Thursday, June 29, 2006
Flightline - Patton’s Secret
Since I go to LA tomorrow for a commission meeting, I figgered this might be a good time to disgorge a little essay about airports, and something I saw in one not long ago…
Life during wartime does have some distinctive characteristics. One I’ve been noticing, is troops at the airports. I don’t travel all that often, but each time I do these days, wherever I start and wherever I’m going, I see our men-at-arms. They stroll incongruously through the terminals in their fatigued fatigues, the worn camo patterns standing out sharply against the universally muted slickness of airport decor. Their heads are often shaved, or shorn to nubbins; their boots pace anxiously on carpet that’s taken the place of foreign sands; and their duffels are stuffed to capacity with all they have been able to call their own during battlefield assignments.
What I notice next is, how the uniforms bring out the individuality of the wearers. It’s like the way tuxedos force us to pay attention to people’s faces - they mask meaningless distinctions and focus attention on the important ones, the things that give people personalities. It’s a remarkable effect, one that I find is only accentuated in places where the uniform is worn by a distinctive minority of the total population. One soldier: I see the army duds. But with many soldiers amid the mufti civilians, I get sucked right into the details and differences in their hands, their faces, their eyes. I think of where they’ve been, and what they’ve seen. I see the uniform, but I keep trying to look past it.
Not long ago as I waited for a flight, I watched a whole fighting crew walk past me in the airport. SIx men, weathered and hardened, pants tucked into their boots, floppy widebrimmed sun hats jammed on shining jar heads, strained straps of heavy duffels crushing down against broad shoulders.... They walked, though not in file, as a definite group. Then, last among them, shorter, a little stockier, identical in uniform but distinct in all other physical particulars, she walked too - more comfortably, I thought, more like a vacationer and less like an invading force. Though she had her regulation duffel slung over her shoulder, her head, unlike those of the other soldiers, was bare, and her brown wavy locks seemed to flaunt her stand-down status. Her clumsy sun hat - regulation camo, frayed from use - peeked out from a pink Victoria’s Secret bag that dangled coyly from her free-swinging hand. Despite her army-issue uniform, her every step broadcast one message with unmistakeable clarity: she was home again, and ready to change more than just her clothes.
See ya next week, party peoples. Keep your panties unknotted.
