Campus Martinet

I was back on campus, some campus somewhere. Maybe my alma mater, although probably not. Just a school close to where I was living now. Some general, some guy I respected and had always admired, was speaking at the campus. As a local retired officer, I’d gotten a special invitation, in which was included the invitation for retired soldiers to wear their uniforms if they chose to. So I went for it.

It’d been a very long time since I’d put my uniform on, almost seven years now, and it felt both strange and wonderful to wear it once again. My dress uniform didn’t fit; I knew that it wouldn’t even before I made the embarrassing attempt to put it on, by myself in the safety of the upstairs closet where even my wife wouldn’t see. But my battle-dress uniform fit just fine. I spent the evening before polishing my boots, and they were as squared-away as they’d ever been, like mirrors. I checked my uniform, pulling the unit patch from which I’d retired, put it on, and headed out to the meeting.

I didn’t really want to, and my wife especially didn’t, but I shaved my beard off. Didn’t even keep the moustache. Hell, it would all be back in less than a month anyway, just a temporary change of pace. Went and got a squared-away haircut, too. I was surprised at myself at my efforts for all of maybe three hours in uniform, but it was fun, and nostalgic. As cynical as I am, I had missed aspects of service, of being a soldier, of being a commissioned officer, and wanted to relive it a bit, if only for a few hours.

Walking across the main square toward the auditorium complex, I saw a troop in a physical training uniform. ROTC cadet or soldier, or assigned teaching officer, I couldn’t tell. I nodded a hello, and the soldier seemed to be looking at me a little strangely. Probably a cadet.

Then I heard a screaming, close and approaching, from my left. A uniformed officer was approaching, maybe fifty feet from me and closing. I could see already he was a lieutenant colonel, that blackened subdued oak leaf unmistakable on the badge in the center of his battle-dress uniform. Me, I was a retired Major, so the first order of business was to salute. I prepared to do so once he closed to the proper distance. But he was screaming at me. Wait, at me? Before he even came close enough for me to salute, his arm was up, his finger pointing at me as he charged toward me, bellowing. I couldn’t make out his words, I couldn’t tell what he was on about yet, but he was upset, and I was somehow at the center of it.

As he drew closer I made out he was screaming about my uniform. I was wearing an outdated uniform, apparently. Well, no shit there, colonel, as I’m retired, and my uniform would be the standard battle dress uniform from the year I retired. I would expect it might be a bit outdated. I don’t go out and buy $100 worth of new battle dress for a retired officer dress-up at the local college every time one comes up. I saluted as smartly as I could, and he waved it away with a derisive half-salute, giving me nothing of the professional courtesy I’d just given him. He was already in the wrong, and regardless of whether he was right or I was right in this upcoming confrontation, he was already on my bad side.

His approach was doing nothing to show that he knew what he was doing. His screaming continued unabated, loud, extremely derogatory, using every phrase and military term he could think of to belittle me. He was screaming about me being a disgusting dirtbag, a slacker, a piece of washed-out history, a disgrace for wearing an unauthorized uniform, a disgrace to the flag and the country and the corps and the Army and the Department of Defense, for being ignorant and ill-informed, for being out of uniform, for conduct unbecoming, for failure to follow uniform regulations, and on and on and on. He was just repeating himself now, the same stupid crap, over and over. He was on ass-chewing autopilot, and he had no idea what he was talking about.

I let him have his little rant as he circled me slowly, about five feet away. I just stopped walking, stood still and let him have his say. I then attempted to tell him that I was a retired officer, acting upon the explicit invitation by today’s guest speaker, which would explain my less than up-to-date uniform. But when it became clear to him that I actually had an explanation that made him look like a fool, he wheeled on me, his finger leading the way, accusatory. He ordered me to attention. I stood there and before I could take it back actually said, “What?” That pissed him off even more. He screamed “Attention!” as loudly and as fiercely as he could, and my twenty-plus years of soldiering kicked in without me even thinking, and I was standing at attention. He had me.

He returned to circling me, continuing his ridiculous tirade. I only now became aware of a growing little crowd around us. A few civilians seeing what all of the noise was about, but most turning away when they saw it was some kind of military thing, a hazing ritual, you know, that kind of thing. But there was a growing knot of ROTC cadets, maybe about two dozen. They formed a circle around us. As the colonel crossed my path I could see the ROTC patch on his shoulder, under the Ranger tab, opposite the 1st Armored Division combat patch on his right shoulder. He had his Jumpmaster badge, and his Air Assault badge. I knew he was Infantry.

So he was training cadre for the college’s ROTC program. I guessed he was probably the program’s Professor of Military Science, the actual title given to the senior ROTC leader on each campus. And this snotty little—I only noticed now that he was maybe 5’11” at the absolute tallest—martinet was going to get some personal mileage out of me, a victim who’d slink away and never come back. He was trying to prop himself up as the gung-ho leader he no doubt projected himself to be to his ignorant, inexperienced cadets, all at my expense. He was going to make an example out of me.

When he came around for the third time, I just relaxed and as my arms pulled away from my sides as I relaxed out of the position of attention, said clearly, “Enough.” Again he turned on me, charging right up to me, screaming into my face to stand at attention now, to shut my mouth, to give him the respect he deserved. I looked him straight in the eye, and answered with a simple, “No.”

I took my beret off my head, and I slowly unbuttoned my tunic, and pulled it off, leaving me there in my battle dress camouflage pants, my sparkling boots, and my brown t-shirt. Yeah, I had a bit of a paunch which was plain to see, but I didn’t really care, not one bit. He was screaming about the proper uniform, how out of shape and fat I was, and then he latched onto insubordination. He started screaming about formal charges and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Over and over he was screaming at me, “Major” this and “Major” that. Having noticed his name tape, I looked at him and said clearly and level, “Lieutenant Colonel Albemarle, I’m not in the Army anymore.” I paused, “So you can take your hollow attempt at leadership and shove it up your tight ass.”

Of course, I knew how that would go over, and it only pissed him off more. His face was almost purple, every muscle tense as he struggled to maintain control over a situation that had turned in a way he hadn’t anticipated. I knew he was out of his element now, ad-libbing, but he didn’t think I knew it. He yelled more about uniform this, uniform that, how fat I was, how he was a lieutenant colonel and I had to obey him. My response: “Albemarle, I’m just wearing boots, camo pants, and a brown t-shirt. I’m not wearing a uniform, so I don’t hear you. ”

That, naturally, made no difference, and he switched to respect and authority, institutional norms of tradition and deference, anything he could think of to yell about. He paused for breath and I said, “If you knew anything about tradition and respect, you’d be saluting me, and thanking me for my service.”

I knew that would send him again, and it did. More screaming, more yelling, and I noticed more cadets looking at me than him. They were waiting to hear what I’d say next. I promised myself no profanity-laced tirade, no losing control like this fool was doing. I would let him look the idiot and the unprofessional through his conduct, and I’d maintain my own composure. I chose my next response carefully: “It’s you who’s the unprofessional fool.”

And that did what I wanted, stepping him up even more than before. He came at me, and grabbed me with his right hand by the shirt collar on my left side, close under my chin. I stood stock still and said evenly, “Take your hand off me, now.” He smiled, like he was going to teach me a lesson, and tightened his right fist to make a ball with the collar of my shirt, pushing upward just enough on my chin to make it a clear threat. I’d already dropped my beret and blouse, and a couple of the more attentive cadets noticed that. He was too focused on himself to think about me. That and since he was shorter, he was looking up at me, not down. His conceited mistake.

My hands came up and grabbed him by his battle-dress tunic under his elbows. Before he could move, I was pulling him to me, my head dipping down. In the blink of an eye my head-butt landed on the bridge of his nose. The crunch was audible, telling everyone around it was broken even before I started to pull back. Already he’d let go of my shirt and his hands were flying to his broken nose. My right foot was already moving out as I started to tip him downward, and he went over in the classic take-down like a training example. As he fell straight backward, his eyes wide now as he fell, I drove him downward, my body already moving downward with his own. At the instant his head and back hit the brick plaza, my left knee drove square into his stomach, taking his wind. Atop him, I ended with the classic rugby move of dominance, taking the flat of my right hand against the side of his face, turning his face to the side, and leaning down onto it with all of my upper-body weight, pinning him painfully.

He was gasping for air, the blood streaming from his nose, his hands fluttering trying to get to it. I waited, and made my speech: “I’ve never seen you before in my life, but I’ve got my measure of you. You may be a Ranger combat veteran, but you don’t know anything about fighting. You’re a pathetic little bully, and I’m sorry these cadets have you as a role model. You’re just the type of hollow, rank-pulling puppet that made it easy for me to retire from the Army. I may have left as a Major, but I chose to leave.”

I stood up, opening my wallet to pull a business card. I threw it down onto him. “If you want a rematch, Albemarle, in or out of uniform, you just give me a call.”

I picked up my blouse and beret and walked on across the plaza to the auditorium, wiping his blood from my hands with my tunic. I did not put my uniform back on.

The general’s talk was on the dull side, but I didn’t really mind. Lieutenant Colonel Albemarle was there, of course, up on the stage, both of his eyes black and swollen, a ragged bandage taped across his nose. Of course, he'd run off and changed his bloodstained uniform. He wisely chose to have one of his Captains give the opening and welcoming remarks. He stayed in his seat the entire time. And not once did I catch him looking at me.

About a week later, the first email arrived from one of the cadets, asking me if we could meet to talk about the Army.