Presenting Bullshit – An Ode to Military Humor

If you have read my recent posts, you know that I have been discussing my family’s departure from Hawaii on our way to Tacoma enroute to North Dakota and the East Coast.  I was ultimately headed to the East Coast to Fort Lee, Virginia to attend the Logistics Executive Development Course.  The stops in Tacoma and North Dakota were to visit relatives.  That reminds me, I should probably tell you my theory of relatives sometime.  Not now, but some other time.  See, Einstein had his theory of relativity.  Well, my theory is kinda like that.  Only, my theory is about relatives.  Kinda neat, huh?  Oh yeah, the stop in North Dakota was also to retrieve my red Chevy van.  Well, I have talked about our journey across the United States to get to Fort Lee, Virginia.  We had some interesting exploits along the way and you can read about those exploits in some of my recent posts.  After arriving at Fort Lee, Virginia, I spent some time in my most recent posts talking about finding a place to live.  I mentioned in one post that we found a place in a trailer park in Petersburg.  And I mentioned in that post my sentiments about the manager of that trailer park.  But my family and I decided not to let that pickup driving, backwoods dwelling, varmint hunting, shotgun hauling trailer park manager interfere with our ability to get along and adapt to our new environment.  Even though we were treated as if we were “other-colored” people, we learn to improvise, overcome and adapt.  My son was getting along just fine and playing with his friends and time moved on.  Well, as I said, time moved on.  My family all got integrated into life at Petersburg and Fort Lee.  Even I got accustomed to life at Petersburg and Fort Lee.  My running routine began once more, I ran through those woods pretty much every evening after school without fail.  And if you read my most recent post, you no doubt read about the orchestrated run that was thrown together by the cadre at the Logistics Executive Development Course.  Well, that’s great, that’s keen, that’s fine, that’s dandy.  However, I am done talking about running.  Yessiree Bob and don’t call me Bob.  The next couple of stories will delve into classroom theatrics.  No.  We didn’t perform in any movies or shows or plays or skits.  We didn’t do any acting and we didn’t star in any Broadway musicals.  None of that jazz.  But let me give you an idea of what I mean by theatrics.  For example: one class had to deal with country briefs.  If you already know what a country brief is, great.  If you don’t, a quick synopsis is that a country brief lays out a brief description of a country’s government, it’s gross national product (GNP), gross domestic product (GDP), emergency preparedness, military strength, military defense posture, climate, weather, terrain, avenues of approach, military-industrial infrastructure, and leisure pastimes and activities.  Generally, all US military students are required to provide a country brief on a country other than the United States to which they have spent significant time assigned.  Foreign military students are generally allowed to provide a country brief on their native country.  The cadre generally allows foreign military students to present the country brief in their native tongue, or language.  That being the case, I thought that I would brief my chosen country brief in Korean since my country brief was to be given on the Republic of Korea (South Korea).  I wasn’t supposed to brief the country brief in Korean or Hangul but I thought, “What the hell, nobody is checking so I’ll go for it.”  There were no Koreans in the class to correct me on any grammatical mistakes that I made, in the language as I went along.  And I am sure that I made more than a few.  But once I got started I got comfortable and just started rattling off the brief in Korean.  As I was speaking, I was pointing out shit on a map of South Korea and correlating that information with the information on my slides.  I was having a helluva time.  It was just like I was back in the controller cell of the G3 At Team Spirit over in Korea.  My supervisor at the Nineteenth Support Command had sent me to Team Spirit as a representative more than once to work in the controller cell.  And I had worked alongside a Korean counterpart during that time to provide daily battle updates.  A country brief is very similar to the battle brief that is provided to a theater Operations commander during a war (although maybe just not as complete or thorough).  By the time I was three quarters of the way done, I had the class rolling in laughter.  I think the foreign language, the loud laughter, and my theatrical presentation of the brief attracted the attention of the cadre because it wasn’t long before the door burst open to the classroom and no less than three cadre members came rolling in to see what was happening.  As soon as that door burst open, I immediately switched my briefing to English as if nothing had been going on.  But, of course, the cat was already out of the bag.  There was no stopping the laughing of the class members.  Not only that, but one or two of the cadre members had heard some of my briefing in Korean.  They didn’t understand what the hell I was saying, but they had heard some of the briefing in Korean, nonetheless.  However, in my after action review the senior cadre leader wrote in his comments that my briefing was one of the most original he had ever heard and it was one of the most entertaining.  I received 100 on the project.  It was a great bullshit effort.  I can honestly say that about ten percent of my country brief was an actually honest-to-goodness country brief.  The rest was pure bullshit.  But I skated through that country brief with absolutely no exercises in futility.

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