Walter D. Rodgers is the pseudonym of a retired family physician who lives across the Narrows from Tacoma, Washington.
Dr. Rodgers is a life member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, who practiced in the American Southwest for 33 years. He has been board-certified in family practice since 1975.
He has served as a hospital chief of staff, vice-chief of staff, and as chairman of numerous hospital staff committees and departments. He was elected president of his home district's division of the American Medical Association in 1987 for a two-year term. He was an adjunct professor of family medicine from 1980 to 1994, and an assistant professor in the same department from 1995 till his retirement in 1998.
Dr. Rodgers represents the generation born in to the Great Depression, which grew up during World War II, and who were the active members of the force-in-being that, over forty-five years, won the Cold War.
Dr. Rodgers served as an enlisted man in the peacetime Army of the 1950s, and was commissioned after completion of Field Artillery Officer Candidate School in 1961. He changed his branch assignment to Medical Corps upon graduation from the Kansas City College of Osteopathy and Surgery in 1966.
The author has also been awarded the Combat Medical Badge, the Bronze Star Medal, the Army Meritorious Service Medal, five Army Commendation Medals, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with bronze star device, plus seven other lesser decorations and is entitled to wear the ribbons of three unit citations. He is a qualified military parachutist. In 1985 he was named a Distinguished member of the 502d Infantry Regiment (Airborne) based on his combat service in Vietnam.
Dr. Rodgers is a life member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Association Military Surgeons on the United States, of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and of the Disabled American Veterans.
The author is also a graduate of the National Defense University, Class of 1990. His thesis was a comparative study of ethical behavior in the military and in civilian society.
Dr. Rodgers served for one year in Vietnam and for six months during Operation Desert Shield.
Additionally, he served 42 years in the Army Reserve's Active Troop Unit Program, retiring as a full colonel in 1996.
01 October 2004
4 PM
Nikolai was in the third bed from the door on the left.
He and Wilson had remembered each other from four years before, at Nellis.
There was a brand-new Air Medal pinned to Nikolai's pillow. Its ribbon gleamed with a clutch-on "V" device indicating that it had been awarded for a valorous achievement. The medal hadn't been there the evening before. It had been awarded by an Air Force brigadier the morning of October 1st.
Nikolai grinned broadly as they met for the second time.
"Hey, Doctor. Long time, no see. But that vasss the idea, I think."
He was trying to sound like Gregory Ratoff or Bullwinkle's Boris Badenov; Wilson couldn't be certain which.
"I'm sorry to see you've been wounded," Wilson said.
"Is nothinggg, now," Nikolai said in his fake, thick, intentionally stereotypical Russian accent. "Issss just one percent third-degree and two percent second-degree burns two weeks ago. Worst is over."
"What happened?" Wilson asked.
"I had to eject over Basra, Iraq," said Nikolai. "I was flying a Tupelov-95, what NATO calls a 'Bear' bomber." He had lost the accent. "I'd just dropped 20 tons of high explosive bombs and was exiting Baghdad's air space when a SAM-2, or maybe a SAM-4, exploded about fifty meters off my right wing."
"How did you get to Basra?" Wilson asked.
"I was able to keep directional control, but was losing altitude, and then a fire broke out in the Number Three engine. We started a very wide, shallow corkscrewing right turn, losing three hundred feet or so a minute. I could see we wouldn't make it to the border with Kuwait, so I ordered the crew to abandon ship.
"Everyone made it out all right. There were no wind gusts, so we were able to keep our parachutes together in a fairly tight group.
"We landed a hundred meters from one of your Naval Infantry--"
"Marine Corps," Willie corrected him.
"...artillery battalion headquarters." Nikolai finished the sentence.
He continued: "One of your Navy medics --"
"Hospital corpsman," Wilson corrected, gently, again.
"...right, corpsman, was there, plus a young Navy medical officer. The two of them treated our injuries. From there, we were--what do you call it--med-evacked? up the chain of hospitals--much better than the Russians,' by the way--till we split up in Germany a week ago, and I was brought here in a C-141 hospital plane."
"I'm really glad it turned out all right for you and your crew," Wilson said. "I've often wondered what happened to all those enlistees over the past few years.
"Now, Staff-Segeant Nikolai Sergeivitch," he changed the subject, assuming a slightly more formal tone: "there's some business for us to do. You already know you will have surgery in the morning. Your heart and lungs sound perfectly normal; there's no reason you should do anything but well.
"The aides will take away your water carafe at midnight. Please don't eat or drink anything after that; it would increase the risk of vomiting and aspiration during anesthesia. The doctors will start intravenous antibiotics during surgery. Your procedures will take about an hour. You should be awake in time for lunch. Any questions?"
"No, Doctor," Nikolai replied. "I feel lucky to be here, in Texas, and not in Baku or Rostov. You rich Americans treat your casualties well."
"You are one of ours," Wilson said as he turned away.
He moved on to the next patient, an Armenian Airman First Class, USAFR, who'd sustained second-degree face and neck burns two days before, during a hangar fire.
*
TOP SECRET
11 Dec 1994 Number 3 of 8 Copies
(Collect and Count as last order of business.)
OPERATION "RECOLONIZE"
Tentative Overall Plan, 1994-2000
I. Planning Phase
II. Recruiting of Cadre (to form nine ground brigade-equivalents plus their air transport and tactical air support).
III. Recruiting of Operating Personnel
IV. Training of Operating Personnel
V. Financial Underwriting
VI. Final Shakedown, Men and Equipment
VII. Deployment Sometime after 2000
IX. Restructure Affected Governments as democracies, Constitutional Monarchy as a Possibility (Peace Corps, Department of Agriculture, but not the State Department or CIA as proponent agencies.)
***********LAST ENTRY*************
BURN AFTER READING
MAKE NO COPIES
TOP SECRET
Christmas Week, 1994
Each of the Service Chiefs, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard said (pretty much) this to his most trusted O-6 deputy, in private:
"Whatever else I may say in the next few minutes, I have to know now that I can trust you never, never to repeat a word of it. If you agree, sign this statement of attestation that you'll do just that, and that you know you can bank on going to jail if you talk out of turn."
All of them did it. They'd been chosen because they could, above all, be trusted.
Each chief then told them: " One of the reasons I've selected you for this duty is that you're going to be able to handle a "day job" involving your regular staff duties, and your secret assignment, this assignment, too, nights, weekends, and holidays. I think that I can see a general's star in your future. That means that in a few years, you'll be in a position to make The Project happen.
"Someday, perhaps years from now, but as soon as I possibly can, I'll personally tell your wife and children how sorry I am for having done this to you and to them.
"Now, this is what we're going to be doing in secret over the next several years....."
He then turned and opened his safe.
