Friday, August 24, 2012

The USS Chik-Fil-A




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The Wisconsin was out-of-date even when she was built, because the battle of Taranto, the sinking of the Bismarck, and the attack on Pearl Harbor demonstrated that aircraft carriers were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: