CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, CARLISLE BARRACKS, PA and MOSCOW, SUMMER 1996: CC COOPER
It was said of CC Cooper that many things were said of CC Cooper. Most were true. The rest would be, as soon as he got around to them. That he was already on the high side of sixty mattered not at all. The legend was always being augmented.
Some people considered CC Cooper insane, others merely a split personality. Cooper, aware of the opinions, argued with neither but preferred the latter assessment: two colonels for the price of one, a significant savings for the Army. One CC Cooper was imperious, stern, austere, intimidating, an officer of the My name is Colonel but you can call me sir variety. The other was aw-shucks/down home good ole boy, always a’joshin’ and a’jestin’. Problem was, you never knew which one you were going to get, although those who’d watched CC Cooper slide between personalities soon understood the tactical value of such shifting, especially in military or bureaucratic encounters. CC Cooper knew how to keep people off balance until they finally found themselves agreeing with whatever he wanted. Later, they would wonder how he’d ever gotten them to go along. Later still, they would realize that despite all the seemingly random jinking between personae, CC Cooper rarely said or did anything that he hadn’t thought through. When necessary, he could think things through very fast.
CC Cooper—it had taken the Army several generations of computers to find a way to get his first name, CC (no lower case, no periods), along with his NMI (No Middle Initial; the Army requires three letters to indicate the presence of none) properly data-based—was born in 1933. His father was an aging veteran of the First World War, a man who bragged to his son that the Army was the first time in his life he’d ever had two pairs of shoes at the same time. Also, apparently the last. The Great Depression hadn’t really affected his part of rural eastern Kentucky; the region was already so poor that the Depression might have been an improvement. CC realized early on that if he wanted that second pair of shoes, he’d have to follow in his father’s footsteps. So he punched out at age seventeen for the Army, won some medals in Korea, got out, went to college on the GI Bill, then back to the Army as an officer. There followed thirty-some years in uniform, three tours in Vietnam, multitudinous decorations, two European postings, once back to Korea, and a couple assignments that required the signing of lifetime non-disclosure agreements. But only twice in his professional life, according to CC Cooper, did he ever show real courage. The first got him a Ph.D. The other ended his military career.
In 1973, following his final Vietnam tour, Colonel Cooper had been assigned to command a college Army ROTC unit. At a very liberal college. In very liberal California. In defiance of both custom and the dean’s specific request, he insisted on wearing his uniform on campus. At his first faculty meeting, he listened politely as the chair of the sociology department vented about military officers without Ph.D.’s holding the exalted title of professor, even if it was something as trivial as professor of military science. The dean then turned to him for response. CC Cooper introduced himself as jes’ a good ole boy who’d be happy to instruct any and all in the experiencing of Kentucky’s various bourbons and, by the way, he would not use the title professor until he completed his doctorate in sociology, which he was officially starting now, under the personal mentoring of the department chair. Extracts from his dissertation, Cohorts and Authority: Generational Radicalization and Institutional Stasis, were later published in several academic journals.
His second act of courage took less effort but was far more personally gratifying. An Army adage holds that the best soldiers are the colonels who will never make general. That the best colonels will not be promoted is an accepted fact of life in an Army where ticket-punching, politics, and gamesmanship routinely count for more than soldierly virtue and accomplishment. Still, the practice of not promoting the best has certain advantages. Some of these “old bull” colonels stay on for years, providing the system with practical wisdom and institutional memory, and their superiors with more than occasional private counsel. They are also used to justify the unjustifiable.
And so it was that, as the Cold War ended, Colonel CC Cooper found himself at the Pentagon, tasked with writing a series of reports praising a series of over-priced, over-hyped, no longer vital—if ever they had been—weapons and systems. Cooper could not understand why he’d drawn that assignment. He had no interest in post-retirement employment with any part of the defense industry. Plenty of other colonels did; they would be more than happy to prostitute themselves. But Colonel Cooper was given to understand that his very stature made his lies more credible, so please continue the fine effort. Cooper fumed quietly for a few weeks, then loudly, then decided that he’d had enough.
He’d just returned from a fact-finding visit to the prime contractor for the M-4077/2 Pulverizer. This was a shoulder-launched anti-armor missile, a project perpetually behind schedule and over-budget, but also an essential component of America’s defenses against Soviet tank hordes, except that the Cold War was over and the Pulverizer was incapable of penetrating, let alone pulverizing, any armor developed after 1972. Pointing this out drew little response from anyone, save a shrug and a plan to spend more millions on it next year. CC Cooper wanted this program killed and decided to do what he could to hasten the demise. So he wrote up his report after witnessing the Pulverizer’s latest triumph. This particular event was a milestone test known as “bench-firing.” The missile with its test warhead was mounted on a bench and fired at a large paper target twenty yards away. Six hits out of ten were required to pass. The Pulverizer had scored five out of nine; the tenth launch was crucial.
The Pulverizer was fired. The Pulverizer ignited. The Pulverizer moved forward. Then the Pulverizer fell off the bench and, under its own power, slithered along the ground for twenty yards before hitting the base of the target. The contractor and the project officers decreed the final launch a hit, the test a success, the program ready to advance as soon as the next appropriation came in. CC Cooper agreed and wrote a glowing report, including commentary on the test and the Pulverizer’s unexpected utility as a lawn edger, garden plow, charcoal lighter, and, possibly, as a new tool for unclogging septic tanks. It might also prove a dandy way of keeping neighbor dogs and children off the lawn, when rigged with a trip wire or some sort of automatic sensing device.
“Colonel Cooper.”
“Yes, General?”
“Got a moment?”
“Sure. What’s on your mind?”
“Your report on the Pulverizer.”
“What of it?”
“Were you trying to be funny?”
“No, sir.’
“As written, it’s unacceptable.”
“As written, it’s also my resignation. Would that be acceptable?”
Two weeks later, CC Cooper, now a civilian, accepted a professorship at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania: a position he’d locked on, as he later put it, before pulverizing his Army career.
The students, usually Army colonels but also a smattering from other services and nations, loved CC Cooper. CC Cooper loved to teach. His lectures on doctrine and technology were as popular as his lectures on Kentucky’s bodacious bourbons and the counties of their emanation. A widower with no children, his social life consisted largely of his students and Major Grace, an off-track Thoroughbred mare whom he delighted in riding around the countryside.
After six years at Carlisle Barracks, CC Cooper had become something of a beloved old fixture. But he was also bored. He wanted to do a book, applying the concepts he’d discovered in his dissertation to the Army. Specifically: what happens when young officers as a generational group lose respect for their elders and a system that refuses to change. He’d seen it happen during Vietnam. He was starting to watch it happen again. He wanted, with this book, to give one final gift to his Army. But the Army wasn’t having it; his requests for a writing sabbatical went endlessly unapproved. He was, in short, expected to keep on teaching, keep on being CC Cooper, and l
ive out his final professional years in placid eccentricity.
And so it came to pass that, one morning in early August 1996, CC Cooper was in the faculty lounge, gorging on Krispy Kremes and mulling how to improve a couple courses he’d already taught too many times. A hand descended from above him to confiscate one of his donuts. The hand, he discovered upon looking up, belonged once again to the dean, a normally dyspeptic man who seemed, this morning, more than normally dyspeptic.
“Problem, Deano?”
“Problem, Coop.”
“Nothing so bad that stealing my coconut Krispy Kreme can’t help?”
“Wish it were that simple.”
“You mean, my donut isn’t helping?”
“‘Fraid not.”
“Then give it back.”
The Dean bit into the donut, smacked the stomach where he carried the remains of several hundred prior stolen Krispy Kremes, then looked dour. “Fucking Pentagon,” he muttered.
“No argument there. What is it this time?”
The Dean pulled a Department of the Army message out of one pocket and unfolded it. “Seems the Russkies want us to send over somebody to teach American military history and doctrine at the Voroshilov General Staff Academy. Senior colonels and fresh new generals for students, all fast-track. No Russian language skills required; they all have adequate English. Ph.D. in something is required. They can be snooty that way. Very modest salary but all accommodations and other stuff, including meals, provided. Problem is, the damn request is six months old and it’s just getting to us. Where in hell am I going to find someone to go spend a year in Russia on two weeks’ notice?”
“May I see the message, please?” CC Cooper asked.
The Dean complied. Cooper scanned it, then said brightly, “Hey. I got me one o’ them Ph.D.’s. I’ll go.”
“Who’ll teach your courses?”
“Go hire one o’them neocon defense intellectuals. They ain’t doin’ nothin’ of value as they be.”
“Do you know how long it will take to staff through your leave of absence?”
“About fifteen minutes if you put down that fuckin’ donut and turn to. I gotta go make some phone calls.”
CC Cooper returned to his office, put his feet up on the desk, then reached for the phone. His first call was to the young woman, a student at nearby Dickinson College, who tended to Major Grace in exchange for free riding privileges. He’d known her for several years and she’d become something of a daughter.
“Hey, Ellen, honey. Me. Coop. How’d you like to live in my condo for a year, rent-free...course I won’t be livin’ there, I ain’t that kind of man…where am I goin’?...Russia. Offer just come up, couldn’t say no. Great, just look after Major Grace for me and pay the utilities…bring a TV if you want, I ain’t got one…lookee, doll, I gotta make a couple phone calls, then probably head to DC to do some fancy expeditin’. You kin start movin’ in now if you wanna. I’ll need ya to drive me to the airport in about a week…say, honey, you wanna use my BMW while I’m gone, too?”
Three calls later, CC Cooper was on his way to Washington, DC, to do some fancy expeditin’. Six days later, he landed in Moscow to begin his year as an American visiting professor. He carried one suitcase, four bottles of bourbon, and a Russian-English phrase book. He was looking for the particular word, the absolutely positively right word, to describe a mature woman, one close to his own age, whom he might squire for the duration. Sadly, the book seemed more concerned with ordering in restaurants than in romance and he was beginning to wonder if post-Soviet Russia was more into eating than fucking. He finished the chapter on “Restaurants and Hotels” and moved on to “Family Life,” which appeared to have less to do with families than with that latest Russian invention, dating, and with kindred and allied activities. There, he found the word he was looking for. He repeated it a couple times, added it to his list of phrases useful in bedroom and kitchen, and hoped that he could remember which was which.