Belgian Beer Run

Things You Keep to Yourself (Tales from a General’s Aide-de-Camp)

When you spend enough time as a general’s aide-de-camp, you learn two things: first, generals are human; and second, there are certain things you just keep to yourself.

I served as aide to a one-star whose career had taken him through just about every staff and command billet the Army could invent. He was sharp, decisive, and quietly competitive. After a few years together, I got to know his quirks pretty well—because when you spend that many hours in the back of a car, on a flight, or crammed into a helicopter with a guy, you inevitably pick up on his thoughts and leanings.

Now, as officers, we’re all supposed to be apolitical. But personalities are fair game, and I knew my boss didn’t exactly think the world revolved around his boss’s boss—General Wesley Clark, who at the time was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.

One spring morning, my boss got the call: he’d been “invited” (in the military sense of the word, meaning voluntold) to play golf with General Clark, a brigade commander, and the division commander. Naturally, each general (and future general) traveled with his own miniature entourage of aides, drivers, and security types. When they all converged at the golf course, it was like a NATO staff meeting disguised as a country club outing.

So, while the generals headed off to swing their clubs, the rest of us—the assorted aides, majors, and captains—milled around near the clubhouse, swapping unit coins, swapping war stories, and trying not to look too idle.  Clark’s dudes had cool MP5s. I had just a lousy Beretta M9.😞

Before tee-off, General Clark’s staff handed out a special set of golf balls—each one printed with “SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE – GEN WESLEY CLARK.” The division commander accepted his with great enthusiasm, carefully placing them in his golf bag like priceless relics.

My boss, on the other hand, simply said “Thanks,” teed up the first one, and launched it into the woods with a full-bodied driver swing that would’ve made Tiger Woods proud. Then he reached for another, and another, until every single one of General Clark’s commemorative golf balls had disappeared somewhere in the Belgian forest.

Not one made it back to the clubhouse.

When he climbed back into the car afterward that evening to head back to the hotel…  he didn’t say a word. Just grinned slightly and asked me if we had any of that good Belgian beer left from our last trip to SHAPE. He was a cool dude. 

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