James Sherry
Nukeman
Originally published in Our Nuclear Heritage (Sun & Moon Press, 1991); revised edition (2022) with images curated by Deborah Thomas
About Face
Studying to attack the enemy, how their minds work:
Self serving propaganda and shows of force are effects
Which can be variously achieved. And certainly,
We should look good to be thought well of.
But the accessible arsenal and mobile strike team can be
Distinguished from even rows of missiles in a parade
And hollow displays of technology.
Rigorous training, war game corrections, and revising strategy
And tactics spark the insight to curtail defective force.
This work introduces active considerations to the models
Of our nuclear heritage, tracing the confluences of war and art.
When fighting to make a living at the expense of others,
Different disciplines branch directly from our duties.
I have found multiple solutions
To a puzzle expected to have one answer.
Each soldier seeks a new conquest.
Boot Camp
Poetry stands in the margin contemplating the edge,
Drawing violence from memory and culture.
Assessing economic / natural cycles,
Poetry applies the innate solutions.
Assuming correctability, it seeks to control habitat and humanity.
Leaves torn away by autumn define the tree’s cycle;
Tender buds of spring open for exploitation.
Winter frost brings an opportunity
For organizing, summer days for foray.
Our nuclear heritage relies on turning points of history
To define clarity and purpose, since it has become that way.
Our nuclear heritage valorizes the conflicts of the classic battles
Where form and content can be distinguished.
First Foray
Daydreams, he hears an inner "Taps".
His stealth bombers ride currents
In the four corners as his mind,
"Over the horizon", surveys.
And then intelligence clarifies bogeys.
And missiles pour forth, the shape of death,
Issuing particulate bitterness.
He drifts in a lake of reports; he drives to the depths
Of weather radar, through drifting clouds of gasses.
And he scoops living beings, like fishes
Hooked in their gills, into his net of survivors.
And he brings down order like a duck
The buckshot bounced off; then it rises again.
And he gathers words and images
From anonymous hacked generations;
His rhetoric comes from Georgics millennia past.
And morning does not come,
For here is history known by no one, only light unfolds.
Past and present solute. The earth was the blink of an eye.
Selective Service
He chooses among assaults, his troops.
He appropriates tactics and crafts his 5th column,
Tracing echoes to their sources—sonar, radar, laser, maser.
Following a branch to find the trembling recruit or a stream
To find the spring, the strategist brings light to the darkness,
Even if it means what's simple becomes difficult
Or the difficult easy.
So, battle tanks silence other guns, and heat seeking SAMs
Chase planes in terrifying waves away from the front.
In anabasis, the way is often cleared by artillery
But often the enemy is snide and regroups.
He calms his anxious generals;
All things mold to his strategies.
He collects academy curricula from proper battle assignments;
Sky and earth are trapped in his subterfuge.
Caught at first in a web of alternatives,
Now casualties aid his route.
Battle logic is the bone;
Tactical nukes make the appendages wave.
Emotion and reason unite and every shift
Of feeling calls forth fresh troops.
Finding rage, he also finds rage's tears;
In exultation a terrible sneeze.
Sometimes orders come easily, sometimes he sits and eats beef.
Satisfaction
So recruits do not dispute,
The victor's pleasure beats rock star's.
Out of events identity licks,
Out of closets war cries justify his need.
Cast the net of fright wide wider.
Language trickles from one particular corner of the brain.
The warrior spreads the fragrance
In an abundance of sprouting arteries.
Harrowing winds lift up the metaphor;
Clouds rise from a forest of history writing turrets.
Catalog of Weapons Systems
The body of suffering takes a thousand forms
With no right way to measure.
Human life changes at the flick of a hand,
The soul difficult to capture.
Squadrons and flotillas compete with the will
Of the people through the gunner's objective.
Caught between the historian and the idealist,
The strategist struggles to win battles without compromising
His munitions, his supporters.
He departs from the canon, oversteps the accords in search
Of a victory that has not destroyed the value of his conquests.
If his strategies are muddled, he cannot succeed;
Only when the mind is clear can his gestures be noble:
The air force captures the emotions and controls the battle.
The army goes to its goal directly.
The navy masters the supply routes and trade.
The commandos are ready at a moment’s notice.
The Seabees protect our own shores.
The submarines are untraceable.
The missiles strike if necessary with final devastation.
The satellites see far.
The intelligence units pass among the enemy and delve his mind.
The quartermaster's corps is orderly.
The lines of communications are their own form.
The pacification teams provide the basics for a defeated foe and innocent victims.
The propagandists turn their anger at the victor to disorder.
The government liaisons prevent interference.
The assassins do what must be done even close to home.
Although each service is different, each stands opposed to
Whatever enemy, and none grants the strategist license.
Action speaks from its reason, language from its use.
Balanced Formations
Each assault assumes particular shape,
But only when alternative scenarios are plotted.
Sentinels for each force harmoniously battle
Toward a mutual understanding of how to attack.
Weapons mingle like colors in a kaleidoscope,
Each enhances the form.
Training is like opening a dam in a river during a drought.
But troops are capricious;
Discipline shouldn't try to mirror personality.
And without individual initiative,
Even dialectics is not enough to drive a tank.
Correcting Errors
Looking back, one finds errors of judgment, moral oversights,
And crime. Anticipating adverse publicity, one seeks
A smooth transition that will not compromise the leaders.
Distinguishing action from result, errors in judgment
Can be compensated, oversights can be covered up,
And crimes can be punished or privately banked.
Confuse them and everyone suffers,
Because the foundation of patriotism, cause and effect, is questioned.
The general inspects his soldiers down to a single hair.
When corrections are precise,
Even politics can frankly control the people.
The Key
Technology may be reassuring and the logic of an assault accurate,
But the target may be trivial.
What has come to fruition requires no additional dispute.
A bullet in the heart, a grenade in the crucial turbine;
Political boundaries must not end.
However the supply lines branch and spread,
They bristle with strategic nodes.
When polarity is restrained,
One is saved the pains of correcting errors.
Prowess Initiative Surprise Victory
Weave elaborate divisions on muddy roads.
The plan must move the heart
Like a squadron of fighters roaring overhead.
New ideas rhyme with current events.
The human spirit spills into the same blood as ancestors.
I gaze humbly at my medals. I wear them for my country.
Breakfast of Champions
Perhaps only a single warhead of a cluster will find its target;
Perhaps only one person's ideas will be disseminated.
Beating your breast and shouting causes friends to wince.
An assault with too many objectives achieves none.
Shoddy soldiering is an eyesore, always obvious
And cannot be the source of operations.
When the troops are not stirred to battle, but alienated
By arbitrary discipline, their minds wander uncontrolled.
When the sun glints off a well placed piece,
The enemy is cowed; the associations ricochet in their minds.
A youngster given an imaginative assignment might follow paths of glory.
A frontal assault within a great strategy might win today.
Criteria
Sustainability:
When the strike is slack and has no follow up,
The rhythm falters. The soldier searches in the dark
For a friendly, but finding none; he calls
And then calls on God but nothing answers.
A single attack, however courageous, is no operation.
Hierarchy:
When the foray is all bravado and the technology overwhelming,
No one will praise the victory.
When the commando mixes with the foot soldier,
The commando suffers.
One hears a single shot in the night.
Value:
Searching for policy, a leader may obscure
And personalize the common good.
Then his words harden, ramble,
And the people feel betrayed.
As with prime time tv, one detects music and harmony
But cannot identify the tasty product. It is too expensive
To buy or pay in defeat. So, battles continue.
Restraint:
Sometimes the smell of blood
Or a convincing argument seduces.
Vanity mushrooms self aggrandized images in your mind.
Especially in a good cause, such as the use of firing squads,
Just proportion must be observed.
Torture:
When the assault is free of confusion,
The troops’ rage is in perspective.
But lunch may be bread and water.
All your resources can be deployed
And still the effort lacks effectiveness.
Finding Strategy
The Historic Victory
I press these rules of war to my heart
As I write rejections for exemption.
I know what's only fashion; I remember what Caesar praised.
As finite as death seems,
Great deeds illuminate humanity's trajectory.
Yet such heroics remain opaque, magnetic,
While the dogface routine is a matter of records gathering dust.
We go to Congress, but our coffers seem ever empty.
The flashy, fundable proposals are like workers without jobs.
Wanting each new weapons system to be funded,
One supply general gets an ulcer while another plays golf.
Nothing remains perfect; the soldier is never complacent.
We hear the laughter of college boys and think they laugh at us.
The retreating commander continually counts his troops,
Thinking it will delay his own demise.
The Terror
I worry my victories have been misrepresented,
And another has seized the strategic objective.
Unworthy to lead modern vessels of power,
I want to initiate the Long March.
I work with materials at hand;
That which is over cannot be delayed.
Then the enemy shot six times rises.
The need for a particular action passes.
But its effects return as useful as an echo from Thermopolyae.
When spring arrives, the troop's blood stirs
And public information encourages emotions.
Yesterday teamwork, today standardization.
Every eye sees the pattern,
And it don't take Alexander to hear the music.
Inspiration
Time comes when the armor is mired,
Though every order wants to be obeyed,
When individual initiative fails.
The Campaigner feels dry as last year's pop star's facelift,
Dead as last year's pop star, as culture that feeds on nostalgia.
Wishing on his venture, he searches his self for a dream.
He relies on circumstances or the weather to change.
He scans the horizon for a convenient opponent.
The real danger is in the dark, strategies brought gently
Like a child from the womb, terrified and screaming.
Forcing actions forces errors;
Letting time take its course makes the course clear.
Victory lies in individuals acting in common cause
On multiple fronts, but no power on earth can guarantee the alliance.
Again and again, I search my heart in the struggle;
Sometimes another theater appears when waiting least expects.
An empire keeps a lasting peace.
Armistice
Consider the use of force civilization requires.
Although all cultures have wanted to rise above it,
As if the fetus could have no placenta,
They have not understood its limits.
The works of the "mighty crumble,"
Yet continue to be the goal of many
And the sonnet of laughter in peace and in war.
Each generation is fathered by the military of the previous;
Only isolated tribes have no apparent pecking order.
The discipline of war makes leaders for peace
And illuminates moral questions.
War is like art because it must deal with calibrated spaces
And the conflicts of partisans.
War comes like lighting from the sky and claws the spirit.
Inscribed on bronze and marble, it is honored as virtue,
But every day must be today
And we must live on in our memories.
Image notes:
1. Museum of The History of Ukraine in World War II ( Kiev, Ukraine).
2. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant shelled by Russian invasion (video capture).
3. Leaf, photo: Alex Xander @xanderalex.
4. Russian Missile (video capture).
5. Duck: Creative Commons.
6. Russian soldier giving cat to child (Reddit).
7. Ninja: Walmart.com.
8. Tank photograph by Marian Kushnir, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
9. Rubber Ducky Skeleton: Luna Sea3D.
10. Lt. Gen. Alexander Lapin, commander of Russia’s Central Military District (left); Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s first deputy defense minister and chief of Russia’s Central Military District (left). Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
11. Captured Russian Soldier (video capture).
12. American consumer goods in Russia.
13. Caesar statue.
14. See more on “Spring March” at:
https://unofficial-leftypol-discord.fandom.com/wiki/Spring_March
15. President Volodymyr Zelensky (video capture).
16. NATO graphic and map. See more about “The Enlargement of NATO” at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO