B.S. Adkison's Real, True-Life War Story

By B.S. Adkison

B.S. Adkison's Real, True-Life War Story is more important than this name and title suggests: While there is not much war in this story, there is even less BS. Here are some life lessons that face anyone who dares to open their eyes. Things that many will find shocking but are common knowledge for most of the rest of the world. A bitter pill with a sweet aftertaste for those with an open mind. Face the facts and face the truth. See what some of the buzz in the streets is about and why people are so worked up. Who knows, you may get your mind right, or not. See where you stand if you dare. Question: What do you have to lose? Answer: More than you might think!

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.S. Adkison
• Release date: Mar 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005083373

B.S. Adkison

Air Force veteran. Fleet manager for a contracting company.I Have built and/or restored several vintage racing and collector cars over the years. I Won a racing championship in 2010. I am an avid reader of mostly history, science and science fiction. I tend to find the topics of magic and time travel intellectually vacant, vacuous and tedious but don't let that discourage you if that sort of thing is your interest, it's my problem, not yours! I'm a hopeless romantic but I tend to shy away from that theme as well. (Too personal.) What little I do write regarding sexuality is usally from an unapologetic hetero-sexual viewpoint because of my comfort of that concept and I admit that I can sound somewhat near the verge of misogynistic, and I do apologize for that, but I certainly won't condemn, criticize or denounce anyone's differing views. Live and let live in freedom and peace is my viewpoint and I will fight like hell for other's rights in that regard if i have to, but, I insist on being able to exercise my own thoughts and opinions so please don't take it personally. Go ahead and hate me if you must but not the free-speech forum or the intellectual freedom that I exercise and love. I really just want to have a fun and pleasant life on this earth and I hope others also want that and I try to treat everyone well with that in mind.

Book preview

B.S. ADKISON’S

REAL, TRUE-LIFE

WAR STORY

BY: B.S. ADKISON

SMASHWORDS EDITION

COPYRIGHT: 2021

ISBN: 9781005083373

CHAPTER ONE

The Captain, in his element, strutted in front of the captive group with a practiced confidence and a clarity as if he had waited a lifetime to demonstrate his current lucidity, and as if to justify his entire military career at his audience’s jeopardy and peril:

…Task Force 120, … In support of Operation Urgent Fury, … The 62nd Military Aircraft Wing will be tested to the limit in what very well could be the opening salvo of a conflict that has the potential to escalate to the highest heights and to the very limits of all that we have ever prepared for…

This is it… War!

Roused out of my bunk literal just minutes earlier by security police officers, who were accompanied by our First Sergeant, I, we, barely had time to dress before we were formed-up to hear what we hoped would prove, in time, to be a comical and overdramatized ‘pep talk.’ But after almost a decade since our Nation’s last, major action, (frankly, an action commonly considered to be overall an inglorious, losing action) we probably should cut this well-chosen, melodramatic and overly theatrical officer some slack. Besides, his effort had the desired effect: It instilled in us the importance and seriousness of the upcoming event by successfully playing to our emotions; it scared the shit out of us!

It was in the early AM hours of October 23rd, 1983. Just one day after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in which hundreds had been killed, and less than two weeks after my twenty-first birthday. I had just earned my third stripe, a Buck Sergeant we called it. Not technically a ‘real’ NCO yet, but still, I would be counted on to be a leader soon enough.

The Captain was masterfully composed as he paced back and forth in front of us and as his well-rehearsed thoughts and opinions spilled out, as if his entire career was focused and fixated for this exact moment. He didn’t hold back as he painted a picture of the horrors we could face, of the strong possibility of the likely involvement and direct intervention of the Soviet military. He seemed to be drawing on his own experience as he described in precise detail a probable, drawn-out international slug-feast that we could be bogged-down in for who knows how long. But if we pull together and fall back on our training, most of us should make it through.

Maybe it was my youth controlling my thoughts and feelings at that time but, I found the entire process somewhat thrilling. Finally, we were going to do what we had been organized for. All this equipment, training and planning would be used for something other than the current deterrence face-off against proxy, communist forces. Just imagine, combat! What would my father think? Would he finally offer his approval? Would he declare that he was proud of me? These kinds of questions were never far from my thoughts, especially considering what had already happened.

When I first came back from bootcamp, he beamed and grinned like he had never before, but it only lasted a few minutes. After that, after what I had said, it seemed like my entire military endeavor was treated as a joke by him. It took a long time before I really figured it out and began to understand the reason why.

Follow the sun. Westerly expansion. Manifest destiny. White man’s burden; all just vague concepts in history books to me. Vague and imprecise because most of that was suddenly too much of a hot-button issue for the school system to pursue teaching with the same righteous vigor that it had been taught with in the past. (At least where I am from.) Times were changing, and as a new generation grasped the societal reins, many of the more recent concepts and historical corrections were still considered too un-American and socially threating to be pursued in much detail for our community. (Our white community.) Many accepted the undisputable facts of this new history, but it was all still much too controversial and upsetting, no matter how bright the light of truth was that shined upon it, at least not just yet. Perhaps college would be where these things would be more fully explored, but I wouldn’t get to know much about that because my Dad formally sat me down when I was ten years old and explained that there would be no college for me.

College cost money! Big money! Even at ten years old I instantly realized that this meant doors closing on so many of my dreams. I protested. I asked something to the effect that he would have me become a ditch digger? He got angry:

You’d be lucky to be a ditch digger! But look at those string-bean arms! You couldn’t even hack that! Besides, you’re not smart enough for college! My father, more often than not, a tack-less brute, didn’t mince words. Further protest brought about another enlightenment to a concept and a reality that I hadn’t pondered before and that positively insured that formal higher education was to be out of the question, a reality that was proven when my older stepbrother was cast away when it was his time: When you’re eighteen, you’re out of here! But my stepbrother had his birth mother to fall back on. I, on the other hand, would have to rely on myself to get a roof over my head and food in my stomach.

My Mother, a thoroughly beaten down and rather loveless woman, offered only indifference and disinterest when the subject of my future was brought up. She was wrapped up in her own thoughts concerning her own escape plans. Plans kept separate from me for several reasons. The most important being that she couldn’t risk me mentioning them to my father, and/or, (god forbid) I might want to be included in these plans. So, after years of confusing and disjointed blanket-statements and other mostly useless advice concerning virtually anything and everything; proclamations and declarations apparently subconsciously designed to confuse, misdirect and end conversations as much as anything, (as far as I could tell) I was forced by circumstances to go it alone and, as a result, I chose my own destiny by joining the United States Airforce on the delayed enlistment program after earning my GED in summer school at the age of sixteen.

Not smart enough, HA! My father never