The Green Jack - #65
Hello! Before we begin, two public service announcements:
I am seeking employment (who would’a guessed!) of a Writer’s Assistant or Showrunner Assistant on a comedy TV show. This is a sizeable distro here, so why not take advantage of it? Got two cover letters. This one is my Writer’s Assistant letter (link redacted) and this one is my Showrunner’s Assistant letter (link redacted) (cough, cough, they’re the same). I know this newsletter now spreads international given my travels over the last year, so to cover my bases, yes, I am open to working in Spain and England. Also, if you know a comedy writer or two that I can get a 15 minute coffee with over Zoom or IRL, please reply to this email; it would be greatly appreciated.
Speaking of Spanish, my second public service announcement:
If you missed my last post a month ago about the Mexican Space Agency crew that’s crashing into Uranus because the captain thinks his crew boy is making an anus joke at him, please click here: [link redacted, see Archives]. Now, my Spanish tutor (who is subscribed) admitted that the joke does not translate exactly well because the “Uranus, Your Anus” joke doesn’t work in Spanish like in English. And that I can’t throw the English version into an online translator and not expect a million grammar problems. Note taken - will work on my Spanish writing, just not publicly.
Enough about me. Enjoy this week’s post.
Yes Mum, you predicted it perfectly: I’m here, sitting on a stool with one leg too small, thus rocking, in a Barbour Durham jacket, covered in thick tufts of cotton, yet from my nose to my loins, I’m freezing. But it’s okay, I'm playing a fun game! It’s called “What’s going to get my toes first these next few hours: frostbite or landmines?” Depends if I give into the urge to walk a mile out from my watchpost, in which case, the answer would be “landmine”. However, “frostbite” hinges on if they holler from the tents a hundred feet to my 8 o’clock, “Hey mate! We see you’ve been freezing your arse off out here. Time to come inside and get some pie!” A bit of pie would be a blessing. Any sustenance that doesn’t taste like shite would be a blessing.
Calm down; you’re getting worked up. Ask yourself the question.
Do you see enemies? No. Fix your posture. Drink your canteen. Do it right. Ask yourself the question.
Do you see enemies? I squinted. Used my binoculars. Unfortunately everything here blends into a dull gray. No. The answer is no.
What do you see?
Penguins. Damp sheep. Heath upon tussac. A vista of treeless flats. The sun was letting go of its hold on the sky. What do you hear? Baahhh...
And footsteps from behind. My mind was too gone to turn my head. The crunching of frozen grass became more pronounced with every approaching step. Seconds passed and an older gentleman soon stood to my left in a beret and Barbour Durham. The jacket’s mess of pockets in the front make us look as if we’re going fishing.
“Are you B company?” the man asked. I glanced at his face; he had the jowls of a dog and crisp lips of a sandwich baggie. “Yes, Corporal,” I responded, but I didn’t know. My place within the Task Force has been swapped so many times, I’ve forgotten how I got entangled with this current unit. He affirmed my dumb judgement with, “Nice,” then bothered me with small talk, rambling on about the most trivial subjects: the weather, the war, the way his face felt in the wind. My God, I hated it all.
I missed a question. “Sorry, what?” I replied.
“Name’s Rick, right?”
Oh. “Sure.”
“Nice.” He joined me in penguin watching. “Don’t take this weird, but you remind me of my son back home. Curly hair, barely shaves… good lad. He’s also in Manchester.”
“Interesting.”
He patted me on the back. “Just out here checking how everyone is doing before we move out tonight.” I looked up at him one last time. He was calm. Stoic.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Maybe when we’re back home, you two can have a chat?”
“Me and who?”
“My son. In Manchester.”
“Ah, yes. That would be nice.” We listened to the silence. A baahh in the distance. “Do we have any pie?”
It was some weeks back on a weekend morning. I was banking through tight slopes of powdered snow on a new pair of skis and as I coasted the last part of my descent, a group of eager teens were awaiting my arrival. “Some of what I did up there will be covered over the next many Saturdays,” I told them. It was the first class and their enthusiasm rode high. “We’re going to be learning from a professional ski instructor,” one said, though as some here on the slopes like to joke, “ski bum” is probably the more appropriate title.
Who cares, “ski bum” is fitting! Nothing can compete with the thrill. If it wasn’t for my flat being a ten minute walk away, I would sleep in the ranger lodge. Now, truthfully, once in a while, I will wake up with no desire to do anything. It happens. But when it’s a Saturday, and I have a class of kids like these arriving at 9 o’clock, I jump out of bed.
Had lunch and tea at my flat that afternoon. Mood was so good, I threw all the windows open. New skis, bright day, great class. Spaghetti leftovers? What could ruin this, I thought. Then my phone rang.
Nobody calls me at this time. No idea who it could have been or why.
I grabbed the phone off the hook in irritation, dropping it in the process. A guttural thunder greeted me on the line.
“Rick Wally MacArthur, you have been selected by Her Majesty’s Service for deployment starting immediately. Official post informing you of this has been sent to your residence per government regulation. Please report to the nearest Armed Forces office for further instruction. May you-”
“Sorry, wait,” I interjected. “You have the wrong number.”
“Are you... Rick Wally MacArthur?”
“No. I just said I wasn’t.”
“Hmm.” A rustling of papers. My food was getting cold.
“Is the following information correct,” he began. My home phone. The residence address. Down to the door number.
“Yes, yes,” I said, “That information is correct... I moved here a bit more than a month ago.”
“And are you, or have you ever been, enlisted in the Royal Navy or its Reserves?”
“I, umm -- yes, but I -- I finished my time.” Quiet on the phone. “Do you understand? I know this sounds strange--”
“So you mean to tell me that this is the correct phone number, the right address, and you are in the Navy, but you are not Rick Wally MacArthur?”
The ticking of the wall clock drew out my unease. Tick... tick... tick...
“You have the wrong person, mate.”
Tick... tick... tick... he cleared his throat.
“Mister MacArthur, you took an oath. Report to the nearest Armed Services office immediately. Thank you.” He hung up.
Went outside after the call and it appeared I did get some post in the mail, one parcel in particular adorning the Armed Forces insignia on a fat, burgundy stamp. In red letters, the parcel commanded me to “Open Immediately.” I finished off my tea and then opened it.
“Dear Mr. MacArthur,” it started. I pocketed the letter into my windbreaker and called my manager. “I need the rest of the day off.” It’ll be a little jaunt to the Armed Services office. Only an hour’s drive. There’s always next Saturday.
The waiting room was akin to a rubbish tip. Nobody had dusted the place for ages. Rubber skid marks littered the floor tile and their ceiling’s fluorescent tubes were full of dead moths. I peered at the few individuals around me. Gruff men sat in dingy plastic chairs, each with a slip of paper that had a two-digit number. Who knew a place could have the rules of a pastry shop and the aesthetics of a dentist’s office.
A blonde woman in military attire was behind a wide glass. She finished talking to number 32 about his wife or something and he walked away. Now say it. Say my number. “Number 33,” she announced.
I approached her window and said hello into the microphone snake thing. The woman nodded her head throughout my story while she thumbed through the stacks of government charades on her veneer desk. I kept losing focus; her eye tic was distracting.
“To be clear,” she interrupted, “the address on the parcel is your address as well?”
“Correct. I want this forwarded to him.”
“May I see identification and the papers you were sent?”
I put my ID and the letter through the window’s cavity at the bottom.
“One moment.” She got up with my documents in hand. Walked a few feet to the opposite side of their cramped office space, and spoke with a short man in a similar military outfit. I didn’t know what they were saying. She then leaned around a corner of their office and spoke into another room. A man with a big nose emerged from around the corner. The three studied my letter and ID, then the Tic Lady appeared to have a stroke of genius and went over to the cord phone and dialed a number. Nobody picked up. Big Nose started pointing at the letter to show Short Man. He held my ID to the light. Wanker. Tic Lady pulled out a massive book from a cupboard and blew the dust off it. Its title had the word “Protocols” on the front. Table of Contents, then she leafed to the middle of it. The bell jingled over the entrance door. I looked over my shoulder and witnessed a man with a flabby chin coming in with a much more important uniform. He said hello, I said hi back, and he entered a code-locked side door into their office where right before the door shut, I overheard him directing them to, “Get London on the phone!”
Meanwhile, hardly a sound on this side. Fella whiffed a trump.
Flabby Chin got the Short Man, Big Nose, and Tic Lady in a circle with my letter and ID, when suddenly, their phone rang again, and Big Nose quickly picked it up. “No?... uh huh,” I could see him saying. He thanked whoever was on the other end (probably London) and went back to the circle. They all agreed on something and Flabby Chin met me at the window. He said hello, I said hi back, we already did this.
“Sir, we are to inform you that Rick Wally MacArthur cannot be located at this moment. He has not updated his contact information, including residence and home phone. That said, after speaking with head office, we’ve received word that according to Article 52G of the Armed Services code, if a service member cannot be found but previously resided at an address that another service member of the same branch currently occupies as the head of household, that current service member must, by the order of his oath, take the place of the previous member.”
Did I hear that right? I requested him to repeat what he just said. He used different wording. Nope. The logic was still daft.
“We will now read you the formalities: Rick Wally MacArthur, you have been selected by Her Majesty’s Naval Service for deployment starting immediately. Please report to the nearest Armed Forces office for further instruction. -- Well, disregard that last part, you’re already here. We just have to say that, haha-”
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“I am not going.”
“Mr. MacArthur--”
“That’s not my name.”
“Sir -- it was in your oath.”
“It was?”
“And in the contract papers you signed. But mainly your oath.” I can’t remember the oath.
“What if I choose not to fight?”
That perked everyone’s ears. I could sense the men in the waiting room raising their heads out of their zines. The ire from the other side of the glass was going down my neck. Flabby Chin pulled his microphone snake grossly close to his mouth.
“If you do that,” he whispered, “You would be discharged.” Yellow teeth and fog on the glass can make any man scary.
“And?” I whispered in return. “Please tell me what the hell that would mean for me.”
“You would lose your pension from the public purse.”
Lose my pension? Am I a conscript? It didn’t sound right. Say to Flabby Chin, “That’s not true, you bastard.”
I can’t. I wasn’t completely sure. A fax printed and the Tic Lady placed it into a manila envelope. She passed the paperwork to Flabby Chin, he slid the envelope to me with another document, “Please sign,” I did so, purposely making my signature huge and annoying, passed the document back to him, and grabbed my stupid envelope.
“Thank you for your service, Jack.”
I called him a cunt and left.
You sign your life away, then learn who you’re fighting. A broadcast of Maggie Thatcher addressing the Parliament ran laps through the news outlets that day.
“The House meets this Saturday to respond to a situation of great gravity. We are here because for the first time for many years, British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power. After several days of rising tensions in our relations with Argentina, their country’s armed forces attacked the Falkland Islands yesterday and established military controls of the island.” The speech, soaked in seriousness, was wedged between bureaucratic monkeys whooping in agreement.
I stopped by my parents on the way back home. “What do you think about Margaret,” I asked Mum. “Well,” she said, “I think she’s quite lovely.” When I told them I was going to the Falklands, Dad rose from the sofa and hugged me, saying, “How wonderful! It’s going to be cold down there!” The rest of the family concurred. “We love you,” they said, “We’re happy for you,” some commented, while others threw a dash of “Godspeed” and “Good wishes” as if to cement their compliments in my mind. All to my dismay, of course. They riddled me with congratulation, when what I really wanted was pity.
I thought all day about Thatcher’s broadcast. She ended her little speech with a passionate declaration: “It is the government’s objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration.” The government’s objective... returned to British administration…
“You heard Thatcher!” Paul exclaimed. He downed a whale’s gulp of stout. The packed pub was a mass of crass talk and we were in the thick of it. “The governor of the Falklands says they don’t want to be Argentine. They’re still loyal to the Crown.”
“Yeah,” I responded. Maybe I should tell him?
“Go there, save some women and children, and come back a hero!” Yeah, he didn’t get it. The man’s not military.
“Paul, I’m sorry, but you don’t understand,” I said. The barman gave us another round. “When I was serving, the Navy did not see me as ‘Marine material’. You know who’s Marine material? Rick Wally MacArthur. You know what I was doing on my last service? Milk runs and mopping floors. I don’t share that with many friends, much less family, but I think you ought to know. In a couple days, I’m going to be boarding a boat again, except this time with a big SMG. It’s damn serious. “
“... And come back a hero.”
“No, no, I have no interest in becoming a hero. Or getting called Sir, or fuck all. All I want to do is ski. That’s it. Live on the slopes for as long as I can.” There was a lull. I chose my next words very carefully.
“It’s that I don’t care, Paul. Okay? I really don’t care about a bunch of blokes in the South Pacific. Let them eat tortillas and speak Spanish. I’m sorry if that’s not tasteful or correct in our society. I really don’t care.”
He stared at me. We gone out to get pissed, not discuss the depravities of war.
“Bloody hell, mate,” he retorted. “They’re still British.”
True. But so is my upstairs neighbor snogging her Cocker at 2AM.
He finished his pint. “Who’s Rick?”
It was five minutes after midnight when the salty rain graced my lips. Our combat boots dragged in the wet grass. Flat land; we were exposed. In the open. “Watch where you put your feet, boys,” the front man warned, and it all goes back to the game: frostbite or landmines. Neither, I now reckoned.
“So some fucking banana told you’d be discharged for refusing to fight? That’s bollocks,” said the trooper walking next to me. It’s a long trudge through the dark, and with the knowledge that it’s our 640 lads versus their 1200 (guessing), you realize why small talk works better than smoking a fag. “This is an undeclared war,” he continued. “We are in a war zone, but Thatcher and Galtieri didn’t declare war on each other. Some Navy mates and I read up on the code before getting on that boat, and yeah, you could have refused and nothing would have happened. If you wanted to refuse.” He paused. “If you had a good reason. If not -- well then it’s your moral duty. I believe you have to do it at that point. Nobody will know your decision, sure, except for three people: You, God, and Mum. And you can’t disappoint those people. That’s what I say.”
Hmm. There was a hush among us. I understood his sentiment of serving; I’ve heard it before. The Falklanders are British, they’re people under attack, I know that. I just can’t feel that. It’s an unshakeable apathy that’s difficult to explain.
Drop the thought. Focus on something else. The patter of rain kept my mind company all the way to Goose Green.
The battefield of Goose Green (Source)
Initial inspiration (YouTube link: Eighties but you're fighting for the Falklands at Goose Green).
The Battle of Goose Green was fought May 28th thru 29th, 1982. Britain won the battle, even though they were severely outnumbered.
June 14, 2022 will mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War when Argentina formally surrendered at Port Stanley to British forces.
British telegram reporting the Argentine surrender in the Falklands War. (Source)
Thank you for reading!