The Army Diaries, Mike Marino [all ebook reader .txt] 📗

Now, there was not a chance in hell for a great escape from the grip of the times. Without realizing it, nor desiring it, Mike was now an official card carrying member of the political Ice Age..more affectionately known by the old timers, as the Cold War. The coldest war that crept at glacial speed towards the finish line, not well defined, nor very refined last man standing standoff. It was a social gala with and ugly undercurrent and tones that were muted browns, hide in the forest deer hunting season browns. It was deadly and it was dangerous and quite frankly, Mike didn't want to be a collaterally damaged casualty in its wake.

Doc Yucatan was right all along...Mike had to take immediate action to extricate himself from the boggy quicksand of killer drugs and killer rock and roll that he had stepped into, sinking gradually at first, then faster at last.

A spindly pine tree swamp of swirling emotions. The desolate swamps he had known as a kid in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Only explorers, and real hunters went into it's bosom. Back in there were old bears and large antlered deer who had managed to find the secret fountain of old age by going deep into the womb of the protective cover of Mother Natures forest.

That forest was a euphemism of maturity, or at least the pathway to it for Mike. Now, goddamit..maturity was pounding on the door, loudly, the dreaded knock of the Russian KGB in the dead of the night to spirit away the luckless inhabitant to the tortures of the Lubyanka deep within it's walls.

"I hear you knockin' but you can't come in...." so sayeth the song, by Prince Richard the Little. It was a mistake, but make no mistake, it was not a mistake, but fate. Yes, Mike was/is a boomer, baby boomer they call them. A child of the Sixties propelled into the whirlwind of the times from the starting line in 1948. These were the times, that some in future, the boomers who would dwell in the future of the 21st Century, all grown up and grey would refer to as the good old days. The Fifties and the Sixties, the twin cities of Peace, Love and Understanding.

The vision was blurry, the memory blocking out the unpleasantness of the times, but the roadsigns still pointed the way.

Cars had big fins and lots o' chrome. Bill Haley was rockin' around the clock, carhops were rollerblading royalty and the suburbs were squeeky clean and so damn bland. Boomer kids said things like "gosh" and "gee" and "thank you ma'am/sir".

Guys opened the door for girls and never called them broads or chicks. Everybody's mom was June Cleaver in disguise and Ozzie Nelson was everyone's dad.

Life was good in the "good old days". The cold sterility of the Berlin Wall generated megatons of political heat and yet, was nothing more than a concrete barrier, keeping the coarse fabric of Communism a safe distance from the ideological stains of Capitalistic encroachment, and not just some arbitrary, invisible line in the sand dividing East from West. It was the personification, in concrete and barbed wire of course, of a political prophylactic, and if either side was going to get oral, it was simply in the form of rhetoric.

As riotous as it was, We knew who the enemy was, and they knew who we were. Godlike vs. godless. Dogmatic dogfights for the hearts, minds and souls of the masses. Stars and Stripes vs. Hammer and Sickle. The soft, sexy silk of red, white and blue democracy trying to shred the Reds, and their burlap fabric of the Iron Curtain.

The 1960's were peace and love and all was groovy. The gentle smoke of marijuana wafted, and it was a time of free love and make peace not war. Surfers ruled the beach, V-dubs plyed the tie-dyed highways and by-ways, and life was bitchin'. Today, planes are used as destroyers of buildings, armies are small cells and secretive and one fanatic can bring down a plane of innocent people with a shoulder rocket missle. Damn! I Miss The Cold War!

After the first geiger counters went ballistic in the aftermath of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the war ended and stopped dead in it's tracks. Victory in Europe, and Victory in Japan led to victorious romps under the bedsheets in the Levittown bedrooms of America. Rosie was ready to put down her riveter and have at it, as the GI's discarded khaki in favor of civies, glad to be alive and ready to rock n' roll and sweat up the sheets.

One year after America lowered the boom and dropped the bomb, the sperm and egg launched their own sexual version of D-day, landing on the bedsheet beaches, and Operation Baby Boom was underway. The year was 1946. The first year of the Cold War that would lead to the first two decades of the newly emerged Boomer Generation, the teen-angst laden 1950's and the rock n' roll harmony of dissent that typifies the 1960's. Two decades that were as different from one another as Abbott and Costello.


Europe, in her post-war makeup was a twisted art gallery of broken metal and architectural ruin. Her once striking beauty, now faded like an aging stripper who had listened to one too many rimshots and far too many bad burlesque jokes. Japan, Germany's samurai accomplice and partner in crime, lay still and quiet as a dormant possum, being eaten alive by a flesh eating irradiated beast of victory that spew hellfire from the sky.


Cordons of colonial possessions fell from the centuries old grip of wizened old Empires, who lost their hold, and grip on the new realities, as old men will do as age and times move on well beyond them.


Got Ghandi? India did, and tossed off the British yoke and won her independance in the bargain. Israelis rolled up their sleeves, and using shovel in one hand and a fully loaded carbine in the other, managed to carved out a place in the desert, and established an oy vay kosher kibutz of a society smack dab in the middle of the Promised Land of Milk and Honey.


The French too, tried to hold on to Empire and colonial rule with an antiquated Devils Island attitude, but by 1954, that would too would go up in Napoleonic smoke, when in a modern day version of Waterloo, they would get souffled in battle at a place called Dien Bien Phu. The times they were a changin', and although the flames of the conflagration of the big war were still smoldering, there was just enough political spark left to ignite the fuse that would lead to the powderkegs that would be the defining flashpoints of the next two decades. Democracy and Dictatorship were about to put on the ideological boxing gloves and go at it ... again!


The Japanese, who had occupied the Korean penninsula for the duration of the war, saw the haiku handwriting on the wall and surrendered to American might and power in 1945 south of the 38th parallel. The forces north of that line surrendered to Stalin. The demonic forces of demarcation were already loosed from the genie's bottle and a new dawn was about to emerge. The soul searchers of Seoul worried heavily about the prognotications from Pyongyang. Tensions mounted as Asia began turning itself upside down and in 1948 the north declared the formation of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

Then the hammer and sickle came crashing down with a fury, causing Maoist mayhem on mainland China when communist forces dealt a fortune cookie of defeat to Chiang's Nationalist government, forcing them to flee to Formosa. The players were now on stage. Dress rehearsal was over, and now..it was showdown showtime. It was just a Manchurian Candidates matter of time before trouble would began to brew like an fully loaded semi-automatic teabag.

The unforgettable Forgotten War raged on from 1950 to 1953 when a tense truce forced the cessation of intrusions and the tug of war for geographic supremacy ended in a stillborn standoff.

The push for Pusan and the inching towards Inchon was put on hold and the uneasy cease-fire let the battlefields clear and gave the dead respite and time to rest quietly.
In a similar and corresponding surreal turn of events, also in 1945, the occupying Japanese forces in Vietnam ended their 5 year occupation and surrendered in a to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils fashion, and as a result, the barndoor was left open and communist backed Ho Chi Minh assumed the power of the proletariat in the North.

The French, were now trying desperately, and in vain vanity to retain the colonial control they had excercised since they assumed control of the rice paddy empire of Vietnam in 1861. Croissant politics weren't what they used to be, and the jaunty beret was knocked off their heads.

The French were dug in deep, deep in the mud at damnable Dien Bien Phu, engaged in a fierce tug of war over the Pastry Republic's struggle for life and death in southeast Asia, when they were ultimately dealt the dead man's poker hand of defeat by the forces of the Vietminh in 1954. They had suffered not just a Waterloo, but a varifiable junglesque version of Dunkirk. The forces of ideological darkness were afoot, Holmes, and the Bolshevik hounds of the Siberian Baskervilles were baying at the moon, fangs bared and howling with delight.

The traveling medicine show that would define the American period would open to standing room only crowds in Vietnam, and would usher in a new era for the nation. As the curtain rose, it signaled the beginning of the end of life for over 50,000 youth of the land of the free. Not just dead and dying, but the untold numbers of MIA's and POW's. Hellhole Hanoi and Sinister Saigon, unknown to most before the 1960's, were now part and parcel of every suppertime newscast in the country, and were more familiar to most Americans than Dubuque, Iowa.

Vietnam in the 1960's, unlike Korea in the 1950's, brought Hardhats and Hippies to the brink. Rednecks with red veins bulging righteously red, white and blue threatened the commie-pinko-fag-peaceniks with a new brand of black and blue patriotism. My Country, Right or Wrong. My Country, Right or Left. Love It or Leave It. Make Love, Not War. Peace in our Time.

Battlecry's of different sides of a divisional and generational line. Along with the acrid smell of a napalmed Nam, we had the homefires cranked up too. The Burn Baby Burn smoke of urban-ghetto fires of civil rights and civil disobiedience, wafted and joined forces with the defiant flames of dodging draftcards and the size 38D cups of liberated bra's. The John Birch Society was replaced by Black Panthers, and June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson were unceremoniously replaced by Gloria Steinham and Angela Davis.

Korea had quiet, head nodding in accension acceptance, if not clearly defined lines of support. You just kept your mouth shut in those days. Vietnam, on the other hand, had numerous and vociferously vocal voices of opposition. Jane Fonda went to Hanoi and did her impersonation of Tokyo Rose. The right sang "God Save America", while the bard of the Bay Area, Country Joe McDonald sang songs about the disastrous bodybag policies of the generals and the Washington politicos..."and it's one, two, three..what are we fighting for, don't ask me I don't