Back at Tachikawa, the NCO wives
decorated the dayroom for the single airmen.
These were divorced people, people who had
never been married, or married men on an
unaccompanied tour. They were undomesticated.
I remember one saying, ungratefully, sotto voce,
"You can't even fart around here without blowing up
a big cloud of tinsel." They hated Christmas.
Not the hypocrisy, or the commercialization.
They just weren't happy persons.
They were drunks. Depressed.
They were SAC-trained killers.
War was their profession.
They weren't touchy-feely.
They were gruff.
They didn't just hate Christmas.
They hated holidays. Anything that disrupted
their routine. Their sense of order. They were holding themselves
together with their fingernails. Did you ever live like that for years at a stretch?
Do you think it wouldn't affect your joie de vivre, your magnanimity?
Get thee behind me, Satan. They were authoritarian personalities.
I myself alone am escaped to tell. Support the troops.
Why do that? They are bloody Fascists.
You'd better be, if you want to last.
Kill them all, and let God sort it out.
Or they'll kill you.