Army-Navy Game

There I was, sitting in a PAX TERMINAL (passenger terminal), waiting for a ride home after being out on a mission.

(As an aside, it still strikes me as odd that the word PAX (Latin: peace) is the designation for "person(s)" in the Army.)

Anyway, a number of us were doing the same thing, waiting for the same aircraft to take us to our respective destinations. There was a TV in the room, which was tuned (if by tuned one means "with an antenna sort of pointed the direction of perhaps maybe receiving a snowy signal which fades in and out with accompanying white noise") to the Army-Navy game.

Just after Army's first possession (which lasted all of about 20 seconds, it seemed), a huge BOOM shook the trailer we were in. Perhaps it was a portent of things to come.

The noise and shock wave caught my attention, but the Battalion Commander and his Command Sergeant Major I'd just met barely took notice of it, so I held my place, and my tongue. (See, I *can* do that! Sometimes, anyway.)

A few minutes after Navy had scored the first six of their 200 points, or whatever it turned out to be, another BOOM shook the building. Still not much in the way of response, though the BC and CSM did look around the room and at each other. Someone else in the room said, "I didn't hear any announcement of a controlled det (detonation) taking place tonight."

The wavy lines of the TV oscillated whilst the white noise crescendoed and diminuendoed. Navy scored again, I think.

Two more detonations BOOMed out, one after the other, shaking us again, which finally prompted a verbal response from the Lieutenant Colonel in our midst. "Well, I suspect they're just controlled dets, but if they're not, they're not close enough to us to be of concern."

Maybe not to him.

Blessings and peace to one and all,

Fr. Tim, SJ

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