A famed general, upon departing the Phillipines at the end of WWII, vowing to “return,” overheard someone in the nearby crowd chatter mutter, vaguely, “Are you going to Montgomery General?” The former military officer turned and briefly addressed the “speaker.” “Are you in the military, son,” the General inquired of the stranger whom was dressed in non-military, informal garb. “No, sir,” the latter responded, surprised the senior officer had heard him at all, and even more surprised he’d even been addressed in any manner, whatsoever by the General. “Just an onlooker.” “To whom and for what reason was that remark addressed a moment ago?” The stranger then went into an “out of the ordinary” lengthy explanation of the comment, confessing he “merely thought” he meant he was asking a conversational partner in the crowd if “HE” was going to be receiving treatment for “hearing things in a crowd” at Montgomery General Hospital in Montgomery, AL, and had “no idea” the esteemed general had even overheard him, at all, and if he had, nothing whatsoever was “meant by that.” The War Hero, briefly, eyed the man over the rim of his lowered sunglasses and answered, “I just wanted to “confirm” “who’s returning where, here,” he responded. “Seems I misconstrued your meaning, earlier.” “I’m only glad, for the sake of the war effort, that we “all” know that, sir.” “Can’t help but do that, can we?” the General returned. “Whatever you say, General. You’re my hero.” “Fantastic!” the General responded. Before leaving the scene by helicopter, the General briefly added another rejoinder to the fuselage of semantic confusion that had just transpired to an accompanying military aid, “I wonder if “those people are doing that to Hitler, too, and if we should send people like that to Nuremberg to see if they can get him in Rommel’s General Hospital?” The military assistant grinned and simply responded, “It might spare half of Africa if “both of them” were there without knowing who the hell ‘got them there.’” They both laughed and stared with sardonic glee, back at the former civilian “common tater” who didn’t seem to know “what in Okinawa” they were looking at. There was “no return on that” once the General had left, for obvious reasons of “formal military grammatical correction.” The General’s “meaning,” with regard to his “return,” as that had been paraphrased in his initial, famous comment, had been “confirmed, not “denied” by a civilian, and, therefore, all was well that “should end well.” He would, therefore, “return” in just the manner that he’d “initially confirmed,” prior to the “definition of that” being unofficially “denied,” just prior to correction.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 15:14:57 +0000
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