Places I’ve Been: Paris (The Louvre and Manute Bol)

Back in 1986, I managed a quick trip on a student tour of Paris and toured the Louvre. I actually got a quick piece at the Mona Lisa from the distance of about fifty feet, looking over the heads of a couple hundred gallery goers. Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable, but at times seemed overly sure of himself.

For me, the high point of the Louvre was when he described an ebony sculpture of an almost emaciated human form that stood about seven and a half feet high. He described it as representing man’s alienation in the modern age. My response was, “Alien? Hell, that’s a life-size sculpture of Manute Bol.” My guide had no clue what I was talking about. All the basketball fans in my group decided that my interpretation was spot-on.

Time Share in Bethlehem

In 1994, I was teaching on board the USS Inchon when we pulled into Haifa for a lengthy port visit and I managed to go on quite a few bus tours. One of them was to the little town of Bethlehem where, the Bible tells us, Jesus was born. I learned that there are three different churches built at the site: one Catholic, one Eastern Orthodox and one Armenian. (These were built centuries before the Protestant Reformation.) Each of the three are built directly adjoining the reputed site of the nativity and I learned that, while the three churches are separate, they have all agreed to a time share for holding services at the holy site.

While I have, at times, been quite critical of some of the acts of organized religion, I found the fact that, at least in Bethlehem, three different Christian sects managed to agree on access to a holy site quite refreshing.

Places I’ve Been: Yap (Big Money and Hard Currency)

From 1998-1999, I served as the public defender on the Island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. Yap is a fascinating place to spend a couple of weeks. After nine months, it can get quite boring. Yap’s claim to fame is that, for centuries before Europeans arrived, young Yapese men would paddle their canoes almost 300 miles to Palau, to quarry huge limestone discs, then transport them back to Yap to serve as their currency. Am I the only person who appreciates the irony of young Polynesian men risking their lives for pieces of limestone, whereas for centuries, members of other cultures have risked their lives for gold, silver or gems?

The Federated States of Micronesia still uses the American dollar as its currency. It has often occurred to me that if Yap wanted to revitalize their economy, they might do well to reintroduce stone currency as a way of raising money from tourists. After all, if other governments can decree that carefully engraved pieces of paper have monetary value, why can’t the Yapese government do the same thing with pieces of limestone. What better souvenir could a tourist have than a genuine chunk of Yapese stone money for say, 500 or 1000 dollars. You could include a thank you note explaining how the person had helped finance roads, medical care and more on the island.

For the real high rollers, they ought to auction off one really huge piece of limestone that will get the buyer an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. Seriously, if you get a bunch of egomaniacal billionaires willing to argue over the fact their piece of stone is bigger than others, who knows how much money you could raise?

I’ve seen some pieces of stone money that are twelve feet tall, so I guess that Yap brings a whole new meaning to the idea of big money and hard currency.

A Saluting Story

I once had a conversation with a woman who had a PhD but absolutely no knowledge about anything connected with military life. When I mentioned this, she mentioned that she had watched M*A*S*H.

One of the biggest misconceptions that lifelong civilians have about the military is that they suppose them to be absolutely servile in the presence of higher authority. This is not the case.

There’s a great story about the Marine general named Louis “Chesty” Puller. The story goes that, one day, an enlisted Marine failed to salute a Marine lieutenant. To which the lieutenant ordered the Marine to salute 100 times. “Good morning sir, one! Good morning, sir, two!...”

A crowd joined to see what was happening and none other than Chesty Puller appeared. When the lieutenant explained that the private had failed to salute him and he had taken corrective action by forcing the man to salute him 100 times, General Puller said, “Well, young man, you were certainly correct in taking action. However, lieutenant, you are aware that every salute rendered must be returned. So why don’t you both start over?”

“Good morning, sir, one!”

“Good morning, Marine, one!”

I recently heard a similar story from a retired Marine friend of mine who had served as the administrative NCO of the Marine detachment at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. The DLI has a heterogeneous population of all four services and the ranks range from junior enlisteds training for the intelligence branch to senior officers who are about to do a tour as military attaches. One day, my friend, who at the time was a mere staff sergeant, noticed that a full colonel in the Air Force failed to return his salute. (At this point, my readers who are acquainted with the guy are already chuckling.) He is a very big man with a much bigger voice. This was even before he got voice training as a drill instructor. As the “zoomie” colonel walked past, my friend held his salute, pivoted 180 degrees and said in a voice which I’m sure carried from one end of Monterey to the other, “Excuse me sir, but in the Marine Corps, we were taught that all salutes must be returned.”

A very chastened and flustered Air Force colonel returned his salute. Apparently, he made quite an impression on the man because any time that colonel saw my friend, he returned salutes at Mach speed. Indeed, my friend comments that one time the man held his salute so long that he had to say, “Excuse me, I can’t drop my salute until you drop yours.”

For the benefit of lifelong civilians, if an officer fails to return a salute and the base commander hears about it, that is a serious breach of protocol indeed. A repeat of such an incident could end a man’s career.

Columbus Community Standards

Many years ago, in the early seventies, I believe, the State Highway Patrol stopped a driver whose car displayed a bumper sticker that read (and I’ll spell this out using NATO phonetics), “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo Michigan.” The motorist had a date in municipal court for displaying an obscene bumper sticker.

The magistrate heard the evidence and rendered a decision as follows: the verb in question can mean a sexual act, or it can mean a term of derision and disdain. Quite obviously, the magistrate continued, it is impossible to engage in sexual relations with the entire state of Michigan. It is, however, quite commonly accepted in Ohio to express all sorts of derision and disdain toward that state, and particularly the University of Michigan’s football team. Therefore, the magistrate dismissed the charge.

Limeys and Yanks

I hope that none of my English readers take offense at the term “Limey.” The term originated with Captain James Cook’s measure of having his men suck on limes to prevent the outbreak of scurvy. So what happens if you don’t suck on a lime during an interminable sea voyage? Answer: You die a slow, horrible, agonizing death from scurvy.

The term “Yankee” originated with Dutch settlers in New York, referring to English-speaking new arrivals. The meaning later expanded to mean “inhabitants of the six states of New England.” During the Civil War, the term came to mean “anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line.” As recently as fifty years ago, the term “Damn Yankee” was a serious insult down South. Now that it’s been a century and a half, some of the bitterness has been resolved. (Although I did once hear about Lee Cameron, the editor-in-chief of Notre Dame’s Law Review being referred to as a Yank. Since Mr. Cameron was born and raised in Mississippi, he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry.)

A small word of caution to my English readers: if you ever see an American wearing a baseball cap with an ornate, red capital “B” on it, do NOT refer to the wearer as a “Yank.” His cap signifies his allegiance to the Boston Red Sox baseball team , and there is nothing that a Red Sox fan hates more than their archrivals, the New York Yankees.

Instead, if you see such a person, simply start chanting at the top of your lungs: “Yankees suck! Yankees suck! Yankees suck!” You will be treated like a long-lost brother.

In France, Beaucoup Coups, USA, No Do Coup!

There’s an old joke that when a library patron asks to see a copy of the French Constitution, the librarian directs them to the periodicals section. When I took my comprehensive general exam to receive my Master’s degree in History, back in 1980, one of the questions was, “Explain to a French family why there has never been a coup d’etat in the United States.” For the benefit of readers who don’t appreciate the stability the United States has enjoyed since 1776, it’s interesting to reflect that the French First Republic lasted 12 years before Napoleon overthrew it in a coup. The Second Republic lasted four years before Napoleon’s nephew, Napoleon III, staged a coup of his own. The Third Republic lasted seventy years, until Marshall Petain seized power in the aftermath of France’s defeat in 1940. The Fourth Republic lasted twelve years (going through twenty Presidents) until disaffected members of the French Army forced De Gaulle to take power and inaugurate the Fifth Republic. Four years after taking office, De Gaulle survived yet another coup attempt and repeated assassination attempts because of his policy of withdrawing from Algeria.

The Fifth Republic has now lasted fifty-two years. I fear that in another thirty years, France might be just one province of a Moslem Caliphate. When I answered Professor Millette’s question, about why there had been an American coup, I pointed out that very rarely had any general motive, opportunity and means to effect that kind of change. For most of American history, the American Armed Forces have been absolutely minute by American standards. For example, in 1940, when the Belgian Army surrendered, the US Army moved up in rank to become the nineteenth-largest in the world.

The United States has had very few close calls in which a coup might have been possible. For example, in the year after the American victory at Yorktown, a number of officers in the Continental Army, disaffected by Congress’s inability or unwillingness to pay them, urged Washington to declare himself King. Fortunately for America’s future, Washington indignantly refused to give the matter a second thought. No republic has ever been so fortunate in the character of its commanding general. Washington abhorred the idea of Caesarism. A few months before the end of the war, there was a meeting of some other disaffected officers at Plattsburgh, New York. They were understandably irate that Congress was several years behind in paying them. Washington had a near-mutiny on his hands. If he’d lost control of the situation, the Revolution might have failed then and there. Instead, Washington gave one of the greatest speeches of his career. At one point, he pulled from his pocket a letter from a member of the Continental Congress. He began to read it, then faltered. Washington produced a pair of spectacles and put them on. Almost none of them had seen him wear them before. Washington commented, “Pardon me, my sight has grown dim in the service of my country.”

Washington managed to diffuse the situation, although he was in an absolutely heartbreaking situation. He knew that for the new Republic to survive, he would have to be complicit in Congress giving his comrades for the past eight years a very poor reward for their devoted service.

Eighty years later, in November of 1862, Abraham Lincoln relieved General George B McClellan of command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan was a very popular officer and there was, briefly, discussion among his subordinates about marching on Washington. At the time, the Army’s new commander, Ambrose Burnside commented, “I don’t know about you fellows, but I call this talk straight treason.” Fortunately, McClellan had no desire to attempt such an action. Instead, two years later, he challenged Lincoln for the Presidency as the nominee of the Democratic Party. He lost in a landslide.

There is, furthermore, the example of the early days of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration. A retired Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler, claimed that some business interests had approached him with the suggestion that he lead a coup. The veracity of Butler’s charges remain a mystery to this day. If there was such a plot, it certainly never came anywhere close to fruition.

In the early 1960s, there was a popular book, later made into a movie, entitled Seven Days in May. The story takes place in May of 1974. (I’ve often marveled at the coincidence of an author predicting America going through a Constitutional crisis in the Spring of 1974.) The plot concerns all but one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff plotting to overthrow an unpopular President. The ringleader is a hugely popular Air Force officer named General James Scott. Many years later, in the months before the start of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Air Force Chief of Staff spoke to the press at length about his services’ specific, tactical plans to destroy Saddam Hussein’s forces. The next day, he was forcibly retired. My collaborator recently spoke with alarm about the Oath Keepers, a group of servicemembers who proclaim themselves ready to defend the Constitution, even if it means taking arms against the government. I informed my young companion that the chance of such an organization of succeeding is far lower than his being stampeded by a dinosaur at the corner of Lane and High. I am old enough to remember that in 1996, a right-wing commentator (with the initials R.L.) state that if Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, he would refuse to leave power. I thought that, apparently, his writers could not come up with anything good that day because the chances of our forty-second President pulling off a coup were slim to none, and slim is out of town.

As recently as 2008, I frequently heard callers on Air America charge that the Bush Administration was plotting to cancel the November elections and stay in office indefinitely. Those fears were, of course, completely unfounded. I recently had the chance to discuss that same subject with a good friend who served twenty-five years in the United States Marine Corps. He stated flatly that there never has been and never will be a coup in the United States for the excellent reason that American servicepeople would not participate. I emphatically agree.