Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
One of the folks who visited with us at Little Round Top was retired from the Air Force, and he hung around while my buddy in the Little Blue Union Second Lieutenant Suit talked to people about what happened at Gettysburg.
Now and then, I chipped in with a few tidbits, and he took all of it in.
A group from Army Officer Candidate School walked by, and I remarked to him that we’d just seen an incubator for butterbars. (A butterbar is a modern-day second lieutenant — or a navy ensign — who wears a single gold bar for his rank insignia, and is the lowest form of commissioned rank in the service. Civil War-era second lieutenants wear a rectangular gold box.)
The Air Force guy laughed at that, then asked me what part I played in all of this.
I said, “I’m really a first sergeant. They send me up here in civilian clothes because they don’t want these second lieutenants to be out by themselves without adult supervision.”
He thought that was hilarious, but my butterbox buddy Gary snorted and protested that, “I worked my way up through the ranks!”
I told him, in my best Buster Kilrain voice (Buster was Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s Irish sergeant in the movie, “Gettysburg”), “That ya did, lieutenant darlin’, and ‘tis proud of ya that I am. I’m just here to keep fresh in yer mind the proper upbringin’ we give ya.”
My observations of any military phenomenon are entirely those of a layman, derived from two years of Army ROTC (as a sergeant first class) and 40 years of listening to veterans and reading things that were written by veterans.
It appears to me that sergeants often develop a unique relationship with the lieutenants they’re assigned to chaperone, particularly when the sergeant is considerably grizzled and the lieutenant is considerably green.
A good sergeant will teach his junior officers the things they need to know in order to become good senior officers and, if he’s proficient enough, they may not even realize it happened until some years later.
It’s a teaching process that also involves bestowing praise when praise is due.
That’s why, when Gary returned to the motel in his uniform with one of our beautiful lady friends who was dressed in her beautiful Civil War-era gown, I said, “Bless yer heart, lieutenant! It does me good to see ya haven’t forgotten how to forage fer yerself!”
The fact remains that when you take the ride, you also must pay for the ticket ... as I wound up doing.
Gary and our friend Mark (who is the other butterbox, but missed our latest trip because of a bout with the doctors) generally begin to sweat when they see a troop of Boy Scouts coming.
Boy Scouts, unlike many of the adults we meet, usually have an idea of what’s going on before they get to Little Round Top.
That means they ask good questions. Very good questions.
We generally station ourselves at one of the Parrot rifles (cannon) on Little Round Top, and one Scoutmaster even knew that the Parrott rifle was designed by a man named Robert Parrott.
I resisted the temptation to say, “Gee. I thought his name was Paul.”
When one group of Scouts surrounded us and our Parrott rifle and began to ask very good questions, the butterbox looked over his shoulder at me and said, “Where’s my artillery man? First sergeant, please explain to these gentlemen the operation of this field piece.”
They kept me hopping for a good 10 minutes or more — after which, it was Gary’s turn to grin.
Being a sergeant, rather than an officer, does have one definite advantage.
When someone asks me a question I can’t answer — and it will happen because I’m the FNG (First New Guy to join up for a while) and still learning — I’ll just do what Sergeant Tyree did in “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.”
I’ll say, “Sorry, sir, but that ain’t my department. Maybe you’d better ask one of the lieutenants about that.”
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We had other experiences, of course, but I’m not sure what to tell you about them. It may take me a while to sort them out — like the photograph that was supposed to show only Gary and me ... but doesn’t.
We’re not quite sure who the other guy is.
Also, it’s hard to describe how, at age 61, it is possible to fall utterly and hopelessly in love with someone you have just met and don’t know at all well, except that you feel like you’ve known her all your life ... someone who lives half a country away, and it’s hard to tell when you will see her again — only thing is, she already belongs to someone else, and that’s fine because you know that the two of you aren’t meant to be together, you don’t particularly want to be together, and your future and hers will take you to two vastly different worlds.
Or something. I tried to explain this to a good friend of mine whose father is about my age, and who is happily married and has kids.
She says I remind her of an uncle she lost at too young an age and claims that she undergoes a kind of withdrawal when I don’t put in an appearance for several days.
The more I babbled and fumbled for words, the more she just looked at me with warm eyes and a soft smile and whispered, “I understand. Believe me, I understand.”
Maybe she does. Fancy that.
