Coming of age in the late 40’s and early 50’s, like so many I was a boy reared on the declining realities of WWII and the much more immediate Hollywood depictions of that cataclysmic event in Technicolor epics that could fire the sense of  joining battle even in a Quaker. The United States Army designated we youthful devotees of such movies as John Wayne’s, foolish young men who leaned more to the Hollywood version of combat than the brutal reality our fathers experienced, with a lot to learn. An integral part of that Hollywood and John Wayne induced reality was the barroom brawl, and as a former combat military policeman in the 101st Airborne Division during that era, I can assure you that such brawls were frequent, sometimes bloody, but above all, celebrated as demonstrations of unit pride. They would never admit it back then, but there were plenty of colonels and sergeant majors who swelled with satisfaction upon being handed a military police report that...(Read Full Post)