Captain defeated; Crew disappears.

[StocktonDon]

Crew (aka darn cat) finished evening chow in the nearly deserted base mess. Noting Captain’s unusual absence from chow, the night scout slipped away to Captain’s residence to check in on his friend. No Captain.

Crew thought a moment and headed for Captain’s favorite spot, a shady bank overlooking the tidal slough on the northern boundary of the base. Sure enough, Captain was in an old set of utilities, sitting and looking into the water, apparently at nothing.

Crew crept silently closer, deciding to stalk as close as he could before Captain noticed. Maybe he could startle Captain and make him jump! Under the bush, along the path, belly brushing silently through the grass, closer, closer….

“Evening, Crew, “Captain said quietly. [What gave me away?] I was watching the reflection in this beer mug as much as I was watching the tide come in.” [Learn anything from either?] “Only that certain uppity night scout’s aren’t quite as sneaky as they better be on combat patrol!” [Me-ouch!.]

[I didn’t see you at mess.] “Crew … I lost this time. The Admiralty not only got me to report on Delta bass fishing but I just got word from a friendly on staff that follow-up orders have been cut requiring more detail. I think I may be losing the battle.”

[Crew could tell his friend was feeling a bit down. Thinking a moment, Crew snorts: is that all!] Captain glares and, in a too-controlled voice, notes his career-long effort to shield the Delta from mindless overuse. “If The Admiralty had its way survival fishing would consist of tossing DuPont spinnerbaits, and then scooping up dead and dying fish as they floated up after the explosion!”

[They just want more help fishing.] “No, they want new and better slash-and-burn harvest techniques of an already stressed resource. Worse, they want to teach exploitation of the resource without teaching respect for it. And worst of all, they want to teach the activity without encouraging students to develop respect for the process of learning how to learn.”

“Instead of cultivating the keen study of the environment and their place in it, lessons that must be applied for successful survival in all environments, The Admiralty wants situation-specific, mechanical step-by-step instructions to maximize harvest. That won’t help service personnel faced with figuring out how to survive in a new and different environment where it might be the real thing. It’s the battle I have been fighting for a long time; I feel I am being forced to fight for the wrong side”

[Well, you are right, of course. Poor you, you’ve lost once and for all. Might as well flop down, expose your throat, and meow like a kitten hoping for mercy.] “Crew, you’ve gone too far! Our friendship doesn’t allow you to …. hmm.”

Crew had done what friendship required. Captain was lost in thought. Crew could almost see Captain reach down into what made him Captain to renew himself in the strength of hard-won, bedrock conviction. As he had done so often in the past, Crew offered Captain the silence to find himself.

[After a while Crew softly offered: do you see the problem, or the opportunity?] “More cat-fu philosophy, Crew? What would your after-action report look like?”

[Faced with the overwhelming forces of duty to the service and your personal loyalty to the requirement of obedience to The Admiralty, did you comply with the literal meaning of your orders? Crew posed.] “Perhaps not.”

[‘Perhaps not,’ my shiny white whiskers, Captain!] “Crew, it still felt like a defeat.”

[Yeah, it was the ‘defeat’ of a weak force in a fighting retreat before an overpowering opponent.] “I should never have let myself get cornered like that.” [Maybe you decided it was time to bring the fight into the open?] “You’re being way too thought-provoking to let me sulk about this aren’t you?”

[Yep. What’s the best you can do when faced with overwhelming odds that you cannot evade?] “If you cannot evade a stronger foe, deflect direct blows and lead your opponent by a controlled retreat onto ground where he is at a disadvantage and he must face you on terms more favorable to the resources you have available.”

[Isn’t that what you did? By refusing to give The Admiralty exactly what was ordered, you deflected the force of orders and provoked a blundering bureaucratic response while retreating to the high, rough ground of sound thinking, where you enjoy some advantage. And, by championing independent thought, you created an opportunity for the opponent’s forces to learn they are in the wrong, inviting them to defeat themselves. My cat-fu masters would ask, what is that, if not victory?]

Captain looked at his beer, stalling while he thought through what Crew suggested. “So, you see The Admiralty’s new orders as an opportunity and not a defeat, Crew? … Crew?”

But Captain was alone. The trusty night scout, mission accomplished, left unseen and unheard - apparently disappearing into thin air. It was a trick Crew pulled off to Captain’s annoyance countless times before. After a moment, Captain wondered, “Maybe I wasn’t so clever in noticing Crew’s earlier approach?”