In the army the unit known as The Rangers are revered as the best that there is. I thought that it was the green berets, but no, it\u2019s the Army Rangers. Take that little tid-bit and marry it to the fact that in the army the letters \u201cFTA\u201d are understood by all to mean \u201cFuck the Army\u201d. With that established our annoying 17 year old punk-ass \u201chero\u201d decided to combine the two in what might be the most irritating way possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a preface my thinking was that since The Rangers were the elite of the army for me to proclaim to be an \u201cFTA Ranger\u201d would imply that I was the elite of the, um, opposition. I went and purchased an army fatigue jacket knowing that whatever I wanted to do with it would not be destruction of government property since I purchased it as my personal property. I then bleached out in huge block letters covering the entire back of the jacket with upper and lower rockers like you might see on a biker jacket the letters \u201cFTA\u201d for the upper rocker and \u201cRANGERS\u201d for the lower rocker. I knew that I was going to blow some proverbial gaskets for the pro-army folks, and that was the point. Still I figured I was covered by the first amendment as far as most serious consequences were concerned. This did not include any ass-kicking that was always right around the proverbial corner for me anyway. As an aside I once had a sergeant so pissed at me that he ran down to his room and got a pistol. He was tackled by other NCO\u2019s. as he ran down the hallway. Surely that act was not to protect me, but to save dude from doing life in Leavenworth. Maybe that\u2019s a short tale worth telling. Hmm, into the queue!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So yeah, I pissed people off just wearing that jacket. That particular game of behavioral Russian roulette was just one of the things that those who knew me, like everyone in my company, as well as the surrounding companies, might have come to expect and therefore were almost numb to. But I wore the jacket out to the enlisted men\u2019s clubs, or off post, where even those who had the same attitude as me weren\u2019t real comfy being around me since it invited the trouble it did. So I played that little game for a while and one day I pushed it even farther.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So where the shit really hit the fan was one day when I was walking along an officer walked by going the other way and offered me a reasonable greeting of \u201cGood morning soldier\u201d. My response was \u201cFTA, sir\u201d. His response was to stop in his tracks one step behind me where he saw my jacket as I was walking the other way past him now and he asked in a not-so-gentle way \u201cWhat the hell did you just say, son?\u201d \u201cAnd what the FUCK is that on your jacket?\u201d And from there things just got very ugly. He asked me what company I was with and then marched me up to the company commander. My commander offered the explanation that was along the lines of saying this is just the kind of shit this guy does all the time. Feel free to do what you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The officer stormed out of the office and I was released back into the wild, since, as I knew there wasn\u2019t much that they could do to me since I denied saying anything but \u201chave a good day, sir\u201d and not \u201cFTA, sir\u201d, so he must have been hearing things and my jacket was protected under the constitution that we had vowed to protect, so, have a nice day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some days later I was called into the Post Commanders office. General so \u2013and-so spoke to me with a sense of familiarity. It makes logical sense that back when my company commander saw the problem he had on his hands early on that he probably notified and even asked for the Post commanders input. I\u2019ll say that his tone was firm but kind of friendly inasmuch as I remember it going somewhat like;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBaker, what are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to get out of the army.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t you just get your discharge and go instead of going through all of this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, because I\u2019ve invested too much of my time and energy into your army. Plus I was told when I joined that I could get out after a certain amount of time with my benefits intact, and I want that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, son, I admire your tenacity, but that isn\u2019t going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSir, I understand that, but I\u2019m committed to it and I\u2019m not giving up, or giving in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlright, son, it\u2019s your funeral. Don\u2019t let me see you in front of me again. Dismissed\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it probably really went like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBaker I\u2019m tired of your shit and I\u2019m just waiting for you to make enough of a mistake to fry your ass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes sir.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow get outta here, you make me sick.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing came from it, aside from a very short story in a blog 50 years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the army the unit known as The Rangers are revered as the best that there is. I thought that it was the green berets, but no, it\u2019s the Army Rangers. Take that little tid-bit and marry it to the fact that in the army the letters \u201cFTA\u201d are understood by all to mean \u201cFuck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-coda-blog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}