BULLIES

  Occasionally I will hear a PSA on radio about bullying and by the time it is finished I am usually pretty annoyed. I can't remember exactly how it goes but it runs something like this. It uses the voices of various male and female children. Today I learned a lot in school. I learned that I am fat, I am ugly, that I smell, that I am disgusting etcetera, etcetera. Then the commercial ends with a child saying the only thing I didn't learn in school today; is why no one helps. I always want to tell the kids in this commercial to quit your whining, buy a helmet and suck it up buttercup. I learned this lesson the hard way. No one can end bullying but the person being bullied. Not your parents, not your teachers or the school principal. You have to learn how to stand up to a bully on your own. When you get a job and work in the real world is your boss going to be able to protect you from a co-worker who is a bully? What if your boss is a bully?

  I grew up a spoiled and sheltered child. My mother taught me to avoid fighting if I could. She said that fighting did not make you a man. I can still agree with that, but like the Kenny Rogers song, Coward of the County say's, "Sometimes you have to fight to be a man". As a child I was a coward. I freely admit it. My life changed when I was orphaned at the age of 12 and I no longer had my parents to run to. At 14 a bully walked up to me in school and for no reason punched me in the face. Shocked, I just stood there and did nothing. Around the same age I was playing a pin ball machine at the State Fair when I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by a group of teenage thugs. I tried to to ignore them until one of them leaned in close to my ear and said, "F_ _ k  you". I did a Pee Wee Herman exit and eased on out through the crowd, letting them have the rest of my game and the pin ball machine to themselves. I am an old man now and I still cringe when I think of the times that I backed down to bullies. The next time I had to deal with a bully I put him on the floor with one punch and I was shocked at how easy it was and how good I felt afterward. 

When I arrives at Detatchment 93 in Turkey I became a flight chief for about a month. I was a flight chief because the Security Police Squadron was short on staff sergeants. During this time I was assigned to a two man room with my assistant flight chief. I owned a Confederate flag and after unpacking it I hung it on the wall over my bunk. There was a black guy from Memphis who walked into my room and spotted my flag. He asked me if I was a rebel. I said no, just proud of being from the South. He turned and walked out of the room without saying anything. A month later two new SSgt's arrived in the detachment and I became an assistant to a black SSgt. He was an odd duck. As his assistant I should have been given best posts but instead he was putting me on the worst posts. I noticed that he was disrespecting me when he made out the duty roster. He would list everyone by their rank and full name. When he listed my name on the roster it was just Segroves. I endured this treatment for a few weeks but I was resolved to do something about it.

On a midnight shift after guard mount we were being posted in the alert area. When our truck arrived I waited for everyone else to leave the vehicle so I could talk to my flight chief in private. It was just him and me. After stepping out of the passenger side I looked him straight in the eyes as he was sitting in the drivers seat and I said in a firm but quiet voice that I didn't know what his problem was but starting tomorrow I expected to be treated with the respect accorded to my position. My rank and my proper name had better be on the duty roster. If not I would go to the NCOIC or Non Commissioned Officer In Charge of security. I was armed with an M-16 and a pistol. He was also armed. He came unglued and cursed me out. The man used every profane word in the book and had pure hatred in his eyes. As I walked through the main gate shack to my post he was following and screaming at me. The Turkish guards looked at us like we were crazy. He was so mad I was afraid he was going to shoot me.

  I walked straight to my post. My gate shack was the size of a telephone booth and as I sat down while he was standing over me spewing out pure hatred. I never said another word after I left the truck. After what seemed like an eternity he turned and stormed off. I called our dispatcher and told him to call our NCOIC of Security, who was TSgt Wright and wake him up. When sergeant Wright called me I told him how I was being treated. The next day Wright moved me to another flight and I became the assistant to another SSgt, who was also black. His name was John Miliken. He was very fair with me and we became good friends. SSgt Miliken and SSgt Charles, who was my sergeant at Kingsley Field Oregon were both black and were the best sergeants that I ever had in the Air Force. Charles and Miliken were like fathers to me. Later I found out that this black sergeant had hated me because of my Confederate flag. I debated taking it down at the time but I decided to leave it up because I knew I wasn't a racist and he was unjustly judging me in the same manner that he had probably been judged because of the color of his skin. This experience taught me to stand my ground when I am right. My opinion of the Confederate flag has radically changed over the years. I look at it as a Democrat symbol today and because of my hatred of the Democrat party I would not have put it on my wall if I had it to do over again. At the time, however; it was not a racist symbol to me. Over time this black sergeant that treated me so badly softened his attitude toward me because he realized he had been wrong about me. 

When I was stationed at N.O.R.A.D. in Colorado Springs I was promoted to SSgt just after my arrival there. Several men in my unit had as much time in grade as I did but they were still E-4's. One big Polish guy was resentful of my promotion. Being promoted put me in charge of the Security Policemen on my shift in the mountain. He wasn't as tall as I was but he was a big man, barrel chested with a low center of gravity. We got along well prior to my promotion but then the bullying started afterwards. He would make threatening remarks or bump into me as we passed each other. As a supervisor, and as a man, I had to do something because I knew that I would lose the respect of my men. 

 One day we were passing each other through a doorway next to CSC, (Central Security Control), and he bumped into me pretty hard. He looked at me and said "Segroves, one of these days I'm going to sniper your ass".  There were several of my men watching and I calmly unhooked my gun belt and placed it on a chair. We were both armed. I squared off, looking him straight in the eyes. "You take that gun off, and we will settle this thing right here, man to man". If he had taken me up on my challenge we could have both been brought up on charges for fighting but this had to stop. He glared at me for a few seconds and finally, with a sheepish grin said, "Aw Segroves, I'm just playing with you". After that I had no more problems with him. I got some sweet revenge a few days later. We would all go to a local city park and play tackle football without helmets or pads. I received a kick-off and was running as fast as I could go down the sidelines when he tried to tackle me. I just ran right over him as if he wasn't there. These were rough games. One day I was going up for a pass. The last thing I remember was catching the ball. When I woke up I was sitting on the ground with a bunch of guys standing around me. I had been knocked out cold and for about an hour I barely knew who I was. . 

  There are various ways to stand up to a bully without having to fight. We encounter employers, teachers, customers, bureaucrats, politicians and many others that are bullies in our everyday life. I have only had one real physical fight in my life. As a security officer I still run into thugs and bullies on occasion. Whenever someone tries to bully me it just makes me that much more determined to stand my ground. My fear is that we are becoming a nation of wimps. There is a "woosification" of society going on today that will one day come back to haunt us. Many boys are not raised to be men anymore. If we don't stop this cancer of political correctness we will become a defeatist nation. The left will have what they want. A nation full of sheep. One reason that people like Donald Trump is that he stands up to the leftist bullies in the press and on the left. When attacked, he defends himself. Some might argue that there are bullies out there that are dangerous and too formidable to handle on our own. They can kill or maim us and I would agree. Yet there is a fate worse than death. A life without honor. 

 As a writer I speak out about the many wrongs in society today. As we have seen, it can be tough speaking your mind. The PC crowd bully people that speak out. Calling them a variety of hateful names in order to silence them. Names like homophobe, bigot, nativist, racist, sexist, and Islamophobe. Speaking out about radical Islam can get you killed, as we have seen in the case of those in France who were writers for the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. They died because they drew cartoons of Mohammad. You can be ostracized in public just for wearing a MAGA hat or a Trump tee shirt. I don't own a MAGA hat but I have Trump tee shirts and I wear them proudly in public. I relish the thought of someone giving me a hard time for it. They will get a piece of my mind if it happens. 

 The Warsaw Jews fought to the last man and woman in the Warsaw Ghetto. They had to know that they were fighting a lost cause but they chose an honorable death standing up to the German bullies rather than meekly walking into the gas chambers like so many of their people had already done. These Warsaw Jews had the honor of dying on their feet rather than dying on their knees. At one time in my life I could not relate to Patrick Henry wanting to die rather than relinquishing his freedom but now I understand what he meant when he said, " Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” It is not a stretch to say that one day sooner than we think, we might have to choose an honorable death standing up to Communist bullies who would dare to rob us of our freedoms.