Professor Hale at Rebellion University has been sharing stories from his past. While they aren’t technically war stories because none involve actual combat, they are both funny and entertaining. As far as I can tell the first story in the series is My First Time from back in mid July. However you could just as well read them in reverse order, starting with the most recent: Ranger School Ch5: Pain.
One of the most common injuries at Ranger school is getting a sharp stick in your eye. If you have ever heard the expression, “It hurts less than a sharp stick in your eye”, you get the idea. This expression was invented at Ranger school.
Here is an excerpt from his story Carried Away: Another story of my wild youth:
It seems the clear spot I found was only clear because tens of millions of ants had worked very hard to keep it that way. This was their superhighway from the hill to the fields. And right at that moment they were trying to figure out why there was something in their path and how they were going to remove it. I don’t speak “ant” very well, but I think the winning strategy had something to do with cutting me up into small, “ant sized” pieces.
I was not getting stung or cut up only because ants live in a highly organized society with a very strong union. The ants that found me were the scouts and scouts are not allowed to do any cutting. Then the porter ants arrive and I was too big to port, so thirty thousand of them are just sitting around waiting for the cutting ants to arrive. And I could tell by the looks on their little faces that “no, you are not counting this as my coffee break”.
Professor Hale has a gift for story telling and if he ever does write that book he is threatening to write, I’ll buy it and read it.
Yes, he’s a talented writer.His style flows easily and as clear as an azure sky.
This flowing style is what makes NY best sellers lists,and successful career writers.
Books written in such a style are often very hard to put down,and must be read cover to cover in a single sitting,even at the cost of sleep.
Wow. Thanks for the kind remarks guys.
LOL, great writing professor hale. It seems your eperiences in the military mightily match my own.
One thing I never heard while I was in was “it was my fault!” Don’t even know why I bother to put the quote marks in, not like I am quoting anyone in the service.
Love the Ant in relation to a union. That was funny.
I had a supervisor in the military who hated my guts, the feeling was mutual he was such an obstinate-communist-pric, bragged about communism all the time and how it was better; he was only in for the benefits. He was an idiot, but he could manage, take the credit for crap he did not do, and pick on guys (other than me, I was a lot bigger than him) below him. When I made rank really quickly he s### bricks, and did his best to ensure I would not make the next one. Seems to be tit for tat anywhere in the military save where bullets are known to fly. Bullets don’t lie, people do, but when a bullet is half-way up your own arse and you have to explain how you got it there; well you get the idea.
I guess my point is the military is becoming its own union with all these douche bag equal opportunity chicas, and their new gay friends joining in droves, they needed to get rid of straight guys like me. Fact of the matter is they think they can make a perfect solution to checkmate in any situation, and make it tetbook reading. Good luck with that. The enemy is not going to care how fashinonable your uniforms are, if you need a coffee break, whether you need time to breast feed; they are just going to kick your arse if you are not ready.
Like you, I see a bunch of ants waiting for someone else to give the go ahead, while enemy boots trample them underfoot. That is, if they could ever do it without men. I guess the enemy should be more friendly to a positive messaged, family-friendly, pro-female work environment?
@ EB,
No worries. The armies of the rest of the world are much worse off than we are. On top of all our problems you can add corruption and tribalism.
The military is basically a front nowadays, a parade as a focal point
The REAL military today is mostly made up of mercernaries & criminals, just like the police system
Private companies rule the military, ie Black Water, private companies rule the police system
Unaccountable mercenaries & criminals make the best soldiers & cops
@ clair. I don’t believe there are more gays in the military than anywhere else in society. There were a lot fewer of them when the military was decidedly not friendly to gays. Gay men join the army for a lot of the same reasons that straight men do: College money, get out of hometown, see the world, become a man, whatever. DADT codified an insane policy that illegal behavior was OK if you got away with it. That is always the case, but not something you want written into law. The real exception to gay recruitment into the military is among the women. Much higher percentage than in the rest of society. And they don’t even do a good job hiding it.
@Mack, That’s a real nice opinion you got there. It’d be a shame if anything were to happen to it.
[D: My apologies. Clair is a troll.]
respect for our warriors.
and respect for a fellow storyteller. It’s not as easy as it looks.
Pingback: Linkage Is Good For You – 8-5-12 | Society of Amateur Gentlemen
My brother-in-law is in the United States military, defending your right to live in a free country where you can run your big mouth.
You’re not worthy to lick his boots.
My main observation,about why the Hale’s writing is so unique:
He is writing about
his unique male experience in a male saturated environment and NEVER ONCE did he pollute his writing with references to home life or his woman outside the service.
That’s what made it sweet, it was pure uncut masculinity.
Please God,don’t let the prof get drawn into a gender queer debate!
Hey man, just write from the soul,and make no concessions.
An article free of feminine influence is so rare these days.Comparable to platinum plated Sterling silver,with no chinks or breaks for the corrosion to get in.
Silence is preferable to dialectic masturbation.
God help us clean our minds of the corrosion.
The fact is it used to be,and perhaps may be still that a young man entering the service was sexually inexperienced,and learning how to fight for his country was the main impetus towards his manhood.
To corrupt and disrupt that purity of experience with implied false allegations of perversion is something only the wicked would do.
Sad to see it’s not spotted quicker,and more men should post and just say “good going man.”
There is no need to respond to sick minds.
Speaking of uncut masculinity:
That is exactly why Hemingway (and other Great Writers) got and kept their rep.
A sweet breath of fresh untainted air.
BTW:
For those “intellectuals” out there:
Not every discussion has to devolve into whom is doing what with their crotch.
The work in under discussion did not.
That’s why it’s beautiful.
Why ya gotta go and crush the beautiful thing?
I suppose i could post a story about sex at Ranger school. But I don’t recall the subject ever coming up.
http://www.amazon.com/America-democracy-country-Bumper-Sticker/dp/B001B11J8Y
So, it becomes an anti-war anti-Bush platform for some.
Nice….
Sheesh, the post and the stories are about people.
As a twist on Monty Python bit, while the rest “sit on our spotty behind squeezing black heads”
Dalrock,
Thanks again for the link. Your readers have more than doubled my normal traffic. If only there were a way to make money from that instead of just stroking my ego.
While there are dirtbags in the military, as everywhere else, I found the vast majority of the people I served with, warts and all, were of a superior cut of cloth compared to the civilians I now work with. Some deployments and a couple UN stints taught me that even a lot of nations that are hostile or borderline hostile to the U.S. produce soldiers who are of good character in most respects, certain vices associated with young men in the military (prostitution, booze, gold bricking) notwithstanding. If they said they’d be some place, or that they’d have your back, by God they would. They didn’t mind ripping off the supply depot – hey, if there’s a pile of stuff, it’s probably surplus – but they’d beat a barracks thief with their bare hands because it’s dishonorable to steal from your mates. They wouldn’t lie about anything important, particularly not about anything that goes to combat readiness. You know all the garbage we talk about, what it means to be a man and that sort of thing? Well, nobody has to ask that in the military. Follow the behavioral norms and you will be most of the way there.
Of course there was a percentage of gangsters; for some reason, these gravitated toward supply and administrative jobs, and every unit has its ten percenters, so-called because that seems to be a universal constant for the number of non-hackers anywhere in the world, except for Special Forces. But the gangsters and non-hackers were a very small number in an otherwise very honorable little universe.
Professor, I shall have to take a gander at your site when I get the chance. The excerpts were pretty good.
The subject of mercenaries/foreign volunteers/professional soldiers is an interesting one. Might be worth looking at if the subject goes on.
I do have a fiew thoughts on that.
Here you go. http://rebeluniv.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-dalrock-has-noticed-me-for-my.html
He’s moved: http://newrebeluniv.wordpress.com/war-stories/
The old links don’t work.