Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 45

Author C. S. Lewis Provides Sage Advice From the Past

C.S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, had some sage advice in 1948 as the world was entering the atomic age. Atom bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three years before and as a result, World War II came to an abrupt halt.

Now, the world was terrified that a devastating new weapon might be utilized by warring nations, thereby initiating something known as mutually assured destruction.  There was a lot of hand-wringing as the thought took hold that global nuclear obliteration might ensue at any time.

In 1948 Lewis was a professor at Oxford University and president of the Oxford Socratic Club. In 1954 he left Oxford to accept the newly-created Chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University’s Magdalene College. Lewis died in 1963 at the age of 64.

Take a look at what Lewis wrote 73 years ago. It still rings as true today in our Covid-infected world, as it did then. If you replace the words “atomic age” with “COVID-19 age” you can see how Lewis’s short essay makes a lot of sense for us today.

“On Living in an Atomic Age,”

By C. S. Lewis

“How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of chronic pain, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.

It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about death. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

Okay, here’s how I read Lewis’s essay. Contrary to what the media, political pundits, Congress, and some self-styled medical “experts” continually tell us, we shouldn’t let COVID, or the ever-present specter of terrorism, or the fear of an uncertain future take up residence in our consciousness.

Instead, we should continue to live our lives and not allow ourselves to be dominated by the ever-present threats that surround us. To do so, allows us to fall prey to the burdens of life that depress us, rather than the joys of life that uplift and encourage us.

What say you?

 

 

 

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Lou Grant aka Ed Asner is Gone. RIP

When I learned that actor Ed Asner had passed away at the age of 91 the other day, I couldn’t help thinking about the old “Lou Grant” television series in which Asner played the gruff and curmudgeonly city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune.

By the way, in case you were wondering, all city editors are gruff and curmudgeonly—even the women who portray them. It is de rigueur for the job.

I, myself was both an assistant city editor and metro editor (an inflated version of a city editor) at the Chicago Tribune. But that is another story for another time.

The Emmy-winning Lou Grant series ran from 1977 to 1982 and at the time I was based in Los Angeles as the West Coast Bureau Chief for the Chicago Tribune.

My office was in the Los Angeles Times building so naturally, I was curious about any television series that portrayed the newspaper business.

I admit I watched the show assiduously, looking for any flaw in the reportorial skills of the Tribune’s two principal general assignment reporters, Joe Rossi, played by Robert Walden, and Billie Newman, played by Linda Kelsey.

I was intrigued by the kinds of social and journalistic issues the show examined. For example, the show looked at the kinds of ethical questions that often arise in newspaper newsrooms—issues like entrapment of sources, checkbook journalism, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, and staging stories and photos.

Naturally, as all good reporters do, they got into occasional squabbles and spats over stories with their immediate boss, the irascible Lou Grant, who also provided guidance and mentorship for the two general assignment reporters.

Rossi and Newman were also fierce rivals and competitors, as is often the case at big-city newspapers.

Lou Grant was the consummate newsman. He arrives in Los Angeles after being fired from WJM-TV in Minneapolis at the end of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. His friend, Charlie Hume (played by Mason Adams) is the Tribune’s managing editor and hires Grant as the paper’s city editor. We learn that Grant began his career in journalism as a print journalist, not a TV producer.

Right away, I felt a kinship with Lou Grant. This was a television character I could like.

As it turned out, I met Ed Asner one day while having lunch in a Los Angeles restaurant with a producer.

“You look just like Lou Grant, the city editor of the Los Angeles Tribune,” I quipped, shaking his hand.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Asner responded.

My producer friend explained that I was the Chicago Tribune’s West Coast bureau chief based in Los Angeles and that I also had the largest beat any journalist could have.

“In addition to the West Coast, Ron covers Asia and Latin America,” the producer said.

Asner’s eyes widened.

“You’re a foreign correspondent based in Los Angeles?” he asked. “Is that even possible?”

I explained that I had been posted to Tokyo and had covered the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975, as well as many other countries in Asia, so I had some experience in the area. Latin America, however, was a new part of my beat.

We chatted a little while longer about journalism in general and finally, Asner asked me what I thought of the L. A. Tribune newsroom as portrayed in the series.

“Does it look real?”

 

“Whoever created the set did a good job,” I said. “But if you want to see a REAL big city newspaper newsroom, you need to go to Chicago and visit the Chicago Tribune. That’s a classic newsroom. It’s enormous and loud.”

Asner revealed that he was traveling to Chicago in a couple of weeks. I offered to let my editors at the Tribune know and said I was sure they would love to show him around Tribune Tower.

“I’ve walked by that building hundreds of times when I was a student at the University of Chicago and when I was part of the old Playwrights Theater Club. It’s a hell of a building.”

As we continued to talk we discovered we were both born in Kansas City.

Finally, I asked Asner if he had spent much time talking to reporters and editors at the Los Angeles Times to prepare for his city editor role.

“Yeah, all of the cast did,” he responded. “And you know what, I always thought actors had big egos until I began spending time with you reporters.”

I had to laugh at that.

I agreed. Many journalists do have outsized egos—especially foreign correspondents. Of course, I added, journalists may have big egos, but their salaries are small.

I then shared a quote about foreign correspondents from the English playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard.

“A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise, he’s someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.”

(Photo by Tribune photographer Bob Fila)

A few weeks later I learned that Asner had indeed visited the Chicago Tribune newsroom. The office sent me a photo of Los Angeles Tribune city editor “Lou Grant” (aka Ed Asner) standing in the middle of the newsroom with Chicago Tribune city editor Bernie Judge and day city editor, Don Agrella—three of the best journalists I have ever known.

“There’s only one thing wrong with your portrayal of a city editor,” said Bernie Judge (left) to actor Ed Asner (center). “Your phone just doesn’t ring enough.” Don Agrella (right) agreed.

Otherwise, television’s Lou Grant played the part perfectly, storming into the newsroom and bellowing to startled reporters,

“All right you turkeys, get to work.”

–30–

 

 

 

 

Respect for the Aged Day: Japan’s Unique National Holiday Honors its Elderly

Today, I am stepping away from the FUBAR disaster that has occurred during the past several weeks in Afghanistan, to something “completely different,” as they used to say on the old Monty Python TV show.

Instead of Afghanistan, I am taking you to Japan, where there is a national holiday called “Keirōnohi” (敬老の日). That’s “Respect for the Aged Day” for all you non-Japanese speakers.

Japan may be the only nation in the world that actually has created a national holiday to honor and respect its older generations. It is held on the third Monday of September each year.

I spent almost 10 years in Japan as the Chicago Tribune’s Tokyo Bureau chief and Far Eastern Correspondent. During that time I can recall seeing Japanese families spending time together in parks, in hotels and ryokans for family lunches and dinners, or just strolling through Tokyo’s ubiquitous neighborhoods.

This unique holiday began in 1947, in a small town in Hyōgo Prefecture now known as Taka. The town proclaimed September 15th to be “Old Folks’ Day” (Toshiyori no Hi). Through the years, the holiday’s popularity spread to every corner of the country.

By 1966 it was proclaimed a national public holiday and was still celebrated on September 15th. Beginning in 1998, Japan introduced the “Happy Monday System.” This system moved public holidays to Mondays so people with 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday jobs could have more three-day weekends. In 2003, Respect for the Aged Day was moved to the third Monday of September.

Japanese who have grandparents or elderly parents have the opportunity to make the day special by taking them out for a meal or simply by spending time together. Even if they can’t be together in person, they can still give them a call and let them know how much they care and are missed.

Japan’s population has the greatest life expectancy in the world, with an average of 82.6 years (79.0 for men and 86.1 for women). According to recent statistics published by the Japanese Ministry of Health, this year the number of people 100 years old or older surpassed 40.000, with 86.5% of them women.

The oldest man in Japan is 112 years old and lives in Kyoto Prefecture south of Tokyo, while the oldest woman is 114 years and lives in Okinawa.

The secret to longevity in Japan is likely the healthy Japanese diet, which is low in foods containing heart-damaging trans fats and sodium and high in fresh vegetables and fatty fish such as salmon, fresh tuna, mackerel, sardines, and herring that are a great source of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids.

In addition, Japanese people have the lowest obesity rate in the developed world — 3%–versus 11% for the French and 32% for Americans, according to the International Obesity Task Force. This is not a genetic trait, say dietary experts, because when Japanese people adopt a Western-style diet heavy in red meat, fast foods, and fried foods, they put on weight quickly.

Still, studies show that the average Japanese adult eats about 25% fewer calories per day than the average American, which could partly explain their lengthy lifespan.

But another reason just may be the way elderly Japanese are treated in Japan’s tradition-rich society. When we used to walk through our Japanese neighborhood in the Fukazawa area of Tokyo, we frequently saw grandparents living with their children and grandchildren—often in traditional Japanese-style houses that were less than 1,000 square feet in size.

While such extended family lifestyles are not as common in Japan as they once were, there is nevertheless an unmistakable reverence for those 70 and older—especially in smaller cities and villages where the pace of life is much slower.

It is always risky to generalize about entire nations and ethnicities. Even so, I always felt that the Japanese treated their aging folks with greater regard and veneration than almost any other place I have visited or lived.

That impression is reflected in Japan’s Respect for the Aged Day, which is all about respecting and appreciating your elders.

That’s a mindset that seems to be missing in America’s youth-obsessed, self-indulgent culture where the elderly are often shunted off to nursing homes or confined to geriatric facilities which I consider nothing more than warehouses for the dying.

 

 

 

 

 

What We Left Behind in Afghanistan: Billions in U.S. Military Weapons & Material

By now you have heard about the military weapons, vehicles, aircraft, drones, and classified technology, and encrypted communications equipment the feckless and incompetent Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff left behind for our new friends the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Clearly, the deaths of 12 U.S. Marines and a Navy medical corpsman, not to mention some 170 Afghani civilians in the ISIS-K suicide bomb attack last week are of primary concern.

But the gift of some $35 billion in military hardware to an enemy American and coalition forces fought against for 20 years, cannot be ignored—despite the Pentagon’s desire to the contrary.

Whether all of that American military gear was intentionally or unintentionally left behind as Biden ordered a full-blown military bug-out, somebody wearing a uniform, such as Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley or Secretary of Defense Llyod Austin should be fired.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley

Of course, that will not happen in a spineless and irresponsible Biden administration. Austin and Milley are more concerned with teaching American soldiers Critical Race Theory and eliminating “white rage” in the ranks than they are about warfighting.

Both seem convinced that the Marine Corps, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are sated with “white supremacists”—an adversary even more dangerous than the Taliban, ISIS-K, or Al Qaeda.

Perhaps their obsession with rooting out “white privilege and fragility” in the military made them forget all of those American weapons and other military gear now in the hands of the Taliban—not to mention ISIS-K and Al Qaeda.

Oh well, who cares if we gifted the Taliban with Javelin missiles. Each one only costs $80,000—not counting the $125,000 launchers? Or what about those Stryker vehicles left behind? Baseline models only run $4.9 million each.

Then there are those F-15 fighters. They only cost about $87 million per copy and those UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. Hell, they are a bargain at only $6 million each. Then there are some $200 million in high-tech drones that the Taliban can now use against us at some point down the road—or can give to the Chinese so they can reverse engineer them.

If you watched carefully last week, you saw videos of Taliban soldiers walking around with some of those 978,000 American M4 and M16 rifles, as well as M24 sniper rifle systems, and M2 .50 caliber machine guns. Some had night-vision goggles, radios, and magazine pouches hanging from their bodies while others tooled around Kabul in American Humvees and MRAPs.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, between 2003 and 2017 the United States transferred 75,898 vehicles, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, 208 aircraft, and 16,191 pieces of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment to Afghan forces.

But that’s not all. Between 2017 to 2019, the United States also gave Afghan forces 7,035 machine guns, 4,702 Humvees, 20,040 hand grenades, 2,520 bombs, and 1,394 grenade launchers, among other equipment, according to a report last year from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).”

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that the equipment is lost to the Taliban, “and obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”

“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” he added.

The Pentagon’s response to all of this: “We are always worried about U.S. equipment that could fall into an adversaries’ hands,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said. “What actions we might take to prevent that or to forestall it, I just simply won’t speculate about today.”

Clearly, no action was taken. None at all. Zip, Zilch.

        A Blackhawk for the Taliban

Last week Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Joint Chiefs staff was asked if U.S. troops on the ground were taking any action to “to prevent equipment from falling into the hands of the Taliban by destroying it.”

His bleak response: “I don’t have the answer to that question.”

So, essentially, the Biden administration, in cahoots with the idiots in charge at the Pentagon, has succeeded in turning the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next 10 years or so.

The Taliban now control 75,000 military vehicles, including about 50,000 tactical vehicles, 20,000 Humvees, about 1,000 mine-resistant vehicles, and about 150 armored personnel carriers.

But more importantly, they have achieved an enormous psychological and propaganda victory, in addition to a military victory, over the United States.

Once again, the Biden administration is not concerned. No, bumbling, bungling Biden is more intent on tracking down white supremacists, domestic terrorists (AKA conservatives and Republicans), insurrectionists, and anybody who might have voted for Donald Trump in 2020 than he is about the gift of billions of dollars of American military gear to the Taliban and their terrorist compadres.

God only knows what caprice the Biden White House will treat the nation to next.

Perhaps our feckless president will give away the Statue of Liberty.

After all, with all these white supremicists running around the country, provoking insurrections, demanding a return to slavery, and Jim Crow elections, nobody will want to come to America ever again so why have the Goddess of Liberty wasting her time in New York harbor?

Let’s put her on a slow boat to Communist China. Now there’s an enlightened, nation that the socialist swamp creatures in Washington love. And while she’s there, maybe she can recover some of that mlitary hardware the Taliban will be giving to China.

In the meantime, take a look at the list of those military goodies we so graciously bequeathed to our conquerors in Afghanistan:

-2,000 Armored Vehicles Including Humvees and MRAP’s

-75,989 Total Vehicles: FMTV, M35, Ford Rangers, Ford F350, Ford Vans, Toyota Pickups, Armored Security Vehicles etc

-45 UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters

-50 MD530G Scout Attack Choppers

-Scan Eagle Military Drones

-30 Military Version Cessna’s

-4 C-130’s

-29 Brazilian made A-29 Super Tocano Ground Attack Aircraft

=208+ Aircraft Total!!

-At least 600,000+ Small arms M16, M249 SAWs, M24 Sniper Systems, 50 Calibers, 1,394 M203 Grenade Launchers, M134 Mini Gun, 20mm Gatling Guns and Ammunition

-61,000 M203 Rounds

-20,040 Grenades

-Howitzers

-Mortars +1,000’s of Rounds

-162,000 pieces of Encrypted Military Communications Gear

-16,000+ Night Vision Goggles

-Newest Technology Night Vision Scopes

-Thermal Scopes and Thermal Mono Googles

-10,000 2.75 inch Air to Ground Rockets

-Reconnaissance Equipment (ISR)

-Laser Aiming Units

-Explosives Ordnance C-4, Semtex, Detonators, Shaped Charges, Thermite, Incendiaries, AP/API/APIT

-2,520 Bombs

-Administration Encrypted Cell Phones and Laptops ALL operational

-Pallets with Millions of Dollars in US Currency

-Millions of Rounds of Ammunition including but not limited to 20,150,600 rounds of 7.62mm, 9,000,000 rounds of 50.caliber

-Large Stockpile of Plate Carriers and Body Armor

-US Military HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment Biometrics

-Lots of Heavy Equipment Including Bull Dozers, Backhoes, Dump Trucks, Excavators

Oh well. It’s only taxpayer money. Who cares?

 

Say it Ain’t so, Joe! America’s Liar-in-Chief Paints a Detached Assessment of the Kabul Disaster

Joe Biden is a disgrace. He is feckless. He is a coward. He is a liar.

Yesterday, he went on television to talk about the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan.

But how did he begin?

He started by talking about the Democrat’s Build Back Better plan and all the “free stuff” he is going to give American voters. He talked about the climate crisis, corporate taxes, and the need for wealthy Americans to “pay their fair share.”

Where was Afghanistan?

But Biden was not finished with his attempt to shove the disaster unfolding in Kabul onto the political backburner.

He then talked about the Democrat’s unconstitutional attempt via HR-1 to appropriate America’s presidential elections from the states where they have resided since the founding of this country.

Finally, he talked about the elephant in the room—the elephant called Afghanistan.

Biden launched into a sunny and unrealistic teleprompter account of the evacuation of Americans and Afghanis from the Kabul airport that belied what Americans, Afghanis, journalists, and even some military are telling us on the ground in Afghanistan.

Panic at the Kabul Airport

This is Biden in his role of Liar-in-Chief—a role he has honed and polished for most of his 40 years as a Washington swamp creature. Biden, as those of us who have watched him for the four decades, is simply allergic to the truth.

During his blinkered homily, Biden essentially legitimized the barbarous rabble of terrorists known as the Taliban by describing ongoing talks as though he were engaged with a legitimate government.

The Taliban are NOT the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The legitimate government fled a week ago as the Taliban swept into Kabul with no opposition from the unreliable and useless Afghan Army.

Taliban Leaders in Afghanistan’s Presidential Palace

What exists in Afghanistan today is the result of a coup d’état, not a legally elected government.

Of course, Biden didn’t mention that little fact. Nor did he address the $30 billion in American weapons, vehicles, uniforms, planes, helicopters, and sophisticated drones gifted to the Taliban by his feckless and incompetent administration and incompetent Pentagon leadership.

No, the billions spent on weapons and training for the now-defunct Afghani government are not important when you are preparing to spend at least $4 trillion on a pork-filled spending package that Nancy Pelosi is desperate to ram through the House in an effort to secure votes for the 2022 midterm election.

U.S. Military vehicles gifted to the Taliban

Who cares that those weapons will likely be used against American troops if we ever have to return to Afghanistan to deal with an Al Qaeda 2.0 or a new ISIS army of terrorists?

Biden and his cadre of incompetent generals must be beaming at the thousands of Taliban soldiers who are now wandering around Kabul wearing American military uniforms, carrying American weapons, and chowing down on American MREs.

How proud they must be at that sight.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Afghanis who worked with and for Americans and other coalition military remain stranded—yes STRANDED—in Afghanistan despite Jen Psaki’s weedy and pathetic repudiation to the contrary.

Will they get out? And what of several thousand Americans who are—yes STRANDED—in their homes or struggling to get to the Kabul airport?

Our faint-hearted and spineless president didn’t mention them. Instead, he painted a rosy picture of a flawless, perfectly orchestrated, and orderly evacuation ongoing in Kabul.

Of course, those on the ground in Kabul beg to differ. They are desperate to get out from under the deadly fist of the Taliban and their terrorist surrogates.

What our incompetent and cowardly president did during his spoon-fed, detached-from-reality remarks Tuesday afternoon, was callous and disgraceful.

Once again, he lied to the American people.

Then, he turned on his heel as reporters shouted questions at him, and walked dismissively out of the room leaving the hot-button issue of Afghanistan up in the air.

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saigon 2.0: Is Afghanistan Withdrawal a Repeat of Vietnam?

Recently I was interviewed on Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” show, hosted by Jan Jakielek about the similarities and differences between what is happening now in Afghanistan and what happened in Saigon in April 1975. Here is a link to that interview. It lasts about 30 minutes. I hope you will find it interesting. Ron Yates

https://www.theepochtimes.com/vietnam-war-reporter-ronald-yates-is-afghanistan-withdrawal-a-repeat-of-vietnam_3959326.html?utm_source=ATLNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021-02-19

 

 

A BOY GROWS UP FAST IN AFGHANISTAN: TRAINED TO KILL BEFORE HE’S A TEEN

Ocassionally, I post stories I wrote while working as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. I filed the story that follows in Febrary 1987 after returning from a foray into Afghanistan with a warlord and his Mujahideen militia. The Mujahideen, who eventually morphed into the Taliban, were fighting the Russians who had invaded Aftghanistan in 1979. I was impressed by the incredible toughness of the men I was with. They were rugged, seemingly fearless, and incredibly dedicated to expelling the Russians from a country known as the “graveyard of empires.”

Mujahideen in the Khyber Pass, 1987

But what astonished me, even more, were the boys, some as young as 10, who were also fighting alongside the men. The story I filed is about one of those boys–a 12-year-old named Daoud Bahrami. It’s a story that never left me and when American troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 in an effort to wipe out Al Qaeda and their Taliban supporters, I recall thinking: “Man, our troops are going to meet men who were once boys like Daoud–kids who were tough and committed and ready to make the supreme sacrifice. This is not going to be easy.”

And, as we now know, it wasn’t easy. In fact, after 20 years we are leaving without achieving anything close to a victory. Yes, we obliterated Al Qaeda and inflicted tremendous damage on the Taliban, but in the end, we lost–just as we did 47 years ago after a 10-year-long war in Vietnam in another land populated mostly by simple peasant farmers.

I hope you will read this story about Daoud Bahrami. It contains some stark lessons about Afghanistan and why that nation has earned the sobriquet “graveyard of empires.”

Feb 8, 1987

The Khyber Pass, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan–Twelve-year-old Daoud Bahrami can’t remember exactly when he stopped being a child.

It might have been a year ago when he attached a magnetized time bomb to a Soviet truck in a convoy parked on the outskirts of Kabul and barely reached safety before it and the men inside were shredded by the explosion.

It could have been while running messages for the anti-Soviet Mujahideen (Holy Warriors) down the narrow, twisting streets of Kandahar with Soviet soldiers firing their Kalashnikov rifles at him.

Or it may have been that day 18 months ago when he woke up and discovered there just wasn’t time to be a child in a country being ripped apart by war.

Daoud Bahrami & Father

In that respect Daoud is a lot like an estimated 1 million other Afghan children, half of them orphans, growing up in one of 314 refugee camps scattered along the Pakistani frontier while the seven-year-old war in Afghanistan rages.

But unlike most of his youthful peers, Daoud has not spent much time languishing in a camp for displaced persons. He is a child who has been trained to kill, who looks at you coolly, severely, with an unsettling lack of passion.

There was no way to corroborate his story, although adult guerrilla fighters said children frequently are used on such missions. Daoud’s own matter-of-fact manner added to his credibility. How many men, for instance, has he killed?

“Maybe one, maybe 10,” he says simply, speaking through an interpreter while sitting on the floor of the small Afghan carpet shop his family operates in Islamabad.

In most cases, Daoud never stayed around long enough to find out the extent of the carnage he created. His job was to use his size to creep as close as he could to unsuspecting Soviet troops, trucks, and tanks, throw his antitank bomb or hand grenade, and dash for cover.

That’s exactly what he did on his last assignment for the fundamentalist Jamiat-e-Islami, one of seven Mujahideen guerrilla groups trying to drive out the Soviet army.

As the sun was dropping behind the low hills that flank the edge of Afghanistan’s capital in mid-December, Daoud was handed an antitank weapon and a hand grenade by his commander and told to work his way close enough to several Soviet T-54s to “do some damage to the infidels.”

Daoud had done this before, so he knew just how close he would have to get to the “big brown iron beasts.”

“I tied the bomb here with my belt,” he said, pointing to the small of his back. “And then I crawled along the rooftops of maybe 15 buildings until I was looking down on the Russians and their tanks. I could see them laughing and trying to make friends with the Afghan people.

“Some of the Russian soldiers were trying to sell parts of their uniforms, like their belts and hats to the people so they could get money. The Russians are always trying to get money by selling something.

“There were three tanks and they were sitting still. I watched for about two minutes to make sure there were no more tanks or soldiers and I leaned over the edge of the roof and dropped my bomb into an open turret hatch. Then, I threw my hand grenade at a group of soldiers standing nearby.”

Daoud fled over the rooftops. After running about 20 yards, he was jolted off his feet by an earth-shattering eruption as the powerful antitank bomb ripped through the innards of the T-54. That was followed by another explosion as the hand grenade unleashed its lethal spray of shrapnel.

“I could hear the soldiers screaming and crying,” Daoud recalled. “Then they began shooting at the rooftops and into the houses with their Kalashnikovs. They were scared.”

Was Daoud afraid? Only that he would fail.

“I am not afraid to die,” he said. “In my heart, I would like to be a shaheed (martyr). So death does not frighten me. I welcome it.”

Daoud’s father, sitting on the floor nearby, beamed approvingly.

“If he goes to war and comes home alive, I will be happy,” he said, looking proudly at his son. “And if he goes to war and is martyred, I will be just as happy.”

Daoud’s brother, Hamad, 15, is more pragmatic about the war that has mutilated Afghanistan and its 15 million people since 1979 when 110,000 Soviet troops invaded. He wants to finish the school he and Daoud attend for Afghan refugees just across the border in Pakistan. He doesn’t want to go back to Afghanistan and the fighting–something he did for almost three years until he turned 15 a few months ago.

“When I think of my future these days I think of myself as a businessman, not as a soldier,” Hamad said.

“You are wrong, Hamad, you should be in the army and help drive the infidel Russians out of our land,” Daoud said, looking sternly at his brother.

“Everybody serves Allah in his own way,” said the boys’ father, rubbing his stubby beard. “If just one of my sons goes to the jihad (holy war) and is martyred, perhaps that is enough.”

Ameena, the boys’ mother, who was filling our small porcelain cups with freshly-brewed tea, shook her head.

“I do not want my sons to be martyred,” she said, her voice unwavering and resolute. “I want them to be free to live in peace.”

Daoud regarded his mother for a moment. “You must fight and make sacrifices to get those things,” he said.” And sometimes you must die.”

“Allah yuafiquna,” she muttered as she walked out of the room, shaking her head.

I looked at Daoud’s father. He translated:

“My wife said: ‘Allah help us.'”

But Daoud had the last word.

“Allah will not help us. We must help ourselves or live as slaves.”

 

When Does a Gap Become a Canyon? (Part 2)

Accomplished wordsmith William Safire once defined a gap between the generations as “a frustrating lack of communication between young and old, or a useful stretch of time that separates cultures within a society, allowing them to develop their own character.”

That’s a pretty good definition. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Generation gaps have no doubt existed on this planet since the first homo sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago. However, the drastic differences that the term implies were not much in evidence until the twentieth century. Before that time humans were not very mobile. Young people typically lived near their extended families, worshiped in their childhood churches, and often worked on the family farm or in a family business. In the 19th Century, most people lived and died without traveling more than 200 miles from where they were born.

                     Hippies In San Francisco

With the advent of television and movies, adolescents were exposed to cultural influences alien to their own families and cultures. Then came the 1960s. Civil rights, women’s liberation, and the Vietnam War exposed a more serious chasm between young and old.

A study released recently by the Pew Research Center found younger and older Americans see the world much differently, creating the largest generation gap since the tumultuous years of the 1960s. The study said Americans of different ages are increasingly at odds over a range of social and technological issues. That divide grew greater after the 2008 election when 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Democrat Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 ratio. It has continued to grow since the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Almost eight in ten people believe there is a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today, according to the independent public opinion research group.

The top areas of disagreement between young and old, according to the Pew Research Study, are the use of technology and taste in music. Slightly behind these areas of difference are listed the following:

Work ethicMoral valuesRespect for othersPolitical viewsAttitudes toward different races and groupsReligious beliefs.

There is nothing new here. When I was a teenager Rock and Roll was considered “jungle music” and those who sang and played it were, in the minds of older Americans, little more than savages. Some radio stations wouldn’t play Rock and Roll. Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis were considered evil influences on the youth of the day.

The 1950s were probably the beginning of what we know today as a generation gap. Before then the closets of most teenagers resembled those of their parents. Not so in the 1950s.  That decade brought a revolution in styles that pushed the envelope and actually continues to influence fashion today.

A lot of guys combed their hair into greasy Ducktails, wore skin-tight jeans and shirts with the collars turned up. It was “the look” of the day.

Girls wore short-shorts, poodle skirts, ponytails, and, if you were lucky, did the “dirty bop” with you. (Believe me, it was tame compared to what happens on the dance floor today).

So what’s the big deal about the widening generation gap of 2017 and how does it differ from the gap that existed in the 1960s?

First, the Pew Study said, the two largest areas of difference–technology and music–are less emotionally charged than political issues. The older generation is likely to be proud of the younger generation’s skill in using new technology rather than to view it as a problem.

As for the musical differences, each generation wants its own style of music, and the older generation generally can relate to that desire–even if most people older than 50 probably consider hip hop a form of discordant monotone chanting rather than vocal or instrumental sounds organized in some coherent sequence comprised of melody, rhythm, and harmony.

In the other areas of difference, the Pew study reported, the younger generation tends to regard the older generation as superior to their own generation–clearly a difference from the 1960s with its rallying cry of “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.”

According to the study, all generations regard older Americans as superior in moral values, work ethic, and respect for others. Why are older Americans regarded as superior in moral values, work ethic, and respect for others? Does it have something to do with the way many children are reared today? If parents equivocate when it comes to teaching such values to their children then it is not surprising that a generation gap between young and old exists.

And who is at fault for that? The younger generation? I tend to think the fault rests with parents and those charged with educating the young. By the time they are adolescents, it is most likely too late to instill in them the values that are revered by older Americans.

One common complaint I hear from older Americans about younger Americans is their reluctance to accept responsibility for their actions.

“It’s not my fault,” is heard all too often from the younger generation. That, however, is a dangerous trap, said Doctors Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their 2007 book (“It’s Not My Fault”) because it not only keeps them from overcoming the effects of all that they can’t control—like other people, circumstances and genetics—but separates them from a solution. And when they give away the ownership of their life, they end up losing the one opportunity they have to fulfill their dreams and enjoy the best life has to offer.

When I was growing up my parents and grandparents simply never endorsed my attempts to use the “blame game” for my mistakes, misfortunes, and misdeeds.

“Stop making excuses,” is what I heard. Eventually, I did.

I never felt there was a generation gap between my parents and me, perhaps because I respected them and they never gave me a reason not to. If there is an area that can be improved on with young people today that may be it.

Children may be grateful in the short term when parents refuse to impose rules of behavior and inculcate discipline in them. But in the long term I believe they are thankful–even if they may never admit it.

Learning to respect others, to honestly work for what you get in life, and to live according to some variant of the Golden Rule (“do not treat people in a way you would not wish to be treated yourself”) may just be the unpretentious bridge that spans the gap between generations.

It certainly beats plummeting into the canyon.

When Does A Gap Become a Canyon? (Part 1)

In the past few weeks, two stories caught my attention. One decried the growing wealth gap between the young and old in America. The other highlighted the growing difference between older and younger Americans on issues such as social values and morality.

Should we be surprised by either of these stories?

I think not.

Let’s look at the wealth gap first. I will get to the Social Values and Morality Gap in Part 2.

A report issued by the U.S. Census Bureau said the wealth gap between younger and older Americans has increased to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing, credit card, and college debt.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, the report said, adding that the gap in wealth is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

Why is this?  Part of it is caused by the economic downturn, which has hit young adults particularly hard. As I saw when I was a Dean at the University of Illinois, more young people are pursuing college or advanced degrees, taking on debt as they wait for the job market to recover. Others are struggling to pay mortgage costs on homes now worth less than when they were bought in the housing boom.

But that is not the whole story. All of us have gone through hard times at one point or another. I can recall when mortgage interest rates were 19 percent and buying a house was simply out of the question. I can recall unemployment rates running between 7 and 9 percent and double-digit inflation–none of which made life much fun.

Perhaps it’s the way many in the so-called silent and baby-boomer generations lived and spent money. Without sounding like some old geezer, I should point out that when I was in my 20s, I didn’t have a credit card. I did have a gasoline charge card from Standard Oil, but the thought of charging meals, groceries, vacations, car repairs, etc. on a credit card was simply not an option. Credit cards were simply not the ubiquitous snares that they are today.

I paid cash for just about everything. I even paid back my student loan–though I was fortunate to have a large part of my college education paid for via the GI Bill.

Today, young people are crushed under the weight of credit card debt. Why? Because for many the thought of actually saving up to buy something is simply anathema. We are in the era of instant gratification. A lot of young people want things, and they want them now! So what do they do? They pull out those credit cards that aren’t already maxed out and continue to accumulate more debt.

And what about those houses that are now worth less than the mortgages? Why would a couple in their late 20s or early 30s opt to buy a $600,000 or $700,000 house with 5% down, an adjustable-rate mortgage, a balloon second mortgage and monthly payments of $5,000 or $6,000?

Why? Because they just HAD to have THAT house–even though common sense told them that home prices during the so-called “housing boom” were grossly over-inflated.

Call me old-fashioned, but I can guarantee you that there is no way I would have done that when I was starting out. That is what a lot of those Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers did. And now many are suffering because of the choices they made.

The Census Bureau report comes just before the Nov. 23 deadline for a special congressional committee to propose $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over ten years.

But more importantly, it has created questions about the government safety net that has sustained older Americans on Social Security and Medicare amid cuts to education and other programs, including cash assistance for low-income families.

“It makes us wonder whether the extraordinary amount of resources we spend on retirees and their health care should be at least partially reallocated to those who are hurting worse than them,” said Harry Holzer, a labor economist and public policy professor at Georgetown University who called the magnitude of the wealth gap “striking.”

Wait a minute! The money that retirees are getting from Social Security and Medicare is money that they paid into the system all their working lives. Are they supposed to feel guilty about that? Older Americans paid into a system that was set up to supplement savings and private sector retirement plans such as profit sharing, employee stock ownership schemes, and savings incentive plans.

Social Security and Medicare are NOT entitlement programs. They are NOT welfare plans for retirees. In fact, the money retirees take out of Social Security and Medicare is in essence money they have loaned the federal government. That the federal government spent that money unwisely or delved into it to fund other programs is not the fault of those who made good faith payments into the system.

There is no doubt that the numbers contained in the Census Bureau report are striking. For example, the median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older is $170,494. That is 42 percent more than in 1984 when the Census Bureau first began measuring wealth broken down by age.

The median net worth for the younger-age households was $3,662, down by 68 percent from a quarter-century ago, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center. In all, 37 percent of younger-age households have a net worth of zero or less, nearly double the share in 1984. But among households headed by a person 65 or older, the percentage in that category has been largely unchanged at 8 percent.

Net worth includes the value of a person’s home, possessions and savings accumulated over the years, including stocks, bank accounts, real estate, cars, boats or other property, minus any debt such as mortgages, college loans, and credit card bills. Older Americans tend to hold more net worth because they are more likely to have paid off their mortgages and built up more savings from salary, stocks and other investments over time. The median is the midpoint, and thus refers to a typical household.

Households headed by someone under age 35 saw their median net worth reduced by 27 percent in 2014 as a result of unsecured liabilities, mostly a combination of credit card debt, mortgages and student loans. No other age group had anywhere near that level of unsecured liability acting as a drag on net worth. The next closest was the 35-44 age group, at 10 percent.

Among the older-age households, the share of households worth at least $250,000 rose to 20 percent from 8 percent in 1984.

It is highly irritating and unfair to blame retirees for the plight of the younger generation. Unless of course, those retirees didn’t do their job in rearing fiscally responsible offspring or, even worse, encouraged them to pile up credit card debt by promising them that a parental bail out was in the offing.

Retirees worked long and hard for whatever wealth they have managed to accumulate. And, as the Census Bureau report shows, most are NOT wealthy–not when only 20 percent have a median household net worth of $250,000 or more.

Most older Americans are working longer than their parents did. Both my parents were able to retire at 62. How many older Americans can do that today? Not many. In fact, most are working well into their late 60s and early 70s.

Indeed, the whole concept of “retirement” has transformed today. The notion of spending the alleged “Golden Years,” sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair watching squirrels and listening to birds, is simply hooey.

So when economists lament the fact that retirees have 47-times more household net worth than Generation X-ers or Generation Y-ers, I can’t help but to parapharase that old Smith Barney TV commercial that said: “They made money the old-fashioned way. They earned it.”

Amen to that.

(NEXT:  When Does a Gap Become a Canyon? (Part 2)

 

Joseph Galloway, chronicler and champion of soldiers in Vietnam, dies at 79

Today, I am running an obituary of legendary Vietnam war correspondent Joe Galloway that appeared in the Stars & Stripes newspaper. Galloway passed away Wednesday. I hope you will take a look at it. Galloway was the quintessential war reporter–self-effacing, courageous, and honest in his powerful reporting. Ron Yates

In November 1965, journalist Joseph Galloway hitched a ride on an Army helicopter flying to the Ia Drang Valley, a rugged landscape of red dirt, brown elephant grass, and truck-size termite mounds in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Stepping off the chopper, he arrived at a battlefield that one Army pilot later called “hell on Earth, for a short period of time.”

Galloway, a 24-year-old reporter for United Press International, went on to witness and participate in the first major battle of the Vietnam War, in which an outmanned American battalion fought off three North Vietnamese Army regiments while taking heavy casualties. He carried an M16 rifle alongside his notebook and cameras, and in the heat of battle, he charged into the fray to pull an Army private out of the flames of a napalm blast.

“At that time and that place, he was a soldier,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Kellogg said more than three decades later when the Army awarded Galloway the Bronze Star Medal for his efforts to save the private. “He was a soldier in spirit, he was a soldier in actions and he was a soldier in deeds.”

Joe Galloway

Galloway later recounted the battle in a best-selling book, “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young” (1992), written with retired Lt. Gen. Harold Moore, the U.S. battalion commander at Ia Drang. The book was adapted into the movie “We Were Soldiers” (2002), starring Mel Gibson as Moore and Barry Pepper as Galloway, and was acclaimed for its unflinching account of one of the war’s bloodiest battles.

“What I saw and wrote about broke my heart a thousand times, but it also gave me the best and most loyal friends of my life,” Galloway said in a 2001 interview with the Victoria Advocate, the Texas daily where he had once worked as a cub reporter. “The soldiers accepted me as one of them, and I can think of no higher honor.”

Galloway, whose reporting took him from the jungles of Vietnam to the halls of the Kremlin and the deserts of Iraq, was 79 when he died Aug. 18 at a hospital in Concord, North Carolina. The cause was complications from a heart attack, said his friend and former editor John Walcott.

In a journalism career that spanned nearly five decades, Galloway became known for writing elegant, richly detailed stories that immersed readers in conflicts around the world, including the 1971 war between India and Pakistan and the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which he covered while embedded with a tank unit for U.S. News & World Report.

A native Texan who grew up reading the collected reporting of Ernie Pyle, who told the story of World War II through the eyes of ordinary GIs, Galloway exalted the bravery of American soldiers even as he questioned the wisdom of the leaders who sent them into battle. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who led U.S. forces during the Gulf War, once called him “the finest combat correspondent of our generation — a soldiers’ reporter and a soldiers’ friend.”

Galloway spent 22 years with UPI and retired in 2010 after working as a military affairs correspondent and columnist for the newspaper chains Knight Ridder and McClatchy, where he wrote critically of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He was played by Tommy Lee Jones in director Rob Reiner’s movie “Shock and Awe” (2017), about Knight Ridder’s skeptical coverage of the George W. Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq.

But he remained best known for his books and articles about Vietnam, most notably “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” which sold more than 1 million copies. He and Moore spent 10 years researching the volume, interviewing more than 250 people, including Vietnamese military commanders and U.S. veterans and their families.

“It is thoroughly researched, written with equal rations of pride and anguish, and it goes as far as any book yet written toward answering the hoary question of what combat is really like,” author and Vietnam War correspondent Nicholas Proffitt wrote in a review for the New York Times. He went on to call it “a car crash of a book; you are horrified by what you’re seeing, but you can’t take your eyes off it.”

The Battle of Ia Drang began Nov. 14, 1965, after Moore and some 450 soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry were helicoptered to a clearing known as Landing Zone X-Ray. They were there on a search-and-destroy mission — “It’s probably gonna be a long, hot walk in the sun,” the brigade commander had told Galloway — and soon came under withering fire.

Galloway and Moore speak at an American Veterans Center conference in Washington in 2008.

For the next three days, they struggled to fight off North Vietnamese regulars, sometimes in bloody hand-to-hand combat. Helicopter gunships, fighter-bombers, and artillery fire helped turn the tide, although a replacement battalion was ambushed and nearly wiped out while marching to another clearing, Landing Zone Albany, in what Galloway and Moore described as “the most savage one-day battle of the Vietnam War.”

By the end of the fighting, more than 230 Americans and some 3,000 North Vietnamese were dead at Ia Drang. Both sides claimed victory: North Vietnamese leaders came away certain that they could outlast the Americans, while U.S. commander William Westmoreland was convinced that his troops “could bleed the enemy to death over the long haul,” as Galloway and Moore put it.

Galloway, who had arrived on the first night of the battle, said he planned for years to write a book with Moore but had put it off until 1980, when he was flipping channels and came across a Vietnam War sequence in the movie “More American Graffiti,” which brought back memories of Huey helicopters and deafening machine-gun fire.

“I found myself sitting in my chair, shaking like a leaf, with tears rolling down my cheeks at the sight and the memories,” he told Vietnam Magazine in 2017. “I thought, you can run from it, and it will catch you and eat you — or you can face it. I picked up the phone the next morning and called General Moore at his home in Colorado. ‘Are you ready to start work on this book?’ He said, ‘I sure am.’ “

Few memories of Ia Drang were more painful for Galloway than the death of Pfc. Jimmy Nakayama, one of two soldiers who were accidentally hit with napalm during a misplaced airstrike on the battle’s second day. Joined by an Army medic who was immediately shot and killed, Galloway raced toward enemy fire to pull Nakayama from the flames. The private was evacuated but died in a hospital two days later.

After the Pentagon reopened nominations for Vietnam battlefield honors, Galloway was awarded the Bronze Star Medal in 1998, becoming the fourth American journalist to receive the honor for bravery in the conflict.

“I accept it,” he said at the time, “in memory of the 70-plus reporters and photographers who were killed covering the Vietnam War, trying to tell the truth and keep the country free.”

Joseph Lee Galloway Jr. was born in Bryan, Texas, on Nov. 13, 1941, three weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His father served in the Army during World War II — Galloway did not meet him until after the war had ended — and later got a job with Humble Oil, leading the family to move to Refugio, Texas.

Galloway attended community college for six weeks before dropping out in 1959 to enlist in the Army, which he viewed as a ticket out of South Texas. His mother persuaded him to go into journalism instead, reminding him that as a boy he had written a weekly newspaper for their neighborhood, banging away at a 1912 Remington typewriter.

He joined UPI in 1961 as a reporter in Kansas City, Mo., and within two years he was bureau chief in Topeka, Kan., where he pestered the news agency’s senior editors to send him to Vietnam, sensing from dispatches by Neil Sheehan of UPI and David Halberstam of the Times that conflict there was escalating.

Galloway got his wish in April 1965, landing in South Vietnam a month after the first American combat troops arrived in the country. He remained there for 16 months and was later UPI bureau chief in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, and in New Delhi, Singapore, Moscow and Los Angeles.

He later won a National Magazine Award at U.S. News & World Report, for a cover story about the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Ia Drang, and worked as a special consultant to Secretary of State Colin Powell before joining Knight Ridder in 2002.

Galloway’s wife of 29 years, the former Theresa Null, died in 1996. His second marriage — to Karen Metsker, whose father was killed at Ia Drang — ended in divorce, and in 2012 he married Grace Liem Lim Suan Tzu, who worked as a nurse’s helper during the Vietnam War.

In addition to his wife, of Concord, survivors include two sons from his first marriage, Lee Galloway of San Antonio and Joshua Galloway of Houston; a stepdaughter, Li Mei of Concord; and three grandchildren.

Galloway (center) with the 1st Cav in Vietnam, 1965

Galloway partnered with Moore on another book, “We Are Soldiers Still” (2008), and teamed with Marvin J. Wolf to write “They Were Soldiers” (2020), about the postwar lives of Vietnam veterans. He also appeared in documentaries such as “The Vietnam War” (2017), directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

“You do this out of a sense of obligation to those who died and those who lived — those especially,” he told Newsday in 1993. “Their battle had been forgotten. You just can’t turn your back on something like that, not if you’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

When Galloway arrived in Vietnam in early 1965, “I knew nothing about war except what I had learned from watching John Wayne movies,” he said in a 2015 interview. He said he thought the war would be over quickly after Marines landed in Vietnam.

“My first week on the ground with the Marines taught me that that was probably not the case. That was out of sheer ignorance of the situation, of the enemy, of the culture, of the country. I was as ignorant as most Americans were, but I had to learn very quickly and combat is a very stiff taskmaster. You learn quickly or you get killed.”

Eventually, he came to realize that the war would take massive resources, especially with Vietnam’s large borders that could easily be infiltrated by both sea and land.

After the 1st Cavalry Division, along with its 435 helicopters, arrived in Vietnam in September 1965, Galloway began covering the First Team.

One of his early experiences with the 1st Cavalry was a march with the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment. The soldiers had marched all day through thick jungle, into a high altitude level, crossing a stream.

“Right before dark, we forded a swift mountain stream, quite cold. It was about neck-deep,” Galloway said.

They camped for the night in a clearing on the other side of the stream. No fires, cigarettes, or other lights were allowed.

“It was probably the coldest night I’d ever spent wrapped in a poncho, just wet. The next morning I thought would never come.”

But eventually, it did, and as the light was coming over the horizon, Galloway took out a piece of C-4 explosive to boil some water for coffee.

“I had just got my canteen cup boiling and was about to put the coffee powder in, and I looked up and there were two guys standing on the lip of my foxhole: a lieutenant colonel named Hal Moore and his battalion sergeant major, Basil Plumley,” Galloway said in 2015. “Moore looked at me and he looked at my hot water, and he said, ‘Son, in my outfit, everybody shaves in the morning, including reporters.’ … I shook my head and dug out my razor and my soap, and re-purposed my canteen cup of hot water.”

Moore and Galloway eventually became close friends.