Word: platooned
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...large arms cache that included boxes of ammunition, heavy machine guns and a howitzer. They prepared to confiscate it when a Somali man stepped forward to argue that the building belonged to an Aidid ally. He demanded to speak to someone higher up. When Corporal Robert Parrish reached his platoon commander by radio, he was instructed, "Get in your vehicles, and leave the area." The astonished Marines left; the weapons stayed...
Perhaps that mirror is blurred by tropical humidity and nostalgie de la boue. Whatever the reason, the French view of Southeast Asia is less wide- and wild-eyed than Oliver Stone's version in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. The perspective in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover is as cloistered in its 1920s Saigon love nest as the French were from awareness of the impending revolution. Pierre Schoendoerffer's Dien Bien Phu (yet to open in the U.S.) meticulously restages the climactic French defeat as if it were all about artillery and not national destinies...
...life, as you may have noticed, is not a close-order drill. Even in the Marines things get messy. At the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, known to servicemen as Gitmo, a private is dead -- the result of harassment by two members of his platoon. The victim was a screw-up who compounded his sins by stepping outside the chain of command to report a rules infraction and seek a transfer. A "Code Red" -- informal disciplinary action by his barracksmates -- is suspected. But are the offenders wholly culpable? Or did they act under orders (or tacit encouragement) from superior officers...
While on weekend leave, my cousin Shlomi's commander dropped by for coffee, without either the battle fatigues or imposing manner one would expect from a platoon leader. After he left I asked Shlomi who this friendly guy was. Shlomi replied, "That's Dudu (a common Hebrew nickname for guys named David). He's a close friend and he's also my boss...
...television, you can see the sweat, but in real life the Marathon is a truly messy business. Out of respect, the television does not show the Red Cross "Disaster Services" medical tents, each of which fill with a platoon of heat exhaustion victims. A man wearing a doctor's glove stands at each aid station with a handful of vaseline. Runners grab a blob and smear it around their groin and between the legs to prevent chafing...