I've noticed that lately the military stories on this subreddit have mellowed out. Not a bad thing - save the blood and guts for September.

This is a story/meditation I posted on reddit seven years ago. It's about a lot of things, but mostly, it's about coffee. Here we go:

Batman

I have a bunch of things I have to write, so naturally when morning coffee reminded me of an unwritten - and almost unwritable - story, I decided to take a swing at that instead. I am Cthulhu to the Protestant Work Ethic - I admit it. Coffee doesn’t get me going - it settles me down. Let me tell you why:

"I'm Batman"

“Batman” doesn’t refer to the comic book character. The military meaning of “batman” is ancient. Basically, he is a personal servant of a military officer - with no other duties. Bat, in this context, refers to the packsaddle (bat, or bast in Old French, bastum in Latin) on the officer’s packhorse. I suppose it’s a shame that the comic “Batman” has confused the meaning, but if you change the job’s name to “packman,” recent developments create the exact same confusion.

Modern times, no? What can you do? No batmen for American Officers - the very idea of assigning an officer a batman is both anachronistic and anti-egalitarian. Now even the very name of what was once a perfectly normal military job has been re-purposed by DC comics.

Who cares, right? A job as a lackey and toady. Phooey. What child born in the USA would even think of volunteering to do such a job? Even if you say it basso profundo - ”I’m BATman” - it doesn’t get any better.

BastKit Weaving

Yes it does. Back before modern times, I had a batman. I did. Had to share him with three other guys, which was unusual.

In 1968, all of the South Vietnamese (ARVN) officers had batmen - a tradition they borrowed from the French. In garrison, I suppose the batmen’s duty wasn’t all that different from other soldier’s duties - clean up, polish boots, lay out uniforms, clean weapons, etc. But they were manservants too - they did all that for an officer. The officers didn’t carry packs or rifles. Just a pistol and a swagger stick. Their batmen carried the rest.

Needless to say, the American MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) advisors weren’t having any of that. Manservants? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. The Marine Lieutenant in charge of our team didn’t want to embarrass the Vietnamese officers, so he compromised just enough to make the South Vietnamese officers - mincing around in their creased uniforms carrying nothing at all - look like complete dicks who thought they merely looked French. It’s the American way of noblesse oblige, don’tchya know? Subtle.

Servabo Fidem

“Americans always spoil the help.” I first heard that in Turkey when my Father was stationed at Izmir. We were a family of seven, and we were required to have servants. The local ex-pat community insisted. When my Mother demurred, the wife of the British Counsel assigned her two maids, who just showed up for work one day.

Mom, of course, over-paid them both, then proceeded to work right alongside of them. She met their husbands and families, gave them gifts. She instructed her children that the people working in our house were working, and we should stay out of their way. Also do what they tell you, and I don’t ever want to hear about you giving any sass to Robiye or Melik, or your ass will hear about it pronto.

When we packed up to go back to the US, you’d have thought someone died in our house. We had lines of family and extended family visiting to offer thanks and best wishes.

We (all the American families) ruined the servants, even the ones who worked elsewhere in the homes of, say, the British or wealthy Turks. “Americans don’t know how to treat servants.” No, we don’t. Happy to say that.

I was a child then. But I was my Mother’s American child. Thirteen years later, ooops, we did it again.

Every Marine is a Riflem... um, Diplomat

In early 1968, I was an artillery Forward Observer assigned to provide support an ARVN infantry battalion. I worked with the battalion’s MACV team, a Marine Lieutenant, a Gunnery Sergeant and an Army SFC.

They had been assigned a batman by the ARVN commander... well, actually the Marine Lieutenant had been assigned a batman. Much to the displeasure of the Vietnamese officers, the Marine LT simply made the assigned batman part of the MACV team - Lieutenant H decided it was our batman’s job to help all of us, even the NCO’s.

A scandal and an insult to military dignity, for sure - but it was easier to simply give the Americans a gaijin license than to argue the point with a Marine Mustang LT who had 19 years' experience under his belt and had a wrong, but unshakable, idea of how enlisted soldiers should be treated - having been one himself.

When I arrived on the scene, there was some controversy. Since I was an officer, the Thiếu tá (Major) in command wanted to assign me a batman, but changed his mind when he got a look at me. Not sure what to make of that. The MACV batman decided I was to be treated just like all the other crazy Americans.

Aw shit - A Shau?

The cause of my assignment was that we were headed for deeper bush than the ARVNs were used to, farther than the rather sedentary ARVN artillery could reach. The 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry was heading for the north part of the A Shau Valley and their artillery would (barely) be within range of us. The Americans wanted the ARVN units to start patrolling farther into the jungle, so off to the A Shau valley we went.

The ARVN officers jumped off the helicopters carrying nothing but a pistol and a swagger stick. The Americans all carried our own stuff. Our batman carried a lot of extra food. Plus he would scarf up whatever part of the C-rations we didn’t want.

We let him do his job. He cooked for us, when there was time for it, and we weren’t messing with the Thiếu tá and his officers. He prepped our doss if we let him, removed bushes and roots that were in the way. We kept giving him stuff, machetes and knives and cooking utensils. He couldn’t possibly have carried it all, and he didn’t.

He had a little black market going. Americans in the woods get a lot of cool stuff delivered by helicopter. We got a crate of C-Rations every three or four days. The batman got complete charge of that - this was back before they took the cigarettes out of the rations. None of the MACV people smoked.

But that was nothing compared to the big cardboard PX box we got every third week or so. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap of all kinds, candy, shaving gear, cartons of cigarettes and little cigars and all kinds of stuff. We took what little we needed, and turned the rest over to the batman. I suppose he sold it, or sent it back to his family who sold it. Didn’t matter. He had everything we needed when we asked for it. We didn’t worry what happened to the rest of the stuff.

We changed batmen at some point. I think our old one retired to a villa on the Riviera. Anyway, he sold his batman gig to someone else, and the new guy was just as eager to please.

I suppose the prospect of being the rear area with the officer’s baggage has always made batman a coveted billet. Even so, batman to the Cố vấns (advisors) was both easy and lucrative. Besides, we spoiled the help. Not ashamed. It’s an American thing - ARVN officers just wouldn’t understand.

Episode of the Madeleine

My memory of our batman is more about moments than narrative. In À la Recherche du Temps Perdue, Proust uses a coffeecake (Madeleine) as the MacGuffin to represent involuntary memories that spring from sensation, rather than a conscious attempt to remember.

Among the many things our batman would harvest from the cornucopia of supplies that came our way, his priorities were powdered coffee, cocoa and creamer from the C-ration pouches. Sugar was in short supply too. Every morning, he would get up before the rest of us - no matter how early we got up - and boil water in his helmet. Then he would take all the coffee, cocoa, creamer and sugar he had to spare and dump it in the water.

I would roll out of my doss in the morning jungle, and there he’d be. He had a cleaned C-ration can with whatever coffee/cocoa he could muster in it, hot to the touch. He never said anything, which was deeply appreciated. I would sit cross-legged on the ground by my doss, sip coffee/cocoa and listen to the jungle waking up.

Was quiet. Even when there was noise, it was the first chirp, buzz, caw, croak, hoot of the new day - maybe the first one ever - that pierced the silence without ending it. A sacred moment. Every day.

Some days the coffee/cocoa was just weak tea - sometimes we were out of everything. The batman did his job as best he could. To this day, I am grateful to him for those moments.

And every day that I could since that time, I have gotten up, made one cup of coffee/cocoa, and sipped my way into the morning. I would be praying, if I prayed, if I was thinking anything at all.

As it is, I sip my Madeleine, and... not remember - feel those mornings in Vietnam. Maybe I’m just remembering backward, sending my sensation back to that miserable, uncomfortable boy deep in the jungle, making his weak coffee/cocoa better with a forward memory.

Maybe that's what I'm doing every morning. Maybe that's what I already did.

Remembrance of Things Past

Could be. For sure, today I use all the sugar and cocoa I want, and I make the coffee stronger than you could ever make with instant. My evidence is that I know that jungle cocoa/coffee was terrible, weak and tasted like whatever had been in that C-ration can, and yet... That was excellent coffee/cocoa. My taste buds remember. We can remember backwards. Why not forward?

I’m groping around for some kind of moral to end this post, but y’know, that’s it. One of those quiet moments that happens in between the times we consciously remember, and intentionally write about.

I do know this: without this story, all my other stories are incomplete, not entirely true. Service is a continuous thing, not a scattering of stories. In that sense all war stories are lies, because so much lies in between.

No moral. No real story. I’m just amending the record with a memory of coffee, today and then. Marcel Proust would approve. We are recherche brothers.

Thanks batman.