BEING TRUE TO THE STRAIGHTEST GENERATION

            I have read – and expect to continue to run into – some well-deserved editorial reminders that this year is the 75^th, and likely the last numbered and remarked anniversary of that epochal episode known as World War Two, within whose embrace I experienced my crucial growing up years, and true to whose promise I lived out some of my country’s most crucial and foundational decades. For me and a fast-disappearing number like me it is the centrifugal and defining event of a lifetime. It fills the capacity of my memory cells so fully that virtually all other subjects are subordinate and related to it. Including – and perhaps especially – that three-year “diversion” we call Korea.

            Yesterday a Vermont friend phoned to report that Jerry Thomas had passed away in a home-town nursing home. Jerry had been one of six of us who traveled to the Air Force Recruiting Station in Montpelier one December day in 1950. That original “six” represented one third of the boys in our high school graduating class and we chose to enter the U.S. Air force and take our basic training together. I fear I may be the last of that “spirited” bunch, with each of whom I had shared uncounted “cherry-cokes” at THE SPOT.  In the following months, as the Korean War grew larger, most of the others followed in one Service branch or another. It was what our older brothers and cousins had done a few years earlier, and it was what we did. Like those predecessors we too had weathered the Great Depression, gotten by on less and witnessed everything World War II had brought to our 20^th century door step. We were in every sense of that generation, and motivated by the same sense of brotherhood and patriotism. We were true “believers”.

            In fact, it is worth pointing out that more than 400,000 of those of us who fought in Korea had also seen active service in WWII, including most field-grade officers and a preponderance of senior “non-coms”. (To our ever-lasting benefit.)

            I think often of the world we came home to, and the unique nature of its shape and character; and of the unvarnished reality of our modest expectations. Married, with a young family and only a high school education, I had the good fortune to attract the attention of an Air Force Reserve senior officer who was a Vice President of Vermont’s most important business enterprise, and who recruited me into the most august of its departments - even without an advanced degree. There my similarly selected colleagues included Cal Haskell, a recently released Air Force Major and experienced senior command pilot, and Gordon Paterson who had served with the 82^nd Airborne Division and who limped from a bad training injury. Gordon, a devoted Masters candidate became my business mentor and best friend. We shot competitively and wandered wild country together. (He became a senior staff member of the University of Vermont and is still a good friend.)

            We were next joined by Lt. Clayton Jordan who came home from the Battle of the Bulge and Stalag Luft III – one of the most notorious of the worst Nazi prisons – as a proudly honored local hero. As a Sergeant who fought on with his last bullet after releasing his men to surrender he was awarded a “battlefield commission”. Clayton twice survived being sentenced to execution by firing squad by sheer audacity. He is perhaps the bravest man I have ever known. I also was assigned to work on a daily basis with a man named Glen Rice, my opposite number in our Dallas, Texas branch office. Glen had been taken prisoner in the fall of Manila back in 1941 and had survived the Bataan Death March. Crippled for life from his years of beatings and punishment by the Japanese, he never complained and felt honored to be working with the rest of us.

            Each of us in our own personal variations, had watched our loved ones go off to war, rally behind a united cause, honor deeply-held values and convictions and remain true to our own personal sense of honor. We came from a generation or two that went to church, opened doors for ladies and pretty much stayed married once we got that way. We didn’t own a lot of Mutual Funds, but tried not to buy stuff we couldn’t afford. I know I am super “old fashioned”, but still write checks and don’t know feel deprived not knowing how to use an ATM machine. And I think I have lived in the very best generation; in perhaps the straightest generation. 

SCARING UP A FARMSTEAD BREAKFAST

            When my Dad was in charge, he never “made” breakfast, he always “scared it up”. When living in a cabin – he assured us – he would leave the door open so that he could run outside just in time to catch the manually-flipped “flapjacks” as they exited the chimney. I thought of all that last week as I noted an unexpected “find” in a nearby meat department, thereupon bringing home a lovely, glistening, five-pound “pork belly”.

            After drying the exceptionally lean fresh cut, I covered it with a dry rub of salt, pepper and brown sugar (my private stock of maple sugar too precious to reduce further), and set it to cure, wrapped, in the bottom of my outdoor refrigerator where I was careful to turn it several times daily over its five-day aging process. Rinsed, dried and ready for the most sacred step of all, it went into my pre-heated smoker over chips of maple wood where I tended it lovingly for about five hours. With a golden “bark” and an internal temperature of 165 degrees, I pulled it out to cool gently before slicing thick quarter-inch slabs redolent of sweet-salty maple magic.

            The next morning, I made a brief stop at our hen house to pick up a couple of just-laid brown eggs before putting a skillet on the heat. I drank in the incomparable smoky smell of the first few strips of hours-old bacon which I set aside on kitchen toweling when half done. Spooning just a jot-and-a-tittle of hot pan fat over the quivering yokes, the bacon returned just in time to get re-acquainted and back to temperature before it was savoring time. You’ll have to cut me some slack for believing that I haven’t scared up a better, sweeter-tasting breakfast than that one in a very long time; and I still have at least 4.5 pounds of incomparable smoked pork belly to look forward to.

            Back on the Vermont hillside farm of my teenage years, the smoking fire would have been funneled underground through several feet of smoldering maple chips or dry corn cobs before being “trapped” in an inverted wooden barrel where the bacon and hams hung suspended, for a longer period of time. We had no “electric freezer” back in those times and in that far northern clime, and along with other parts of the pigs and other farm animals the cut meat leavings were merely wrapped, labeled and placed on shelves in an old outdoor cabinet in our woodshed where they kept frozen solid until May – or maybe June.

            My Dad was probably fortunate to pass on from this world before such wonderful breakfast fare became “illegal”.

MARKING APRIL’S CONNECTION WITH HISTORY

            Highway traffic passing my Rockville property for the past several weeks may have been doing some head-scratching as they looked over to see a strikingly beautiful, familiar yet unfamiliar “American” banner flying at the top of my flag pole: alternating red and white horizontal stripes with white stars in a field of blue filling the upper left quadrant. One member of my prized collection of seventeen historic “American” flags, this one gets flown on very rare occasions. It is in fact the first national flag of The Confederate States of America with only seven stars (representing Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Louisiana.

            Known affectionately as “the stars and bars”, its three broad stripes when rippling in the wind or blown about in battle could easily be mistaken as the Union colors, confusing maneuvering troops of both denominations, and getting people killed at Manassas in the first Bull Run battle. Because the white bar was so large, it may even have been mistaken as a “surrender” symbol. Accordingly it was replaced by the more well-known and unmistakable “battle flag” with its diagonal cross-bars.

            When displaying this particular flag to school children I point out that it figures importantly in our country’s history, and that many tens of thousands of American boys died fighting under its stars and bars; it is their youthful bravery and devotion to a cause that I honor – NOT the cause itself.

            It was with President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers in April, 1861 that the plunge toward civil war probably became irreversible, setting the stage for South Carolina’s firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, an eventuality Lincoln had sought to avoid at all costs. (In fact he had carefully coordinated the dispatch of the ship carrying needed supplies for the fort with Confederate leaders. Of all the “southern” states, South Carolina was the most obdurate and entrenched in its anti-Union, pro-secession sentiments.)

            It was almost exactly four years later on April 9, 1865 that Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses (“Sam”) Grant, effectively bringing America’s costliest war to an end in the living room of a home owned by Wilmer McLean in Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Seeking peace and safety for his family, McLean - a proud Southerner - had departed his previous home in Manassas Virginia, when the war had actually begun when a Union cannon ball fell on his kitchen when he was dining with Confederate General PGT Beauregard in July, 1861.

            Then it was Apri1 15, 1865 when an assassin’s bullet took the life of Abraham Lincoln who was probably the only living human who could have prevented the era of political and social strife which befell the bereft nation which had paid so egregious a price for a reunion over which the slain leader would likely have presided.

            As the breeze rippled the “Stars and Bars” these past few days, I could not help but visit other “collectors’ banners in my personal “museum” including: the 20^th Maine regimental; Irish Brigade colors; Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s 7^th Cavalry guide-on; General Hood’s 1^st Texas Headquarters flag; George Washington’s “Pine tree” flag and the Revolution’s “Bennington Battle Flag”.

            On the wall to my left hangs Don Troiani’s portrait of the 14^th Brooklyn Hussars of 1862, while at my back a large lighted reproduction of Mort Kunstler’s “Lee Takes Command” capturing that historic May 31, 1862 event looks down on my writing desk. A replica 1863 Cavalry Officer’s sword is suspended over all.

            As an ironic afterthought, there is also a certificate with then Governor Zell Miller’s signature “appointing” Al Cooper (a definite “Yankee boy”) a Lieutenant Colonel in the Georgia Militia -  a thank you from the State of Georgia for a modest piece of service during the 2002 Olympics.

THE LONG ROAD TO OUR OPIOID EXPLOSION

            I remember the day, sixty-six years ago, that I was called to the Quonset hut headquarters of my commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Lenton D. Roller. He shared with me a Top Secret communication he had just received from a U.S. Army CID officer requesting that an Investigator from our unit look into reports of an unusual level of criminal activities in a South Korean village near us, but in a remote area off the beaten path. There was something of a political challenge inasmuch as this area was under the control of the Columbian Military, the South American country of Columbia being one of our United Nations “partners”.  The small town was known to us as “Little Chicago” because of the lawlessness which surrounded it. (I will not mention the real name of that village out of respect for the people who may call it “home” today.)

            I selected three of my fellow Air Police men to go with me, minus identifying helmets and armbands. Instead of our similarly marked (and widely-hated Willys jeep with its obvious siren and mounted .50 caliber machine gun, we chose an older (and much-loved) Ford-made WWII model from the motor pool. It was a long and rough ride to the village, and it was late in the day when we entered the seemingly empty village.

            Like most such agricultural enclaves, the residents’ thatched huts were in the background to an area of packed dirt at the center of the short street on which we parked. The military center surrounded a long system of what appeared to be three squad tents hooked together end-to-end, from the open door to which blue smoke issued, accompanied by a strong smell and a strange sing-song of human voices. Leading our foursome inside where a lone, weak light bulb hung from the center overhead strut, revealing two rows of double high G.I. cots with a narrow space between their length, a strange sight reached my (until then) innocent eyes. Fifty or sixty soldiers (?) lay languidly and half-stoned smoking opium and cocaine and making the happy moaning noise we had heard.

            So far we had seen no one to talk to, but I had this disturbing feeling that we were being watched running down my spine. “Fellows” I whispered, “we’re getting out of here.” We moved, slowly but watchfully back through the settling dusk to where we had left our jeep. But it was not to be quite that easy. We found our jeep, not exactly where we had left it, but turned upside down in the dry creek bed.

                Fortunately there were four of us, and luckily we were driving the lighter-weight old WWII Ford model.  We soon had it upright and in running condition, and we were on our way, promising each other that we didn’t care if we ever saw Little Chicago again. That was in the year 1951, but I can still feel that unmistakable shiver that went up my spine telling me that someone’s rifle scope was trained on my back.

            One year later, 1952 and I was serving back in Washington State in the good ol’e USA and working on a special military liaison assignment with the nearby County Sheriff Department and the Seattle Police Department Vice Squad.  In the process, my partner (M/Sgt. Walter Korewo) and I uncovered information that linked a local nightclub known as The ------- Gardens with possible drug distribution activity AND a teenage prostitution ring. Accordingly we documented our undercover operations with a report shared quietly with our superiors.   We were promptly ordered to meet personally with a U.S. Navy flag-rank officer who was the military liaison for law enforcement with the “civilian world.” To our utter surprise we were “braced” and dressed down for what we were reporting. “You risk setting our local relations back by years!” he informed us. “Don’t you know who owns the - - - - - - Gardens?” (Even all these years afterward, I prefer not to mention names.)    Suffice it to say. . . M/Sgt K. was quickly transferred to an East coast assignment, and since I was within months of my end-of-enlistment release, I was left in place.

            Not only did I receive a stark lesson on the extent to which the drug trade’s tentacles were having a corrupting influence where I least expected to find it, but I changed my mind about looking forward to continuing my law enforcement career field in the civilian world. Today, all these years after that visit to a Korean town called “Little Chicago” and my rude look into that as- yet -unglimpsed world of human addiction I am reminded daily that this year the U.S. will suffer more than 500,000 deaths from what we call “Opioid overdoses”, with my own state of Utah ranking 4^th in the nation’s list of shame.

A TALE OF TWO BROTHERS AND THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

            On June 28, 1914 the heir-apparent to the Hapsburg throne in Austria-Hungary, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated by an 18-year-old student radical no one ever heard of while visiting Sarajevo, Serbia.  In truth the Archduke was not exactly “loved” in his own country, and one might not have expected the event to deserve more than a headline or two in a Europe where such events were not all that uncommon, but thirty days later an insulted Austria declared war on Serbia.  Upon that action a series of mutual defense treaties began to come into play. First Germany declared war on Russia, then within another few days, Belgium and France. On August 4^th, Great Britain declared herself at war with Germany, and the dominoes of history came tumbling down. Within weeks twenty-seven nations had declared war, and what became known as “The Great War” (eventually World War I), and “the war to end all wars” was underway.

            World War I – “The Great War” – had been going on for three years, and twenty million were already dead before President Woodrow Wilson on April 6, 1917 finally got around to involving the United States.  A surge of patriotism swept the country, and on May 3^rd, 1917, Identical twins from Washington State named Auburn and Oscar enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, along with many of  the Skagit county boys they had grown up with.  They became the subject of some notoriety and a front page newspaper article  when it was discovered that every inch of their body dimensions, and even some of their finger prints were identical.

            They trained together in California, where their superb marksmanship on the rifle range quickly got them noticed. Soon they were on their way to the battlefields of France, where the boys from Skagit County became the backbone of the 20^th Company, 5^th Marine Regiment. There, the twins were permitted to serve in the same Company, but not in the same squad.

            By June, 1918, the war was not going well for the Allies, and the Germans were poised to finally capture Paris. As the French retreated from the lines they had been holding near Chateau Thierry, about 30 miles short of their capitol city, the Marines were left to carry out a poorly-planned attack, across a field of wheat and oats to the side of a copse of forest growth known as Belleau Wood – a small patch of landscape which was about to make the United States Marines the legendary service branch it has been   ever since.  No one told Major Berry’s Marine Brigade the Wood was filled with a numerically-superior German force whose machine guns had been laid out to cover every square yard of the open field.  At dawn on June 6^th, the 5^th Marines launched the attack, with the 20^th Company out front.  Auburn’s squad was decimated by enemy fire, and he himself was felled by grenade shrapnel to the head and face.  Oscar’s squad soon passed by, and Oscar saw enough to be sure his brother was dead. Spurred on by that knowledge, in the hours and days to follow, his intelligence missions behind enemy lines would win him the Navy Cross and make him one of the most decorated Marines of the Great War.

             As the grim battle swirled around him, Auburn was passed over by medics who left him with the dead where he lay until nightfall when those who came to collect the dead – Germans and Americans alike – determined he was alive.  He would eventually spend nearly a year in hospitals in France and the U.S., much of that time unable to utter a word through the bandaged and wired facial wounds.

            In a Naval hospital on the east coast he would meet a red-headed volunteer who would become his wife.  They honey-mooned back in Washington, where the twins from Skagit County would be briefly reunited.  Over the next forty years, divided by a continent, they would see each other only one more time.

            The Battle of Belleau Wood is seen by historians as the turning point in the Great War – the “Gettysburg” of World War One.  It gave the Marines the nickname “Devil Dogs” and defined the Corps forever after. The wounded and scarred twin from Skagit County refused the Purple Heart, and did not  think he had done anything special. But he was a “hero” and a quiet inspiration to his four sons, two of whom would see action in other wars, and two who would become Marines.  His full name was Auburn Forest Cooper, and he was my Dad. Not all of his wounds could be treated and he died too young. On June 6^th, every year, I proudly place his circular dog tag and the attached globe-and-anchor emblem from his uniform around my neck as I dress for the day. He taught me all I needed to know about honor.