Military service, part 3

At ages 20-21

At the end of Nov 1967, we already reported again to the Naval School (Ilha de Villegagnon, beside Santos Dumont airport), where the officers of the Brazilian Navy are trained. It was (and is) a semi-conventional institution of higher education (semi because military), AAA university level, which prides itself on saying that it is the oldest university-level teaching institution in Brazil.

It was the vacation period of the young men who studied there as boarders and, I believe, we from EFORM did not occupy even a quarter of the available facilities. I was there recently (2023) and was moved to see everything more or less the same, after 55 years.

It was also a troubled time, Brazil under the military government that had begun in 1964, the president was Costa e Silva, guerrillas in the interior of Brazil (Araguaia) and in urban areas, the Vietnam War, the hippie movement (the peak was at Woodstock, Aug 1969), strong terrorist actions in Argentina (Montoneros), in Uruguay (Tupamaros) and, in Chile, the president was Eduardo Frei, replaced by the leftist Allende in 1970, overthrown in 1973 by General Pinochet. In Brazil, Carlos Lacerda, leader of the “right”, was organizing the “Broad Front” against the military government, tying a knot in many people’s heads around here. I was a Lacerda supporter (we are in 2023 and I think I still am).

The standard of the teachers and officers in charge of EFORM changed a lot. Another level, but so as not to disappoint us, there were also those officers who were “not quite right”, that is, with some psychological problem, placed there to add points toward retirement. From CIAW to the Naval School, only Marine Lieutenant Joel Belo accompanied us.

One of the “teachers” I remember (not the name, because it was not worth it), was an M&G (sea-and-war = colonel in the Army), who gave us a class on “urban guerrilla warfare”. This M&G was considered excellent because he had been among the first students of his class, and military men give great importance to that. I remember that he explained v-e-r-y c-l-e-a-r-l-y that he did not allow himself to be interrupted during classes and that, at the end, the students, authorized by him, could ask questions. The reputation of being mean and extremely rigid preceded this M&G. On a certain day, the class began, and the M&G was there explaining a tactic:

_ you come through here and we through there, etc. and so on.... then if you do this and that we will do that and this and blah blah blah, then we having surrounded you, you..... blah blah... and the M&G scratching the blackboard, extremely excited....

_ at a certain point, I could not resist and said out loud in the room: who are the “we” and who are the “you”?

General silence. The M&G and the whole class petrified and the M&G, still with his back to the auditorium, begins to turn around slowly, looking at the class and showing that he had had an adrenaline rush, says in a studiedly paused voice, lower than that of the class, and as if he were being directed by Hitchcock:

_ Who said that?

While I was still thinking whether it had been a good idea to say that, with the whole class looking at me in silence, the M&G says, controlling his vocal cords, but in ecstasy at the power he had over that infamous student:

_ report “immediately” to the officer of the day and say that you are under arrest.

Throughout life I noticed that military men use these “immediately” a lot; another thing they use a lot is the expression “appropriate measures”. So, I must have given a little smile, feeling immediately arrested, for the appropriate measures, a little smile that must not have gone unnoticed by anyone, neither the class nor the M&G, who bellowed to the class (we were about 100):

_ two students senior to the prisoner shall present themselves to escort him to the brig.

I looked at Joviano, who was the most senior of our class, and already began approaching him to be taken to the lockup.... And we began leaving.

The M&G, apoplectic: I said an escort of two. And I said to him:

_ but I am the second most senior of the entire class! The M&G, already somewhat out of control:

_ do not dare address me (or something like that, I do not remember well),

At that moment, Ivo, who was the most senior of the Marines, and I believe was the third most senior of the whole class, had the good sense to stand up and, pretending to grab me roughly by the arm, take me out of there, with Joviano reacting a little late, and we went to the officer of the day. Arriving there, we learned that that M&G was, at the Naval School, a kind of Lieutenant Lapin from CIAW.

The CIAW movie repeated itself at the Naval School, improved: the general director of the Naval School (Álvaro?) did not like the face of the M&G who had arrested me and, to mess with the M&G, it could only be, invited me to lunch at his table in the officers’ mess, and made my arrest an unforgettable event. We discovered ourselves to be Lacerda supporters and right-wing intellectuals, together with quite a few officers; I was almost convinced to “incorporate” into the Navy as an engineer, I even chose the “corps” of the DHN (Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation). During the year 1968, while I was a civil-service employee of the Central Bank, every afternoon, I changed my mind about being a public servant.

After all, the military man is the prototype of the public servant. It was a decision that made my beloved mother very sad, because she thought it was a good idea to have her son in a stable job for life. She told me that I did not know what it was to go through hardship. Trying to convince me to be a public servant, she told me many stories about her and my father that I did not know. It seems that parents make an effort to hide difficulties from their children, thinking that, with this, the children will be free from the problems they went through, or out of shame for what they had to face, who knows.

From the episode with the M&G, what was really annoying was a detail that appeared during the days I had to sleep in a cell, “for show”: I caught pthirus pubis (a type of louse commonly called “crab louse”) in the hairs of my left armpit, probably from the cell mattress. The Navy doctor who treated me was extremely efficient, but I was annoyed because I had never contracted any of these so-called sexually transmitted things.

At the end of 1968, we were graduated as midshipmen (GM), with all the pomp, and learned that the two months that were missing, January-February 1969, would be actually embarked, on an unprecedented voyage of the Brazilian squadron to Europe to take part in some so-called “Cabraline commemorations”.

The Squadron left here soon after, according to a photo from the time, on Jan 07, 1969, returning at the end of February 1969.

From that trip many memories remained, told in the chronicle “military service, part 4”, and in the chronicle “ethnic jealousies, - alfacinhas”.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # R2026 Jan Ra, 6,415 characters.