Farmer Bill was a character. Called me every week or so just to chew me out. Reminded me of my dad if Dad had been a motor-mouth. It was heartening. I got to looking forward to his calls for the comfort zone.
Took me a while to find what he needed but the Army had "stood-up" a "military farming support network." And eventually I found everything.
Look, an army travels on its stomach. Soldiers are always the last people to go hungry.
In most societies, that's because we've got the guns. But the U.S. Army tries, very hard, not to steal all its food. (Sherman's March to the Sea being a notable exception.)
But our models were forecasting "chronic, serious and endemic nutrition shortages" in the U.S. That's a fancy way of saying "famine." It was classified Top Secret because the Policy Makers were saying everything was coming up roses. I saw the actual reports. And as the growing season of 2020 went on, the reports were getting worse and worse.
So the Army had set out to rectify that as well as it could. It was stepping all over USDA at that point, but it didn't care. Soldiers were going to eat. If for no other reason than so that they'd have the strength to stop the food riots that were coming. Without killing the rioters.
"Stuff" for farming was available. Dealerships had gone into receivership. Stocks weren't getting distributed. Seed that was "genmod" was just sitting in warehouses and getting ready to go bad.
The Army was handpicking some farms to make sure soldiers ate. It might not be perfect, but soldiers would have something to eat.
I really think it was mid 2020 when the coup was closest. (Other than at the election and I'm getting ahead of myself again.) The Joint Chiefs were looking at the fucking country starving and the President and her advisors leading the charge into famine. But they didn't revolt. They held firm to the concept of The Society of Cincinnatus. Civilian leadership control never truly broke. But they did whatever they could under the table.
Farmer Bill became one of those "under the table" deals. He got what he needed from "seized" stocks that were just sitting around. He sold his food to the Army when it came in. Quite a few soldiers ate actual wheat bread during the winter of 2020–2021 because of Farmer Bill.
Enough of Farmer Bill. This is about me.
It took several months for the general's schedule to open up enough for some chit-chat time. And it was late when we started and I had duty that night. He had my predecessor sit in for part of my shift. We talked late.
He really was interested in Khuwaitla. He wanted out of this rat-fuck, too. But we both agreed we were doing useful work even if we hated it. So I talked about Khuwaitla. And he agreed that Abrams were tough and thought it was funny that I was so ambivalent about them. I pointed out he'd never had to fight them. He laughed.
We talked about getting them over the Taurus and the Anatolians and he thought it was funny that I'd gotten the routes mixed up. He told a story about when he was commanding a brigade in the Entry Phase in Iraq and despite GPS getting on the wrong road and running into a hell of a firefight. I told him about swinging wide on Mosul, which I'd gotten from that op. And some reading over the years. We talked about Slim and he'd read "Unofficial History" and he recommended a couple of others that turned out to be excellent. Slim was big on logistics. We segued from that.
He asked me if I'd seen the classified reports on food production.
I admitted I had.
He asked me if I had any suggestions. Beyond expanding the "food for soldiers" program which was already as big as we could do and get away with under the table.
I said I'd had a lot of time to think on night shift.
And?
What? You want the full PowerPoint presentation?
That's how I got into Plans and Ops of ESM.
Not that that was a lot better. Every answer came down to the same equation: H.R. Puffinstuff. We could do a little, but we weren't going to be able to do enough.
Things were totally and completely screwed. Factor after factor was building up. The Plague. The bad weather. The false forecasts. The utter stupidity of the Zimbabwe Plan. USDA being forced to give all the wrong suggestions. "Organic" uber alles. Remember my rant about "Organic." Three times the tilled land for the same amount of food. We had less tilled land and mostly organic and all natural farming. "Farmers" breaking stuff for which the parts were becoming scarcer and scarcer and scarcer because the factories that used to make them were abandoned and the rate of breakage was beyond belief. And the "farmers" didn't know how to fix anything. (Okay, by 2020 the worst of them were gone. Most died in the winter of 2019. But then they got replaced by a new crop of idiots.)
Any single one would have been bad.
The combination had things totally and completely FUBARed. Fucked Up Beyond Any Recovery.
And we knew deep in our bones that as soldiers we were going to be left holding the bag. We'd be the ones that people threw stones at when there wasn't even the food for the soup lines. Or shot at.
The economy was still not coming back. Stocks were trading, commodities were trading, banks were sort of getting their feet under them again. But the damned "nationalizations" had people running scared. Say you bought stock in a company then the next day it got "nationalized." Know what you got? Nada. Nichts. Nothing. Nobody wanted to invest under those conditions.
And in the meantime anyone who was paying any attention to the news could see that the coterie around Damen Warrick was getting fatter and fatter and fatter.
Hell, if people had had the energy there would have been a flat-out revolt.
And, yes, that did break out in places in 2020. And as soldiers . . . we were left holding the bag. We were the ones that had to kick down doors and round up "insurgents." Our stock was starting to fall. We were going from saviors to "oppressors."
People, we didn't vote for Warrick. Nor for the Dems that gave her absolute power.
We just got left holding the bag.
It was July of 2020 and I pulled an idea out of my ass. It was shit. I knew it was shit. And soon enough everyone in the U.S. and in several other countries ate my shit.
I invented the Kula Bar.
Yes, that's right, people. You can blame that abortion purely on me. I am at fault. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.
The Kula Bar. The most reviled and despised food on earth, with the possible exception of Spam.
The Kula Bar in all four revolting flavors: Piss yellow, leprous green, horrible horrible blue and that truly stomach-turning red. I cannot to this day get the taste out of my mouth. I refer to them as their colors because there is no way to explain to those who have not experienced them the taste.
The sole redeeming quality? It kept the death rate down. Not gone, but down.
Here are the factors that led to that monstrosity.
Food was going to be short. Not "soup lines" short but "nothing" short.
Fuel was going to be short. Not "perhaps we should use the hybrid" short but "we can't even boil a cup of water" short.
It was going to be cold. Not "it's cool in here" cold but "if we don't get five or six people under this blanket we're going to be corpsicles in the morning" cold.