Of course there were the various UN, humanitarian and peacekeeping missions around the world, but that wasn’t soldiering, and it certainly wasn’t the way to make a four-star general. As Jack and the guys moaned to each other over bourbon in the mess, it was a very tough call to set your career alight dropping powdered milk on dead African people. Or digging up football pitches full of skulls in Bosnia.
Jack had seen the way the wind was blowing when Bush wimped out of going all the way to Baghdad.
“We should’a had Saddam’s ass hanging on the Pentagon flagpole,” he and his comrades had assured each other through mouthfuls of beer and chili fries. “But Old Man Bush listened to Pussy Powell. What kind of soldier was he? Too scared to risk his men. For Christ’s sake, what is happening to the world? We have an army that thinks it has a right not to get killed! Powell was probably worried his men would sue.”
In Polly’s flat Jack was pacing up and down telling his story, almost ignoring her. She wondered what on earth he could be getting at. Whatever it was, she wasn’t interested.
“Pussy Powell?” she asked.
“Lots of men left the service,” Jack continued. “But I couldn’t. I didn’t know any life other than soldiering. I had nowhere else to go. Besides, I’d sacrificed too much to give it up.”
They looked at each other. Polly might have spoken but Jack continued.
“Then something strange happened. Just when everybody thought they’d never get promoted again, sex came along. Sex is what saved the entire US military career structure from stagnation. Sex replaced war. Funny, huh? Kind of what you guys always wanted in a way. Make love not war and all that bullshit.”
“What are you talking about, Jack?”
Polly had resigned herself to the evening’s going round in circles for ever.
“Remember Tailgate?” he continued. “Bunch of navy flyers couldn’t hold their brew and started waving their dicks at some lady sailors?”
Polly did recall it. The scandal had been big enough to be reported in the British media. There had been an appalling display of drunken brutality at a US naval conference.
“As I recall, it was all a little more serious than dick waving,” Polly remarked.
“Jesus, did the shit hit the fan. They court-martialled everybody! ‘Sir! Yes, sir! I waved my dick, sir!’ Dishonourable discharge! ‘Sir. Yes, sir! I waved my dick too!’ Out goes another one. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of training – gone! The brass thought they could calm things down by throwing a few minnows to the sharks. They couldn’t. The shit flew upwards. ‘Yes, I failed to ensure that dicks were not waved.’ ‘Yes, I allowed a dick-waving culture to develop…’ You want to know how many admirals were eventually implicated?”
Polly did not. She was not even slightly interested.
“Thirty-two, Polly! That’s a historical fact. Thirty-two admirals. Our attack readiness was compromised. Navy morale was shot to ribbons. Comfort was given to our enemies. And all because we live in a world that thinks it can legislate against guys acting like assholes.”
Polly could scarcely believe it, but even at this point in the evening Jack still seemed to be anxious to compare their political points of view and yet again, despite herself, she could not help but oblige.
“You can legislate against rape and intimidation and harassment.”
“Jesus!” Jack snapped. “These guys were sailors! The navy never should’a let those women anywhere near them. There was a time when being a disgusting fucked-up maniac was a military career requirement!”
“Change hurts sometimes,” Polly snapped back.
“Oh yes, it does, Polly, it sure does. Change hurts all right. I’ve seen men cry. I’ve seen marines cry because they’ve just discovered that when they pinched some secretary’s ass at the Christmas party they were in fact making a career decision.”
Perhaps Jack had been right earlier when he’d spoken to Polly of “her kind”. She could certainly empathize with this situation and her sympathies were not with the weeping marine. At her work Polly was called upon to deal with similar situations all the time and she knew all about the sort of activities that guys called “just bum-pinching”.
“Well, perhaps your friends shouldn’t go round pinching people’s bums, then,” she said.
Jack threw his arms into the air in frustration, spilling his whiskey as he did so.
“Hey! We all know that now, honey! Oh, we sure do know that now! Our learning curve has been real steep! Problem was, nobody told some of these guys till they were in court! Nobody told that poor tearful marine that the way he had always acted, the way his daddy and his grand-daddy had acted, was suddenly criminal behaviour. Nobody ever warned that twenty-year-service marine that it wouldn’t be any Soviet commando that’d take him out in the end but some little girl with a grudge.”
“Yes, well, maybe that marine should give some thought to all the little girls who’ve done the crying over the years.”
“Well, maybe he should,” Jack conceded, although he did so rather aggressively. “And he’s certainly going to have plenty of time to reflect on it, because suddenly there’s been an awful lot of vacancies in the military. I didn’t get these four stars defending democracy, I got them for keeping my dick in my pants.”
“So no female rookies raped on your watch, then?”
“I never was much of a party animal, Polly. In a way I owe that to you.”
Jack was thinking of the poor German girl, Helga, and that bleak night in Bad Nauheim in the early eighties. He knew what men were capable of when they were drunk and in packs. Particularly soldiers. He had been with the UN in Bosnia, had seen what gangs of men could do when no civilizing factor restrained them.
“You may not believe it, but you changed me,” Jack explained. “All that stuff you told me all those years ago. It genuinely affected my outlook, made me see the other point of view. I truly believe that you influenced me for the good, Polly. I believe I’ve been a better soldier because of you.”
The irony of this was nearly too much for Polly.
“And over the years,” Jack continued, “I’ve always asked myself what you would say about stuff. It was almost as if you were still there with me and I didn’t want to make you angry.”
It was true. Jack could not be sure, but perhaps his unfinished love for that passionate, idealistic seventeen-year-old girl he had once known had refined him and caused him to avoid the mistakes made by other soldiers. He wasn’t thinking about terrible incidents like the brutalization of Helga – mercifully such events were rare – but the smaller invisible pitfalls that so many of his colleagues had fallen into. The sort of thing they now called harassment. The comments, the pinchings, the endless catalogue of minor sexual impositions that men had for so long practised with impunity. Jack had avoided them all. He was recognized universally as a gentleman and, while others of his generation had found themselves demonized by the new morality, Jack had prospered.
“I’ve always loved you, you see, Polly,” he said. “I still do.”
Again the circle came round. Polly could see that Jack was struggling with something inside himself but she did not know what it could be. Perhaps it was just the fact of an unhappy and unfulfilled life. Perhaps he was not so different from her, after all.
“What about your wife?” she asked gently. “You must have loved your wife when you married her. Did you love us both?”
“I thought I loved her, Polly. God help me, I thought I did, but now my true belief is that I married her because I was trying to get away from you.”
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