingy corridor.

The officers followed the child through a shabby living room into a small bedroom in back. A black teenage girl was cradling a tiny blanket wrapped bundle in her arms and crying hysterically.

“She ain’t breathing,” she wailed. “My baby ain’t breathing!”

Burt recognized the chemical stench in the air the moment he entered the room. Flashes of cold bivouacs in the Army came back to him. Sterno! The girl had been trying to warm the small bedroom by burning cans of Sterno.

Snatching the child from the mother’s arms Burt unwrapped it from its soiled pink blanket. He had seen this before in pictures in the training manual. Lips, nose, ears and cheeks, all bright cherry red.

Asphyxiation!

Burt sprinted out into the cold air of the balcony. As he ran he shouted and tapped the child on the shoulder, not out of any conviction that it would do any good, but simply because it was the first step in the procedure he had practiced at the academy, and in a crisis he always fell back on the automatic actions of his training.

He was always proud of himself at times like this. Steady as a rock! The world could be going to Hell-in-a-hand-basket, but at times like this everything seemed to slow down and become very quiet as he sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.

Reaching the balcony he lifted the baby’s chin slightly to clear the airway and blew two gentle breaths into infant’s open mouth. He followed this with 30 rapid, but gentle, chest compressions using two fingers in the center of the child’s chest. Repeat.

Two gentle breaths, thirty chest compressions. Repeat.

The tiny warm bundle in his arms stopped its feeble squirming and grew cold.

Repeat.

Part of Burt’s mind was startled at how quickly the child’s body had turned cold but the thought was firmly suppressed as he doggedly continued to apply C.P.R. to the icy little girl in his hands.

Repeat.

Burt stayed calm.

Repeat.

Completely calm.

Repeat, Repeat! REPEAT!

---------------

When the Paramedics arrived Burt was still vainly trying to apply C.P.R. to the child. They had to pry the corpse from his hands.

The teenager’s mother, summoned from work, arrived, still in her waitress uniform, and Burt could hear Violet in the Apartment, giving what comfort she could to the hysterical women.

Burt stayed calm, he didn’t feel a thing. Taking out his notebook he jotted down the details getting all the necessary names for his report from the neighbors who had congregated on the balcony near the apartment.

He didn’t feel a thing.

Steady as a rock.

No worries.

He didn’t feel a god-damned thing.

-------------------------

When he got home, Susan was still up.

She followed him down the long hallway saying important things to him.

She always had important things to say to him, but at this moment Burt could not tell you what they were. Her lips moved and sound came out, but Burt heard nothing.

As he walked, Burt peeled off bits of his uniform and dropped them in the hall. Presumably, Susan said something important about this as well, but Burt didn’t hear. He also didn’t feel anything, anything at all.

He was naked by the time he reached the bathroom and he walked in, locking the door behind him. He turned on the shower and calmly waited for the water to grow warm.

Completely in control.

He stepped into the big, claw-footed, bathtub pulling the vinyl curtains closed behind him.

Steady as a rock.

He stood there, the hot water drumming on the top of his head and running down his body.

And then he felt something.

He felt all of it.

Every god-damned bit of it.

Every god-damned, stinking, mother-fucking bit of it!

Excruciating sobs racked his body and he crouched down on his hands and knees on the floor of the big old fashioned bathtub like a wounded animal. The hot water pattered on his back.

“So cold! he sobbed. So god-damned cold!”

He must have thrown up because he could see vomit swirling down the drain in front of him.

After a while he found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor of the bath-tub with his arms on his knees and his head down, still sobbing.

Vaguely, in the background, he could hear Susan pounding on the door and yelling.

---------------

He ran out of tears sometime around the time the shower ran out of hot water.

Crawling out of the tub Burt opened the bathroom door and shambled across the hallway to his bedroom dripping water as he went.

Sometime during his shower Susan had apparently grown tired and left because she wasn’t there. He and Susan no longer shared a bed and tonight he was profoundly grateful for the fact.

Stopping at the battered, Salvation-Army-special-sale-chest-of-drawers he picked up the heavy, lead-crystal, Captain’s Decanter and poured a very large dram of Scotch into a matching lead-crystal tumbler.

He poured himself another Scotch and, lumbering over to the bed with it in his hand, flopped down, the last drops of shower-water drying on his naked body.

He lay there for a while nursing his second Scotch.

The sliding door that connected his bedroom with the living room slid open and Susan came in wearing a big terrycloth bathrobe and carrying a huge steaming mug in her hand. Absently he noticed that it was the “Marvin the Martian” mug that Tom had given him for his birthday.

His special private mug.

He didn’t give a fuck.

She talked at him for a while as he lay naked on the bed savoring his Scotch. It tasted like a burnt, tarred rope. The extra money he had spent on buying the finest Scotch he could afford was worth every penny.

Susan continued talking, but warm, fuzzy waves were coursing through Burt’s blood and he felt fine.

He felt great. He took another sip of his Scotch.

He was amazed at how quickly that tiny bundle of life had turned cold in his hands.

Warm tears welled in his eyes and rolled unnoticed down his cheeks.

Susan blew on the contents of her steaming mug to cool it and continued talking.

He couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t feel a thing. Things were fine.

Some primal instinct that men had acquired back in the days when they had traded the relative safety of chasing saber-toothed tigers for the far more dangerous habit of sharing a cave with a woman kicked in.

When in doubt always agree.

You don’t have to know what they are saying you simply have to agree with them and apologize for whatever cruel, insensitive, beastly, man-thing that you had done.

Didn’t matter what it was. It was your fault and the sooner you took responsibility for that fact the sooner she would leave you alone.

Susan’s words washed over him.

Burt smiled and nodded in agreement. The good-old Scotch was fully on the job by now and he felt just fine, thank you very much.

“Yes dear.”

“Absolutely dear.”

“You are right dear. I am sorry.”

Scalding hot soup poured over Burt’s naked genitals. He roared in pain and confusion.

“What the fuck!”

Burt blundered to his feet, arms flailing wildly in pain, anger and confusion his mind frantically trying to replay the last few seconds of conversation.

The words came back all blurred and jumbled by pain and Scotch.

“I-don’t-think-you-love-me-yes-dear-you-wish-I-was-gone-absolutely-dear-I don’t-think-you-ever-loved me-you-are-right-dear-I-am-sorry.”

Susan staggered backward in terror avoiding Burt’s flailing arms but managing to trip over a chair and went sprawling to the floor.

She lay there, crying.

“I knew it was only a mater of time before you hit me,” she sobbed. “Does it make you feel like a big tough man to hit a defenseless woman?” She eyed Burt with triumph.

Burt staggered out into the hallway and returned with his service automatic. He jerked back the slide, chambering a round, but didn’t point it at the creature on the floor. Instead he kept the muzzle pointed firmly at the ceiling. Even drunk and in pain he kept it pointed firmly at the ceiling.

“Get out!” he roared. “Get the fuck out!” He was sobbing. “Leave me the fuck alone you blood-sucking bitch!”

Susan scrambled to her feet and fled to her room

When she was gone, with warm tears still running down his cheeks, Burt carefully lowered the pistol’s hammer. Pressing the release he dropped the magazine and then pulled back the slide, ejecting the chambered round.

Hobbling down the long hallway to his studio he opened the heavy steel locker in which he stored his cameras, placed the pistol, magazine and loose round on the top shelf and then closed and padlocked the cabinet.

Taking the key, he went back down the long hall, opened the front door and walked, naked, out into the cold night air on the front porch. The cool air felt soothing on his burns. With all his might he threw the key down Capp street. It landed somewhere in the tall weeds of the neighbor’s yard.

Burt closed the door and hobbled back to his room. Closing the bedroom door behind him he threw himself face down on his bed and cried himself to sleep.

------------------------------------------------

Next morning, soon after dawn, Burt was sitting on the sidewalk at the corner of Mission and Sixth Street, dressed in faded jeans and a dark blue Pi Kappa Alpha sweatshirt, cradling a paper- bag-covered bottle of beer in his hand. He was waiting for Fort Help, the low-cost or no-cost “Free” mental health clinic, to open.

He had left his car at home and walked the twelve blocks.

From time to time he took a sip of the beer, purely for medicinal purposes. He had learned in the Army that the sovereign cure for a hangover was one, or at most two, beers and a couple of aspirins, in the morning.

A passing City Police cruiser slowed, eyeing him, but drove off when he pulled out his shield case and flashed his badge.

Professional courtesy. Cops don’t bust cops. Not unless you get caught with a smoking gun in your hand and a dead body on the ground at your feet, and even then they would most likely ask what the deceased had done to deserve it.

The rule even covered shit-ass Housing Police cops.

Cops is cops. Period!

A tall, extremely fat woman with a crew-cut, wearing black Keds high-topped sneakers, black trousers and shirt and a white necktie, stalked down Van Ness eyeing Burt with disgust. Through her septum she wore stainless steel nose ring large enough to tether a bull with.

Stepping over his legs, which sprawled across the sidewalk, the lady fished in a massive carpet bag and produced a big steel ring covered with keys.

Selecting the appropriate key she unlocked the front door to Fort Help and stepped in, closing the door in Burt’s face. Turning the sign in the window from closed to open the woman stalked off towards the reception desk.

Opening the door, Burt entered the big, linoleum-tiled, reception room and told the receptionist that he was there to apply for counseling. Dusty light filtered through large, unwashed, plate glass windows, ringing the woman’s massive black clad body with a golden halo.

With an air of smug self-satisfaction the receptionist told him that the councilors didn’t get in until nine. She pointed a sausage-like finger at a mismatched collection of dilapidated overstuffed chairs ringing a faded oriental throw-rug and commanded him to have a seat.

As Burt sat leafing through back issues of Mother Jones Magazine he noticed the hand lettered sign painted onto the wall next to the waiting area. It read: “Congratulations! You have taken the first step on your journey of recovery and self-discovery.”

God of Our Fathers

2007-06-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Speaking at the celebration marking the 400^th year since the founding of Jamestown President Bush hailed the town as “where it all started.” For many Americans this may come as a surprise since there is a persistent misconception that American History started at Plymouth Rock. Of the two early settlements, Jamestown, founded May 14 1607 while Plymouth Colony was founded November 19 1620 almost a full generation later.

The reason for Plymouth’s popularity, at least among some Americans, is not hard to discover. For many Plymouth is associated with the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving while all that Jamestown has to show for it is Pocahontas and greed. Jamestown was a commercial settlement pure and simple and its only reason for being was to make money. The quest for “religious freedom,” on the other hand, makes for far more appealing mythology.

And mythology is exactly what it is. Whatever the passengers on the Mayflower were looking for religious freedom was not on the list. In fact not even all the original settlers at Plymouth were Pilgrims. Of the original 102 settlers almost half were non-religious “strangers,” as the Puritans called them and the freedom loving Pilgrims had to pass laws making church attendance mandatory. Throughout the rest of colonial America’s history there was a constant battle between the forces of religion and those of secularization with the secular side in almost constant ascendancy.

So few early settlers went to church, or indeed belonged to any known religion, that by the 1730’s and 1740’s a desperate effort was launched by Evangelicals to “bring the Colonies to God.” This was known as the “First Great Awakening and it was part of a great international Protestant upheaval that proved to be the first signs of the eminent death of European Christianity.

So ineffective was this Evangelical undertaking that in 1775, on the very eve of the American Revolution, there were only 1,800 Christian ministers in all the colonies combined, giving a ratio of one minister for every fifteen hundred adults. At the end of the American Revolution the new US Government conducted its first national censes and discovered that barely 17% of the population listed themselves as Christians or as even belonging to a church of any sort. A poll conducted of the students graduating from Yale University in 1796 revealed that only one member of the entire class professed a belief in God. What makes this poll significant is that Yale was, at the time, a divinity school.

When Thomas Pain, writing on a drum in the snows of Valley Forge, penned the lines “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot may, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country…” he may have had no idea just how true his words were because most Americans stayed away from the fight in droves.

After the fighting was over, however, a great clamoring arose in the land for the fruits of victory. The Revolution sparked a vast transformation of American culture away from the “Enlightenment and classical republicanism towards vulgar democracy and materialistic individualism…” This, according to many American historians, was the real American Revolution and nowhere was this revolution’s effects more clearly seen than in the matter of religion. Following the Revolution a spirit of egalitarianism coupled with a strong anti-intellectual backlash and a capitalist ethos, led to the rise of populist institutions including self-proclaimed doctors, lawyers and, above all, clergymen.

Soon wagon loads of snake oil salesmen were crisscrossing the country calling themselves “doctors” and peddling all sorts of unregulated nostrums. They were joined by legions of self-proclaimed lawyers who would, for a fee, plead cases before what passed for courts in most frontier settlements and self-anointed clergymen who would preach from any pulpit that would have them. When they could not find an open pulpit they would hold revivalist camp meetings and preach from atop stumps in the forest.

Eventually such learned professions as medicine and law were able, with the help of the government, to form medical and bar associations with the power to regulate who could practice these professions and establishing standards for their education. This, however, was not the case in the field of religion nor, given the Constitutional protections afforded to freedom of religion, could it be. In his The Principle of Protestantism, (1844) Swiss theologian and historian Philip Schaff, describing the anarchic nature of American Christianity wrote:

Tendencies, which had found no political room to unfold themselves in other lands, wrought here without restraint . . . . Every theological vagabond and peddler may drive here his bungling trade, without passport or license, and sell his false ware at pleasure. What is to come of such confusion is not now to be seen.”

For all practical purposes religion, in America today, has become whatever its adherents say it is. The government is almost powerless to set any standards for what is a religion and who is a minister of that religion. As an example of this I once convinced an Army chaplain that a silver medallion in the shape of a double edged razor was a religious symbol and that that Somerset Maugham’s novel “The Razor’s Edge” was my scriptures. During his theological interrogation I asked him from which Gospel the following line was drawn:

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

(Shakespeare, William The Merchant of Venice act 1, sc. 3, l.)

He smiled in a condescending manner and gravely informed me that it was not in the Gospels—it was from the letters of Paul!

Alas this was not an isolated incident. In over thirty years of wedding photography I have encountered ministers who could not identify the Pentateuch and were frankly skeptical that such a book was in the Bible. Other ministers have carried Biblical literalism so far as to stoutly maintain that the Parables of Jesus “were not made up…” but “…were stories about real people who Jesus had known.”

Often the exact same lines of scripture were given diametrically opposite interpretations from one church to another and once, when I tried to demonstrate the variety of contradictory incidents in the story of Noah’s arc, I was actually accused of having a “trick” Bible printed!

The sad fact is that in this country today the Bible is seldom read and even when it is only carefully selected passages, chosen to support a given ideology, are studied. This has lead to what some have called “Salad Bar Christianity,” which some define as:

Name given to Christians who "pick and choose" the parts of the bible they deem important. For example, believing the part about homosexuality being an abomination, while discounting the directive to kill your children if they are disrespectful to you. Applies to most every Christian not already in prison for killing his own children.

It is a popular boast among Fundamentalist Christians that the Bible is the foundation of American Civilization and government and some of the more extreme members of radical sects have tried diligently to have the Ten Commandments put on public display in Government buildings.

Given the history of Biblical illiteracy in this country however, and the current dismal state of Biblical knowledge, it is hard to see how anyone can argue that the actual Bible has had very much impact on American culture at all. Evidence would suggest that if the Bible is not actually dead in this country it is at least severally wounded. While its name still carries some weight in some circles its teachings are almost completely unheeded. Even worst, they are almost unknown. How can a book that almost no one actually reads, a book which charlatans can, with a little effort, make say almost anything, be said to have an impact on a society?

Poet of All Nations

2007-06-01T23:27:00.001-07:00

Although some Western readers have noted certain superficial similarities between the writings of Rumi and those that other Persian poet familiar in the West, Omar Khayyam, the two poets are actually quite different in their core philosophies, particularly when read in the rather loose translation of Khayyam’s works by Edward Fitzgerald. From the 1870 through the Roaring Twenties Khayyam’s writings were wildly popular in England and America, so much so that many Christian ministers, aware of Rumi’s poetry, united in urging Western scholars to hurry our translations of Rumi to counteract Khayyam’s hedonistic and atheistic message with something more spiritual and uplifting.

Rumi’s impact on the art and philosophy of Central Asia, and most Islamic countries, is almost too great to measure. In the West, Rembrandt was inspired to draw him and Dante, Fredrick Hegel, Goethe and Gandhi have all paid tribute to his genius and his message. Pope John XXIII in a special tribute declared “In the name of the Catholic world, I bow with respect before the memory of Mevlana.”

Many today consider Rumi to be the “poet of all nations” and a search of the listings under his name on Amazon.com, will reveal more than fourteen pages of books either by or about the great Iranian mystic. In the modern world of cultural ignorance, violence and warmongering, Rumi's life work is a call to turn one’s back on hatred and revenge.

Some Poems by Rumi

Terrible destruction dances and the world’s days darken.

If you want Supreme Reality, hide form fame.

You’re looking for the Pearl? Plunge, now to the sea’s bottom.

What is on shore is only foam.

-------

Last night a friend asked me, “Where is your homeland?”

I said nothing, for what could I say?

My homeland is not Egypt, or Syria or Iraq.

My homeland’s a place that has never had a name.

-------

Love’s nationality is separate from all other religions,

The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved (God).

The lover’s cause is separate from all other causes

Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.

-------

The children follow,
not knowing the taste of wine, or how
his drunkenness feels. All people on this planet
are children, except for a very few.
No one is grown up except those free of desire.

-------

Come, come, come again,

Whoever you may be,

Come again, even though

Yu may be a pagan or fire worshipper.

Our hearth is not the threshold of despair.

Come again, even if you may have

Violated your vows a hundred times,

Come again

-------

You take the high road and I’ll take the low.

2007-05-31T22:21:00.000-07:00

In Biblical studies the term “Christology” is shorthand for how much of Jesus was “God” and how much was man. Wars have been fought over this question so let’s approach the topic as though we were handling nitroglycerin while suffering from a bad case of the hiccups.

The question of how much was “God” and how much was man is vital to our appreciation of the “sacrifice” of the cross. I believe that the larger share of man in Jesus, and the more attached to the things of this world that man was, the greater the value we may place on his decision to give it all up in his obedience to the will of God.

Consider this image. You are an adult and you are out horse playing in the yard with some small children. You are wrestling around and, being bigger than them, you could easily beat them but you are not a bully so you let them “win.” You have not given up very much but you have made them happy. This is “high” Christology. Jesus is “just playing around.” No harm no foul. Just a game. If this is the “sacrifice” of the cross then it is really no big deal, is it?

Ah but there is a darker side to this level of Christology. There are people in this world who work out their sexual fantasies by “giving up power” under strict rules, to people who are empowered to “torture” them for recreational purposes. It is called S&M and there is a great vogue for “crucifixion” fantasies in this world at the moment. How do I know? I am a photographer and it is my job to “boldly go where no one in their right mind would go before.” I have had a large cliental of dominatrix (dominatrixs? or dominiatrixi?) and was the staff photographer for the San Francisco Exotic Erotic Ball for three years running. Believe me, Sodom and Gomorra would blush.

There is even a nightclub in the City called “The Power Exchange” where entertainment like scourging, crowns of thorns and crucifixion would be considered foreplay. So if a “man” knowing that he is really God allows himself to be put through this sort of thing and even killed, knowing that he is going to rise in three days and ascend to heaven—well in San Francisco that would be called “edge play.” Not very dignified is it? And not really a sacrifice either.

But what if a man, knowing that he is special and perhaps even touched by God, but in love with the things of the world and as reluctant to give them up for the unknown world of death, as you or I, is asked to die for the world as an act of faith in God? He is, no doubt scared, he does not like what is being done to him one bit, and is terrified that it is going to be painful, humiliating and perhaps even futile. And yet he submits and says to God “thy will be done.” Much more heroic don’t you think?

That is why a “low” Christology is so much more “Christian” than a high one. The novel “The Last Temptation of Christ” by Nikos Kazantzakis, is often attacked by unthinking believers as being “disrespectful” of Jesus but is it? When Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness and is tempted by Satan a “High Christology” would make a mockery of this ordeal. Satan tempts him to turn the stones into bread and Jesus says—in effect “no thanks I have already eaten.” Or worse “Don’t be stupid! I’m God I don’t need to eat.”

Or when Satan offers him all the kingdoms of the Earth. A “high Christology” Jesus would be thinking “What a schmuck! Doesn’t he know I am God and already own this real estate?” I once tried to explain this to a group of Fundamentalist protesters outside the movie version of the novel but all I got was spat on and threatened for my troubles. There are none so blind as those who will not see.But a man, a real man who, while filled with faith and love, but still only a man, might be tempted and then his strength in resisting temptation is admirable.

And then there is sex. This one always drives some people crazy but consider this. If God takes on the form of a human to experience his creation from this angle, and fails to have sex, then he rather missed the whole point of the exercise, didn’t he? NOTHING in the Bible claims that Jesus was celibate, it is just that the mental image of him having sex messes with people’s minds., rather like picturing your own parents getting it on-but you know that the must have or you wouldn’t be here.

This has nothing to do with “holy grails” or Da Vinci codes or any of that sort of thing, it is simply that for the sacrifice of the cross to be valid Jesus’ attachment to the world must be strong—or what’s the point? And the love of a woman, or a wife and family, and the fear of losing them, has been known to make cowards of even very good men.

Which brings us to the subject of naked images of Jesus. Some have found the recent chocolate statue of Jesus unsettling because one could see his “naughty bits,” but consider this, do you really think that the Romans would give him the dignity of a loin cloth? The ordeal was designed to be painful and humiliating and to deny any aspect of the full horror is to lessen and belittle the sacrifice.

So, what have we found out? Perhaps it is the notion that the higher the Christology the lower the value of the sacrifice on the cross. If that is the case I, for one, want my Jesus as human as they come. Some may think the high road is better but I say to them “you take the high road and I’ll take the low road and I get to -----? Before you!”

I hope.

It ain’t necessarily so

2007-05-23T16:04:00.001-07:00

Why the things you are libel to read in the Bible ain't necessarily so and why that doesn't matter so much.

The Bible is one of the great literary masterpieces of world literature, a font of artistic expression, poetry, literary imagery and a source of inspiration and solace to millions of people worldwide. The one thing it is not is inerrant. Not every line in the Bible is the absolute truth, nor did its various authors intend that their work be interpreted as though they were.

We are not here referring to the many cases of internal inconsistencies, such as the multiple creation stories in Genesis, or the conflicting conquest narratives found in Joshua, which depicts a genocidal blitzkrieg in which the Canaanites are utterly destroyed as opposed to the narrative in Judges, in which the Canaanites were not vanquished as in Joshua but continued to exist, being more gradually absorbed into the Hebrew state and, in some cases such as Shechem, where the land is purchased rather than conquered. Nor are we referring to the numerous historical inaccuracies and anachronisms such as camels in the time of Abraham, iron chariots, the siege of Jericho, (which had been deserted centuries before even the earliest possible period for the Israelite invasion) or the utter impossibility of the Exodus narrative.

Instead, today we will consider some of the numerous books or passages which are literary fictions and intended by their authors to be interpreted as such. People unfamiliar with reading the Bible as a work of literature often miss the point that the Bible is filled with satire, parody and other forms of humor. For example there is a whole line of Anti-Prophetic Satires in the Hebrew Bible designed to poke fun at Israel’s prophets and call into question their visions and prophecies. Among these may counted Balaam and his talking donkey (Num 22:21-35) the boys and the bald prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2:23-25) the lying prophet at Beth El (1 Kings 13) and the fishy story of Jonah. Many biblical scholars now argue that the primary goal of each of these narratives is portray the whole institution of prophecy negatively.

To better appreciate this literature and its authors let us examine the story of Jonah and the “Whale.” Many Fundamentalist have expended a great deal of time and energy trying to “prove” that a man could be swallowed and live for three days in the belly of a whale or other “great fish.” This is a shame because it is apparent to anyone who reads the yarn with an open mind that the story was intended as a satire, a humorous story told in order to teach a moral. Humor has always been a powerful teaching tool and Jesus himself used it frequently in his parables, which were not stories about actual events but made up tales designed to teach.

The humor begins at the very start of the book when Jonah, God’s prophet, is the only character in the whole story who fails to obey God. When given a command by the Almighty to go to Nineveh his first reaction is to hop a boat going in the opposite direction, trying his best to flee from an omnipotent and omnipresent God.

But Jonah quickly discovers that he can’t get away that easily as Yahweh sends a mighty storm to stop him. Here we see again the comic touch as all the sailors grow frantic appealing to their gods but Jonah, who is the cause of all the trouble goes down to the hold to catch a nap.

The landlubber scribes who wrote this book apparently did not know too much about the sea since he shows the frantic sailors trying to reach land in the middle of the storm whereas anyone who has spent much time around ships knows that no sailor in his right mind would go anywhere near land under those conditions for fear of being dashed to pieces on the shore.

When the captain finally wakes Jonah up he obviously knows why the storm is going on but is too cowardly to say so until his guilt is found out by casting lots. Cornered he finally admits that he is a “Hebrew,” a term which the Bible author uses here to differentiate Jonah’s people from the Phoenicians, Canaanites and other non-Yahwehist peoples living in Palestine. This is another admission that Joshua’s genocide of the Canaanites was not all it had been cracked up to be.

Unlike the Jonah, who is after all a prophet of the Lord but never follows his orders without a fight, the sailors are instantly converted to the worship of Yahweh and, on Jonah’s advice toss him into the sea, which instantly quiets down whereupon the sailors immediately make sacrifices to the Lord and take vows to his service.

Jonah is of course instantly swallowed by a “great fish” which most people in his predicament would view as a bad thing, but Jonah immediately launched into a comically inappropriate prayer of thanksgiving for having been “rescued.” This is in place of a prayer of repentance or a plea for help, either of which would have been more appropriate considering the circumstance. After three days of this the poor fish has literally had a “belly full” and vomits Jonah (on God’s orders) onto dry land.

Given a second chance, Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh which, in keeping with the other comic elements of the story, is described as being so big that it would take three days to walk across it. The real Nineveh, which has been thoroughly excavated is indeed very big for its day, almost three miles across with a circumference of eight miles but a city of this size would hardly take an hour to cross much less three whole days—the exaggeration is obviously intended for comic effect.

Jonah, who is a very bigoted man and hates the people of Nineveh, gleefully starts prophesying that within forty days the city will be “overturned.” The word chosen is a deliberate double-entendre which can be interpreted either as saying that the city will be destroyed or converted. To Jonah’s disgust the people immediately convert and the king goes so far as to order that even the farm animals be dressed in sack cloth and ashes and humans and animals alike are ordered to cry out to the Lord and swear to turn from their evil ways—although which evil ways the animals are to swear to forgo is not mentioned. Here again we see the point being made by use of absurd exaggeration.

Jonah is of course not happy at this turn of events since he was hoping to see the city destroyed and throws a tantrum because God has let the people get off so easily. Crying out to his God he says “"LORD, isn't this what I said would happen when I was still in my own country? That's why I tried to run to Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, patient, and always ready to forgive and to reconsider your threats of destruction. So now, LORD, take my life. I'd rather be dead than alive. (Jonah 4:2-3).

He goes outside the city and sits down to wait for the hoped for fire and brimstone and Yahweh causes a bush to grow up to shelter him. The next night, however, Yahweh sends a worm to kill the bush and again Jonah pitches a fit screaming that he is so unhappy over the death of the bush that he wants to die.

Yahweh, as though speaking to a naughty child, admonishes the crybaby prophet by asking “Is it right that you should be angry about a bush?” Like a crabby child Jonah answers “Yes, angry enough to die.” Again with the dying already! What a schlemiel!

And now comes the whole point of the story, the moral. As though speaking to a naughty child the Lord tells Jonah "You had compassion on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came up overnight and perished overnight. Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?" (Jonah 4:10-11). And that is the kicker. The lord it telling Jonah, and all the narrow minded and sanctimonious of the world, who think that he is on their side alone that he has compassion for all his creation, even the poor animals wandering around in sack cloth and ashes.

And there we have it, as sweet a little comedy as anything we could expect from Mel Brooks. Throughout most of Hebrew and Christian history sophisticated men and women who have heard this story were well aware that it was never intended by its authors to be taken literally. Alas, with the rise of modern Fundamentalism and its dogmatic clutching to the discredited theory of a literal reading of the Bible and a mad insistence on Biblical inerrancy in the face of mountains of contrary evidence, most of the beauty and wisdom of the Bible has been stripped away, leaving only a hollow husk of grim, uncharitable and dogmatic faith centered around a rather sad and pitiful obsession with personal salvation. Fundamentalists have managed to take most of the “fun” out of the Bible, and that is a crime, because in addition to being "The Good Book," the Bible is also a very good book!

Jaysauwiya, Nalini “Jonah and the Whale” http://www.moshereiss.org/messenger/16_jonah/16_jonah.html

Marcus, David “From Balaam to Jonah: Anti-Prophetic Satire in the Hebrew Bible” (Brown Judaic Studies 301) Atlanta: Scholars Press 1995

Miles, John R., “Laughing At The Bible: Jonah As Parody”, in Radday, Y.T. and Brenner, A. Eds. (The Almond Press, Sheffield, 1990) pg. 203-215.

Snow, Ed, “Jonah: Gently Raise the Sacred Satire,”

http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/08/jonah-gently-raise-the-sacred-satire/

Walton, J.H., The Object Lesson of Jonah 4:5-7, Bulletin for Biblical Research 2, 1992.

The Baseball Tree

2007-03-25T18:04:00.001-07:00

Back in the early 80’s I was living in San Francisco. I had recently gotten out of the Army and was hoping to pursue a career as a professional photographer. Although I was willing to take whatever jobs offered, mainly commercial, my dream was to do socially relevant photo essays in the manner of Eugene Smith or Margaret Bourke White.

I heard on the news that the San Francisco Housing Police was recruiting a special force of officers to work in a very troubled housing project known as the “Pink Palace.” With visions of a photo essay of project life from the inside dancing in my head I joined up and after about a week of training I was issued a night stick, a police band radio and a uniform and deposited one evening on the curb outside the infamous building where I was told to stay alert, check in by radio once an hour and “try not to get killed.”

I started patrolling the thirteen floors of the project looking for trouble, and for photos. Sometime around midnight a Swedish tourist staggered up to me out of the dark of the parking lot, his face streaming with blood. “They hit me with baseball tree,” he mumbled and then collapsed. As I started to call for an ambulance on my radio, I noticed that there was a fire department across the street so I ran over to it and pounded on the door.

A small window in the door opened and a man peeked through demanding to know what I wanted. I told him the situation and a moment later bells and horns sounded. Then the engine door of the station opened and about twenty firefighters, armed with axes, double-timed out of the station and over to where the injured man was laying. Forming a circle around the victim, they protected the one firefighter who was carrying the aid bag as he worked on the man, from a crowd of project residents who had gathered. A gang of teenage boys, who I suspect had committed the assault, strutted up and down showing off for their friends while the rest of the crowd of mainly black residents glared at the all white fire fighters.

Watching from the sidelines I thought of pulling out the camera that I had concealed under my jacket but lost my nerve when I reflected on the fact that after the fire fighters left I would be alone with this mob, a white man in a uniform with no weapon more formidable than a nightstick. Somehow I knew that this was not a neighborhood that took kindly to uniformed white men snapping photos without permission so I stood and looked on helplessly as some of the most intense photo opportunities of my life slipped by feeling ashamed of my cowardness.

I did not know it at the time but this was a wise move. How wise I was to learn some months later when I had to rescue a black reporter for the San Francisco Examiner from an angry mob when he pulled a camera out from under his jacket. In the ghetto camera equals Nark, which equals undercover informer, which equals trouble. Had I pulled out that camera I probably would not have lived through the night. I did not know it at the time but an armed undercover policewoman had been killed in that very building the night before.

Standing on the sidelines feeling shame and frustration I surveyed the scene before me. The raw light of a bare bulb illuminated the injured man lying in a pool of his own blood. He was sprawled on the floor of my tiny, grubby guard shack, a cinder block building equipped with bulletproof windows, pocked by dozens of bullet marks. The medic bandaged the mans’ head while the axe toting white firemen stood in an outward facing circle confronting a mob of angry black residents who yelled insults and gesticulated obscenely.

Above the door of the guard shack, some wag had pasted a bumper sticker that read: I (heart) San Francisco.

Hot Gates

2007-03-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

It is often said, by those who do not understand history that “If the Persians had won their war against the Greeks history would have been changed forever.”

Really? How so? Back in the 19^th century there was what came to be called the “Hot Gates,” school of historiography (named after Thermopolis) which maintained that conquest by the Persians would have killed the so called “Greek miracle” but would it have? Let’s look at the facts.

First, an awful lot of the art, literature and philosophy that came out of the “Greek” world was actually from the Ionian cities under Persian control. Modern historians, freed from 19^th century prejudices, realize that most of the ideas that the Greeks popularized had their origins in the East in the first place. True the Greeks put their own special spin on them but that would have happened anyway regardless of who was in control. The Persians didn’t give a rat’s patooti what kind of government, art or philosophy you had so long as you paid your tribute on time. One big advantage that a Persian conquest would have brought with it would have been a greater mixing of ideas.

This is what happened when the conquest went the other way and Alexander took over the Persian Empire. In the market place of ideas the Greeks were Microsoft and the Persians were Atari. That is to say the Persians (meaning the whole “East” that they controlled including Palestine) had a whole bunch of original and interesting ideas but the Greeks packaged and sold them with ruthless efficiency. Once the two cultures were united the Greeks swarmed all over the East carrying their ideas with them. In Palestine, the mixing of Greek rationalism with Canaanite mysticism set off the whole Judeo-Christian-Muslim powder train which exploded into the ideological flowering of the three religions. Let’s not forget that a certain Galician carpenter, who has become rather well known in the West, came from the area known as the Decapolis, a ten city area in Northern Palestine noted for its mixing of Greek and "Eastern" philosophies.

There are historians who maintain that Judaism grew out of an intellectual reaction to Greek philosophy. One thing seems clear, contact with the Greeks caused the Jews to change their circumcision practice from a minor operation which only took “a little off the top” to the full Monty it has become today.

For better or worse what we laughingly call “Western Civilization” is a synthesis of Eastern and Western trends thrashed out in the market place of ideas. All that a Persian conquest would have done is open the market a little earlier.

New Imperialism

2007-03-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

At the battle of Omdurman in 1898 a young Winston Churchill watched in amazed horror as wave after wave of Mahdist troops charged into the teeth of concentrated British rifle and machinegun fire only to be mown down in bloody swaths. At the time he, like most Englishmen, thought that there had to be something different about native peoples, genetically speaking, to make them behave in such an irrational manner. What Churchill and his fellow British officers at Omdurman did not understand was that there were people in this world who would rather die than live under foreign rule, no matter how benevolent its intentions are. The Iraqis are proving to be just such a people.

Although it is unfashionable to say so much of the history of the British Empire, particularly after the middle of the 19th century, can only be understood if one takes into consideration the Englishman’s very genuine belief that he was engaged in a noble enterprise whose mission was to bring the light of civilization to “lesser breeds without the law.” In other words the “White man’s burden.” While imperialists often justified the coloring of this or that bit of the map red by claiming that great financial benefits would flow from their actions the truth of the matter was that they were genuinely convinced that they were doing God’s work by helping liberate oppressed peoples and bring enlightened policies, not to mention clean water and proper medical services, to blighted parts of the globe. What is more surprising is that, for the most part their policies genuinely were aimed at doing good.

The problem was that the people upon whom they hoped to inflict this good did not see things in quite the same light as the British did. People resent being told that their way of doing things, hallowed by generations of tradition, are wrong and that they need wiser, foreign people, to show them the right way and when those supposedly wiser people turn out to be culturally tone deaf, that resentment boils over into anger. Generations of idealistic Englishmen wore themselves out in fruitless attempts to:

To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Kipling’s poem reflects the confusion and bitterness these thwarted idealists felt when they took up the White Man’s Burden only to:

And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

The entire phenomena of third world nationalism can, in very large part, be laid at the doorstep of the British Empire and its misguided attempts to “civilize” the world. The sad thing is that the reward for all their idealism was that the Empire bankrupted England and reduced her to the ranks of a second class power. The cost of running India, of keeping order, guarding its borders and providing health and welfare benefits for its population exceeded the entire revenue of the whole empire combined. It was only the returns on British investments in the areas of white settlement, primarily the United States, South Africa and Australia, that kept the British ship of state afloat for so long. When those began to fail, because the areas the British were developing had reached the point where they could finance their own economic expansion, England sank under its debts.

Today America finds itself in a very similar position. Running record deficits the Bush Administration has seen fit to squander 300 hundred billion dollars in its crusade with no end in sight. The oil, which was suppose to have defrayed these expenses, is not flowing nor will the people of Iraq allow it to be used for American purposes, at least not without a fight which the Americans cannot win.

Many modern day imperialists, innocent of military history, console themselves with the belief that America could win if only it were willing to employ sterner measures. Not so. The Nazis employed as stern measures as they could muster in their attempts to suppress the Warsaw ghetto and yet the Jews kept fighting just as the Palestinians continue to resist the barbaric measures employed by Israel. The American military, which has the American people to answer to, cannot afford to be seen being any more brutal than they already have been and even that may have been too much. There simply are not enough soldiers available to keep a restive population under control and if the Americans decide to really push them then they will really fight back, something they haven’t done so far, and then American forces will be lucky to get out alive. When I first wrote this piece back in April of 2004 I predicted:

“What is more there are not enough troops in the pipeline to sustain even the low levels we currently have on the ground and if the fighting heats up even that flow will dwindle to a trickle.”

Since then my prediction has proved to be prophetic and the Army and Marines have just reported missing their recruiting goals by over 40% for the third month in a row.

The draft is not the answer since it will only help to crystallize opposition to the war in this country at even a faster rate than it is currently forming. It is one thing to wave flags in support of “the troops” and quite another to be asked to be one of their number. A president and vice-president who dodged their chance to serve in combat have precious little moral authority to ask others to do what they were unwilling to do themselves.

Right now the best thing for America to do is to fold their tents and steal away into the night, leaving the Iraqis to sort things out for themselves. True there may be a civil war but what of it? We fought our own civil war and emerged the stronger for it. By automatically assuming that the side we would not like to see win will be the one to come out on top is to discount the values we treasure in the market place of ideas. During the Cold War it was common wisdom that the Soviet Union would be the eventual victor but those of us who had faith in the strength of our institutions and the superiority of our ideals knew that the tide was running the other way.