This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 33 (Sat., Jan. 14)

Although Saturday was a workday in the Army, we didn't have anything scheduled, since our basic-training unit, which would be 3rd Platoon, Company B, 5th Battalion, 3rd BCT Brigade, was going to be available on Tuesday, giving us Monday to finish things off. First Sergeant told Sean to tell the troops not to leave base, since we didn't yet have our military IDs.

That really put a damper on some spontaneous plans, but we all really felt sorry for Bobby Reid. Although he was from the City, his girlfriend was from a farm on Cookstown Road, only about three miles from our barracks door, just on the other side of McGuire Air Force Base. When nobody was listening, Sean told him to go phone his girlfriend and we'd all turn a blind eye to the presence of a girl in the barracks, particularly if they were to use the cadre room, which was directly below ours, and had been the site of the now infamous lie-detector-assisted interrogations.

Out of sheer boredom, we split up in teams to GI the barracks, which wasn't going to take all that long, since there wasn't very much to do except for getting rid of the tracks caused by the drizzle outside. While we were cleaning away, First Sergeant came by, and was apparently annoyed that someone yelled: "At ease." telling everybody that an NCO, higher than an E5, since Sean was in the building, and probably the man, himself, was on the prowl.

"God damn, McGrady, " We heard First Sergeant address Sean. "how in blue Fuck do you get all your troops to GI the barracks on a day off?"

"It was their idea, Top." Sean was mopping the stairs, since we were the only ones to use them. "What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to speak to Doctor Loughery." Top chuckled indulgently, seemingly enjoying the fact that one of his subordinates had a PhD.

Sean laughed. "The good Doctor is cleaning the crappers."

He looked through the door and did find me cleaning toilets, however, not using my toothbrush. "Hey, Ben." I nodded and wiped my forehead, although at this winter temperature, there was not going to be any sweat. I even had my field jacket on, since the windows were open to air out the ape-house smell of the latrine. "Got confirmation that they're petitioning the powers that be to make you a Captain."

I must have frowned, since he looked satisfied. "Who are 'they'?" I wanted to know.

"The Army Security Agency." He seemed surprised that I hadn't guessed. And he'd said it lout enough for Sean to poke his head around the corner from the stairs.

I was frowning, and Sean was good at putting things together. "I suppose that Langley will now have to tell them to butt out."

"You mean Langley as in C--" First Sergeant cut himself off, probably because he'd told me that my secrets were safe with him. Luckily, he didn't know any of my real secrets.

And, once again, coincidence proved to be on my side. Outside, I heard Haruki asking a member of the platoon, where he could find me. And there he stood, next to Sean, smiling in his 'Uniform, Class A, service, green, winter, 1 set' with his hard-stripe rank of E7, his unit patch, an embroidered yellow and green Edelweiss with a sword running upward through it, telling everyone in the know, which I wasn't, what his line of work was.

"Hey, Haruki." I greeted him, which he ignored, since protocol required him to greet Top first.

"Good day, First Sergeant." He stuck out his hand to shake with Top. "I'm Sergeant Hernandez, and am here to see Private Loughery and Specialist McGrady."

"My pleasure," First Sergeant shook Haruki's hand and immediately started to leave. "I better get out of your way, before you have to classify the fucking latrine top secret."

Haruki looked surprised at the quick departure. Sean laughed and came in out of the doorway. "I'm Sean McGrady." He took Haruki's hand, who still seemed taken aback at Top's exit.

"Hi, I'm Haruki, your new roommate." He looked back at the door, through which First Sergeant had walked. "Did you piss on the guy's leg, or something?"

"No," Sean chuckled. "your unit patch spooked him; pun intended."

Sean and Haruki laughed. "Good one." Haruki declared, and again, I was in the dark.

Sean was the first to notice my lack of humor and deduced correctly. "Spies are called spooks."

"Yeah, and?" I was leaning my butt against one of the six freshly cleaned washbasins with my arms folded.

"Well," Haruki grinned his special grin. "my unit patch is from the Army Intelligence Corps."

***

Helmstedter was grinning mischievously as Haruki, Sean and I were leaving the barracks. "Hey, Drill Private!" I turned my head, and he yelled. "how do ya say 'shaken, not stirred.' in Albanian?" I had the distinct feeling that I wasn't going to hear the end of this for a long, long time.

Haruki wondered what that was all about, as we squeezed into the TR4, with Sean on the shelf behind the two bucket seats, since he was smaller than me. Sean laughed and patted my shoulder. "Go on; it's your story."

Of course, I had to go into some detail, that Sean hadn't heard, about how Haruki had coached me for the language testing segments, and in hand-to-hand, which you don't usually learn in a course. He listened attentively.

What Sean also hadn't known, was how he'd taught me hypnosis to be less susceptible to Army propaganda, to be resistant to bullying, and that it was a useful tool in stopping pain, both emotional and physical. Haruki had given me the know-how to be able to practice on my own, should I be deployed to Vietnam, and should I be wounded or taken prisoner. And now, it was Sean's turn.

Haruki asked him if he were interested, and Sean told him that he was, but the idea sort of scared him. We turned off the road and drove into the parking lot of the main PX. We got out and within five minutes, standing by the car, Sean no longer had any pain in his leg. Haruki also told him that they would practice some more, when Sean moved back to New York, but he basically now had the ability to do it himself.

"Could I hypnotize someone and put them under my control?" Haruki laughed and pointed at me. Sean picked up on this. "Have you done that?"

I shook my head. "No, I asked the same question. And apparently you can't."

"This is still the subject of covert military research." Haruki told us. "But for all practical purposes, other people cannot hypnotize you against your will. But you can hypnotize yourself and not know it."

"Cool." was Sean's reply.

"Not really," Haruki laughed lamely. "since it sometimes results in fatal road accidents. When people 'fall asleep' at the wheel, a lot of times they have, in fact, let themselves be hypnotized by the monotony of driving."

"Well," Sean started out carefully. "could something like the Manchurian Candidate actually happen?"

"That's the question, nobody really knows the answer to." Haruki shrugged, but glanced at me as if he were hiding something. "As of yet, nobody really knows where the borderline between effective brainwashing and the less abrasive repetitive suggestion lies. But the CIA is cooperating with the Departments of Defense and State, in working on that at the Psychological Strategy Board."

Sean gave me a glance, as if to indicate that he was not really sure that he wanted Haruki to explain it. So, I asked Haruki to give us an example.

"Okay," His grin became somewhat childlike. "Do both of you know who Bucky Beaver is?" We mumbled, both a little uncomfortably, that we did. "Can you sing the jingle, Sean?"

He turned red but sang, sounding rather embarrassed. "Brusha, brusha, brusha with the new Ipana…"

"And why haven't either of you ever purchased Ipana toothpaste?" Haruki was chuckling at being able to act clairvoyant. We shrugged. "Because the brand of toothpaste is either handed down from parent to child, like religion and many other things parents program into us." He smiled broadly. "Or, it is recommended to us by the dentist, and not by a singing beaver. Besides, the advertizing contradicts itself: the beaver is aimed at children, and the wintergreen flavor appeals mainly to adults.

"So, those of us who use Colgate, do so generally because our parents use it. It was the first toothpaste in a tube to be sold in this country. It's similar for Pepsodent and all the other old standbys. But those of us who use Crest use it because our dentist tell us to, or actors on television dressed up like dentists. The makers of Crest were the first to put fluoride into their product."

"Funny, " I was trying to remember our toothbrush and floss session, beyond having been numbingly bored. "yesterday, at our oral hygiene lecture, they recommended Crest."

"And fluoride's good for us, ain't it." Haruki mimicked a hillbilly accent, suggesting gullibility, and again, his grin went mischievous.

Sean laughed. "That's what the dentists tell us."

"And It's also used as insecticide and rat poison." Haruki pointed at the large PX building. "Go in and ask them for Sweeney's sodium-fluoride roach killer or Wil-kil silver-fish bait."

"Okay," Sean seemed more intrigued than I was. "so what you're going to tell us is something about a domestic puppet master who has convinced the US government and the American Dental Association that roach poison is good for us?"

"Yeah, and the puppet master, so to speak, is the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, who lives in New York City and whose favorite writer is Gustave Le Bon, who has theorized the importance of national traits, racial superiority, herd behavior and crowd psychology, and, by the way, was also Adolf Hitler's favorite author." Haruki summarized quickly enough to make my head spin, but Sean seemed to be soaking everything in.

"I have never heard of any Edward Bernays," Sean stated flatly. "and I have read quite a bit on psychology, and I've certainly read Freud. What has Bernays ever published?"

"Officially, he runs a public relations cum advertising firm, which works a lot for the US government and, without seeing any conflict of interest, for companies that lobby the selfsame government." Haruki sounded slightly defensive, which wasn't his nature. But maybe he was going for a good-feel relationship with his new roommate. "His works include his 1928-book with the sleek title: Propaganda."

"Wow, sleek isn't in it. How about modest?" Sean laughed. "Have you got the book at home?" Haruki nodded. "Can I borrow it, when I move in?"

"Of course." Haruki chuckled, knowing that they had just bonded. "And modest, he isn't. He's one of the experts President Wilson used to turn the basically pacifist American people into warmongers to get into World War I." Haruki noticed my dumbfounded expression, he grinned and continued to pile on the information. "Oh, and one of his other works is Crystallizing Public Opinion, published in 1923 and one of Hitler's Propaganda Minister's, Dr. Goebbles', favorites."

"No wonder this shit isn't public knowledge." Sean was shaking his head, no longer in disbelief, but in anger.

"Oh, and," Haruki added as almost an aside. "Bernays is also of the opinion that democracy will eventually fail due to the destructive potential of human nature, which, he thinks must be manipulated for democracy to survive. This is in his contribution in 1955 to Engineering of consent."

"God damn!" Sean looked at me; I had to shrug since all of this was new to me, too. He brought his outburst under control. People in the parking lot were beginning to watch, and he didn't want to appear to be maladjusted. Nobody returning from a war zone did, or so I'd been told. "So, what does this have to do with fluoride?"

"To give you the short version of a very complicated story," Haruki patted Sean on the shoulder and squeezed. "One of Bernays' clients was Alcoa aluminum. They had shitloads of fluoride, which is contained in bauxite, the ore basis of aluminum, and which they couldn't get rid of. Bernays used his persuasive abilities to get the American Dental Association on board in believing not that fluoride is bad for your teeth, which it is, but good for your teeth. This created the two-birds-with-one-stone scenario. They got rid of toxic waste by dumping it into our drinking water, thus making tap water a medicine. And Crest has turned toothpaste into a therapeutic agent, rather than just a cosmetic."

Now, with our mouths visibly gaping, I managed to ask if the makers of Crest were involved with this falsification of facts. Haruki shrugged. "You tell me. All I know for certain is that Proctor and Gamble is on Bernays' list of preferred clients." He chuckled, shrugged and quoted the advertising slogan: "Better Living Through Chemistry."

Although it was logical, I still had trouble believing everything he was telling us, but, then again, I had no reason to doubt it. Sean, on the other hand, seemed to be giving this serious thought. Looking at him, trying not to vent his anger, I thought that he had the makings of an anti-government activist. Maybe, he and Haruki would move to Cuba together, and as a trained medic, Sean could look after Granddad.