Birthday “boy” Private Beetle Bailey, a real American hero

Old soldiers never die. At least the ones in the comic strips don’t.

It wasn’t all that unusual to find 60-year-old guys in the Army at the precipice of the Iraq War with America in a simultaneous fight in Afghanistan. Times were hard and as former Defense Secretary and chief Bush administrator wisenheimer Don Rumsfeld once famously told a soldier: “You go to war with the army you have … ”

Even so, the fact that the comic strip “Beetle Bailey” turns 60 this weekend you would be looking at a 78-80-year-old private if his true age was laid bare. And Sgt. 1st Class Orville Snorkle, probably 100 and Gen. Halftrack, why he’d be might be in the “World’s Oldest Man” category.

Bailey was introduced as an indolent college student named “Spider” when he enlisted in 1951 and he not only remained in the Army but did so continually as a private whose main purpose in life is laziness when he isn’t getting his ass kicked by Sarge. The latter, one  must say, doesn’t do bad at near 100.

Of course, comic strip characters never age — although perhaps some have — and most never die. What is even more remarkable is the fact that the characters many times live on longer than their creator. It’s a rather neat trick when you think about it.

The strip, “Beetle Bailey,” itself slowly kept up with the times. Although the civilian secretary Miss Buxley to this day remains a sex object, she has neatly tread the waters between remaining a beauty and having a firm hold on her inner “hear me roar-ness.”

Then the turmoil from the Civil Rights struggle which found itself alive with riots and fires on board Navy aircraft carriers during the waning days of the Vietnam Era was reflected with a somewhat PC afro-coiffed lieutenant named Flap. He was later followed by an Asian Cpl. Yo and eventually Spec. Gizmo, a token “geek” whose arrival came as part of a contest sponsored by Dell Computers, the money raised going toward the Fisher House Foundation. That organization provides housing for relatives of veterans and military personnel in hospitals.

The U.S. military remains the nation’s societal microcosm and “Beetle Bailey” — for all its warts and flaws — has long been a mirror held up to the armed forces. It is because of those warts and flaws, and the fact that it is one of those fun house mirrors being hoisted, that “Beetle” has remained a great American treasure.

Sure Beetle is lazy. If you go out with your buddies drinking and chasing skirts every night for 60 years, you’d be searching for a napping space yourself. Sarge would probably have Beetle and his pals polishing rocks or vacuuming the parking lot around Camp Swampy if they weren’t all out trying to hide from the sometime ridiculously mindless jobs the military expects performed by its non-  “bullet catchers,” as a Army reserve officer I know recently called those in combat. When you get down to it, Beetle represents those service members who are more tired than lazy. Although one who proudly was named “Laziest” in his high school, I know when someone is genuinely lazy and Beetle is one lazy soldier.

Much of the real military isn’t portrayed in “Beetle” and who would want it? We get enough death and dying and the young men and women you see minus limbs or who await their PTSD “group” at the VA. Sure humor could come from all that — gallows humor — but much of society doesn’t understand that type of funny although those who do generally use or have used it for a coping mechanism.

Great comic strips show a part of our world that many of us have trouble expressing. “Beetle Bailey” makes everything so simple. So I wish Beetle a happy birthday and many more. Oh, and have a good nap.