Mr. Write's Page

A few weeks ago, when I was writing a post about my former boss Major Walker, I found an old newspaper clipping in a souvenir box. I can’t remember the last time that saw the light of day.

I remember precisely where it came from: the base newspaper when I was in the Air Force. It was sometime midway through my hitch, maybe 1966 or 67.

The base paper, the Mach Meter, had a habit of sprinkling its pages with random inspirational stories for the troops. You know, gung ho stuff to bolster spirits, build esprit de corps, etc. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. It’s sort of expected.

Some months later, I ended up being assigned as the editor of that very newspaper. And, as I suspected, it was always the base commander or some other high personage who ordered us to run such stories.

But the effort was always SO transparent. And honestly, it never worked very well. Soldiers are a tired, jaded, sarcastic lot who quietly roll their eyes at puffery and propaganda.

In this case, I executed my symbolic rolling of the eyes by strategically cutting off the end of the sentence. What you see below, I laminated and displayed on my refrigerator door.

And now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what the next line said we were full of.