I think I knew--
I don't remember where I read it,
but it made sense, to me--
that military service was
to prepare a person to enter,
and succeed in, corporate America.
SAC was where they got their managers.
The billboard said, "Peace is our profession."
That meant, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength." It was Newspeak.
Doublethink. Nineteen Eighty-four.
I was in the Air Force between Korea
and Vietnam. We weren't at war with anyone.
We were in the Cold War. With the Russians.
Think Dr. Strangelove. How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb. Love General Curtis E. LeMay. Old Iron Ass.
He killed more people fire-bombing paper houses than both atomic bombs.
Hemingway's war was WWI. Or the Spanish Civil War. Or WWII.
Patrolling for German subs off of Cuba in the Pilar.
Good thing he didn't catch one.
His job was fucking Jane Mason.
Later married to Arnold Gingrich,
his publisher at Esquire. He took the stuff out of
To Have and Have Not that made it into A Moveable Feast,
barely changed. Unchanged. Of course, you can't sue someone
who's dead. That's why the book was published posthumously.