Mack
Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Battleships
and The Chik-Fil-A Wars
Last
week a much-watched political event was staged in Virginia before the USS Wisconsin, one of the last battleships.
Perhaps
the Battleship Potemkin was already
booked for a wedding reception.
Forty
years ago, hosting a political rally next to a battleship would have been the
occasion for one of the gentle, harmless peace demonstrations common in that
era of tie-dyed polyester and lots of body hair in unlikely places. Such love-ins usually featured casualty lists.
Now
the all-we-are-saying-is-give-peace-a-chance crowd terrorize waitresses at
Chik-Fil-A.
Chik-Fil-A
– every American of every faith tradition, political leaning, and sexual
disorientation can agree that Chik-Fil-A is about the oddest name ever for a
foodery, even one that sells fragments of dead birds to the public. How does one spell or pronounce
Chik-Fiol-phil-fillip-filet-philately…?
“Chik-Fil-A”
– is that a secret code used by Big Chicken as part of its nefarious Club of
Rome plot to control the world by hoarding all the gizzards in a secret vault
in Switzerland?
How
often was fried chicken served on battleships?
Battleships
are now artifacts of the past, like fountain pens, iambic pentameter, long
pants, and Sunday services that don’t feature percussion instruments. But everybody seems to love them –
battleships, not drum sets -- not as instruments of death (which was their
primary function), but as symbols of national pride and power.
The
Wisconsin was out-of-date even when
she was built, because the battle of Taranto, the sinking of the Bismarck, and the attack on Pearl Harbor
demonstrated that aircraft carriers were now to rule the sea, and the role of
battleships after 1939 was to serve as graves for thousands of young men.
The
Bismarck, after all, was rendered
helpless by a wooden-framed, cloth-covered, single-engine English biplane whose
lift-off speed was only slighter faster than the aircraft carrier launching
it. Further, the many anti-aircraft
batteries of the shiny new Bismarck never
hit even one of the several sputtering kites attacking it.
There
might be a lesson in that for those suffering over-confidence in those who believe
in the invincibility of our shiny new aircraft carriers.
The
first crew of the Wisconsin could
well be the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of the last crew. The seamen of 1944 grew up in the Depression,
and for many their Navy-issue shoes were the first new ones they had ever
known. They ate three good meals a day,
and were paid $21 a month. Their Navy grandsons
and granddaughters, growing up in prosperity, would have found the very same working
spaces aboard the Wisconsin tighter
in every way.
The
Wisconsin served (what a weak verb!)
during World War II and Korea, took a long nap through Viet-Nam, and was
awakened in the 1980s. She and her twin,
the USS Missouri, went to war for the
last time in 1991, refitted with missiles and drones that by now are as
outdated as the 1944 main batteries.
Both ships are now museums, and once interest is lost in them they will
rust and decay, and sink into the mud, like the century-old USS Texas.
No one will ever again see a battleship sail “into harm’s way.”
Scuttlebutt
has it that the battleship Arizona,
blown apart in combat on 7 December 1941, is still kept on the Navy’s
books as a commissioned ship, but this is not so. It ought to be, and there is a precedent in the
perpetual commission of the USS Constitution
from the War of 1812. The USS Arizona could be re-commissioned and
returned to the Navy List with a signature.
Then, forever after, whenever a United States Navy fleet sails, the Arizona would lead the Order of Battle.
We
owe that pride of place to the sailors of all the ships of World War II.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment