I am a lifelong student of both language and military affairs.  They are not necessarily mutually related topics of interest, but neither are they necessarily mutually exclusive.  Military life is so rich, full and dynamic that it creates a lexicon all of its own, words that often eventually disseminate into the everyday language of the people at large, with such words often losing their military origins in the process of evolution.  Such could be happening here in Iraq in the latter first decade of the 21^st Century.

Since Jan. of ’03 I have served 81 months in The IJOA and AF TO.  I have worked on/around/with the staffs of CFLCC, MNF-I/USF-I, I and II MEFs, RC-South (AF), the 101^st AB/AA Division, the 1^st Cav and 3d ID’s, and CJSOTF-AP.  As a despised at worst and ignored at best ‘civilian’, I can unobtrusively listen in on the briefings, meetings and conversations of my younger, usually less experienced active duty colleagues as they go about their appointed tasks as professionally as they can.  I am a non-entity and so am not ‘there.’  I am both amazed and amused at what I hear out here, day after week after month after year.

During my own active duty days I served on battalion, regimental and division level staffs.  Three times I was a principal staff officer on a general staff; and I suffered through three long years on duty at my own parent service’s HQ in WDC – so I know the trials and tribulations of life as a staff officer, both as a principal and also as an even more servile underling.  I have seen the demeaning, life sucking existence of a staff ‘pogue’ evolve over the last 36 years, deteriorating from bad to worse.  And I feel for staff officers, I really do!!  In fact, my level of sympathy rises exponentially the higher the level of command at which the poor, unfortunate staff officer serves.  Most of us, statistically, spend far more time during our military careers as staff officers than we do as commanders, which we all long to be.  But we serve where ordered, dutifully and loyally.  It is not a crime to be a staff officer, though a staff officer may feel like he is ‘doing time’.

Some folks describe service life as a ‘circus.’  I describe a military career as a perilous walk on one of the acts of that circus, on an upwardly sloping, fraying, greased high-wire in a wind tunnel, without the benefit of a safety net below, and with one’s supposed ‘friends’ standing below on the ground shaking the uprights, hoping you’ll fall off  (thus creating a vacancy and shifting the focus from their own foibles to the fallen Humpty-Dumpty).  So in this age of grossly inflated fitness reports and an awards system so liberal as to beggar the imagination of previous generations of American warriors, there is a ‘zero defects’ mindset.  One ‘aw shit’ wipes out 10,000 ‘attaboys’ accumulated through many years of loyal, dedicated, exemplary service.  One unknown answer to an off-the-cuff question from ‘The Old Man’ at a briefing can ruin the efforts of decades.  This is a legitimate concern.  Every meeting, conference or briefing can become a career killer.  The fear is palpable.  Officers do not fear the enemy without: to quote ‘Pogo,’ “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”

In the last 15 years I have become a huge fan of the Army’s catch-all word, “Hooah.”  Though scholars will debate its mysterious origins for decades yet to come, I think it was borrowed from the Marine Corps’ “Hoorah.”  Hoorah is used for one sole, meaningful purpose – to express enthusiasm.  Hooah can also be used to accomplish this esteemed linguistic mission, but it has also evolved in usage to be so much more varied in application.  Nowadays soldiers can be heard to say the versatile word Hooah to mean so many things, in just about any situation.

Languages evolve.  Difficult though it may seem to the educated ear, Puerto Rican Spanish and Neapolitan Italian are direct descendants of Cicero’s polished Latin.  Old words change in meaning and usage over time, and new words arise to take their place and enjoy their moment in the lexicological sun.  The word I nowadays  hear being used both more frequently and in more varied ways is ‘Trackin’.  I think that Trackin’ is the next Hooah in early 21^st century U.S. Army MilSpeak.

We have all sat through countless, mind-numbing BUA’s, CUA’s, BUB’s and CUB’s, where the occasional, odd moment of something relevant to us is a rarity amid the monotonous, dull, boring recitation of mindless facts and figures that would overwhelm Einstein in their increasing complexity – supported by charts that are now so ‘busy’ that the viewer, no matter how smart he is, could not possibly retain it all, if he even got it in the first place (and some colonel is jockeying for a Bronze Star with ‘V’ for vanity, for his non-tactical acumen in coming up with just the right background color for the power point slides).  Naturally, the listeners (from the earls and dukes sitting up front at the king’s round table, to the serfs scampering like rats for a place on the back benches) tend to fall asleep as the briefing/meeting/conference (BMC – usually with emphasis on the ‘BM’) drones on endlessly and – for the most part – meaninglessly as well (at least for the majority of the audience, whose tasks deal with matters other than those being briefed by some ‘talking dog,’ chosen more for platform manner and appearance than for subject matter expertise).  Hey, the sleep deprivation here takes its toll of even the mightiest of warriors, both real and imagined.  We’ve ALL dozed off when the topic of the moment seemed to have nothing to do with us!  (I freely admit that I have, so I am not slinging stones.)

Now how many times have we heard at a BMC when after ‘His Majesty’ asks a question, there is occasionally that career deadly ‘pregnant pause’ in which a staff officer wakes up, as the ‘old man’s’ question pertains to him.  Sometimes the staffer concerned in this potentially embarrassing or worse situation didn’t hear the question, or all of it.  Often he looks and sounds like an ox who’s just been pole-axed, and his initial non-verbal ‘body language’ clearly indicates that he doesn’t have a clue what the answer is, or maybe even what the issue is.  Again no mud being slung at that circumstance, as we’ve all been there on that ‘X.’  But today’s courtier-warriors, rather than reply with the time-honored ”I don’t know, sir, but I’ll find out” (a la Military Science-101), quickly compose themselves to show the boss and the world that they are aware of and on top of this issue, and so they manfully reply with the new buzz phrase, “Trackin’ it, sir!”  (Often shortened to merely one word, “Trackin’.”) As I hear this hypothetical situation play out for real time after time on a weekly basis, I know in my military mind and heart that ol’ Mr. ‘Trackin’ it’ is blowing smoke up his boss’ butt!  Where do these guys come off doing this?!  It is sometimes so painfully and patently obvious that I am really surprised that the question asking royalty doesn’t call the BSer’s bluff.  After all, the king didn’t get to sit on the throne by being a dummy.  The Capi are usually damn smart and highly astute guys (though not always).

This increasingly common phrase ‘Trackin’ it’ is both, in FM 22-5/LPM parlance, the ‘preparatory command’ and the ‘command of execution.’  For the principal staff officer’s beleaguered underlings are monitoring this situation more closely than a cardiologist with a stethoscope attending to his patient suffering from cardiac arrest.  And so, as the semi-exalted ones  in attendance at the war council of their elders start to scurry about like a bunch of cockroaches whose rock has been overturned,  their Untermenschen subordinates back in the office are frantically disentangling themselves from the headphones over which they were alternating between watching “Jeopardy” on AFN and monitoring the big show.  By the time their immediate boss returns to the office from the BMC at a forced march pace (in hopes of being ready for or even better, avoiding any follow-up questions), his mid-field grade staff  had better have researched all the world’s knowledge on that topic-question, and have ready to almost immediately pass on to higher point/position/decision papers galore (like a pre-planned fire mission on a List of Targets that only needs a call for fire IOT execute).  Speed of response often seems to be of more value than accuracy.  (Gotta show the Ol’ man that we’re trackin’ it!)

Then ‘Team Trackin’ will gather its stable of field grade officers to try to decipher what the old man really meant by his seemingly innocent sounding question, and what does he really want to know.  (Why doesn’t somebody just ASK him!?) This will lead to dozens of man hours spent by a collectively senior group of staff officers discussing the implications of the issue ad nauseum, “where there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth” (as The Good Book says).

Then the sacrificial “O-6” (nobody ever says the word ‘Colonel’ anymore, or even (Navy) Captain – it’s always “O-6”) will gather the best info available, and courageously go where angels fear to tread to brief his principal who sits at the head table.  All involved are still quite confused of course, but when the one or two star (again, people don’t say “General” anymore; it’s almost always “one star this,” and “my two star that”) asks what the story is, his subordinate Colonel (excuse me, “O-6”) will reply, “We’re trackin’, sir!”  So I think that the thousands of staff officers and lesser minions who have walked the hallowed halls of the Al Faw and Perfume Palaces these last seven years, will add Trackin’ to the American military lexicon. I nowadays hear personnel of lesser grades using the ‘T’ word much more frequently and with a wider variety of meanings, as in Q: “Yo, dude – ya goin’ to Hip Hop at MWR tonight?” A: “Right on, brother, trackin’! See ya there.”

The troops were Rockin’, and the officers were Trackin’.  Guess who had more fun.

Semper Fi!