299 Days: The 43 Colonels

by Glen Tate

  “I want my kids to have a good life,” he continued. “Please pardon my reference to ‘the children’ like the old government used to do all the time, but in this case, it’s actually true. Our kids have seen enough. They’ve lost parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends, you name it. Some have seen killing, and some have had to do it. They’ve seen maiming and watched people go insane. They’ve been hungry. They don’t need any more of this. No more of it.” The Legislature chambers were silent. Some because they disagreed with Ben’s reconciliation approach, others because they appreciated the horrors of what he was describing.

  “They need peace,” Ben stated. “Not the wishy-washy ‘peace’ which was always a code word for the other side gets what they want and we lose. They need safety and prosperity. They need the old America back.”

  “They need their parents to have jobs that can support their family. They need to go to school. They need to walk the streets without getting shot. They need to be able to go sleep at night without being terrified of gunfire or someone breaking down their door.”

  “So, yes,” Ben said a little sarcastically, “it’s ‘for the children.’ It sure is. You know why? Because I fought for my kids and so did you. We didn’t fight to then fight some more and to keep fighting. We fought to win and we won! Let’s act like winners—and that means living the best possible lives we can.” Many in the audience applauded.

  Ben paused and then quietly said, “That’s where the Reconciliation Commission comes in.” Ben felt himself starting a political speech and taking the attention away from the real honoree, Grant, so he decided to wrap it up.

  “As you know, the Reconciliation Commission, headed by Grant, makes recommendations on who should be prosecuted and pardoned. He and his small staff investigate what the person in custody did and then take on the very hard task of figuring out if punishment or pardon will best serve the interests of the people of New Washington State.” Some, but not all, members of the audience applauded.

  “Enough about that,” Ben said. “Grant wouldn’t want me going on about him.” Grant looked up from his seat and nodded, which got some laughs. “Let’s get down to business,” Ben said. “Come up here, Grant.”

  Grant found it surprisingly easy to walk from his seat to Ben. He wasn’t even shaking with nerves. The applause was thunderous. He approached Ben and stood at attention, even though he was in civilian clothes. Then again, Grant never had a military uniform, so a suit was, in many ways, his uniform for his duties. Ben took out a colonel’s insignia and pinned it on Grant’s lapel. He gave Ben a crisp salute, and it surprised him how it didn’t seem weird to be saluting his old friend.

  Grant looked into the audience, a sea of lights, people, and applause. What he heard was not a sound, but a thought. Well done, Colonel.

  Chapter 336

  Col. Ashur Bet-Kasha

  (Honor)

  Grant soaked in all the applause, admitting to himself that it felt spectacular, and then slowly walked off the rostrum. As he headed back to his seat, he passed the next colonel, the older Arab man, Ashur. Grant spontaneously hugged Ashur and whispered into his ear, “Your family has quadra,” which was the word in Ashur’s language for deep honor and respect that lasts for generations. This was what Ashur and his family lived for: quadra. It meant everything in his culture. Gaining quadra for your family was the highest calling for a man in his culture.

  Ashur looked at Grant and a tear rolled down his cheek. He was speechless. He was dressed in colorful traditional Assyrian garb, reflecting his people in the Syrian/Turkish border areas. An Arab man dressed like a Turkish sheep baron looked strangely out of place in a room full of Americans in suits and dresses. But, then again, it made all the sense in the world to Grant and others in the audience. They knew what Ashur and his family did for the Patriots, and why the Assyrians and their language might have been the thing that allowed the gathering of victorious Patriots to ever occur.

  Grant looked Ashur in the eye, tears and all, and repeated, “Quadra. Quadra, my friend.” Ashur hugged Grant, which caused the audience to explode in applause. The two men remained locked together, feeling the praise and honor that they didn’t think they deserved, but at the same time acknowledging that they’d earned. Two men from radically different cultures, but united in one thing: honor. Doing the right thing. Helping people, protecting their families, righting wrongs. It was the same everywhere in the world, at least among honorable people.

  Grant went back to his seat; this was Ashur’s time and he deserved all the attention. Seeing that Ashur was standing, Ben said, “It is with great pleasure that we honor Colonel Ashur Bet-Kasha.” The crowd gave Ashur a standing ovation.

  “Everyone knows what Ashur and his very large and brave family did,” Ben started. “But for the record of the New Washington Legislature, I want to recap it.”

  “How in the world did Patriot forces communicate extremely sensitive information on unencrypted radio channels?” Ben asked. “I mean,” he said, once again going off script, “we silly ‘amateur’”—another swipe at Lima Governor Menlow—“’teabagger’ hillbilly barbarians aren’t possibly as smart as the wise Legitimate Authorities,” he said with just enough sarcasm to be funny, but not so much as to be obnoxious. “How did we do it?”

  Ben suddenly slammed his fist down on the podium. “When you abuse people, they rise up!” he shouted. “They fight back!” More applause. Ben’s posture and tone became very casual, like he was chatting with someone he’d known a long time, even though he was speaking to several hundred strangers in the legislative chambers, and hundreds of thousands more on the internet throughout New Washington and elsewhere.

  He looked into the crowd and seemed to connect with every person sitting there. “When the history of the Collapse and Restoration is written,” he said, looking over with a smile to Marco Romano, who was the official historian of New Washington, “it will be abundantly clear that the Limas’ biggest mistake was treating people like crap.” He wanted to use a much stronger word, but swearing during such a momentous occasion was out of the question.

  “Over and over again,” Ben said, “ from the colonels’ stories you’ll hear today and, more importantly, from your own lives, you’ll realize that what often got regular people to finally pick a side and fight hard was the abuse they suffered by the Limas.” Ben threw his hands up for emphasis, and said, once again, “My goodness! How stupid could those people be? With every stupid law, every unfair regulation, every thieving tax, every yellow-hat-wearing animal they unleashed, they made a lifelong enemy.”

  “They did it,” Ben said, “because brute force was all they had.” He realized he was making a speech instead of honoring Ashur, so he deftly changed the subject back to the original topic.

  “But we had code talkers,” Ben said. His face lit up with a smile and he said, conversationally once again, “Can you imagine the look on their faces when the Limas heard all this ‘kallaka, laka, kallaka, laka,’ on the radio.” He was imitating the gibberish that the Assyrian language sounded like to Americans.

  He pointed at the audience to make a serious point, “Yeah, but that ‘kallaka, laka, kallaka, laka’ was an unbreakable code.” He showed the pride the Patriots felt by having such a simple and stunningly successful code system. “Not only was that code unbreakable,” he said with another smile, “it was as easy to use as talking to your cousin, if your cousin is Assyrian!” The crowd laughed.

  Ben looked at Ashur, “Obviously, Colonel Bet-Kasha, your entire family—your very, very large extended family—is being honored today. But we only have forty-three colonelships and couldn’t give them all to one family.” The audience laughed. Ashur’s family, the ones who went into combat as code talkers, actually numbered more than forty-three.

  Ben looked at his notes and then dramatically set them down, to once again show that he was just telling a story about someone he cared for, not making an official speech.

  “You kno
w, Ashur,” he said, looking at him, “I wanted to name off all the operations that were successful because your brave family served as our code talkers, but the operations are still way too sensitive, even after the war.” Ben looked at the audience and said, “That should tell you something.”

  “But you all,” Ben said gesturing to the audience, “deserve to get a flavor of what the code talkers did.” Ben put up a finger as if he were counting off things.

  “First, the code talkers were in every regular and irregular unit that we had,” Ben said. “A few days before New Year’s, all of our units were perfectly informed of the upcoming operation. They knew when it would take place, where they needed to be, all the code phrases for authenticating themselves and other units, and where all the neighboring Patriot units were.”

  Ben got very conversational again. “Think about that,” he said. “Our guys knew everything they needed to know, right when they needed to know it.” He let that sink in.

  Ben couldn’t resist another swipe at the Lima Governor who presided over Seattle and some of its suburbs. “Ole’ Governor Menlow must have been screaming at his generals, ‘I thought you told me the teabaggers didn’t have any communications we couldn’t crack!’ Wrong again, Ricky,” he said, instantly regretting that he was turning a speech to honor Ashur into a personal attack on his rival. Ben changed his mind, however, when the audience erupted with laughter and cheering. They loved it when they could show the sophisticated progressives how much smarter the “knuckle-draggers” actually were. Ben would give them more of what they wanted. Besides, he really, really hated Rick Menlow.

  “Ashur’s family,” Ben said, returning to the true speech at hand, “was in all the danger of the Patriot forces.” He wanted everyone in the audience to connect with Ashur. “Battle of Everett?” Ben said, “They were embedded in that unit. The spectacular liberation of the Tacoma prisons? They were there, too. Taking the Lynnwood City Hall? Yep. Getting our people safely out of Bremerton? Oh, you bet Ashur’s family was there.”

  Ben paused again and said, “You see, if Patriot units were fighting somewhere, Ashur’s family was there, too. They were with us in every single battle. They were with us in every sense of the word.”

  “I am happy to report,” Ben said, “none of Ashur’s family was hurt in the fighting.”

  “Praise God!” Ashur yelled out in English. Ashur’s family was Christian, despite being from Syria and Turkey. In fact, they had been Christians from the very beginning about 2,000 years ago.

  “But Ashur’s family made more sacrifices than just going into combat with all our units,” Ben said, sarcastically emphasizing the “just”. “The women and children in his family voluntarily put themselves at risk to make the missions work.” This surprised some in the audience; they had heard about the brave Assyrian men in the units, but not the rest of their families.

  “Ashur offered, and his family agreed,” Ben explained, “to house their wives and children with Patriots as…” Ben struggled for the word, “well, as friendly hostages.” The audience was puzzled. “It is a tradition in Ashur’s culture to make the most concrete offering of loyalty possible: to give up your family to an ally to assure the ally that you will not betray them.” Ben exaggeratedly pretended to tell Ashur a secret, “But, Ashur, our people never would have harmed your families. That’s not the Patriot way.” However, Ben thought to himself, it was very reassuring to Patriot soldiers that unknown Arabs, privy to sensitive information that could get the soldiers killed, had pledged their wives and children to the Patriots.

  “It wasn’t just the men in your family who fought bravely,” Ben said, noticing that Ashur’s chest puffed out a bit in pride when he heard that. “Your wife led several other wives, and even some children, as a network of messengers who moved around freely behind Lima lines and back and forth into the free areas. They carried papers written in your language, which has its own alphabet incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t a professor of Near Eastern linguistics. The messengers’ cover story for the papers was that they described some pagan ritual, which would have made it okay with the Limas. Your family members, while Christian, appeared to the Limas as ‘Arab,’ which meant they were under no suspicion. The Limas were on the lookout for men with short hair in ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ shirts, not Arabs.”

  Ben realized it was time to let Ashur speak. Everyone wanted to hear what he had to say. “So, with great honor, I give you Colonel Ashur Bet-Kasha.” The audience sprang up in applause and cheering. They had heard the tales of the code talkers; now they wanted to actually hear one of them speak.

  Ashur, who was in his seventies, took a few moments to walk up to the rostrum, the applause continuing without a break. As soon as he shook Ben’s hand and stood at the podium, everyone became silent. There was something about him—he was an elder who deserved respect—that made everyone quiet and anxious to hear what he had to say.

  Ashur’s first words were, “Thank God.” He spoke in a thick Middle Eastern accent, but was perfectly understandable in English. “I thank Him for everything, but one thing in particular: freedom.” The crowd applauded. “In most places in the world, in most times in history,” he said slowly, “men have ruled, which means no freedom. Right after Eve ate that apple a few hundred kilometers from my homeland,” he said with a smile, referring to the Garden of Eden, “men have stolen power, money, land, women, and slaves. It’s how man is when he acts in his own interests.”

  Ashur paused. He was speaking in a language foreign to him, and projecting big and complicated thoughts. “This, of course, is not what God wants from us. He wants us to treat each other with respect, for different cultures to get along, and for us to prosper and be happy. This is freedom, and it is what He wants for us.” The crowd was silent, eagerly absorbing this wise man’s words.

  “There was no freedom in my homeland,” he said. “So I left, which was very, very hard. Everything we knew, the lands of my ancestors, our way of life—we left all of that. Please, mister or misses member of audience,” he said in his first flub of perfect English, “think of what it is like to leave everything you know and go somewhere foreign.” The audience reflected on that for a moment.

  “What would it take to make you leave?” he asked. “Lots of money? It had been our experience that it would just be taken by the government. No, the one thing you would leave for is freedom. Before the war, I used to say to people that you can’t know what freedom means until you have lived where there is no freedom. But, now that everyone here has experienced the lack of freedom, you know what I mean. Freedom has a sweetness only those who have gone without it can understand. So, now after this war, you understand why we came here.”

  “But, after the first few glorious years in America, we saw the same things starting in your country that we had experienced for generations. Some of the police and judges were corrupt, tax men made up the rules, and the government told each little group that the other groups hated them and that only the government could protect them. And they told us that we couldn’t worship as we chose. All of this was like it was back home.”

  “Imagine our disappointment,” he said to a spellbound audience, “to leave everything, only to come to a place where freedom was going away.” He paused and then said, “It’s even harder to watch freedom go away than to live in tyranny. We wanted to scream, ‘Can’t you people see what’s happening! Don’t end up like us! Please fight for your freedom!’ Because we knew that once freedom is gone, it can never come back.”

  “Or can it?” Ashur asked. “Yes, if God wants it to, it can come back. This has only happened twice, from what I know of history. Thousands of years, hundreds of countries, billions of people, but it only happened twice. The American Revolution was the first time. America was free before the British took freedom away and then you took it right back. It was costly and hard.”

  He paused, smiled, and threw open his arms, “Then you did it again! You took back your freedom here and in
some other states. Now you can join my family as people who can truly understand what it is like to see freedom go away and then fight to get it back.” The crowd applauded.

  “But, if I may, I have one request,” he said very sincerely. “I am an elder, so in my culture, you must listen to me,” he said with a grin. “And I am now a colonel, so I am ordering this!” Ashur followed up with a laugh. “Joking aside,” he said in a solemn tone, “do not let freedom slip away again. Please, no more of that. No more families like mine and like yours who are heartbroken to see it slip away. No more, please.” The crowd stood up and started cheering.

  Ashur had no more to say. He knew his speech would be written down in the history books and he had effectively made the one point he wanted to make, so it was time to sit down. He raised his arms and gestured his thanks to the crowd, then he started to walk back down to his seat on the floor of the Legislature. He stopped and dashed back to the rostrum to leave the crowd—and the history books—with one last thought.

  With a giant smile, he yelled, ““Kah-mah-lah-malik!”

  Chapter 337

  Col. Lorraine Bryan

  The Mama Bear

  It took a while for the applause to die down. The crowd was on its feet chanting, “Kah-mah-la-malik!” which was “victory!” in Ashur’s dialect of Assyrian. It felt like more like a rock concert than a joint session of the Legislature.

  Ben knew that the mood was about to change when he introduced the next honoree. But, he realized, that was how the Collapse and resulting war had gone, and how the Restoration would go: a rollercoaster of joy and sadness. These were serious times with enormous consequences, so life had extreme highs and lows now; calm and boredom would come back when things were restored. Hopefully.

  Ben looked at the seat next to Ashur and Grant. Empty. This was the first posthumous colonelship.