Philosophy

You learn interesting things from miscreants.

Such As! Some women say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This is not true. The way to a man’s heart is with a Ka-bar from just below the sternum upward at a 40-degree angle to the hilt and pivot the blade to his left.

Now, I've never needed this information for any action I may have contemplated taking personally, but knowing that this is the way your opponent thinks gives you an edge in dealing with him.

I spent time while I was in the military as an Armed Forces Policeman. We weren’t detectives or traffic cops or the guys to go to when you’ve lost your dog. We were the guys tasked with keeping solders, sailors airmen and marines out of trouble when they were on liberty in various foreign ports. It’s not the same as the Military Police (MPs) or Shore Patrol (SPs) or Air Police (APs) we were the guys that told those guys where to patrol and what the local rules were. Also, we were the ones they called when there was something to big for them to handle. We had guns, they didn’t, although most of the time we depended on nothing more than a night stick and our wits to keep the troops from hurting themselves too much.

I found that many times our biggest problems came from overzealous MP-AP-SP personnel assigned to us. As in the time we got a call about a riot at a bar in an area of Subic City called The Jungle. It was an area we told the fleet to stay away from and a place we seldom ventured unless asked. This time we had no choice as one of our Shore Patrol teams had gone where they were told not to go and were in the process of getting their butts whooped. The desk sergeant on duty sent two vans out to gather up shore patrol to take to the fray and I gathered up the available MPs and SPs from headquarters and headed for the last van. When I got to the vehicle I found a SP in my seat in the front of the van I told him to get in the back and he wanted to argue about it as he thought he outranked me. I wasn’t in the mood to argue so I figured I could set him straight later. I jumped in the back and we headed out for The Jungle. These vans are normally used as prisoner transports so the back cannot be opened from inside, therefore I told the Shore Patrol in my seat to remember to let us out when we got where we were going. I told him again when we got to the scene of what looked to be a pretty wild riot… all to no avail. The moron jumped out of the van and ran into the fray wildly swinging his nightstick, while we in the back of the van set helpless to do anything but curse. A very long ten minutes later someone opened the back of the van to put in some prisoners and we all piled out on top of him. The fighting was over. I went into the bar and found the moron bruised and bleeding and he jumped up and started yelling at me for not backing him up. It took all the fortitude I had not to kill him on the spot. I took his stick and his SP armband and made him ride back to HQ in the back with the prisoners.

Most of the way home I imagined scenarios where I had him drawn and quartered or court marshaled or just took him back to one of the cells and beat the living crap out of him, but when I took him out of the van he looked so beat with all the cuts and bruises, I just sent him back to his ship with orders to send us a replacement and instructed him to "Never"come back again.

All in all, it wasn’t such a bad deal. I didn’t have any lumps, bumps or bruises and I had lost no blood at all. I had barely broken the crease in my uniform. I suspect that that van stunk of testosterone to a much greater degree then it ever had before or since, but that would be expected.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Uncle Dave