A salty old Command Sergeant Major, a nickname, and one very wrong turn at Fort Benning
If you've spent any time looking around Say When Outfitters, you've probably met Lt. Dingleberry. He's jumped out of perfectly good airplanes. He's ridden in tanks. He's made questionable decisions and somehow managed to look good doing it. What you probably don't know is that I didn't invent the name. For that, we have to go back more than forty years to Fort Benning, Georgia, and a Command Sergeant Major named Larabie.
The CSM
Command Sergeant Major Larabie was what we used to call a salty old soldier. He had just missed World War II, served with distinction in Korea, and later completed three tours in Vietnam. By the time I knew him at Fort Benning, he had accumulated the kind of experience—and rank—that meant very few people were interested in crossing him. You have to understand a little about the Army hierarchy. A Command Sergeant Major sits at the top of the enlisted ranks. Technically, plenty of officers outrank him. In the real world, however, there weren't many officers interested in testing that particular theory with CSM Larabie. A bird colonel or general? Sure. Everybody else? Proceed at your own risk.
Larabie also had a nickname for just about everybody and everything. Officers were particularly good targets. There might be a Colonel Dipstick one day or a Captain Brown Noser the next. But my favorite was always:
Lt. Dingleberry.
I don't remember there being one particular lieutenant behind the name. Lt. Dingleberry was more of a type—the young officer who, despite his best intentions, occasionally came up with a plan that left the old NCOs wondering what in God's name he was thinking. Larabie had apparently known a few of them.
Korea
Most of CSM Larabie's stories were about Korea. He could describe the Chinese attacks at night so vividly that, even though I hadn't been there, I could almost picture them. He talked about the massive waves of soldiers coming through the darkness. The sound of bugles. The tremendous noise. The confusion. And the realization that there was a determined army coming straight at you with every intention of killing you and the men beside you, and he talked about the cold. Not it's pretty cold outside cold. The kind of cold that froze everything.
During one attack, Larabie said their rifles had frozen shut. They couldn't get the actions to work. That's when, according to the CSM, one of the “Lt. Dingleberrys” came up with a solution: Pee on the rifles. I can still remember Larabie telling the story. “I'll be damned if it didn't work.”
And then they went to work on the enemy.
There was always humor in his stories, but underneath it you understood that these weren't stories he'd read somewhere. He had been there. Interestingly, for a man who could tell you so much about Korea, Larabie rarely talked about Vietnam. He did three tours, and told very few stories. Whenever the subject came up, about all he'd say was: “Damn, it was hot.” I never pushed him. Some stories a man wants to tell, and some he doesn't.
Then I Became Dingleberry
Somewhere along the way, as my friendship with the CSM grew, something happened. Larabie started calling me Dingleberry. I'd like to believe it was a term of endearment rather than a professional assessment. I'm sticking with that version. But nicknames are funny things. You can't really give yourself one. A nickname has to be earned and bestowed upon you by somebody else—and hopefully it's given to you by a friend rather than a foe. Either way, this one stuck. It stuck so well that more than forty years later my brother and other members of my family still use shortened versions of it. “Hey, Ding” or “Dingle, what are you doing?” and every time I hear it, I smile. Because somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm standing at Fort Benning again, listening to that salty old Command Sergeant Major tell another story.
One of My Poor Decisions
I also had the privilege of spending quite a bit of time around Army Rangers while I was at Fort Benning. Which brings me to another piece of Lt. Dingleberry—and the inspiration behind one of my favorite Say When shirts:
WE MAKE POOR DECISIONS LOOK GOOD.
That one comes from personal experience. It was 1985. This was peacetime, and Fort Benning was a different place than it is today. You could move around much of the post with relatively few restrictions. One afternoon I decided to find somewhere different for lunch. That was poor decision number one. I drove around for a while and eventually realized I had absolutely no idea where I was. Remember, this was 1985. There was no GPS. There were no smartphones. There was no Google Maps politely telling you to make a U-turn. There was a paper map. So I pulled off the road to figure out where I was, and that's when a gentleman wearing a ghillie suit stood up beside my car. That's generally not a good sign. Apparently, I had driven directly into the middle of a war game and parked my car in such a way that I was interfering with his shot. He explained this to me. I apologized, and I decided that perhaps this wasn't the best place to have lunch. So I got back on the road. That should have been the end of the story, but it wasn't.
Maybe Nobody Will Notice
I took another road trying to find my way out and somehow managed to insert myself into a military convoy. I couldn't pass them, and I couldn't turn around. I wasn't entirely sure where they were going. So I did the only thing that seemed reasonable at the time. I decided to blend in. I was driving a green car. Maybe nobody would notice.
In hindsight, this was poor decision number two. Unfortunately for me, the convoy eventually made its way back toward the very area I had just left. The area containing my friend in the ghillie suit. And his friends. Who were waiting to ambush the convoy—and me along with it.
Somewhere in the middle of a Fort Benning war game was a civilian green car rolling along with a military convoy as simulated hell broke loose around us. At that point there wasn't much left to do except try to look like I knew exactly what I was doing. I had a lot of explaining to do that day.
We Make Poor Decisions Look Good
I lost touch with Command Sergeant Major Larabie in 1986. I've often wondered what happened to him. But I've never forgotten him.
I haven't forgotten his stories about Korea. I haven't forgotten the way he avoided talking about Vietnam. I haven't forgotten his sense of humor. And I certainly haven't forgotten the nickname he gave me. Nearly forty years later, when I began creating the characters for Say When Outfitters, Lt. Dingleberry was already there. I just finally gave him a face, and when I needed a slogan for a lieutenant who could jump out of an airplane, climb into a tank, or find himself somewhere he probably shouldn't be, I didn't have to look very far for inspiration. I'd already lived it.
WE MAKE POOR DECISIONS LOOK GOOD.
Sometimes the best designs don't begin at a drawing board.
Sometimes they begin with an old soldier, a paper map, a green car...
…and a very wrong turn.
Say When.
