Parthian Shot
a fleeting editorial dart inviting chase
Basic Training
"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond;
cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."
by Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens;
Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar in Pudd'nhead
Wilson (1894)]
I began my second tour in Vietnam by reporting into the assigned
unit while it was operating in the field, bringing along the
payroll so as to learn the names and faces of unit members more
quickly. The commander did not immediately release me to my duty
assignment, an uncommon practice at the time, and one which had
me second-guessing my capabilities, until I'd worked with other
unit members for a few weeks. Since this occurred at the height
of the war, it was done despite the need for the full
participation of every replacement ... there was no surplus, as
with whole units transferred entire from stateside bases. This is
now a normal practice for replacements joining an
operational unit in combat. It serves as an adjustment
period for both the new guy and the old
timers, who demonstrate how policy becomes reality, theory
gets put into practice, and everyone accommodates each other.
Adaptations are made for inherent weaknesses and modifications
are made for innate strengths ... and the front line
survival rate improves.
It wasn't long until my new unit completed its assigned mission,
and our assets were returned to their parent commands so we could
return to base for stand-down. My previous tour
had been conventional, which meant that support personnel were
rarely encountered and combat operations were perpetual ... the
only stand-down that anyone ever got on my previous tour
was an in-country pass for extraordinary performance, or
evacuation to a hospital for a wound. All work and no
play diminished our physiques and eroded our morale, making
us more vulnerable to enemy tactics. Learning of the impending
stand-down, I began to hope that this unit was not a
meat grinder, and began to speculate about the
forthcoming fun and games. Stand-down differed
from field operations in only two ways: nobody was shooting at
us, and we could live the life of garrison soldiers ... reporting
at regular hours, eating in a messhall, sleeping in a bed, and
using a latrine. It was only fun if you liked to
sweat! ... and the only games were training
scenarios!
My grandfather was one of the American Expeditionary Force
volunteers for the Great War in Europe of which General John J.
Blackjack Pershing reputedly said: All a soldier
needs to know is how to shoot and salute. ... and
saluting was the least of it! We cleaned our
equipment, ran to the nearby beach, stripped foreign weapons,
rappelled from towers, rigged helicopters, practiced first aid,
tailgated a milk run to keep our jump status current ...
everything we had all done innumerable times, but did again ...
and again. And then we went right back out on operations against
pop-up shoot-back targets in Vietnam's hinterlands.
I remember thinking at the time that I'd been in the Army for
almost seven years and already knew all of this stuff. I
was not some cherry, and neither was I a hot
dog ... and my know it all attitude probably
showed. I would pick up two more Purple Hearts on this tour while
serving beside men who were on their fourth or sixth tour, or
who'd been in Korea, so if I'd just looked around a little I
might have discovered that I wasn't as smart as I
thought I was before Mister Charles undeniably proved it
to me! It has been said that life gives you the test before
it gives you the answer, but all that training was as much
of an answer as anyone needed ... at least anyone bright
enough to get out of his own way. If wisdom is the
result of hard learned lessons, then humility is its
manifestation. And because my instructors liked to play cute
little harmless tricks to prepare us for the deadly
surprises that awaited us on the battlefield, I fear that my
ostensible understanding is going to prove illusory
during the ultimate final exam! ... Erasmus is probably
right about the impending cosmic joke.
And the point of all this good training, if not just to
redirect and concentrate all of one's inveterate hostilities, if
not just to dissipate or sublimate all of one's perversities, if
not just to waste time or squander tax dollars, is then to
sustain the individual for a period sufficient to accomplish
something by virtue of heightened awareness and keen responses
... in other words, to attain a goal by the timely application of
thought and character. Talents and traits are marvelous assets,
but training can improve results to the point that a dedicated
person can accomplish more than an uncommitted one, given certain
circumstances and goals. A combat truism is that a good big
person will defeat a good small person every time, which also
applies to contending nations. But it is also a fact of history
that most of everything that has ever been accomplished has been
done by people who didn't feel very good that day! ... or the day
before, or the day after. Life is not a sports event of refereed
heats under optimum conditions, and the fact that we are
attempting to impose some staid scheme upon robust reality merely
makes us more vulnerable. If we are not sleepwalking
through a walled garden of predictable delights, we are apt to
find insight and inspiration almost anywhere.
After Vietnam, I embarked upon a host of new adventures,
beginning with college. I'd always been one of those promising
students who detested school, and college was no different ...
except that some of the subjects and a couple of professors
managed to ignite my brain! ... sometimes I imagined that smoke
must have been pouring out of my ears! My philosophy professor, a
disabled World War Two veteran, confided to me shortly before his
death that he used me as a paradigm through the years whenever
students would complain about the workload, saying that he'd once
had a student who never took notes, but just paid close attention
to everything in class. I was pleased to reciprocate for this
Socratic emulator by averring my dedication to eradicating
sloppy thinking, which he'd inspired. But I owe a couple
of English professors an apology for dogmatically resisting their
allegorical interpretations of prose ... perhaps I was still too
close to the ineluctable realities of a fell war to entertain
pretty metaphors. Combat had taught me that the only thing hidden
between the lines was the enemy.
Even though times have changed and the three R's are now
being taught in multimedia labs, basic training
is that essential process that will ... at least it should ...
develop the necessary skills for survival. One may quibble about
the priorities, and school boards do so regularly across the
country, but the objective is clear: to graduate functional
community members. Nobody has to like it; they just have to do
it. If we are prudent, we will enhance the trainee's abilities,
but we should also be wise enough to know that most people do not
work in the narrow field of their interest or specialized
education. If the trainees are equipped with intellectual tools,
instead of calculators and videos, then they can find (or make)
the tools they need when they need them. Anyone who can parse a
compound sentence will have no problem with Venn diagrams, with
geometric theorems, with administrative flowcharts, or with
molecular chains. If the trainee is bored by the subject then the
instructor is obligated to find a trigger that will make
the information relevant ... introduce an attractant or repellent
to stimulate fight or flight! To promote ingenuity,
establish restrictions, such as curfew or chores at home, or
prohibiting pogy bait in the barracks, and then watch
the trainees get creative! Régimes around the globe are
notorious for their prisons, but we are renown for breaking out
of prisons ... even those of our own devising.
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Troops of the 116th Infantry
Regiment in the 29th Division
practice quick reaction maneuvers
at East River Range
near Bagram, Afghanistan
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One of the things that became apparent in Vietnam, and has again
become apparent in Iraq, is that, for whatever reason and despite
regulations, troops arrive in a hostile area without the
requisite skills essential for job performance (or even for
survival), and their training must be supplemented before their
deficiencies become irrevocable. Although each major unit
established a base camp academy to acquaint replacements with the
latest lessons learned from their combat operations, the
theater command also established an orientation and
acclimatization course to refresh the training of the troops,
while their bodies adjusted to the local conditions. As Samuel
Johnson and others have observed, the mind becomes amazingly
focused when death impends; so none of the trainees needed
particular exhortations. With the notable exception of police
officers, fire fighters, and emergency medics, life threatening
situations are uncommon in the civilian arena ... but career
mortality is conceivable. And the only remedy for students
evacuated by lazy teachers or excreted from bad schools is
autodidactism. Supplementing and expanding a mediocre basic
training is now easier than ever, and the proficiencies acquired
will redound to personal advancement and unit excellence.
As a literary magazine, we predominantly receive two types of
submissions: a professional offering or a nascent venture. We
welcome both. The former is almost always accepted without
further exchange, aside from compliments. The latter is sometimes
startling, and can be frustrating, on both sides of the putative
editorial divide. The former is a veteran whose crafted work
settles into the genre. The latter, regardless of scholastic
attainments or worldly triumphs, is often ignorant (or careless)
of mission, guidelines, and policies. Sometimes they write as if
their native tongue were a second language ... using words to
build a monument to the idea immured within their minds rather
than a bridge to convey their ideas from mind to mind. Sometimes
they write in imitation of another's style as well as someone
else's attainments. And sometimes they write as if they hope to
fertilize a storyline into maturation by the lavish application
of fructifying verbiage.
We consider it to be part of our editorial responsibility to
offer constructive criticism to anyone submitting work
that manifests thoughtful construction and creative expression.
We, of course, have form letters that communicate a polite
rejection or an impersonal and imprecise encouragement, but when
the writer is, in our opinion, very close to
getting it right, then a vague attaboy
might have them inadvertently trashing the wrong part
and wrecking the whole thing! Although we have neither the time
nor the inclination to teach creative writing ... publishing this
magazine is labor enough, thank you very much ... but a few
obvious comments proffered in private from the author's
first disassociated reader of the work might help with revision.
In fact, we have often found that a relative period of post-creative reflection will enable the author to ameliorate their
own composition ... as one notable storyteller phrased it: I
don't write much, but I rewrite a great deal!
I really hate to say it, but all that junk that
we should've learned in school is a solid foundation for
composition. It doesn't have to be as formal as the bad old
days, but going through the motions almost always helps with
focus and fulfillment ... even with inspired poetry. Like advice
on child rearing and almost everything else, writing
recommendations run the gamut. Some ostensibly creative writers
treat composition as a job of work ... so many hours of
application will generate so many pages of output each day, day
after day. Others write because they have no other option for
quieting their minds. Others have convoluted, if not involute and
ulterior motives. In every case, the work produced will benefit
from a critical analysis and a term of inactivity.
Back in the dark ages, when English teachers were
pedagogical drill masters, the outline was an ordeal that
squelched all enthusiasm from creative writing; but we have found
that if an author cannot utter the theme of his work in a few
words, then the reader will not discover the objective of the
piece. In an arena of post-modern deconstructionism, missing the
point of an author's projectile vomiting is not an unmixed
blessing. We, however, strive for better communication, already
knowing that some things are beyond anyone's ability to describe
or explain ... we must still try to indicate the ineffable
essentials. We recommend that authors make note of the salient
points and principal objectives of their intended expression, and
identify the ultimate goal of the work before beginning to write,
and then identify a select word or phrase from the body, either
at the climax or denouement, to use as the title when the
composition is completed. If the writing is laborious and story
development tedious, then the reading will be likewise. As the
former Army nurse on our staff keeps saying: if it hurts,
stop! ... and that is sage advice for the aspiring writer in
the throes of imaginative agony.
Our former Army nurse staffer is also fond of saying: use it
or lose it! This, of course, means that writers must write,
but they must also practice good writing. One of the best ways to
check one's skill level is for the writer to read good works ...
not to imitate them, but to analyze their craftsmanship. The
writer, as with any other artist, is not entirely a creative
person ... at some point, and usually at several points of
revision, he must become his own first editor. Probably the best
way for an author to become objective about his precious
emission is to set it aside so the intention and even the
specification becomes dormant in the generator's mind. Such
separation can be exacerbated by the beginning of a new writing
project. Some professional authors attempt objectivity by working
simultaneously on several different projects, but we have found
that this tends to bleed or blend them, instead of
differentiating them.
Once the idle piece has lost its immediacy and tempered its
subjectivity, the writer needs to review the work so as to find
what is missing and to improve its phrasing. One will be amazed
to discover, in the cold harsh light of reflection, what is
missing, and what is redundant. During the rewrite, the author
should also attempt betterment in both language and plot
... by building verbal spans between scenes, emphasizing tension,
clarifying conditions, enhancing characterization, and so forth.
Words, which are the writer's stock and trade, should be as
original and substantial as the story itself ... moil, inanition,
and animadvert are words, but effectualization and
impactization are not words, and neither is
miniscule, indorse, heighth, nor
irregardless. The gerundizing of rhetoric neither
enriches nor improves communication! A spellchecker cannot repair
vocabulary errors, grammatical mistakes, or trite clichés;
and the apt simile or mot juste will elude any author
who neglects the essentials of basic training.
The true lesson of basic training is that its import is so
fundamental that its techniques are applicable at every stage of
a person's development. When the novice breaks the rules
and succeeds by a fluke, it's because he didn't know what he was
doing ... and neither did anyone else ... but with more
experience, his ingenuity or luck encounters the unforgiving
axioms that he has previously ignored with impunity. In order to
break the rules, of grammar, of design, of warfare, one
must first learn all the rules ... and only then can someone
exploit the opportunities inherent in every developing situation.
Although some institutions attempt to abrogate this postulate,
every instance of creative expression is as untrammeled as the
very first time ... one may have written dozens of poems, climbed
dozens of cliffs, fought dozens of firefights, but the next one
is unique. Every confrontation is imbued with the potential for
original triumph! Trying to create a story or poem without basic
training is like trying to invent a society without knowing
history or understanding human dynamics. The fundamentals always
matter.
"He left nothing out [of his story], and in leaving nothing out,
he created no villains and invented no hero[es]. It was a flat
although bloody account, curiously lacking in either anger or
passion. He did what he set out to do ... he made it dull."
by Ross Thomas
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