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Esprit de corps is a crucial factor in the military. But sometimes the spirit can get a little carried away. For a long time, at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, when night fell and the sergeant was away, the soldier boys and soldier girls did play. And if the sergeant showed up, he was often greeted by a loud "Hello!" The greeting, uttered heartily by recruits standing watch on each floor of the three-story brick barracks, was not quite military protocol. Rather, it was a warning to those engaged in hanky-panky to end their trysts and jump back...
Even before the panel arrived to inspect Fort Leonard Wood last September, the Army had tried to control the raging hormones of the teenagers it recruited into basic training. Male and female recruits were moved into adjoining rooms housing up to eight soldiers, all the same sex. The Army also removed all of the bedroom doors to allow sergeants to monitor activities more closely. But with the recruits' doors gone, lights-out in barracks also meant lights-out in the halls if the recruits were to get any sleep. The increased darkness, however, only allowed for more sexual misbehavior...
...involved heightened group responses. A heave of national paranoia resurfaced on the 50th anniversary of the Roswell, N.M., flying-saucer incident. So certain were an astounding number of Americans that a saucer did indeed crash in the desert near Roswell in 1947 that the Army Air Force command in Fort Worth, Texas, issued an explanation at the time that the vehicle in question had been a weather balloon. This past June, to keep the public calm, the Army published reassuring photos in the papers...
...Elsewhere on the NFL docket: Soon-to-be-fired Dallas Cowboy Barry Switzer pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor gun charge following his arrest last summer carrying a loaded pistol in his luggage at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He was fined $3,500. And the Miami Dolphins have offered a contract to troubled ? and I mean troubled ? running back Lawrence Phillips. "There is a large upside," coach Jimmy Johnson said before meeting with Phillips Tuesday, mentioning the legally challenged Phillips will be entering a "highly disciplined program" with the Dolphins. It may have to involve manacles...
...moral quandary posed by this story--the difficulty, given the context of the people and mores of Dismount Fort, of defining proper or humane behavior--permeates Under the Red Flag. Ha Jin is not a preachy author. He offers his characters choices that are incompatible and potentially destructive and then dispassionately records what they do next...