September 15, 1999
In a city as self-possessed as New York, where attention-seekers spike their hair, throw lavish parties, shout obscenities from the street corners, or borrow the name of a famous avenue and write stories on a web site with the assumption that everyone will care about the events of their private life, it is important to get a reality check every once in a while.
That is why I enjoy serving in the Army National Guard. One weekend a month and two weeks a year, I get out of the City and hang out with soldiers. They help me keep it real.
Soldiers don’t like show-offs and they have no problem saying so. When a guy comes strutting back to the barracks, bragging about how he just spent the night "banging some chick," the men of my company taunt the braggart with jeers of "Notice me! Notice me!" until he shuts up.
This vigil to constant humility never lets up.
This past weekend, at the request of the town, my National Guard unit drove a tank down the main street of Montgomery, New York during the municipality’s birthday parade. When we reached the end of the route, I told the driver to park near a lemonade stand and cut the engine.
Immediately, a crowd formed around the 60 ton beast. Kids climbed up to see inside the turret. Their parents stepped up and asked us how fast it went and how far it could shoot. And old men came up to tell stories about their time in the War. (Whether that war be in Europe, Korea, or Vietnam.)
The World War II vet approached me first. He recounted how, as a part of General Patton’s Third Army, he marched a hundred miles in three days through the snow to rescue the 101st Airborne hemmed in at Bastogne. A Korean War veteran told me how his infantry company slugged its way out of the Pusan Perimeter and then pushed back the North Koreans and "Red Chinese" during the Inchon landing.
Finally, a frumpy looking guy wearing a "First Cav" ball cap came up and told me he’d been a rifleman during Vietnam. As a grunt, he’d fought Charlie in the Ia Drang Valley, joined the Marines in the defense of Khe Sahn, and stumbled through the triple-canopy jungle outside the ancient city of Hue, with NVA regulars and Viet Cong tracking him down with no mercy.
"It was really rough. Even now I get goose bumps thinking about it" he told me. "My platoon was surrounded and pinned down for three days. It felt like three years. We knew we were going to die. Twenty-seven of us went in. Only nine of us came out alive."
"That’s awful" I said quietly.
But did the soldiers in my unit—many of whom are Desert Storm vets--give a damn about what these men had to say? As each veteran was telling me his tale of misery and woe, a chorus of my fellow soldiers, standing ten feet away, chanted in a whisper, "Notice me. Notice me."
Can you believe that? Not even a Vet can get a break.
And if a Vet can’t get a break, then neither should anyone else. So, the next time you observe someone showing off, try saying "Notice me. Notice me." I did this morning to a multiply-pierced kid on St. Mark’s Place. The look of humility on his face was priceless.
Try it. It’s great fun.
I bid you peace,
Broadway Jim Jenkins