Charles De Gaulle Re-Visited: Anderson Cooper

"So I tells the company commander the vice president of the United States is Charles de Gaulle...."


Every year, I attend a reunion of the 404th MP company, with whom I served in Germany back in the 1960s. We sit around, drink German beer, and re-tell the same old war stories from those days we shared back in Germany.

One story that gets told every year is about one of the guys whose name is long lost to me. He was apparently sort of a Beetle Bailey type soldier. Nonetheless, the company decided he should be promoted from specialist 4th class to sergeant. One of the prerequisites was that the promotion candidate had to be interviewed by a board consisting of the company commander and a couple of other officerss. Part of the interview would be standard military questions about whether the soldier knew his general military orders about not leaving his post of duty until relieved and other such nonsense. There were also questions as to whether the soldier had any clue as to what was going on in the world. Thus, it was that the company commander asked the soldier, "Specialist So and So, who is the vice president of the United States?"

The soldier thought for a moment, looked straight at the company commander and replied, "Charles de Gaulle."

The company commander, shocked, sat back in his chair, sent the others out of the room, then quietly told the soldier: "Specialist So-and So, I want you to take your time and think carefully for a minute about your answer." He then called the others back into the room and said to the soldier, "Specialist So and So, I am going to ask you again, who is the vice president of the United States?"

The soldier paused, looked straight ahead and said, "Sir, the vice president of the United States is Charles de Gaulle, Sir!"

At which point the company commander reportedly yelled, "Get him outta here!"

I am reminded of this story when I see CNN's Anderson Cooper and Fareed Zakaria discussing the killing of Qassem Soleimani and actually comparing him to the former vice president of the United States, French president, Charles de Gaulle, while Zakaria compared him to the French Foreign Legion (not exactly a bunch of choir boys).

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2020/01/03/cnns-cooper-zakaria-compare-iranian-terrorists-french-foreign-legion

So I am tempted to dig into Cooper's past to see if he ever served in the military, specifically the 404th MP Company in Germany in the late 1960s. Nah, he's too young. Or maybe the soldier went on to have a love child named Anderson Cooper, who knows?

Hey, Anderson, who is the vice president of the United States? Think carefully before you answer.