Every spring at Kasernes all over Germany they have some sort of post clean up day. Usually the morning is spent cleaning up from winter, raking, sweeping, trimming, etc., all the common areas and work places outdoors. The afternoon is spent on the living areas, the barracks for the singles and the housing areas for the folks who live in quarters. On clean up days, only absolutely essential work gets done, everyone is required to "pitch in" and get things squared away. This is not a really big deal, most folks look forward to any excuse to get away from the office for a day. At most kasernes there is a Colonel in charge and he walks around watching people work and offering encouragement and pointing out things that are not done correctly. But Patch Barracks is a little different. Patch Barracks in Stuttgart-Vaihingen is the home of HQ USEUCOM, the highest US command in Europe. In a small kaserne that probably doesn't cover 50 acres, there are more General Officers and Civilian Equivalents per square inch than anywhere else outside the Pentagon. When I was there the count ran somewhere above a dozen. But in the spirit of "pitching in", all that brass got out and swept and trimmed and bagged and all that...well, the four star usually didn't. One beautiful spring morning in the early eighties, I was hard at it with my fellow Protocol worker bees...an Air Force Colonel, Marine Captain, an Army Master Sergeant and 5 civilian office workers of varying GS ranks...alongside the GS-17 from DARPA and his Colonel and Navy Chief, the FSO-1 (an ambassador-level foreign service officer) from the Political Advisors Office, and his AF Captain and secretary, several senior NCOs from all services, the Army Colonel that was the Secretary of the Joint Staff, his secretary, the executive officers from the Chief of Staff and DCINC offices, plus their support staffs - five or six NCOs and a few secretaries. This was just the folks from the command group building. The Chief of Staff, an Army 3 star named Haldane stepped out onto the porch pulling on his work gloves, surveyed the work going on and asked, "Well...I wonder how much it is costing the American taxpayers to get this yard cleaned up today?"

The last couple of days I have been chewing on an article Ock posted about rank and its priveleges. What do the two things have in common? Haldane was asking a valid question. When you arrive in the thin air of the ether where all the stars are, how much is your time worth? Ock was concerned about the "value of persons"...what about the value of their time?

When I first got to the Reception Station at Fort Ord, a scared, seventeen year old thug-in-the-making, I was incensed when I was told to line up and pick up cigarette butts. That seemed the most unfair thing I had ever heard. Never mind how many of them were mine...lots of them weren't. I was dumb enough to question why I had to do that and the tac NCO got right into my face and told me the General was called away so it was up to me to do it. In a perfect world, all souls are created equal. But in the Military, privates' souls are paid considerably less than Generals'.

The grounds on Patch Barracks would get just as clean...maybe cleaner...if a bunch of privates did it, under the watchful eye of a couple of NCOs. And it would cost the US tax payers on heck of a lot less. I think the policy of Clean Up Day is designed to show the privates that all them high rankin' folks are just people, too. Watching an Air Force Colonel leaning on his shovel gabbing with the Translator reinforces that notion, the art of the goof off is alive and well at all ranks.

So what is my point? I am not sure. It vexes me that while I disagree, I agree. The wife of an AF LTC once told my wife, while discussing this very subject, that she did not begrudge the Generals any thing they get because she has seen what they went through to get those stars. Her husband was topped out, he would never be an O6, he was in a field that was so secret and so limited that no matter what kind of education he had, and he HAD, no matter what kind of degrees he plastered his wall with, and there were many, there just wasn't any need for an O6 that was that smart, I guess.

So the rant continues, shaping around the opinions of its participants, some sniping here, some real insights there, and stories galore. I mentioned that the military could not survive as a democracy...it cannot survive as a commune, either.