A Soldier's Thanksgiving Story

We are 21!

La Bloga first appears in the world, the universe, blogosphere, or anywhere else, on November 28, 2004. Rudy Garcia, Manuel Ramos, and Michael Sedano are the founders. Soon thereafter, Rene Colato Laínez and Daniel Olivas join. Over the years, La Bloga has enjoyed the company of numerous writers who've shared interesting stories and insights. You see some of us in the mugshots at the top of the page.

Thank you for reading La Bloga, friends.

La Bloga is in transition, announcements pending, saying farewell and welcome to our writing team. Look for the news in upcoming columns. 

Are you a raza writer interested in joining La Bloga? Click the link embedded in the mugshots at the top of the column to let the Editor / Blogmeister (Michael Sedano) know!

 

Thanksgiving At Hwaak-ni, 1970
Michael sedano

It was a day like any other day, except I was there, Hwaak-ni, a remote Korean village that hosted the 75 soldiers of Bravo Seven Five (B 7/5), the highest missile site in the world. 50 men in the Admin Area base camp, 25 on the mountaintop, two nights up, one night down.

High atop Mighty Mae Bong, 25 missileers would have lukewarm turkey dinner. Down in the Admin Area, we looked forward to hot chow, a Great Big Thanksgiving Day Dinner That Can’t Be Beat, as Arlo Guthrie was singing*, back in the States. Given what had transpired the previous months, the promise of real food, and a feast at that, had the men of B 7/5 bubbling with excitement.

Bravo's Best In the Snow at Hwaak-ni

The Summer had been disastrous for the men of Mae Bong. The REMF Warrant Officer responsible for ordering our chow has mucked it up so badly he exhausts our rations budget. The last hot meal the cook serves is boiled potato chunks. Chunks are what remain after Tyner, the cook, cut away the rotted and black spots on the spuds. We eat C-rations and ville-bought ramen for the rest of the month.

Morale was already in the toilet before the chow went to Hell. 

The Battery Commander is a Dud of major proportions, an SAE frat boy from the U of Alabama. BC skulks around the Admin Area—never went up to the top—carrying a swagger stick wearing a scarlet turtleneck dickie. Scarlet is the heraldic color for US Air Defense Artillery. The cabal of ROTC Officers follows their leader and strut about with their own swagger sticks and dickies. They look silly and earn the contempt of every Enlisted Man and NCO. 

A few moments before jumping onto the manning truck and heading up the mountain.

With that level leadership it’s no surprise the Battery flunks every combat-readiness inspection, and, as punishment, the battery has them every few weeks. Finally, the Colonel has enough and fires that jerk and forbids swagger sticks and dickies.

The new BC comes to Mae Bong determined to return military discipline to the unit. He arrives in time for Thanksgiving so when he announces the traditional dinner the entire morning formation leaps in the air, clicks their heels three times on the way up, and lands with a smart salute. Ajua, real chow, and not only that, turkey and all the trimmings! 6000 miles from home and mira nomás! Just like home.

To say the battery is brimming with joy would be an understatement. Me, I have a special treat: Tyner invites me to make the pies! I have not been in a kitchen since leaving Ft. Ord, so making pies is doubly special.

It is strictly against regulations for me to be in the kitchen, much less making food, but so it goes.  Tyner used to give me rides to Camp Page in the back of the mess truck and on the ride back he’d give me a quart of pineapple juice—something B 7/5 wasn’t entitled to--with the proviso I toss the empty before we hit the front gate and not be seen when I exit the truck. 

So there we are in the kitchen and I’m ready to make pie crust: flour, butter, salt, and hours of mixing, chilling, rolling, molding into pie tins. This is what I signed up for.

Tyner hands me frozen pie shells. I am struck dumb. Who’s ever heard of frozen pie shells? Then he opens cans of apple and cherry filling to dump into the pie shells. Presto! I’ve made four pies in no time flat! I take off my apron and leave Tyner baking turkey and doing all the work for a Great Big Thanksgiving Day Dinner That Can’t Be Beat.

“Crawl on out of there!” Pinky shouts at 6 a.m. as he rouses the barracks. Thanksgiving Day at Bravo has arrived. Órale, hit the latrine then head to the chow hall for a standard Army breakfast of fresh eggs to order, pancakes, bacon, papas, toast, coffee, milk.

Then the new BC sends out word that hits with major grumbling and profound disappointment: no Great Big Thanksgiving Day Dinner That Can’t Be Beat unless we dress up in our Class A uniform. 

Soldiers passing a pipe, Admin Area B 7/5

Crap. We are a front-line working outfit, 15 miles from North Korea. Our uniform of the day is combat boots and fatigues. That military crap is for the rear echelon, headquarters soldiers. Bravo has a sign "welcome to the ruggedest, highest HAWK** missile site in the Free World." This is not Class A territory.

The road to Bravo

Bitter as can be we dress up in our monkey suits, show up at the appointed hour, four to a table, looking charp and soldierly. The new BC makes a speech, noting how good and military we all look, to stifled grumbles.

No one grumbles when Tyner and the Korean KPs fill our trays with turkey and all the trimmings. This is, indeed, despite the necktie and spit shined shoes, a Great Big Thanksgiving Day Dinner That Can’t Be Beat.

Y sabes que? Although it’s a tiny slice, the men of Mae Bong have pie for dessert, compliments of Specialist 4th Class Michael Sedano, who is heard singing a chorus of Alice’s Restaurant Massacree as he changes into fatigues and heads to the Commo Hootch for duty and a postprandial reverie thinking about home.

* Alice’s Restaurant Massacree
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaKIX6oaSLs

**HAWK missile

https://history.redstone.army.mil/miss-hawk.html

Memorial Day 2023: Remember the Chicano Who Won WWII?

This column originally ran in September 2019. My father saw Europe through the gunsights of a .30 calibre machine gun. He fondly remembered a big house overlooking the arches on the beach of Etretat, Normandy. The Army billeted the victorious soldiers there on the cliffs. That house was one of two good memories Dad shared with me through the years.

Michael Sedano

“What the Hell is that doing there?” My dad’s vehemence wasn’t unusual but this time his irritation rang with something else. The cover of the big thick book had the Nazi swastika against a white circle. I recognized what I’d done and snatched the volume off the table and hid it away spine-first. I thought the author had been stupid to put that piece of crap so blatantly out there, but then, I knew my dad’s stories, and the symbol sold books about the 16-year old war.

I was probably 5 when I first heard about my daddy’s war. This puts my Dad only 5 years distant from the last days of World War II, 6 years from being an orange picker with a high school diploma. He was picking la naranja again, and smudging in winter, with 2 kids and a Good Conduct Medal.

Dad showed me the armbands, some fotos of dead German soldiers, a newspaper foto of his smiling face sticking up from the tank. He looked so young, even to my mocoso eyes. He told me haunting stories about killing people. About the dead German tank commander said to bear an eerie resemblance to my father's face. A barn filled with machine-gunned civilians. It was war.

They were never going to get rich on an orange picker's sueldo
but that didn't stop my Dad from 100-box days when the
grove was good.

Dad sat in the machine gunner’s forward post on 19APR45 when his tank, the C’est la Guerre, led the 69th Infantry Division to the front door of Leipzig City Hall. The war was won. If you saw the movie, Patton did it all by himself, casí. “We gave it back,” my Dad told me as he closed the shoebox of memories.

Dad wouldn’t have been the first GI inside the building, but as the machine gunner riding in the nose of that tank, my Dad was the closest GI to the front door when the driver set the brakes and WWII was over. A Chicano won WWII. My Dad never said that. William L. Shirer went that whole book and didn’t say it. I say it: A Chicano orange picker from Redlands California won WWII in Europe. It’s true.

By the time the Army allowed my dad and his platoon into the building, all the good stuff was gone. Rank has its privileges. A few worthless German marks littered the floor, some brand new Nazi armbands. Here's a chrome bayonet that slicks in and out of a decorative sheath, in all likelihood the guy who wore it in a goose-stepping parade was killed during the assault.

This is the crew of C'est la Guerre, the first U.S. tank
to reach Leipzig City Hall, where this bill littered the floor.

Dad autographed a one hundred thousand Mark bill and sent the loot home to Berdoo. Germany was printing money at will and the bill looks like it's fresh off the printing press.

C’est la Guerre’s crewmen signed a one hundred mark bill. Along with my Dad, these are the first GIs to reach Leipzig City Hall. History has forgotten these warriors. Somewhere a family has a similarly autographed bill. I hope they know it's a treasure.

McCann, the Loader on C'est la Guerre, remained in contact with my father the rest of their lives. Just as dementia was seizing my Dad's future, they'd planned a reunion so my nearly-blind Dad could view the Fall colors back east. When McCann died, my mom decided my Dad didn't need to know that. She said goodbye to Mrs. McCann for us. Thank you for your service.

Two armbands complete the collection. A variety of GIs signed their names and addresses. I looked up a couple. The address in Chicago is a building erected in 1900. It stands. I know one GI who returned there after WWII. Hillsboro TX buried a man whose particulars suggest he was with the 777th Tank Battalion that day in Leipzig. Another Chicano who won the war. Chippewa III 22 signed both armbands.

I am happy my Dad did not downsize his Army souvenirs. I’m downsizing my possessions and happened upon my Dad’s last Army stuff, the memories he kept in his strongbox. Dad, I won’t let go of your memories. I’m not waiting for VE Day to say “thank you for your service.” And I add, thank you for holding in those nightmares. I remember your stories, I understand holding it in can break a man. You did that for us.

The last time I sat with my father in his bedroom at home, his mind was back in the field. He wanted to reset the firing stakes for their new position. He was on the road to Leipzig, resting now, dug in and ready. I could hear it in his voice.

69th Infantry Division, 777 Tank Battalion, on the road to Leipzig, April 1945.
The soldier stands over the machine gunner's hatch.

U.S. Army tank C'est la Guerre in Leipzig, Germany April or May 1945

C'est la Guerre and other armor, Leipzig, Germany, April or May 1945

Swastika is too offensive to feature on La Bloga

SNAFU: A Night At the Opera

Note: Esteban Torres completes advanced electrical training in preparation for four-year assignment in Europe. A series of military foul-ups sees the youngster re-trained to blowing up old bridges and patrolling the brand-new Iron Curtain. Torres' love of cartooning lands him full-time assignment in elite Bavarian environs. Assigned to Intelligence School in Oberammergau, he draws propaganda manuals, a dream job. He's recruited to infiltrate Romania as a spy but the plan never gets off the ground. Like any soldier, Torres' duty comes with adventures and mishaps. The ex-soldier enjoyed telling how his plans for an elegant night at the Munich Opera's first post-war La Boheme turns into a night in jail.

 

Excerpt from Chapter Three, The Autobiography of Esteban Torres As Told to Michael Sedano

1949, Germany

My big let-down of no job, is a move up to a great job. The first months in my overseas assignment, I work mostly in a comfortable office drawing cartoons for the Army newsletter. 

 

I’m also assigned regular Constabulary duties. That means, for all intents and purposes, I’m la chota.

 

In Böblingen, this teenager fresh out of the East Los barrio struts around decked out in shiny black helmet with two gold stripes, spit-polished boots laced-up to the ankles with bloused trousers and Sam Browne belt. 

 

I am the occupation army’s constabulary with authority over 12,000 mostly good people. I carry a weapon and live rounds. Locals call me das Blitz-Politzei after the lightning bolt on our shoulder patch.

 

I’m approaching my twentieth birthday. Back in the United States I still can’t vote and in California, can’t go buy a drink in a civilian bar. I can’t live in Montebello--because I’m Mexican--no matter how old I am. No Chicanos need apply.

 

Joining the military straight out of high school might not be for everyone. You aren’t everyone. Neither am I. Enlisting in the Army was my choice in 1949. I would not do anything differently today. 

 

== 1951 == Torres is now a Staff Sergeant 

 

The boy who left L.A. is a man now. Other men follow his orders. The man from East Los disciplines as needed, keeps matters in the platoon, no need to go up the chain of command. Under my leadership, my men fit together, my men become a team, efficient, effective, in control of the mission. Nothing can shake our confidence.

 

I had to laugh when I thought about my confidence once I’d been in Germany long enough to know my way around. I thought I was unstoppable, except I stopped myself.

 

Not looking back has been a good way for me to keep my eyes on what’s headed my way. That Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared, has lifelong value. In fact, the one time I left myself unprepared it cost me dearly.

 

One of the streets in town was a tailor’s row. Imported yardage had found its way into the economy and the tailors stocked a lot of green wool material, perfect for a young GI with a sense of style to have a custom-made Class “A” uniform made to his specifications.

 

Vanity can be a good thing, when you’re young and do elaborate things that put you into the cultural swirl of things, like the Munich Opera. 

 

My grandmother played opera records on Sunday mornings while I lay on the floor reading the funny papers in the Examiner and La Opinion. I laughed at the Katzenjammer Kids while German opera played in the background. Then came the war against Germany and the Katzenjammer kids, and German opera, sounded different. 

 

After the war, German music came back to life, and although the Opera House had been bombed out, the Munich Opera was doing La Boheme on a rebuilt stage.

 

I planned the event of a lifetime. A fabulous dinner, the opera in my custom-made Class A United States Army uniform. My brass would shine and reflect candelabra lights as I strode up the stairs into the hall. The center of attention.

 

I never made it.

 

I checked into a first-class hotel to get myself ready for my big cultural night. A hot shower, fresh shave, ribbons and brass in place. My “bespoke” custom-made uniform made me look like a diamond.

 

I had just tied my spit-shined dress shoes when a firm knock focused my attention on the unlocked door. It opened and two MPs walked into my room like they paid the rent. I recognized their pugnacity from my days as a Constabulary patrol.

 

“Where’s your pass, Soldier?”

 

Pass. 

 

A detail I’d neglected, I wasn’t prepared. 

 

These MPs weren’t boy scouts and sure were not going to do a good turn daily, let me go to La Boheme, my plans went up in smoke. 

 

The MPs did their duty. I was escorted to jail and that’s where I spent my night at the Opera, all dressed up fancy in my tailor-made Class A uniform, locked up with the drunken GIs. I definitely was the most turned-out jailbird in Germany that night.

 

I had the Pass. My Commander approved my leave, the Company Clerk typed up the Pass and handed it to me. I put the Pass in my fatigue jacket pocket and left it there. My jacket and pass were waiting for me when I reported to the Captain. He laughed.

 

Leadership looks like a laughing man behind a desk and a relieved man on the other side of the desk. The Commander figured my punishment was the cost of the ticket to La Boheme, the price of the hotel room, and the taste of stale bread sandwiches instead of Sauerbraten, Rotkohl, Kartoffelkloesse, and all the trimmings of a fancy German banquet on an enlisted man's pay.

 

Veterans Day 2021: One Vet's Not All Sad

What was it supposed to be, if not this?

Michael Sedano

 

I was a soldier. I am a Veteran. Seven percent of United Statesians have worn the uniforms the nation observes on Veterans Day. Imagine that, because there aren't that many of us around, so you might not know a Veteran of U.S. military service.

 

It’s been many a year that I grow morose as Veterans Day nears. It was my first Veterans Day out of the service.An interviewer for my Dream Job as a Debate Coach told me “You’ve been away from debate too long,” to be hired at Moorpark College. I admit that shook me up for a long time.

 

The interviewer asked, did you see any combat? Would I be coaching debate today if I’d killed people for him? Would my “time away from debate” been shorter? 

Sedano, Center foto, right. Mud Day.

 

“Sedano. Front and center.”

 

39 men relax imperceptibly at their name not being “Sedano.” For his part, Sedano understands he’s not expected to answer verbally. He strides to the stage and stands at Attention.

 

Bayonet training culminates the nation’s 8-week curriculum converting civilians into soldiers. It’s April 1969. We can run and march as a unit. We shoot guns and throw hand grenades. We breathe CS gas. We can punch and kick and stomp a man or woman, in theory. We will kill (name withheld because we have no idea, que no?) We can take it. Seven weeks of everything three Drill Sergeants and an asshole mess sergeant throw at us, and we took it. We are those fabled “rough men at the ready.”

 

“What is the purpose of the bayonet?”

 

My brother got the record for his birthday, it was red clear vinyl. Must have been 1955, I was ten. Tiny grooves yet they played all the armed forces songs. We played that disc endlessly, sang along to all of them, even the Coast Guard. We played war, our imaginations stoked by the lyrics, semper paratus is our guide, fame fortune, wild blue yonder, over hill over dale we have hit the dusty trail. Montezoooma.

 

“When you hear The Army Song,” Drill Sergeant lectures, you stand. “No matter where you are or what the occasion, when that song plays, you honor every man and woman who served before and after you. You stand."

Ft Ord., February 1969. Barbara brings tacos. I wear my white maggot patch.

“Over hill…” is The Army Song. It means something. I stand when I hear it. I stand out when I do.

 

The Rose Parade 1986, our first year in the new Pasadena home. We buy tickets on the corner of Colorado and Lake. Pretty good spot, tired musicians have rested between Arroyo Parkway and Vroman’s, where the bands pick up the beat and start playing again.

 

Totally cool for us, we can hear it when the bands approach, drums rattattating the cadence. The pianist in me hears that four-four beat and the Veteran in me imagines a voice calling out.

 

“Hut.” We march in step, 40 of us basic trainees. Hut. Hut. Every few steps he calls out “Left.” Sometimes Drill Sergeant sings a song. We are happy to hear the happy song. Poison Ivvvy, late at night when you’re sleeping Charlie Cong comes a’creepin along.”

 

Here comes this year’s Army band. Rattat hut hut. The Drum Major lifts the Mace high, sounds out a long tweeeee-eeeeeet! Then staccato Tweet tweet tweet! Only trodding boots make a sound, in unison to the 4/4 beat. 

 

Hut. Hut. Hut. The opening notes every soldier every kid every civilian in the United States recognizes as the over hill over dale we have hit the dusty trail as the caissons go rolling along song. Catchy tune.

 

I’m on my feet before the unsung lyric reaches “Hill.” The marching band, playing into the eighth measure, approaches my grandstand. I'm standing, alone among the seated mass at Lake. Hand salute, it's the Flag, gente. It's the Song, people.

The Drum Major looks at me. He tweets a short attention to the players. 

 

Tweet tweet tweet. “Eyeee-ss, LEFT”

 

“we have hit the dusty trail…” the Army Band plays with Eyes Left on me, fingers and lungs breathing the tune for all these folks, but this Song, it’s for me. Eyes front. The band marches past the Bank of America. “For it’s hi hi hee in the field artillery.”

 

View of North Korea from Mae Bong. Summer 1969.

Me, I was Air Defense Artillery. I sit down. People look at me. I stood for the flag, pendejos. And the Song. I'm a Veteran.I was a soldier.

 

The training buildings up on maggot hill cluster near an auditorium where we’re trained as a company. Today, platoon-level activities are the Order of the Day. Usually we stack our M-14 rifles outside the classroom building where we come to be trained. When we get there early we do push-ups to pass time. We always get there early.

 

Army Basic Training teaches patience and humility. In December, I’d been lecturing at the University. In March I’m being lectured to like a 9-year old who knows all the songs. I am 23 years old. Today, we carry our weapons inside to sit awkwardly in orderly rows, elbow to rifle to shoulder. Except Sedano. 

 

I’ve been called to the front, to pose on command. Drill Sergeant and I have a stage, a riser a foot above floor level where I look across the faces of my platoon, a bunch of teenagers. I scream and shout con gusto, hyeah! Right thrust, move! Hyeah! A bunch of us are Draftees like I am. A sizeable number are RA, Regular Army guys who joined. A few National Guardsmen and Enlisted Reserve join our ranks. They eat last, by the way. Parry left, move! Hyeah! Right thrust, move! Hyeah!

 

“Men,” Drill Sergeant asks. I’m standing at Port Arms, the M-14 making a sharp diagonal across my chest. The eyes of the men shift from the giant Smokey Bear hatted leader to me with my piss pot. In the movies, he asks me to attack him and I kick his ass. 

 

“Men, What is the purpose of the bayonet?”

 

Drill Sergeant is doing this to torture us. Makes us tough. He knows it’s so damned ridiculous to have to say what we have to say when we say what is the purpose of this foot-long knife with the sharp point at the end of seven inches of thin lethal steel. Pointing my bayonet, looking down at the platoon, standing on this podium, I’m so damned glad I am not expected to answer. 

 

“Men, What is the purpose of the bayonet?”

 

“Drill Sergeant! The Purpose of the Bayonet, is to strike Fear into the hearts of our enemy!”

 

I’m looking at the guys and the guys are looking back at me striking fear into the hearts of our enemy. They’re all glazed-eyed from being too tired not to laugh, but knowing if they laugh they are in deep deep shit from the Drill Sergeant and his minions, stationed to pounce.

 

The men don’t dare laugh. Inside, I’m making faces at them and giving them the finger, daring them not to laugh. And they’re pulling it off. The training worked, we’re a Unit. These guys share my misery and they don’t laugh at my performance nor their own absurdity. Finally, they are laughing. At the tops of their bloodthirsty lungs, their laughter sounds exactly like “Fear into the hearts of our enemy!” I find myself shouting with them.

 

“Right Face. On Guard.” Bayonet training today ends with a Pageant of the Masters Tableau, The American Fighting Soldier. I assume the position.

 

Sedano wears a piss pot steel helmet, green fatigues dotted with drying yellow-red mud from the morning’s crawling in it. Sedano’s right leg bends back at the knee, his leather combat boot flat. The hollow wooden podium drums when the soldier’s left boot slams forward onto the podium. Sedano bends his left knee to lean forward, pointing his M-14 with its sheathed bayonet at an imaginary enemy. Flags and a loud fanfare would have been a nice touch.

 

Drill Sergeant puts me At Ease after that and dismisses me. I’m thinking as I take my seat, anyone who gets into a bayonet fight is in deep shit. I hope they make me a clerk.

 

Basic Combat Training culminates in a battle royale, of sorts. Three soldiers form a gauntlet with simulated bayonets—pugil sticks—and have a bayonet fight with one after another soldier until every soldier has fought three times. And three soldiers have fought 39 times. I am number one of three.

 

“Parry Left and Thrust! Ready…”

 

Sedano looks excitedly at the manuscript. He’s identified a good copy of Aristotle, but one that made the voyage from Spain. Sedano’s Ph. D. studies move along with the new manuscript. He is retranslating the rhetorical tradition as it comes to America from Spain and into Spanish from Greek and from English. He is building a schemes and tropes handbook, illustrating his modern rhetoric handbook exclusively from Chicano Literature. He is having the time of his life, Santa Barbara to Austin. Young, free, in Love. It's 1970, Barbara's enjoying the change of scenery, life is good.

 

But that didn’t happen. He got drafted. “Ready, Fight!” And he beats up 36 soldiers. And gets pounded three times, twice quite badly. Bit the dust, as Homer says in Greek.

 

That’s why I’m not morose this year. Those memories are good memories of good times, in actuality, all things considered. 

Ask a Veteran, she or he will tell you, “I’d do it again.” 

Even though it completely changed the course of our lives. 

That’s what it means, “I’m a Veteran, I was a soldier.”

Sedano as a soldier following orders: Mufti in the Ville.