Word: sergeant
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...gives Powell license to recognize and even joke about the ethnic differences in America in the face of both tiresome political correctness and simmering racial hatred. In his San Diego speech he parodied a pompous white military officer speaking in empty and orotund phrases. Then he mimicked a black sergeant talking about the coming war in the Persian Gulf: "We gonna kick butt and go home." Describing an encounter with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at his White House treaty signing with Yasser Arafat, Powell put on a New York Jewish accent. And he even worked around the edges...
Spencer Gilliard, the program's sergeant major, remembers Koernke as a "so-and-so," and not just because Gilliard is black and Koernke had complained publicly about "niggers and Jews." A "fanatic with weapons," says Gilliard, Koernke also seemed chronically unable to observe rank. The culmination of this attitude, recalls another staff member, occurred "one day, when he came in and he had these general's stars on. He had promoted himself to general. All the other cadets were going crazy. You had to work real hard, and colonel is the highest rank you could make. It was like-golly...
...attend the Army's intelligence school at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, but the introductory curriculum he would have taken was less suited to a high-level strategic thinker than to that person's secretary. Once back in Michigan, as an E-5 specialist -- the equivalent of a sergeant -- with a G-2, or security, section of a peacetime Reserve unit, there would have been little call for the arcane arts he had learned. A soldier in the current equivalent of his unit assesses Koernke's position as that of "a glorified clerk," concerned mostly with processing security clearances...
Their VIP passenger was strapped into a seat by Angel Castro Jr., a 45-year-old sergeant major who has spent more than half his life in the Marines. "I sat him down," Castro recalled in a thick Bronx accent, "and he said 'Thank you, thank you, thank you' -- he just kept on saying that." O'Grady was shivering, dehydrated and soaking wet. After he drank almost an entire canteen of water, Castro asked him if he wanted something to eat. He nodded, and an MRE -- a meal, ready-to-eat-was passed forward. O'Grady took three or four...
Everyone jumped when one round tore in, smashed into some communications gear and bounced harmlessly off the back of Castro's flak jacket. The Marine behind him handed the sergeant major a 7.62-mm slug. Castro handed it back with a smile. It was, he said, "no big deal...