B. U. G. S.

The very idea of someone thinking me as one of Tough Guys like those who call themselves The Greatest Generation LITERALLY– and I mean that literally — gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach. Reading back over the piece I just wrote, “Fear,” made me FEAR that you will take that as a statement that the Hero Bob thinks only of others, not himself, when threatened.

As Nixon used to say, “Let me make this very, very clear. I am not a crook…”

Sorry, I mean I want to make it perfectly clear that I am NOT a Fearless One. I have not feared DEATH because my life was simply miserable. I lived because I had something to do, and also because of my one percent Christian faith. My life would not have been so miserable if I had been immune to fear.

Let me give an example. You could conclude from what I wrote that I had no concerns for my own safety, all I thought of was my family. That’s Greatest Generation crap.

I have lived in fear. I was terrified of losing my job. I was scared of having the hell beat out of me. A LOT of things worried me that were about ME.

Citing the supreme example, let me tell you the most frightened I have ever been in a scare-filled life, and it had nothing whatever to do with my concern for OTHERS.

I was sitting in Africa with a fully automatic weapon, a REAL assault weapon. I heard a rustling noice behind me. I suddenly realized that a baboon troop was going right by, and I was right in their path.

It got worse. I could see from the corner of my eye that they had BABY baboons with them.

We all know that an elephant can kill you almost routinely if they have baby elephants with them. If you are out in wild territory, the FIRST rule is that if you see any animals that have young with them, get the hell out of there and don’t let them notice you. So here I was, right in the middle of violating that rule with a whole troop passing right by me.

Now let me tell you something about baboons you already know. The word “baboon” is cute. On many documentaries I have seen a closeup of a baboon opening its mouth is a huge yawn. That looks so HUMAN! It looks like a bored old man. It’s CUTE.

Their mouth is so huge makes the yawn look especially funny.

What one tends not to notice in that yawn is the TEETH. The mouth is big to accomodate those enormous teeth. They are the teeth a baboon troop sometimes uses to tear a lone female lion to pieces when the troop has babies with them.

So I did not notice how CUTE they were. I was not even amused by the fact that some of them were carrying charming little baby baboons in their arms the way a human mother would.

I lacked what you might “perspective” on the whole situation.

They were coming in from my back, all around me. If I had been in the direct path of one of them coming from back there, they would have recognized me as an animal and not a still life and ripped me up. But I was not ABOUT to turn my head to see if one of them was coming directly up on me. At that point, compared to Young Bob, a statue is doing a dervish dance.

Death did not scare me. But something primieval in me objected violently to being ripped to pieces and left there after I was rendered harmless. After they passed me I had violent shakes that went on and on.

Bob is NOT Fearless. Thousand of members of the Greatst Generation dropped their weapons at Normandy, but I have never heard ONE of them say THEY were one of the ones who did it. This is not dishonesty. After the pasage of years and watching John Wayne movies, they have totally forgotten all that and see themselves as heroic.

Sure, they will repeat the Greatest Generation Matra: “All men who are in combat are afraid.” But they seldom REMEMBER it.

In my case that incident was decades ago, too. But I remember that Young Bob was not a Tough Guy. Ole Bob was scared out of his wits.

As for my weapon, once the troop hit me, it would have done no good at all. And at the time I totally forgot I had it, and if running would have done any good, that gun will still be sitting out in the African bush.