The coming national election has the Colonel feeling a bit nostalgic.
Oh, for the halcyon days of peaceful and orderly transition of presidential power.
You know, like Bush v. Gore.
Twenty years ago the Colonel was serving as the Chief of Current Operations on the staff of United States Forces Korea (USFK). The staff was primarily Army with an eclectic assortment of token representation from the Air Force, Navy, and Marines -- just enough to satisfy the designation: Joint. Parallel to the US staff was a mirror staff composed of Republic of Korea (ROK) military. The two staffs together formed Combined Forces Command (CFC). And..., all of this was nominally under the command of United Nations Command (UNC) -- a U.S. Army four star wore all three hats. As you can well imagine, the organization chart and chain of command was more than just a little convoluted.
The staff didn't let the organizational mishmash get in the way of planning and operational progress, however. Their own squabbling over rice bowls (military slang for areas of responsibility) was enough of a roadblock.
The Colonel's counterpart on the ROK half of the combined staff was a ROK Army one-star by the name of Bang (pronounced "bong"). General Bang was (is) a great man who navigated the shoals and undercurrents of, often, competing US and ROK goals with aplomb. That he had a great sense of humor helped immensely in the herculean task of keeping two armies focused on the threat to the north; not to mention easing a knuckle-dragging Marine's attempt to operate in a completely foreign environment -- the Army way of doing things as much as the Korean.
Early every morning, the combined US - ROK staffs provided BG Bang and the Colonel a half-hour PowerPoint presentation that covered peninsular events over the past 24 hours and progress on planning for upcoming exercises and high-level visits, etc. Afterwards, the principles of the two Current Operations staffs -- representing air, land, naval, and command post -- met in a smaller executive setting. Since most of the stuff of any import had already been covered in the larger audience brief, this smaller session was more about team-building than anything else.
BG Bang and the Colonel had agreed early on that instead of the more comfortable and default seating arrangement around the large conference table -- US on one side and ROK on the other -- staff counterparts would sit together. Furthermore, each pair was responsible for teaching each other a slang word or colloquialism that would be shared daily. The looks around the table were priceless when a South Korean general, whose culture is steeped in polite and deferential speech, answered a subordinate's unbelievable claim regarding an issue with: "I didn't just fall off the turnip truck."
As you can well imagine, some... okay..., a lot of the slang the American officers taught their Korean counterparts was not appropriate for polite company. The prim Korean officers tittered like schoolgirls when one would use a blue phrase that would ordinarily not be accepted in their society. For their part, the American officers, the Colonel included, continuously butchered the Korean language, shocking the deferential Koreans when the wrong tense was used when addressing a senior.
One morning in the second week of November of 2000, BG Bang summarily cut off the culture klatch and asked the Colonel, "What is a chad?"
What followed -- as will be no surprise to any of you unfortunate enough to have been present when the Colonel has been asked a simple political or history question for which the Colonel believes a very detailed answer is required -- was a narrative tour de force of the Constitution, the States' responsibilities in national elections, and the role of the Electoral College.
The greatest looks of interest around the table were the Colonel's American subordinates -- they were clearly hearing some of this for the first time. And, that a knuckle-dragging Marine who didn't go to college (the Colonel went to Ole Miss, instead) could expound on the subject so, was even more amazing to them.
At length, when the Colonel finally paused to take a deep breath, the very prim and polite Korean brigadier general sitting next to him, grasped his forearm and exclaimed,
"I asked you what time it was; not how to build a [expletive deleted] clock!"
