‘This Is Your Captain Speaking.’
When I was in the fifth grade, quite early on in it an unannounced day came when a few of us were abruptly reassigned to a class of sixth graders. It was obviously meant for us ‘high achievers’ to have more of an educational challenge, but little, if anything, was ever said about the whole matter. It was all very curious; but ’they’ of course knew what they were doing. ‘They’ were in charge of us. No questions asked.
The teacher of the new class was a young woman from Wales,(1) with, apparently, a naval background in her family, because she announced that the class would be organized along the lines of a crew aboard a ship. One factor regarding that structure was that the class would elect a captain of ‘their’ ship. Lo and behold - in a total surprise to me - I was elected Captain. (What??! Over all these sixth graders???) I didn’t know what to do. Then.
I do now.
That summer saw the end of WWII,(2) and I happened to be up in the Bay Area of California and over in San Francisco itself the day that there was a parade down the main street of that fair city of the heads of state and other leading dignitaries of all the world’s countries, going to kick off a meeting of their designated representatives to establish something called the United Nations, for a New World Order of that time.(3) I remember very clearly sitting on the curb, at a sparsely bystander-populated section of the parade, watching these ‘leaders of the Free World’ pass by in the backs of their mostly convertible cars sporting their nation’s colors. The irony of being ‘convertible,’ of course, being lost on all and sundry of us onlookers. And, I’m sure, on even many, if not most, of those dignitaries themselves.
We’re talking the subject of ‘command and control’ here. Few people in those days had even a clue as to what was going on in the world, behind such scenes, for the public’s misleading edification. And mistaken identity.
Fast forward to five years later, and the summer of 1950, when the UN had failed in its primary (announced) mission - of ‘keeping the peace’ between the world’s nations - and the Korean War broke out. I had just finished my tenth grade in school, and so was spared the beginning of that ordeal, and on into the beginning of my time at university, when an uneasy Armistice was declared in that ‘Police Action’.(4) We undergraduate males were counseled a) to join the R.O.T.C., and b) that we would not be subject to the Draft as long as we were engaged in our (official) educational pursuits. Which shortly thereafter changed for me, into another form.
The operation took two ‘moves’. The first was that I reached a breaking point of sorts during a hot, late-afternoon R.O.T.C. class in a Quonset hut on the edge of the campus when our instructor, a Sergeant in the real thing, was droning on about various forms of machine guns. Machine guns? Excuse Me??…The class over, I made my way back to my room (in the Independent Men’s dormitory where I spent my Sophomore and Junior years) in a nauseous state of mind, closed and locked the door (my roommate fortunately was not due back for a while), for whatever reason put some Wagner on the record player, and laid down with my pillow over my head.
Machine guns???…
The upshot of the interlude was that I dropped out of R.O.T.C. (for which I got into some trouble when the university’s PTB found out about it; but by then my die was cast), which set up - as I look back on it all - the next move of the chess pieces of my life:
an unambiguous spiritual experience. Which ultimately propelled me a) out of university, and b) onto the Path of a Seeker of Truth which I have trod ever since.
I am now 84. And still going strong, in that direction. And more so now than ever, as things begin to reach their Culmination point, in a very long Process, of education.
But I had then to take a detour, for two years out of my life, to serve my Draft time in the Army. Which in the event took the form of being a c.o. - a conscientious objector. Which meant, and means, that I never trained with a weapon, took both my Basic Eight and Second Eight in training to be a Medic. In which form - with a TDY into Special Services, serving as Entertainment Director for the Seventh Division in Korea for most of my tour of duty over there - I served my country, with honor, from ’56 to ’58; at the conclusion of which time I took up my Seeker of Truth role in earnest.
Which brings me up to today. But with a telling note along the way, ‘sounded’ over there in South Korea.
First, a lead-up to it: Somewhere along the way of my time in the Service a bunch of us raw recruits were in formation when the NCO assigned to us asked us if any of us wished to apply for Officer’s Training. Pregnant silence. I felt ‘eyes on me,’ as it were; and admit that I felt an instinctive urge to apply. That that was where - or sort of where - I belonged, instead of well back in the ranks, with my light hidden under a bushel, as it were. But being a c.o. - and feeling well committed to that role, and decision - I couldn’t very well command troops in battle. I would, rather, command an end to hostilities.
A sort of Permanent Armistice.
Which I do now. With the Advent of a new ‘economic’ system, in place for the whole world, whereby we share goods and services with one another - and give of our best in the process - out of a higher motive than the ’training wheels’ one of profit. Out of the highest motive that there could ever be:
Out of gratitude to our Creator for life with meaning.
Out of, in a word:
Love.
And as part of this New Order of Things on this planet, all corruption is going to be rung out of our ‘system’. For, we are going Up, to a higher ‘educational’ level - Life being a school; and the Purpose being to graduate - on the spiral stairway to the heavens. However many ‘stations’ it takes to get to the top: of total, and perfected
Unity.
But I was talking about a ‘note’ that was sounded for me over in South Korea, at that stage along my personal Path. I remember a day when a young Corporal was assigned to lead a Detail of us in close-order drill, on the parade grounds of our Battalion Hq. He was fairly new to the job, and it showed; and soon he brought us to At Ease, for a breather. And then suddenly, ‘out of the blue,’ asked me to take over for a bit. Rather than spend any time wondering Why Me, I found myself springing into action, like a sheep dog, herding them around the parade grounds by various barked commands, and then bringing them back smartly (and I mean smartly; they ‘rose to the occasion,’ did a fine job of it) to where it had all begun, and back - after the command of ‘Parade - Rest!’ - to At Ease, whereupon I re-assumed my position anonymously back into the ranks.
The poor Corporal was a bit sheepish about it all. As I guess I would have been, too, in his position, with all the commands that had erupted, and in pefect timing, from my mouth. (‘Detail: Atten-SHUN! Right - FACE! Forward - MARCH! Hut, hut… By the Right Flank MARCH!…By the Left Flank MARCH!…Column Right MARCH! Hut, hut… Left Oblique MARCH!…Right Oblique MARCH! …About Face MARCH! About Face MARCH! Hut, hut…Column Left MARCH!…Column Left MARCH! Hut, hut……Detail - HALT! Right - FACE! Parade - REST! At Ease.’)
Where had that come from? I wondered.
An innate desire and ability, for Command and Control, I reckon. Bursting out of long pent-up personal control.
Which also came out last night, in the middle of the night, when I found myself, from whatever concatenation of conscious mental anguish and dreams, in anger at what is and has been going on in and to my country behind the scenes of everyday life LONG ENOUGH, turning on the light and writing down the following statement:
‘This country is under my command and my protection. Hands off.’(5)
For, you see - as I am beginning to acknowledge to myself, openly -
I feel born to the job.
And now,
am ready for it.
And not a day too soon, I reckon.
—
footnotes:
(1) I remember that detail because there was something peculiar about the matter. She happened to say something once about how the Welch were a ‘special’ people. She didn’t elaborate on the subject, and I never found out, in later years, why that was. I found out that there was some evidence that the Irish were descended, curiously, from royal Egyptian blood; but that would be a different matter.
One might well think.
(2) That was 1945, for those of you who have been brought up under the tutelage of the New World Order crowd, and don’t know about those sorts of historical facts. Including many of you Americans not even knowing - for not having been taught in your schools - even who the U.S. fought in that war, if you can believe it. All, another matter.
Sort of.
(3) The circumstances, briefly: My brother and I were spending the summer up in the Bay Area, from our home in Southern California, with our father and his wife and fairly newly hatched daughter, our half-sister. Our mother had left and then divorced our father back ‘when I was still in diapers’ (as our paternal grandmother would tell me, regarding those circumstances; indicating the ‘bad blood’ between the paternal side of my family and our mother) and had gone off to make her own mark in life with us in tow; but apparently part of the divorce settlement was that our father and that side of our makeup had ‘visitation rights’ of some sort. It ended up taking the form of our father appearing briefly in our lives a couple of times while I was growing up (with my mother and her new husband, and then just her, with another divorce soon under her belt. She had plans. To try to make it in Hollywood. Another story), and our spending a few summers staying with our paternal grandparents at their home in the East Bay Area, and then a couple of summers in the same town (Richmond) with our father; who had by then become a chiropractor, and was/just happened to be over in San Francisco on said business on the day of the parade dedicated to the nascent UN, and took us with him.
It’s a small world.
(4) Something to do with Pres. Harry Truman having taken us into the war that was not really a war, for political - to say, domestic constitutional - reasons. It was all getting very complicated. On purpose.
(5) This feels of a piece with a statement that I would make to the leaders of Communist China; to wit:
‘Remember the Flying Tigers. Do not dishonor your ancestors. And get your soldiers out of my country.
That is all.’
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