MILITARY BRAT

When I saw and then read The Great Santini, I was stimulated by memories and a time and place always there, but marginally relevant in the here and now—or,  maybe not; do you ever forget your roots?  My step father was no aviator nor was he a Marine, but my mother was a military brat herself—her father was a career Marine, a good friend of Chesty Puller, and an eventual Quartermaster General for the Marine Corps. My brother and my nephew were in the US Army. I happily, never served but rather, got my experience in the military by osmosis. That legacy is still there!

Complicating my story is my mother. She loved the military life and status it afforded her. She was an elitist of sorts (given her druthers, I think if she would have chosen, to have been a peer’s wife in Edwardian England and I would have gone to Boarding School). That complicates some of my upbringing as the child of a Navy Captain. An example: my mother corrected us when we referred to ourselves as, “military brats.”

“You are NOT military brats; you are Navy Juniors.”  The book, Military Brats gave some history to this and reported what I observed. This was a term used only by elitist Navy wives whose husbands were officers and the distinction was not used often and the concept of differentiation, died on the vine. Enlisted men and their wives would have only shook their heads at the very idea.

My most memorable and formative years growing up were on a square mile town bracketed by a large Naval Air Base and a base where Navy Seals are trained. Walking anywhere one saw uniforms, the sports cars of Navy flyers, the '59 Chevies of the enlisted, flags, tattoos, and the badges on cars that allowed entry onto bases. The Fourth of July Parade was a famous event and in my life featured heroes of the Viet Nam war as well as the crew of the Pueblo. There were civilians in the town but during Viet Nam, one’s high school acquaintances had, “skin in the game,” ie a father potentially or actually at risk. I played football with one of Admiral Stockade’s sons (and if you don’t know who he was, google him!).

Military Brats and The Great Santini express norms I continue to know. My step father (the only father I ever knew) never physically abused me but I was afraid of him. Ours’ was an authoritative household with mother the arbiter and manager of the household and for conflicts in the day to day. Though never deployed away from family, my stepfather was distant, emotionally; I have many conversations (in my head) I would love to have had with him as an adult. I answered the phone, “Dr. Moeller’s residence, Randy speaking.” If I was not specific in my speech, for example saying, “you know?” Or, “I guess,” there was a problem, just as for enlisted men: “No, I don’t know; what are you trying to say?”

“You guess? Don’t you know?”

“Yes, sir and Yes Ma’am,” were staples of any conversation with an adult—something all of us excelled at—and I learned to curb it mostly after the withering gazes of young women at the Alpha Beta Check out or coffee houses when I thanked with that phrase. It still peeks out and I, on the other hand, react viscerally when I am called, “sir.”

We had chores codified into the weekly schedule and beds were made before going to school, even when I was in second grade which is when I learned how to make “hospital corners.”  We did not bounce quarters off the sheets to demonstrate a job well done. We had a dress code. We got haircuts at the base barbershop where the enlisted men went. “High and tight” was the norm and even from a young age, I pleaded for mercy, usually to Phillipino barbers whose command of English was not so good. In first grade, my mother mandated a crew cut, military style. When I came home, a first glance at me found her bursting into laughter. The notion that the haircut was an intended form of humiliation (for recruits, anyway) was very real to this six year old. The fruit of that humiliation and my love of stories and pictures of  ancient Greek soldiers led to a lifetime as a “longhair” which of course was a subject of irritation to mom. Many a peer with a civilian background would get that wrong; I have been labeled a Deadhead many times in my life and the characterization falls flat. Deadheads don’t fall on their swords (intentionally, anyway).

I witnessed and followed the ritual of standing at attention and facing the flag when revele was sounded and the flag raised--typically getting off the base bus on the way to a haircut.

Another legacy: Geography mattered to me in a way it did not to civilians—It could easily be relevant to my brat-friends and me. The same went for international news, even before Viet Nam.

I never saw my parents argue; not once!  They were “stoic!”  As a brat, I was as well and that legacy holds through and past my professional life. “Shit happens” was not an unfamiliar refrain in school and work. One adjusted and developed a plan and adjustment. It was fascinating how much “abuse” I could take on with a stoic’s demeanor, like a soldier, with my eyes on the eventual goal, the process, and the outcome we are all seeking. The guiding principle was organization and loyalty to the “cause.” For example, in Junior High, a student and I got into a shoving match between classes in a hall; an elderly female teacher saw us and grabbed each of us by the arm and hauled us into her classroom. She seemed angry. My opponent jumped in loudly proclaiming his innocence and simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He went on to describe, “what happened.”  When I was confronted with authority, I often, “froze” and maintained my cool. I often found it difficult to remember and recount what happened. However, hearing the story of what happened  being told in an inaccurate and self-serving manner, my memory kicked in and I prepared myself, not having yet spoken. Not speaking until asked to do so was very much a tradition with military brats. The teacher did not know me and I still remember her appraising me. “My, you haven’t said a word! Is that guilt or are you waiting to be asked?” I defended myself. I left, with no punishment and a sense of having won a victory over, "the whiner."

As a youngster, marital harmony was clearly a priority for my mother. She took peers and people of her parent’s age dying with a stoic pose that bordered on denial. We lived for a year in Chevy Chase, some eight or ten miles from Arlington National Cemetery where my biological father, her first husband, is buried. She never took my brother or me to see the gravesite. She confessed later that she simply did not know how to do that—emotionally.  While my brother and I both have thought that limited and odd, I have heard advice from him regarding emotions set in war time (he and his son have seen service in the army), be they reflecting visual images or actual loss: “Sometimes, it is better to simply compartmentalize that, put it in a box, and put it under the bed.” I have found many World War II veterans express something similar until they are very old and reflecting on what it all meant and wanting that out there before they were gone.

Going to college at UC Santa Cruz provided me with my first immersion with peers who came from very different backgrounds. My first year at UCSC found me in a dorm, sharing a floor and bathroom with 19 other males. We were mostly from Upper Middle Class families (Winship across the hall did High School in Switzerland and played rocking soccer), and Bob next door grew up in Palo Alto, son of a dentist. All of us were working on a pecking order of sorts and I discerned that I stood apart in many ways. I was organized: I had a major and a path to graduation in four years. I had classes at 8:00 AM. I did not abuse drugs though alcohol proved the exception. I curried favor with Eric, the RA who in fact was working on an advanced degree after serving in the Army in Viet Nam. He and I bonded and with that, refrigerator privileges, and a source of beer as well as of all things, mead were available to me. Our comraderie would find me employed by Eric during Spring break two years running learning construction and painting houses.

Peers were surprised by my table manners, a reflection of being an officer’s Brat. Of interest, I have eaten on Navy vessels and the chapter on “Upstairs/Downstairs” in Military Brats reflects my experience. A formal dining room with the officer at the head. Silver tableware, linen napkins, staff dressed in whites (always Philipinos or Blacks) and table manners galore. At the Palo Alto Dentist’s home, eating chicken, I looked up half-way through the meal to find everyone, parents and peers, staring at me as I took my portions of chicken to the bone with a fork and knife. We were not allowed to eat food at a dinner table with our fingers.

The other part of dining with officers, at home anyway, was the free use of alcohol. This is a frequent topic in Military Brats. The irony is real: one could not advance in rank without the camaraderie of drinking—sometimes heavy drinking—and such use at the wrong time or place could be a career ender. My parents drank in excess, or so I thought in High School: two Old Fashions watching Huntley Brinkley and typically a glass of wine with dinner. I was experimenting with alcohol in High School and my father, whose education as a young man was in a Jesuit school, attempted a Jesuit -like approach: I was hired to bar-tend parties which were plentiful. It was eye-opening to watch my parent’s peers get garrulous, loud, and red faced as the evening wore on. My face betrayed nothing until I related the stories to my friends.

Perhaps the most lasting legacy in terms of my adulthood was the very military experience of living in a foreign country. It was life-changing. One can’t tease out the role of formal education, temperament (both genetic based and the home environment), or a number of other variables but for all my life, considering how a problem looks from another person’s point of view owes a lot to living in a Latin Country during the Cold War. Viscerally, I learned about runaway inflation, beggars showing their stumps, a military take over on the way home in a school bus, and “Us vs them,” thinking. By this, I refer to obvious economic disparities in Brasil in the early 1960’s as well as US citizens looking at the host country: The Brazilians at my school were from wealthy families and I knew this simply walking into their homes. We had a freezer in our apartment when food markets down the street did not have them. The domestics working for my mother could not get their heads around the notion of eating meat that was months old. The parents of my American friends displayed a wide array of orientations: condescension about Brazilian culture vs genuine pleasure and loving of it. If only I had been able to stay into adolescence there……

Another consequence of this foreign experience found all of us—my siblings and myself, mostly color blind. My mother agonized over all our dating and marriages that were with people from different cultures or races. And we all enjoyed putting her through that…..I had a platonic friend who as an Asian American from San Francisco and I dreamed this fantasy of, “bringing her home” to challenge my mother’s bias. I happily did not execute on that. Military Brats points to a tendency of many to engage in work or causes that tie social justice to a need for organization, a functional system, and like the military, a mission. It certainly guided many of my life choices. I have often noted doctors leavging the military life do well in a system of care like Group Health or Kaiser.

Semper Fi and no regrets!