For a few months in late 2019, I served what turned out to be my last “deployment” in the U.S. Army. I put the word “deployment” in quotes because the mission involved me living out of a nice hotel in downtown Manila, and wearing civilian clothes to work every day. That was a far cry from the tents, dirt, heat, and incoming rocket fire I was used to in my previous overseas assignments. Our mission was the Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group-Philippines (JUSMAG-P), and this was a legitimate gem of an assignment. The work was meaningful, the conditions were good, and most importantly, the team was excellent. I was one of a group of mostly junior officers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force who had temporary duty as liaison officers in JUSMAG. I arrived as the “new guy” in October of 2019, coming in as an Army lieutenant colonel to a liaison element already consisting of an Army major, two Marine captains, a Marine staff sergeant, an Air Force captain, and two Navy lieutenants.
The Makati Diamond, a luxury hotel in downtown Manila, hosts an inter-embassy bowling tournament at the Mall of Asia a couple of times a year. It is a big production, as they rent out the entire facility for the evening and have a dinner spread as well as drinks the entire evening. In the most recent iteration, participants included teams from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Kuwait, Great Britain, the European Union, Australia, Bangladesh, the United States, and, of course, China, with many of the embassies fielding multiple teams. The intent of these inter-embassy events is to encourage rapport-building between the different embassies and to promote team building within the individual embassy teams. And of course, it’s also good marketing for the Diamond.
When a rep from the Diamond came by our office to invite us to the bowling event several weeks before it occurred, one of my fellow LNOs asked her who else was participating. I decided at that moment that whoever she said first was going to be our mortal enemies for the purposes of the bowling competition. The first country she said was...
... Belgium.
After expressing my universal dislike of Belgium and all things Belgian (much to the surprise of the Makati representative “But, everyone likes Belgium!”), our team then tried to come up with reasons that we didn’t like them. As it turns out, that was somewhat hard to do… because yeah, “Everyone likes Belgium.” The only things we came up with to hate Belgium about were what they did to The Congo and, rather inexplicably, Belgian waffles. I kind of like Belgian waffles but decided to just roll with it. Down with Belgian waffles!!!
Having established Belgium as our enemies, it was decided that anytime something bad or unexpected happened to us in the weeks leading up to the tournament, it was Belgium’s fault. Manila traffic? Yeah, that was on the Belgians. Internet slow in our work area? Yep, that was their fault too. Hot water out at the hotel—again—? “Thanks, Belgium.”
In addition to bad-mouthing Belgium every chance we got, our preparations included sewing unit patches onto the bowling shirts that the Diamond provided us, trying to figure out the transportation arrangements (since none of the LNOs had personal vehicles), and figuring out our smack-talking plans for the actual tournament. Interestingly, the one thing our preparation did not involve was any actual bowling. We talked about getting in some reps at the lanes in the Mega Mall just down the street from our hotel but never managed to make it down there. We were going in cold.
As it turned out, we had quite a few very good bowlers in JUSMAG, although I was not one of them. I like bowling but I’m not very good at it. In fact, if I get over 100 it’s a pretty good game for me. One of our Marines, Staff Sergeant Gogo, was quite good, however. In fact, he won the “best bowler” award at the last bowling tournament the Diamond hosted and was part of the team that won first place overall at that previous event. We had several other good bowlers as well. We were pretty certain that we could put together a solid four-person team for the upcoming Battle Against Belgium.The idea of being able to compete directly with the Chinese in the tournament was also a big draw. The United States and China are at odds throughout the Pacific, and one of the primary ideological battlegrounds is the Philippines. I shot down the idea of wearing Winnie the Pooh or “West Philippine Sea” T-shirts because I didn’t want an international incident—or an actual fistfight—with the Chinese. I mean, I wasn’t trying to turn this into the kumite (or the Kuomintang—heyo!) but we did decide to bring props. At the golf course on the Philippine Army base where we worked, I found a golf club cover that was shaped like a boxing glove and patterned with the American flag. For intimidation purposes, we also brought the trophy and the individual medals won at the last tournament. Over time, the enthusiasm of being able to take on the Belgians and the Chinese eventually got to the point where I felt it necessary to text out an animated .gif of the “no fighting” scene from Season 3 of Peaky Blinders.
Eventually, the day of the tournament arrived. We told our driver to drop us off at the Mall of Asia, which as you might expect from the name is quite massive. We had to walk a bit to get to the part of the mall that had the bowling alley, which involved crossing a few streets. The crossing indicators in that part of Manila are very clever. I was used to the static “walking man” that normally only turns from white to red and may blink when you’re running out of time to cross. At the Mall of Asia, they have a digitized walking man whose gait matches the approximate speed you need to cross the street safely. It starts off at a slow stroll, increasing to a brisk walk, and then a trot. Towards the end, the little green man is hauling ass—which is exactly what you need to be doing so you don’t get mowed down by Manila drivers. I thought it was extremely clever, and a little bit funny.
In case you’ve never been to the Mall of Asia in downtown Manila, the place is as huge as the name implies. And they have just about everything. They have at least one gun store, which is something I didn’t really expect to see outside of America.
Ironically, we also had to walk past a Belgian Waffles kiosk in the Mega Mall in order to get to the bowling alley.
And of course, no major mall would be complete without Krispy Kreme.
We also passed a “KKK” restaurant inside the mall. KKK has, of course, a completely different connotation in the Philippines than it does in the United States. I did still think it was interesting enough to take a picture of it, though.
Eventually, we found our way to the bowling lanes. In typical American style, we got there early. No worries, more time to pre-game before the main event. The alley was huge. I don’t recall the total number of lanes, but there were well over 20. The Diamond had a great dinner spread set up for us, which included as much beer and wine as we could drink. I don’t care for beer and I don’t drink much these days anyway, but many of the other attendees gratefully pounded it down. Drinking, as it turns out, is a pretty universal pastime.
When it was time to go onto the lanes, we realized that our teams were off. A couple of people who were supposed to make up our third team were running late, so we had two full teams and one extra bowler. Being the type of person who’s just as happy doing the bowling as I am heckling the other bowlers from the sidelines, I told Ariana, our Air Force captain, that she should bowl and I would sit in the back and drink the Makati’s free beer. But she was having none of it. “Sir, you’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. Go ahead and bowl, I’ll sit this one out.” I thought this was a particularly kind gesture on her part. Not only was I looking forward to this, but Ariana is also an observant Mormon and therefore didn’t even have the consolation prize of an unlimited supply of free beer.
I set up the trophy and medals from the last tournament and our “USA” boxing glove on a table near the beer, just to remind everyone that Team USA was still the boss. It was interesting to me how many people came by to take selfies or group photos with the medals and trophies. I mean, what exactly are you doing with these pictures, people? Is your Instagram game so weak that you’ve got to pose with trophies that you not only didn’t earn, but that belongs to an entirely different country? But whatever, you do you. We know who REALLY owns those trophies.
About halfway through the first game, I noticed that a very short, middle-aged Filipino woman was surreptitiously trying to stand beside me while my back was turned. She wanted a photo with me because I was so tall, and she was so short. After two years of living in Korea earlier in my career, this was something I was quite used to so it was no problem as far as I was concerned. But the woman got super-embarrassed when I looked down and saw her standing behind me, and all of her friends began laughing. Turning red, she started to walk away but I waved her back over and put an arm around her shoulders, and stood up as tall as I could so her friends could take her picture with me. She even got to wear the Team USA boxing glove. At least she didn’t want to pet my hair, which was something that my very blonde wife had to deal with when we lived in Korea.
There was a lengthy delay in getting everything ready for the start of the actual tournament. We used the time to practice on the empty lanes. With an hour of uninterrupted practice without the distraction of keeping score, I was actually able to get my “spin move” down pretty well, and to (mostly) keep my ball out of the gutter. That would pay off later in the evening.
As we waited for the tournament to officially start we honed our game and availed ourselves of the Diamond’s generosity. Everything was going fine until—you guessed it—the Belgians showed up. As soon as they arrived I immediately regretted dialing back the obnoxiousness of Team USA. To begin with, the standard back bowling shirts that the Diamond had made for everyone weren’t good enough for the Belgians, who had very nice custom shirts made for their teams. They also had red, yellow, and black face paint (their country’s colors) and, in a particularly intimidating move, they brought a team of cheerleaders consisting of young local national women from the embassy’s local civilian hire pool to cheer them on. And cheer they did.
The cheerleaders were particularly boisterous and would go wild for even routine events during the game. They had red, yellow, and black inflatable plastic rods that they would bang together and they even did a couple of chants and cheers in Belgish (OK, I know “Belgish” isn’t what they speak in Belgium, but I couldn’t tell what language it was so I’m going with that). Since I fully expected our American teams to be the most colorful and obnoxious ones at this event, I was a little taken aback. The Belgians really brought it. Unfortunately for them, all of the cheerleaders, facepaint, and custom shirts weren’t enough to get them past the first round of eliminations in the tournament. Buh-bye, Belgians. Our vengeance was complete.
China had one or two teams at the tournament, it was hard to tell. But it appeared that their team(s) consisted entirely of local nationals. Maybe all of their diplomats and security personnel were too busy “belting” and “roading” (or dealing with coronavirus, two months before telling the rest of the world there was a problem). Some Chinese diplomats may have shown up later in the evening, but it didn’t make much of a difference. They didn’t make it past the first round either.
The European Union team fared significantly better. For their part, they brought bright yellow balloons with the EU logo on them. While more modestly swagged than the Belgians, the EU team was significantly better at bowling.
To my surprise, my team was also significantly better at bowling. JUSMAG had two teams, one of which had what we thought were all of the best bowlers on it. This was headed by Staff Sergeant Gogo, a massive but modest Marine who, as we later found out, was literally the best bowler in the entire room. I was on the second team, the one with the “leftovers” from what were supposed to be the second and third parts of Team USA.
At the semifinals, the “all you can drink” beer and wine began to be a factor. I don’t like beer so I didn’t drink much. One of the other members of our team, Dick, was an observant Muslim so he didn’t drink at all. Logan, the Marine captain, and Pat, the Navy lieutenant on our team, drank a lot of beer but it actually seemed to help their game. The other teams also drank a lot of beer, but it seemed to cause a degradation in their overall performance.
That was very fortunate for us.
The Diamond’s prizes were extremely generous. Members of the winning team received individual trophies and a complimentary overnight stay for two at the Diamond. Prizes for second and third places were also well-received. To the surprise of no one, Gogo won best overall bowler.
So that’s the story of my last “deployment” as a U.S. Army officer. You’re welcome for my service :)
This story is a personal vignette and does not represent the official policy of the United States Military Academy or the United States Army. The article first appeared in The Havok Journal.
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