Wetherhorn

Radiation scars

I have my share of scars on my body. They were collected over many years. Some of them are hard to see. For example, there is the 1 and ½ inch line on my left palm from a broken bottle. A similar sized mark goes over my right eyebrow, caused by an encounter with a barbed wire fence. A separate such meeting resulted in a broad 1 inch scar on my right thigh.  A simple listing of them makes it sound like I was involved in some dangerous things. That’s not entirely correct, but I never kept anyone from drawing their own conclusions.

None of those scars were caused by fighting. I have only one from that kind of confrontation.  There is a tiny, tiny mark on my right forearm from taking a knife away from an opponent when I was not similarly armed. I got it while in high school. I’ll elaborate on that a bit later. But the largest scars are from radiation burns.  There are 2 big ones on my back that were conspicuous enough for me to be embarrassed to remove my shirt at the beach or poolside.  I usually used the excuse that my skin was fair and sensitive and most susceptible to sunburn.  That also happens to be true.  The two little radiation scars on my face are much harder to see. One is on the back edge of my left earlobe, the other just under my left nostril. I have always felt that having scars from radiation made me more cautious about nuclear weaponry than most people, and that was even before I was a student at the US armed forces nuclear weapons handling course. Here, too, the simple fact of having them allows the listener to reach conclusions that aren’t always quite the entire story.

The knife fight came about when I was high school senior and enrolled in the school ROTC program.  ROTC is an abbreviation for Reserve Officers Training Corps. It is a program arranged by the armed forces for giving students introductory training in military affairs. Completing ROTC in a university makes the cadet an officer. Completing ROTC in high school used to make a cadet exempt from basic training.  It was the beginning of the school year, and one of the newest students, a junior, had just transferred from a nearby military academy with a reputation for being tough. I was an ROTC cadet officer, and was assigned to teach first aid to the other ROTC cadets that hour. The new kid was in my classroom and was toying with a switch blade knife. I told him to put it away. He ignored me. I warned him if he did not put it away I would have to take it from him. He folded it up and put it in his school bag. But that’s not the end of the story.

At the end of the school day I left late and was just coming out of the ROTC classroom exit. This same new student was waiting for me. He had his knife out. No one else was around.

“Do you think you can take this from me now?”, he asked, in a menacing tone.

My reply was short. “Yes!”

He lunged at me and I caught his wrist. His other hand grasped my free arm. We wrestled a bit and he tried to turn the knife. The tip of the blade nicked my arm. I was a bit taller and heavier. I pushed him against the wall, and then forced him down to the ground. His hand was twisted, and he dropped the knife. I released him, and picked up the knife. I closed it, locked it, and handed it back to him with another warning.

“If I ever have to do this again you’ll never see the knife again.”

Then I turned my back on him and walked away. It was probably a stupid thing to do. If he really wanted to hurt me I was giving him a fine opportunity. But this whole confrontation wasn’t really about hurting. It was a struggle for status. He had now found his place in the pecking order was below mine. He was also determined that no one else would be above him. The end result was that I never had any discipline problems when I was teaching. He stepped in and quickly brought anyone who might have been misbehaving into line.

Oh, yes. About those radiation scars. They were caused when I was an infant and had some birthmarks removed by radium radiation. It’s a practice that was soon discontinued. I really did complete the US Navy nuclear weapons school and commanded a team that was trained to handle nuclear weapons in transit. We trained on inert full scale models and were never exposed to actual radiation. I’m not to blame for anyone jumping to conclusions knowing only that I really have scars from radiation burns and did attend the nuclear weapons course.