"CRA" TRIANGLE

A lecture given on 23 October 1956

... We've heard about too many battles. Now, if we'd never heard about a battle but simply fought in a few, all we would have would be the experience of having fought in a few and the R is right there -- the dead bodies, the bullets whizzing around and so on.

This was always something which was quite amusing to me. I used to think about this as very peculiar, very peculiar. I used to think there was something wrong with me because if anything had to do with action or combat came along, I didn't find the circumstances very intolerable. And this was inexplicable to me until I found out that I considered battles I had never been in ghastly! And I didn't think any of the battles I'd ever been in ghastly. See, I didn't think this was a bad thing. I didn't even vaguely associate this as a bad thing. Submarines are something you fish for. They're slightly larger than other kinds of fish. And airplanes is like duck hunting except the duck can shoot back and you have some motive to shoot down airplanes -- to stop their propellers; enough significance.

I'm afraid I have that to this day. I'm afraid I do. I look up at airplanes and lick my chops and what wouldn't I give for a .40 millimeter. It got to be a sport. No more than that. But boy, there were some battles that were fought with airplanes, and there were some bombings, and there were some other things that happened during the war that were just too ghastly for words! Until I finally realized that I hadn't attended them.

Now, give you some idea like this: the reality of battles does continue after the fact. Now, I heard about something the other day that made me feel rather bad. I dropped the I-76 or the Imperial Japanese Navy Trans-Pacific Submarine down into the mouth of the Columbia River, dead duck. And it went down with a resounding furor. And that was that. I never thought about it again particularly except to get mad at all the admirals I had to make reports to because of this thing, see? This was one out of seventy-nine separate actions that I had to do with. And it had no significance, see?

But the other day I was kind of tired, and my dad suddenly sprung on me the fact that my submarine had been causing a tremendous amount of difficulty in the mouth of the Columbia River. Hadn't thought about this thing for years. Of course, it's all shot to ribbons, this thing. It's got jagged steel sticking out at all ends and angles, and it's a big submarine! It's a -- I don't know, about the size of the first Narwhal that we built. And the fishermen coming in there and fishing are dragging their nets around in that area, and it's just tearing their nets to ribbons -- they've even hired a civilian contractor to try to blow the thing up and get it the devil out of there -- and has evidently been raising bob with postwar fishing here for more years than I'd care to count. All right.

The moment I heard about this I felt contrite. I like fishermen; they're friends of mine. And the next thing you know I was asking my father for the address of the fishermen's association up there to write them a letter of apology. I want to call something to your attention. I never wrote any letters of apology to the Japanese navy. Here are dead men, see? Dead men. Three hundred dead men involved in that thing -- big crew, big sub. They got wives and children and... And I should, you see? I know the Japanese people, and I like them and so on. And that really should cause remorse, you see? But the remorse is all on something I heard about, you got the idea?

If you look that over for a moment you will see that it's completely idiotic. The actual function of slaughtering off a bunch of people and messing up a bunch of machinery and so forth -- that actually is quite an overt act. No faintest quiver. But that I would tear up some fisherman's net that I hadn't even met, you see, this -- contrition -- this is an overt act. Oh, is it?

Now, I'm sure you have material like this that you can look over similarly. Quite amazing. It's quite amazing. When we look it over carefully, we come to grips with reality. Well, reality is fine. But the reality you read about is for the birds, because there's no R there. Got the idea? No R.

.......... --

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes." -- George W. Bush - [Houston Chronicle, 5/8/94]

Cheerful Charlie

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