Fifty-six years ago, in the streets of Taipei, Taiwan, I purchased a work of art from its creator, the Chinese painter Peco Yeh.
The sordid details of that transaction are mentioned here.
Since then, several people have contacted me to declare themselves owners of other original Peco Yeh canvases.
The latest is Jane Upchurch, who emailed me: “In the early 1970s my (ex) husband was in the military and was stationed in Taipei. He had been to Chinese language school to learn Mandarin. We bought a Peco Yeh painting on the street which I still have in it’s original frame. It’s approximately 16” x 18”. (It’s hard to see in the attached picture but the little girl is catching a bubble.)”
Jane attached a good photo of the canvas she owns.
Bubble Girl, by Peco Yeh. Courtesy of Jane Upchurch.
Once again, we have a picture which hints at the multiplicity of styles and subject matter painted by Peco Yeh, the enigmatic twentieth-century artist. The girl is a rather standard renering of a Chinese child. The bubble she embraces is rendered with grace and finesse. We could call it a slice of life.
Compare this not only with my canvas—a mystical expression of a boatman on a misty morning—but also with pictures provided by Earline Dirks and Joshua Lowe.
Once again, we have a picture which hints at the multiplicity of styles and subject matter painted by Peco Yeh, the enigmatic twentieth-century artist. The girl is a rather standard renering of a Chinese child. The bubble she embraces is rendered with grace and finesse. We could call it a slice of life.
Compare this not only with my canvas—a mystical expression of a boatman on a misty morning—but also with pictures provided by Earline Dirks and Joshua Lowe.
Others who have contacted me and provided images of their Peco Yeh paintings include Earline Dirks and Joshua Lowe.
Chinese boy with lantern. Courtesy of Earline Dirks.
Street scene. Courtesy of Joshua Lowe.
If this keeps happening, this lowly blog may become the world’s leading collection of information about Peco Yeh.
(NOTE: The following offering is pure fiction. No chickens, roosters, donkeys, parakeets, or speckled trout were harmed in its production.)
I always figured I would wind up doing something remarkable, like disprove the Pythagorean theorem, or find a cure for chemistry.
Imagine my chagrin upon receiving in my mailbox a summons to show cause why I should not be disheveled for keeping more than six live chickens on a city lot.
Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell Douglas. Fair use.
It would be mortifying to go down in history as a poultry scofflaw, especially considering I don’t even like Buffalo wings.
Surely they’ve mistaken me for the guy down in the next block who’s always playing Green Acres on his brown furlong. Many’s the bright morning I’ve spotted him standing out in his driveway in vest and tie, seeming about to sing a hymn of praise to The American Farmer. If you ask me, he’s just the type of enthusiast who would breed an egregious brood.
There was a time when the city fathers had too much on their minds to bother with a thing like this. It’s not as if I had a rooster for my flock. That is, if I even had a flock—which I most definitely do not.
I have not a single hen. Why would I get a rooster? Those things go off at four a.m. and can be heard for miles around.
Gao Qipei (1660–1734), Braying Donkey (1713). Public Domain.
We once stayed at a vineyard in Tuscany where the vintner kept some sweet little donkeys. Each dawn, at the first ray, they brayed a paean to the sun god, demonstrating why they are called “mountain canaries.” At least they were cute, unlike any rooster you ever met.
But I digress.
Who You Gonna Call?
Æthelred the Unready. Public Domain.
The point is, I didn’t know what to do. So I called on Milo Bung.
My old schoolmate Milo—fourth cousin to Slats Grobnik and a direct descendant of King Æthelred the Unready—has a big reputation as the nemesis of all officials. He once reduced a building inspector to a heap of wilted artichoke leaves in under thirty seconds.
I don’t know how he does it, but in this hour of crisis, I want Milo on my side. Nonetheless, I hesitated several moments on Milo’s doorstep.
Finally, I took a deep breath and pressed the button.
The great man himself flung open the door. He was clad in smoking jacket, ascot, and waders. In a brief second, he discerned my status. Milo always could read me like a book.
“Hmm,” he frowned. “Well, you’d better come in, then.”
He withdrew from the door and led me through endless dim corridors to his sanctum sanctorum. I mean, his den.
Fly rods, woven wicker creels, hand nets, and all the impedimenta of the compleat angler lay strewn over every horizontal and vertical surface.
“Sit anywhere,” Milo said.
“Going fishing?”
Milo smiled. “Thought I’d sneak up on a few of those speckly little trout things. Season opens on Saturday.”
“May their finny tribe increase,” I replied. “Perhaps I could just set this tackle box on the floor for a moment.”
“Be my guest.”
“I am,” I reminded him. I shifted the tackle box and sat.
Down to Business
“Now,” Milo said. “What’s on your mind?”
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Don’t tell me. It’s the old excess urban fowl runaround, isn’t it?”
I stared at him. “How did you know?”
“Oh, they’ve got a little calendar down at City Hall. Last week in April, it’s time to hassle homeowners about hens.”
I whipped out my notice and brandished it in his face. “Look here!” I said with righteous anger. “I don’t even keep a parakeet, let alone a chicken.”
“Utterly irrelevant.”
“Is that so?” I huffed and puffed as he gazed on me with pity.
“Well,” I said after a decent interval. “What should I do?”
“Ignore it.”
Briar pipe, maybe a Kaywoodie. Photo by Petey21. Public Domain.
“Ignore it? An official summons from City Hall?”
Milo nodded, fiddling with a vintage Kaywoodie briar pipe.
“How can I ignore it?”
“You’ll be a sucker and a fool if you don’t.”
“Explain.”
Genius At Work
“When they send you a provocation like this, they mean for you to quail and quiver. It gives them shivers of joy, like a male grunion at the height of the run.” He tapped his Kaywoodie against the heel of his hand and dislodged a few shreds of stale tobacco into a large glass ashtray. “See, they want to get you on the run.”
“What good does ignoring the summons do?”
“It lures them into overplaying their hand.”
“How so?”
Milo chuckled. “They will descend on you with a flying squad of chicken inspectors, most likely backed up by a SWAT team.”
“A SWAT team?”
“Exactly. If you’re lucky, they’ll stage a three a.m. raid.”
“You call that lucky?”
“I should say so!” Milo packed fresh tobacco into the bowl of the pipe, tamping it down with his index finger. “If they make enough fuss, you’ve got them just where you want them.”
“I want them nowhere near my house, is where I want them!”
“Nevertheless, there they are. And no excess chickens to be found on said premises. You really don’t have more than six, do you?”
“I DON’T HAVE ANY CHICKENS AT ALL!!”
“No need to raise your voice. Now, it would help if you could arrange for Biff Brash and his Action TV News Crew to be there with cameras and lights—lots of lights—when the SWAT Team arrives.”
“Must we go to these lengths, Milo? At last, sir, have you no shame?”
He sucked on the stem of his pipe. “They’ll be so worried about a lawsuit for false prosecution—you’ll be exempt from even mowing your front lawn for at least two years.”
It’s All Upshot From Here
I stared at my old friend, not in a warm and cherishing way. “Aren’t you going to light that thing?” I asked.
His mouth twisted in horror around the stem of his Kaywoodie. “Light it? Start a conflagration in the house? Muriel would kill me.”
This from the fearless facer of SWAT teams.
Guess my chickens have come home to roost. I’ll just quietly pay the fine.
NOTE TO POTENTIALLY CONFUSED READERS: What you have just read should have been posted on April Fool’s Day. It is pure fantasy, every bit of it. Not one scintilla of fact. Except the donkeys. I distinctly remember the donkeys.
Storyteller near Cairo (1878) by Wilhelm Gentz (German, 1822-1890). Public Domain.
What is a story?
A story can be almost anything. We are so much accustomed to telling stories, stories are so ingrained in our psychic and physical makeup, that storytelling and storyhearing can be said to be an essential component of human-ness.
What is a good story? Ah, thereby hangs a tale.
Second Thoughts
“Where there is no vision,” observes the Book of Proverbs, “the people perish.”
Vision. Jewish Rabbi Reading The Bible To His Family (1816), by Alexander Lauréus (Finnish, 1783 – 1823). Public Domain.
But vision is hard.
Revision is easy. At least, I find it so.
Once there is something substantive down on paper, I can see that something is wrong with it, and I can fix that. Then, I can see that something else is wrong with it, and I can fix that. Eventually, by a painstakingly iterative process, I can get it down to where it’s pretty good.
But getting something substantive down on paper in the first place: that’s the hard part.
Where does that first thing come from?
A Deep Well
Some people believe that inside each one of us, there is a deep well of creativity just waiting to be released as a bubbling fountain of expression.
I find that is true, but it’s hard to get it started. The more I write, the easier it comes. But the pump needs priming.
Writing every day helps, because then you can just continue whatever you were in the midst of writing yesterday. But sooner or later, you finish that project—at least, you finish the first draft. Then, it is ever so tempting to lose yourself in almost endless revisions. That’s a lot more fun.
Red Smith, sportswriter. Fair use.
Red Smith said, “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Perhaps you wonder, Gentle Reader, why Your New Favorite Writer bores you with all this drivel.
Because I have to write something. That’s why.
I keep telling myself that once I get the first draft out on the page, then I can revise it and revise it to the point where you’ll find it noble and inspirational. Or at least acceptable.
Fellow writer Percy Dovetonsils. Public Domain.
“Aha! I’ve caught you out, O New Favorite Writer! You’re admitting, in black and white for all to see, that it’s all in the revision. In other words, writing the first draft is a mere formality. Perfectly trivial.”
Well, perhaps so, Dear Reader. But let me point out that if it were not for the every-Tuesday-morning character of this blog, I would not have written anything at all. Then where would my much-vaunted revision chops be, O Reader?
And it is the same across the board. I would not write this blog except for the deadline. I would not write a short story except for the need to prove I can write a short story. (The jury is still out.) I would not write a novel except for having gotten some screwball idea about a story I could tell in long form, and then feeling compelled to stick it through to the end.
“So, what are you kvetching about, O Writer? You impose all these deadlines and burdens on yourself.”
Yes, but complaining is half the joy.
Enough, Already
I’ll see you next week Fair Reader. After all, I’ve got a deadline.
Or rather, ahem, my short story, “Beast of the Moment,” is in it. (Page 171, if you must know.)
I am proud of this story, because it was good enough that editor Mandy Haynes deemed it worth publishing.
It has the three chief virtues of a good story: A beginning, a middle, and an end. (See Poetics vii. 2-3, by Mr. Aristotle, noted Greek philosopher.) It also has an interesting, and humane, subject: an old woman who loves dogs. So, yes, it’s a feel-good story—yet not pollyannish.
“Beast of the Moment” appeared in the June 2023 issue of WELL READ online magazine. If you wish, you can read it for free here.
But it also appears now in print, in this paperback anthology of 2023’s best pieces. I’m honored it is there. On page 171. I’d strongly advise you to acquire a copy, for it has not only my story but 37 other great pieces by a variety of authors. I read my way through it last week and liked what I saw. There were short prose pieces, both fiction and non-fiction, and a good sprinkling of original poems.
One piece that made a strong impression was “A Hard Dog,” by Will Maguire, starting on p. 20. It’s a story about a hard dog, and, well, it’s a hard story about a dog. It deals with the relationships between a forlorn man, his recent girlfriend, a stray dog, and the neighbors. There are points where it’s hard to read and you want to give up on it. But if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded. Maguire tells a hard story, but he tells it with skill and a certain amount of grace. Dog lover or otherwise, I recommend giving it a try.
The next story up is “Evolution of Love,” by the talented and persistent Rob Grindstaff. It’s a romance for the modern era, and it tells its tale with depth and imagination. I promise you’ll get involved in the developing love between positivistic scientist Steven and the faith-based nurturer Dempsey. And there’s a neat little twist at the end that could be magical realism . . . or something else entirely. Don’t miss it.
There’s a flashy story called “Silver Sequins,” by Joy Ross Davis, that will make you think twice. I call it “flashy” because, for one thing, it’s short enough to qualify as flash fiction. It has that nice quality of flash fiction, the quality of not filling you in on everything—just giving you the drift of it and letting you fill in the blanks. But it’s also flashy because its author’s narrative skills are displayed with brilliance and panache. Yeah, I confess: That’s really what I meant. And, just like the stories mentioned above, it’s about—would you believe?—relationships. A well-wrought story, worth a read.
There are pieces that may be fictional short stories but could be mini-memoirs, sprung directly from life. It’s hard to tell with “Choices,” by Robin Prince Monroe; “Waiting for a Signal,” by Jeffrey Dale Lofton; the sardonic “Obituaries,” by Rebecca Klassen; and “What We Keep, What We Throw Away,” by Phyllis Gobbell. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether they’re fact or fiction. Each of these little gems highlights a facet of life that feels as real and experiential as a dropped memory or a parent’s tear for a wayward child.
I fear that by mentioning certain stories I have slighted others. The truth is, they’re all good, all thought-provoking. And the same can be said for the many poems.
By the way, did I mention that my story “Beast of the Moment,” about an old widow and her long-time canine companion, appears beginning on p. 171?
If you’d like to read them all, the price is certainly right: $15.00 paperback, $5.99 Kindle. Get the anthology here.
Kudos to my friend Jerry Apps for reminding me that this week—April 7-13, 2024—is National Library Week. The theme this year, according to the American Library Association, is “Ready, Set, Library!”
Apart from the brutish verbing of an ancient and honorable noun, I endorse the sentiment.
Libraries, expecially local public libraries, are wonderful things.
“Libraries connect our communities and enrich our lives in ways we may not realize,” says National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and Newbery and Pura Belpré-award winning author Meg Medina, who serves as 2024 Honorary Chair.
Birth of a Bookworm
The first library where Your New Favorite Writer ever had borrowing privileges was the public library on Park Street in Streator, Illinois. I was astonished and proud to learn that, shucks, even kids in grade school could have library cards. I signed up and started reading books, one after another.
Streator’s Carnegie-built public library in 1903, still in daily use.
In those days, between the ages of six and twelve, I read what today we call kid lit. Adventures like Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson. Cowboy books like The Coming of Hopalong Cassidy. Horse books by Marguerite Henry, dog books by Albert Payson Terhune, Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight.
I read biographies especially written for children—thumbnail sketches of American heroes like Andrew Jackson, John C. Frémont, Lou Gehrig, and George Washington Carver. Casting my mind back to remember a children’s biography of a notable woman, I draw a blank. Sorry, dear—we just didn’t have them.
We had plenty of sports books, though, most of them written by Jackson Scholz or John R. Tunis. None of those books won the Newbery Medal or the Pura Belpré Award, but they were exciting and taught sportsmanship, persistence, self-respect, and consideration for others.
And then there was science fiction.
A great place to loiter. Photo from Streator Public Library website. Fair Use.
Dear Reader, when I was a boy, no actual human being had ever flown into space. But the feat had already been achieved many times over in the works of Robert Heinlein, Lester Del Rey, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.
My habit, when loitering—there is no better word for it—in the Streator Public Library, was to find a book that looked interesting, pull it off the shelf, and start reading. There in the cool stacks, I sat or squatted on the marble floor and read, sometimes as much as half a book before my stomach told me it was lunch time, or supper time. Then I would trot to the front desk, flash my library card, check out the book, and take it home to finish.
Carnegie Libraries
The library was a swell place to spend time, a temple of learning in its own right. It was one of 2,509 libraries built between 1883 and 1929 with money donated by Scottish-born steel magnate Andrew Carnegie—1,689 of them in the United States.
According to its website, “The Streator Public Library is a US Landmark Carnegie facility that was constructed in 1903. The Fuchs murals that were installed, around the interior of the lower dome, were painted on leather in a local shop and installed in 1905. The original grand stair case, woodwork, shelves, and stained glass are still in place. Many of the original oak tables are still utilized.”
Andrew Carnegie in 1913. Photo by Theodore Marceau. Public Domain.
Carnegie started his philanthropy by building a library in his birthplace of Dunfermline, Scotland. Then he gave a library to his adopted hometown of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and another to Braddock, Pennsylvania, the site of one of his steel mills.
Eventually, it got out of hand.
As Carnegie began to realize how much money he had, he entertained library proposals from all over. In 1897 he hired a personal assistant, James Bertram, and put him in charge of screening all the requests. They developed a questionnaire to determine whether a town applying for a library actually needed and could support one. They made sure local officials were committed to funding the ongoing costs in perpetuity.
Once a town was declared eligible to receive a Carnegie library, a handsome edifice was built—in any of several different styles, but with quality and elegance. It was almost always entered by a flight of stairs, symbolizing the elevation of the public mind through reading. There was also a lamp post or lantern near the entrance, a symbol of enlightenment.
Carnegie pioneered the open stack library. Until then, most library stacks were closed. You submitted a request for a book, and then a librarian went and got it for you. Carnegie figured self-service would reduce operating costs for libraries, and he was right.
But open stacks brought a greater risk of pilferage. So the circulation desks at Carnegie libraries are usually large, imposing, and placed conspicuously near the main entrance.
That Desk is a Friend of Mine
The new Endres circulation desk. Screenshot from Streator Public Library website. Fair use.
In 2013, a new circulation desk was installed at the Streator Public Library, dedicated to the memory of Oral and Dorothy Endres, the donor’s parents. As it happens, I remember Oral Endres. He was an insurance agent for Metropolitan Life. A nice man. When I was a boy, about seventy years ago, he spent time at our kitchen table often enough so I knew his name. He made sure we were adequately covered.
Mr. Endres’ son, who gave the new circulation desk, was not as big a donor as Andrew Carnegie; but it’s the thought that counts.
Visit your local library soon. While you’re there, take out a book.
The Zambezi River rolls across a vast plateau in southern Africa and falls into a deep cleft in the earth. This sudden descent is known as Victoria Falls.
Victoria Falls is twice as wide as Niagara, and twice as high. Though neither the widest nor the highest waterfall, when height and width are combined it is the largest sheet of falling water anywhere on the planet.
Your New Favorite Writer visited Africa a few years ago. On takeoff from the airport at Livingstone, Zambia, our pilot flew a slow S-curve at low altitude, so passengers on both sides of the plane could get a good gander at the falls.
It was an astonishing spectacle.
Another view of Victoria Falls. Photo by Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA.
The trench into which the Zambezi tumbles is cross-wise to the river. It is so wide, so narrow, and so deep that the water seems to plunge straight into the bowels of the earth. There is an outflow stream at the bottom of the gorge, but it is narrow, dwarfed by the immense falls.
Victoria Falls—white horizontal line in center—seen from the International Space Station. Public Domain.
Wait For It
I have reached that point in life when old friends, whom I’ve known for ages, are dropping dead one by one. It concentrates the mind. One dwells on death.
Now here, on a different continent, an image presented itself: Picture all of us, all humanity, moving across a wide plain. And somewhere in that plain is a crevasse. But it can’t be seen from any distance.
Perhaps the crevasse is crooked, so you may reach your part of it it before or after I reach my part of it, even though we march abreast.
From my point of view, a friend or aquaintance suddenly drops out of view—yet here I am, still sauntering forward. Someday, without warning, it will be me—and people I know will keep strolling or marching along, wondering what became of me.
Now, Here’s the Payoff
Like the waters of the Zambezi, I may appear to have been swallowed whole. But actually, I will just flow out sideways, like everyone else, through new channels, into wide lakes, past twisty creeks and broad estuaries, to God’s eternal sea.
We are in Holy Week, the name Christians give to the time between Palm Sunday and Easter.
Your New Favorite Writer was going to expound on holiness but found he is not yet grown-up enough to write on that subject in a sensible way.
So, maybe next year. I’ll be 79 then.
But now, for Something Completely Different:
Meeting Steve Canyon
We turn a page from the sacred to the profane.
I have just read Meeting Steve Canyon . . . and Flying With the CIA in Laos, by Karl L. Polifka. It’s a memoir of a particular time and place in the Vietnam War.
Thinking men, in war, may notice a discrepancy between facts and ideals. So it was with Polifka. A U.S. Air Force pilot, he was assigned as a forward air controller, or FAC, in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.
A Cessna O-1F Bird Dog takes off in South Vietnam, 1968. This aircraft was later used by the Ravens in Laos. USAF Photo.
Polifka’s job was to scout enemy assets and troop formations from a slow-moving, propeller-driven aircraft—an O-1, a U-17, or a T-28—to mark enemy positions with phosphorus-tipped rockets, and to direct fighter/bombers to attack the places marked by his rockets.
Sounds simple, right? In reality it was a severe task, which called for technical skills, sharp reflexes, steel nerves, and iron resolve in the face of physical and psychic trauma.
A T-28D Trojan trainer of the Royal Thai Air Force waits for takeoff beside a U.S. Air Force F-4D Phantom, 1972. The T-28 trainer is like the ones used by the Ravens. Public Domain.
Polifka believed in the cause. He appears never to have suffered the deep doubts developed by some fighters in the long Southeast Asian war.
But the job required mental toughness and gave many opportunities for an intelligent observer—which Polifka clearly was—to question the utility, even the sanity, of operational tactics.
Flying out of Gia Nghia, in the Central Highlands, Polifka ran afoul of “pre-plans,” operations concocted by shadowy experts at Seventh Air Force headquarters. He often felt the pre-plans were not informed by good knowledge of actual conditions on the ground.
Steve Canyon, as drawn by Milton Caniff. Fair use.
When Polifka grew tired of the routine at Gia Nghia, someone suggested he tell his supervisor he was “interested in Steve Canyon.” Uncertain what the phrase might imply, he did what was suggested. His supervisor frowned but in due course of time a transfer came through. “Steve Canyon” turned out to be an unofficial cover name for a clandestine project in Laos.
If the name doesn’t ring an immediate bell for you, Steve Canyon was the hero of an Air Force-themed adventure comic strip drawn by writer-artist Milton Caniff from 1947 to 1988. Steve Canyon the action hero was very well-known, but the program in Laos that bore his name was hush-hush.
A Fine Mess
The Kingdom of Laos, officially neutral, was used by North Vietnam as a conduit for troops, arms, and provisions bound for South Vietnam, where the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and its allies the Viet Cong fought the South Vietnamese Army and its allies including the United States. Other players in Laos included Communist Pathet Lao guerilla forces interested in overthrowing the royal government, plus both left-neutralist and right-neutralist armies.
It was a mess created by a major power vacuum in close proximity to a hot war.
Because of the theoretical neutrality of Laos and the desire to appear righteous on the world stage, U.S. operations in the kingdom, though undertaken to support our official and public Vietnam war effort, were partly dissociated from regular military channels.
Polifka and the other Steve Canyon controllers, known as Ravens, got their targeting priorities from CIA case officers on the ground and from General Vang Pao, an ethnic Hmong in the Royal Lao Army leading his people against the Communists.
Gen. Vang Pao is the face in center, under a tan cap, behind the shoulder of King Savang Vatthana, the big guy in tan uniform, shown at a 1968 royal visit to Sam Thong, Laos. Photo by NruasPaoYPP, licensed under CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Officers at U.S. Seventh Air Force resented these arrangements. A conference had to be called to allocate air strikes in Laos. The conferees decreed that sixty percent of ordnance dropped would be directed by Ravens and the remaining forty percent by Seventh Air Force controllers.
The Nitty Gritty
These matters of protocol and bureaucratic infighting are only the background. Most of Polifka’s book is a retail account of dozens of deadly fights in the hills and valleys of Laos, centered on the plateau known as the Plain of Jars—Plaines des Jarres in French, abbreviated PDJ.
On one level, Polifka’s narrative is a persistent justification of the tactics developed by the Ravens, the CIA, and the Hmong fighters and their work as a successful team defending the Hmongs’ lands and villages, as well as a condemnation of unsuccessful and ham-handed operations undertaken by higher headquarters.
More basically, it is a tale of merciless slaughter. The telling is cumbered with a heavy load of jargon—CBU-24s and PTs and T-76s and 12.7s in bewildering variety—which the reader must struggle through to get the story. It’s a tough go, even for a reader with a military background.
But the reward for coping with all the acronyms and terms of art is a story that is steeped in authenticity. There can be no doubt that with minimal exaggerations and simplifications, this narrative presents the day-by-day reality that the Ravens and their comrades-in-arms lived. Getting that story is a fairly grim reward, yet it’s an important story, told by a combatant who had both a bird’s-eye and a worm’s eye view.
Memories Triggered
These events interest me because during this period, 1968 and 1969, I was immersed in the same war—mercifully for me, at a greater level of abtraction.
While Karl Polifka and his cohorts felt the heat of anti-aircraft and mortar fire zoomed through at tree-top level, I and other members of my squadron soared blissfully overhead in RC-130 and 135 spy aircraft, intercepting radio signals at altitudes of 30,000 to 39,000 feet.
We flew some missions from Cam Ranh Bay up and down the Mekong River for several hundreds of miles. Where Polifka and his fellow Ravens kept constant lookout for 12.7mm, 14.5 mm, and 37 mm anti-aircraft fire, we had no worries except the remote chance that the NVA might bring in 85mm or 100mm cannons somewhere along our route. Even the 57mm artillery they did have spotted along the Mekong could only reach 28,000 feet.
So Polifka’s war and mine were the same war. But the nature of my mission and the organizations that oversaw it placed me in a different context than his. My role was the bland gathering of intelligence, little of it related to immediate action, most of it valued for long-term analysis of enemy capabilities and intentions.
EC-121 aircraft on the ramp at Korat RTAFB. USAF photo.
An F-4 Phantom jet releases its bombs. USAF photo.
Polifka mentions with admiration F-4E pilots out of Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base who could shred ground targets with great finesse. There were times I flew out of Korat on EC-121 airborne control platforms, and when near the flight line I saw fully-loaded F-4s screaming off with a great bang of their afterburners. Some of these must have been the same guys Polifka worked with over the Plain of Jars.
As Close As I Care to Get
Sometimes I did glimpse the grim realities of the war.
One night after dark, riding at 30,000 feet back to Cam Ranh Bay from one of our Mekong River flights, white flashes splashed into our compartment from outside. Crowding the side window, we saw what looked like an intense thunderstorm over central Laos. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of white flashes, closely spaced, at intervals less than a second.
“Those are ARC LIGHT sorties,” said our pilot. “Buffs dropping their payloads. Each flash is a 500- or 750-pound bomb exploding on impact.”
How could anyone, or anything at all, live under such a heavy rain?
At Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, we used to watch B-52 Stratofortress bombers—“buffs,” in Air Force slang. They were something beautiful to see—ungainly yet graceful at the same time—slipping down over the ocean, crossing the shore on final approach.
B-52 landing at Guam. U.S. Air Force photo.
Each buff carried fifty or more bombs. “Between June 1965 and August 1973, the Strategic Air Command scheduled 126,663 Stratofortress combat sorties, of which 126,615 were actually launched. The number of aircraft reaching the target area was 125,479 with 124,532 successfully releasing their bombs on the targets.” (https://media.defense.gov/2017/Mar/28/2001722969/-1/-1/0/04-ILL_HIST_CH08-CH10_(PAGES149-200).PDF, Ch. VII, “B-52 Arc Light Operations,” p. 167.)
Readers of historical fiction or nonfiction are not always familiar with military life and customs.
A cavalry battle scene by Philips Wouwerman. Public Domain.
So here is a short primer. If you already know this stuff, check back next Tuesday, when we’ll be up to something completely different.
If you are still here, fasten your seat belt.
Military Organizations
An army—American or foreign, present or past—breaks down into smaller units. Speaking in a general way, these are:
Squad: Four to twelve soldiers.
Platoon: Thirty to forty.
Company: A hundred or more, usually.
Regiment: Roughly a thousand.
Brigade: Two to five thousand.
Division: Ten to forty-five thousand.
Corps: Twenty to eighty thousand.
(Note: The plural of corps is corps, and the -ps is silent in both cases, so it’s pronounced core. Also, the word “corps” sometimes denotes not the large unit between a division and an army, but rather the whole group of people dedicated to a certain function, as in the Marine Corps, the Signal Corps, or the Medical Corps. The only way to avoid confusion is to consider the context.)
Army: Fifty thousand up to half a million men.
The Army—that is, a nation’s whole army: May comprise several smaller armies, operating in different regions.
The actual numbers vary a lot, depending on nation, historical period, organizational doctrines, recruiting and retention success, and attrition during war operations.
Grant’s Army of the Tennessee numbered 48,000 at the Battle of Shiloh, April 1862. And it was only one part of the whole Union Army. Illustration by Thure de Thulstrup (1848–1930). Public Domain.
Each unit contains a few of the next smaller-sized unit. Thus, a company may be four platoons plus a handful of command and staff personnel; a regiment may be ten companies plus command and staff. In some armies, at some times, there have also been battalions of several companies within a regiment—but that’s a pettifogging detail. Also, in the American Civil War Confederate regiments were about half the size of Union regiments—in other words five hundred troops rather than a thousand.
The point, for purposes of reading fiction: Squads and platoons engage in small firefights. It takes regiments, brigades, and divisions to fight a large battle. And if you have officers discussing the movements and operations of whole corps and armies, they are probably in a major command headquarters or a national capitol, pushing markers around on a map or sand table, far removed from actual fighting.
Pulling Rank
Rank indicates both authority and status within the military. Rank is a complex topic, partly because there are two separate, overlapping, simultaneously operating systems of rank.
A simple way to put it is that the large body of enlisted men is commanded by commissioned officers but overseen, guided, and led by noncommissioned officers who are themselves drawn from the body of enlisted soldiers.
Commissioned officers and their insignia of rank, from bottom up, are:
Second Lieutenant (gold bar)
First Lieutenant (silver bar)
Captain (two silver bars)
Major (gold oak leaf)
Lieutenant Colonel (silver oak leaf)
Colonel (silver eagle)
Brigadier General (one silver star)
Major General (two stars)
Lieutenant General (three stars)
General (four stars)
General of the Army (five stars)
Oy vay! What a mess.
Perhaps you noticed that three different levels of rank are designated “lieutenant.” But they are not the same. A lieutenant is the lowest form of life among commissioned officers, but a lieutenant general is one of the lords of the army. A lieutenant colonel in somewhere in between.
If you must simplify the title of a lieutenant colonel, call him “colonel” rather than “lieutenant.” The same goes double for a lieutenant general.
Two different ranks have “major” in their titles.
You may address any of the general officers as “general,” but don’t call any of them “lieutenant” or “major.” You will be demoting them, at least in speech. They will not appreciate it.
A major outranks a lieutenant; but a major general is beneath a lieutenant general.
That’s the army for you.
The main thing is that higher ranks command larger units than lower ranks. A lieutenant might command a platoon; a colonel might command a regiment; a major general might command a division, and so forth. Over the history of warfare, there have been many exceptions to these rules of thumb, but higher rank normally denotes greater power.
So if you read a work in which a general commands only a company of troops, all I can say is there has been terrible attrition in his ranks. On the other hand, if a captain commands a division, all the higher-ranking officers must have endured mass slaughter. Such extreme disjunctions of rank and authority seldom if ever occur.
So, Who Runs the Army?
That’s easy: The noncoms run the army. Everybody knows it and all acknowledge it.
Noncommissioned officers are drawn from the privates and work their way up. The lowest level noncom is called a corporal; he may lead a squad. The next level up is called a sergeant—pronounced SAR-jent. The rest of the noncoms are all sergeants, but there are many levels of them. The way you can tell them apart is by the number of chevrons and “rockers” on their sleeves.
Specific nomenclature varies with time and place, but here are the noncommissioned ranks in today’s U.S. Army:
Chevrons, rockers, and star denoting a sergeant major.
Corporal
Sergeant
Staff Sergeant
Sergeant First Class
Master Sergeant/First Sergeant
Sergeant Major
Command Sergeant Major
A Master Sergeant and First Sergeant in today’s army are the same thing, only with somewhat different job responsibilities. There is a rank called “Command Sergeant Major of the Army,” but it is simply a special case of the Command Sergeant Major, whose job is to be the senior enlisted advisor for a particular (large) unit.
As with commissioned officers, noncommissioned officers of higher rank have wider responsibilities. A corporal or sergeant may lead a squad—too small a unit to have a commissioned officer in command. At the platoon level, a commissioned officer, a lieutenant, is the commander; but there is also a sergeant, or a staff sergeant, who is the “platoon sergeant.” He advises the platoon commander on decisions to be made, and once those decisions are made, he delegates particular squads, teams, or soldiers to carry them out. Platoon sergeants do a lot of coaching, helping soldiers perform their tasks as ordered.
In lower-level units—platoons and companies—the unit NCO usually has more experience and practical knowledge than the relatively junior officer in command. Therefore, young lieutenants are advised to be guided, even in combat decisions, by their sergeants.
In larger units such as brigades and divisions, the commanders do not rely so much on their command sergeants major for advice, but they do lean on them heavily to anticipate, prevent, or iron out problems of discipline, morale, or training among the enlisted troops.
Thus, command of units is generally a cooperative venture of commissioned and noncommissioned leaders. In European armies well into the twentieth century most of the officers were members of the titled aristocracy: dukes, earls, viscounts, barons, and knights. The private soldiers were drawn from the serfs on the aristocrats’ estates, and the more capable and aggressive among them were appointed as corporals and sergeants. Today, in most armies, the class distinction is more along educational lines. Commissioned officers come into the army with college degrees.
The arrangements sketched above for the army generally hold true for the marine corps and the air force as well. The units may be described differently, but the names of the ranks are similar to those of the army. In the U.S. Air Force today, privates and corporals are known as airmen. But they are ruled by lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels, and generals—whose orders are mediated by various kinds of sergeants—just as in the Army.
What About the Squids?
The Navy is a whole different thing. They have their own way of talking.
The principal fighting unit around navies are organized is the ship. The number of sailors depends on the size of the ship. An aircraft carrier is like a brigade or division in the army. A whole fleet of ships may equate to an army corps. A destroyer or other small ship may be something like a company or regiment.
Most naval terminology is unique. Floors are decks, walls are bulkheads, stairs are companionways, and so forth. Likewise, naval ranks are denominated by mostly different terms.
Ensign
Lieutenant Junior Grade
Lieutenant
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Rear Admiral Lower Half
Rear Admiral Upper Half
Vice Admiral
Admiral
Fleet Admiral
The insignia for these ranks are the same as those for the same-level rank in the army—gold or silver bars, oak leaves, eagles, or stars—but the navy also has sleeve insignia that denote the ranks by gold rings around the cuff.
Even where the navy uses the same words as the army, they mean different things. A lieutenant in the U.S. Navy is equal in rank to a captain in the Army; a captain in the Navy is equal to a colonel in the Army.
Noncoms in the Navy are not sergeants but petty officers.
Petty Officer Third Class
Petty Officer Second Class
Petty Officer First Class
Chief Petty Officer
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Master Chief Petty Officer
Fleet/Command Master Chief Petty Officer
Odds and Ends
I have outlined only the generality of military organization and command hierarchy. In reading, you will encounter numerous exceptions in different countries and historical periods.
The U.S. Naval officer today known as a Rear Admiral Lower Half was once called Commodore.
At the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, the highest-ranking naval officers were called flag officers, the designation changed back to admiral partway through the war.
In the British Army, what we call lieutenants are known as subalterns. It’s worth noting that, when the British do call their lieutenants lieutenants, they pronounce it LEF-tenant, unlike us colonials, who pronounce it LOO-tenant.
And the British equivalent of a U.S. five-star general (General of the Army) is called a field marshal.
George C. Marshall, the first five-star general. Public Domain.
When the United States instituted the five-star rank, partway through the Second World War, one thought was to follow the Brits’ practice and call it field marshall. But our chief general was George C. Marshall, and it was thought that “Field Marshal Marshall” would just sound silly. So they made it General of the Army. Only five men, to date, have worn that rank:
George C. Marshall
Douglas Macarthur
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Henry H. Arnold
Omar Bradley
All were World War II leaders of world stature.
Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr. in 1945. Public Domain.
Five-star fleet admirals in the Navy, created about the same time, were:
William Halsey Jr.
William D. Leahy
Ernest King
Chester W. Nimitz
No U.S. officers of any service branch have been appointed to that rank since.
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Enough soldier and sailor talk for now. Check in next week for something equally riveting.
As an old man, it’s easy to see I’ve had a wonderful life, filled with joy, love, and satisfaction.
At age twelve, however, things were not that rosy. Happiness sometimes seemed out of reach.
Casting a fond eye back on the 1950s, I have written a little book about a twelve-year-old boy and his hopes.
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His name is Izzy Mahler.
A secret spring: In the New England Woods (1855–65), oil on canvas, by Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826-1900), Public Domain.
Izzy lives in Plumb—an ordinary town sprinkled with a few magical places, like Patch Pagelkopf’s basement . . . the Public Library . . . and the dark, jungly Bottoms, where lustrous minerals lurk in a secret spring of water, waiting to be discovered.
Izzy’s great hope is to be one of the gang, not stand out as the youngest and smallest of his classmates. Fifty-one percent of his brain teems with schemes to fit in, while another fifty-one percent struggles to keep his family together. At times it seems his brain must burst.
Mom and Dad, caught in the grim world of adulthood, act like people from a strange planet. Izzy’s favorite grandpa languishes in a far-away hospital. And Izzy must keep his sister, Christine, from learning how dire things are—because she’s, like, a lttle kid, you know.
Extra money might ease the strains on his family, but Izzy has made a pact with his blood brother Collum to keep mum about the gold from the secret spring.
Everything comes crashing down when the Russians launch Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. It’s a vile trick to cheat the U.S. of its proper place in Space and make aspiring spacemen Izzy and Collum live out their lives as grim adults on Planet Earth.
What can a twelve-year-old do, in 1957?
You’ll have to read the book to find out.
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An eleven-year-old boy in 1956.
Izzy Strikes Gold!is a middle-grade novel. Boys and girls from ten to fourteen will identify with Izzy and his friends—steadfast Collum, bellicose Lyle Haycock, enchanting Irma Ruger, and the mystifying Mutt-mutt Corner.
But their grandparents—folks of an age with Your New Favorite Writer—will also enjoy this serio-comic journey into the rosy land of the past.
Publication is scheduled for July. We’ll have a big launch party. If you’re in or near Madison, Wisconsin, please come help us launch this lovely book. If not, tune in by Zoom.
In the weeks leading up to publication, you’ll be able to order Izzy Strikes Gold! at a special discount. I’ll let you know when pre-orders open.
Thanks for your constant support in these endeavors.
In the Old Testament Book of Exodus, God revealed himself to a man named Moses in the semblance of a burning bush. Moses thought it odd that although the bush was aflame, it was not consumed by the fire. So he decided to take a closer look.
Landscape with Moses and the Burning Bush (1610–16) by Domenichino (Italian, 1581-1641). Public Domain.
When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
—Exodus 3:4-5, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition
One must not go shod, you see, on holy ground.
Writing a Sermon
Dear Reader, you already know Your New Favorite Writer is . . . a writer.
I’ve written many things: Utilitarian items like training manuals, instructions, official reports, news releases, magazine articles, photo captions, even the occasional speech. Literary products like poems, screenplays, short stories, and novels. Desultory or occasional outbursts like this blog.
You may be unaware that I also write sermons. I don’t mean sermons in a figurative sense, like “Did you see Larry’s rant about civil public discourse last Tuesday? It was a regular sermon!”
No, I mean actual sermons. I sometimes preach on a Sunday morning, because I am a lay preacher in the Congregational tradition. Some denominations only allow ordained clergy to preach, but in our chuches, official credentials are not necessarily required. It’s more about being called to preach the Gospel.
A local church may be deprived of its regular preacher for a time. My name is on a list of people who may be called to fill in. This week I am readying a sermon to be preached in a small town a couple of Sundays from now.
Sermon writing is not like any other kind of writing. It’s not just that it must be from the heart; all good writing should come from one’s heart. It’s not even, exactly, that it’s informed by the Spirit of God; I like to think the Holy Spirit is there somehow in everything I do.
But mainly, this is writing produced on commission for a Very Special Customer. When writing a sermon, and when delivering it, one stands in the presence of God. One ought to go barefoot.
The Homiletic Tradition
Some preachers, taking a cue from Exodus 3, go so far as to stand barefoot, or stockingfooted, in the pulpit when preaching on Sunday morning. (They do! You could look it up.)
Some preachers don’t even write their sermons down—convinced, as a theological tenet, that when preaching, they must simply be a spontaneous instrument, tuned in to God’s frequency. The Almighty will put words in their mouths at the right time. And He always does. Almost all of those whose preaching is completely spontaneous also spend a great deal of time reading Scripture. When God gives them a message on the spur of the moment, Bible verses are automatically embedded in it.
George Whitefield. Engraved by J. Cochran, 1877. Public Domain.
Jonathan Edwards, mezzotint print from Welsh Portrait Collection. Public Domain.
Methodist evangelist George Whitefield (1714-1770) made up his sermons on the spot. Congregationalist cleric Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) mostly wrote his out in advance.
I, like Edwards, write my sermons. I write what I want to say, so that when it comes time to say it, I will remember what it was I wanted to say. A revelation is neither more nor less divine for having been written on paper before it is spoken.
Authenticity
“All well and good, O New Favorite Writer,” I hear you cry—“but how do you get the divine part in, in the first place? How do you know that you are preaching what God wants people to hear? Or are you merely an unshod charlatan, after all?”
I am glad you asked, Gentle Reader.
I think my sermons have some spiritual validity because I start from the Bible. When preachers write sermons, there are generally two different ways of “starting from the Bible”:
1. Refer to the lectionary. The lectionary is a table that associates a set of scripture passages with each Sunday of the year. It was worked out, many years ago, by clergy who wanted a systematic way for a congregation to work through large parts of the Bible over a three-year period. So the lectionary repeats itself every three years. And its pattern is complicated. But it’s all written down, so on any given Sunday, you can easily find out what the readings are. In some chuches, use of the lectionary is law; in others, it’s a respected tradition. Still others disregard the lectionary entirely.
2. Use some other method. You simply choose a Bible verse to preach about. You may pray to God for a passage of Scripture to be sent to you. You may reflect on something important the congregation ought to hear, and your reflections may put you in mind of something from the Bible. You may don a blindfold, open the Bible to a random page, put your finger down on the page, take off the blindfold, and see what you’re going to preach on. Any of these methods, or others, can work; any of them can be useful if you are preaching in a church that does not use the lectionary but prefers to leave the choice of text to the preacher.
Which method do I use? Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Mostly it depends on the local custom of the church I’m addressing. If they love the lectionary, far be it from me to disturb their idyll; I’ll simply preach on the lectionary text. If they are lectionary-independent, I will find a verse on my own.
More important than the specific verse chosen is the approach and attitude of the preacher. This brings us back to the burning bush, and the sandals. When preaching a sermon, one stands quite consciously in the presence of God. It is presumptuous to speak a word purporting to be God’s word, when in the actual presence of God. The only approopriate attitude is humility, whether one shucks one’s oxfords or not.
So when starting to write, before I open the Book to the verse chosen, I first pray to God that a new understanding of the verse may be sent through the Holy Spirit. That’s a good approach. If you pray thus, and pray sincerely, something interesting and useful will pop off the page and into your consciousness. Then it’s just a matter of writing it down.
Chutzpah
What gives one the sheer, gosh-awful audacity to write messages on behalf of God, for delivery to God’s people?
While God was speaking to Moses from the burning bush, he commissioned Moses to go to the pharaoh of Egypt and liberate the Children of Israel held in thrall there. And Moses said, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you.”
But Moses continued to demur. His Impostor Syndrome prompted this plea: “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” And God replied, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” (Exodus 4:10-12, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition.)
There are many more examples of people wholly unqualified to speak for God, who have been commissioned by God to do so anyway.
The Bottom Line
I have received the gift of writing. I believe in the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and someone has to speak to his people on Sunday mornings. So here I am, Lord: Send me.
