USO: How Hollywood Serves

The last guy you want to meet in the entertainment industry is a writer. We just aren’t very interesting. Sure, guys like Joss Whedon seem cool, but that’s only when compared to other writers. Put him in a room with any actor, musician, or even Key Grip, and Whedon is the pasty guy in the corner having a conversation about the vagaries of the flux capacitor with himself. So when I had the opportunity last week to travel with a small group of actors (Zachary Levi, Joel David Moore, Kal Penn, and Christian Slater) to the Middle East and Africa with the USO, I jumped at the chance. Finally. A perk.

For my actor friends, though, there was a bit more trepidation. After all, they were the actual celebrities on this celebrity tour, the ones people would want to meet. I doubt they are alone. In fact, I suspect that a big reason why more actors in Hollywood don’t volunteer their time with the USO is that they simply don’t know what the experience will be like. Sure they’ve seen video of Bob Hope out entertaining crowds of troops, but as an actor, you don’t carry your show on the road. Will the troops even care that you are there? What will you have to offer them? Is it uncomfortable? Is it political? Fortunately for me, the actors in my party decided to give it a try in spite of these questions. Here is what we learned.

For the actor, the USO offers an alternative to its live music and comedy shows. It is the Hollywood Handshake Tour, and it’s just what it sounds like. Actors meet the troops, eat with them, take pictures with them, sign autographs for them, and thank them for their service to Uncle Sam. Oh, and they shake their hands. If we were worried that this would seem insignificant compared to a live performance show, that worry was quickly dispelled. The troops simply could not have been more gracious and welcoming. None of the actors wanted to seem pretentious (they were there to show their gratitude to the troops, not to posture or promote anything), but to our surprise, the lines at each event were hundreds of people deep. People literally gave up part of their day to wait for the chance to shake hands with the actors, and get this, to thank them for coming. That people sacrificing so much for us would turn around and thank us for the simple “sacrifice” of getting to be in their company left us all speechless, but then, these soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are just the finest, most decent people on earth.

As far as the comfort level, when we arrived at the airport, we were greeted by our USO tour manager, whose job was to make sure we had everything we needed and were always where we needed to be. All of the international travel was business class on civilian planes, although some of the inner-theater travel is military. In our case, that meant getting to fly out to sea on a COD and actually LAND ON THE DECK OF A FREAKING AIRCRAFT CARRIER! Again, speechless…

In Bahrain, we were put up in a beautiful, high-end hotel, and in addition to our tour manager, both a local guide and a military liaison met us. Add to that our USO supplied photographer and we were really left to want for nothing. In Djibouti, our accommodations were less ornate, but still extremely comfortable. Our liaison, Karen, picked us up from the airport and took us to our private lodgings on the base. We stayed in a variant of the same CLUs (Containerized Living Units), basically large shipping containers partitioned into two-bedroom, air-conditioned apartments that the troops stay in. The food was all great, the AC was always cold, and a man sleeps soundly knowing that the United States Army is guarding the gates.

It is also worth noting that you never feel your time is being squandered, other than perhaps when you are waiting for flights at international airports. When we weren’t participating in the scheduled events with the troops, we were dropping in on parts of the base we weren’t scheduled to see. A trip to the medical facility, or the base fire department, a quick tour of the flight-line and a chance to sit in a C-130… The days are full and meaningful. Plus, the MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) teams always want you to experience some of the culture that the troops experience as well, which in our case meant a trip to the Grand Mosque in Bahrain, an audience with a village chief in Africa, and a brief time volunteering at an orphanage where our service members devote so much of their free time to the children that the nuns who oversee the facility literally can’t accommodate all of them.

Finally, let me address the question of politics. Several actors may have questions like, “What if I support the troops, but not the war they are fighting?” My answer is simple– keep your opinions to yourself. The troops do. In fact, not one person, from the civilian cooks, to the enlisted men and women, the officers, or even the Admiral we met made a single unsolicited political comment. Americans in uniform serve the National Command Authority. When they get their orders, they perform with a level of skill and professionalism that is without equal. In short, no matter what the politics of the individual soldier, they are professionals. You may or may not agree with their orders, they may or may not agree with them, but they aren’t there to philosophize, and we weren’t either. One of the actors in our group recently quit his job on a hit television show to go to work for the Obama administration, and I may or may not have voted George W. Bush as a write-in candidate in the last election, but there were no heated debates, no strange agendas or conflict. Just like the soldiers are there for one purpose, to execute the orders of the President, we were there for one purpose, to thank those troops for that service. It couldn’t have been a more neutral, positive experience.

One request we did hear again and again from the troops was to simply tell their story, and what a story it is. A story of bravery, hardship, camaraderie, and sacrifice… But there is something else, something I had never realized before. Time and time again the people doing these difficult jobs told us how much they actually like it. To a selfish man like me, that prospect had never entered my mind. I assumed the people who join the military were taking one on the chin out of a sense of duty, and to be sure, that is part of it, but there is a beauty in what they do that isn’t a labor at all. When a sailor on the Eisenhower wakes up every morning, he knows his place in the world. He has a specific function, and is highly trained and very, very good at his job. And he lives in dedicated service to no less worthy a cause than the defense of his home and his family. There is a peace and a confidence in that sort of life that I think a lot of us would be very lucky indeed to find in our own. These are not mindless cogs in the military machine. These are free men and women living rich, full lives in service of a noble calling. They deserve our support and our thanks, yes, but they may deserve something of our envy as well.

In the end, the whole experience was just spectacular. All of the actors felt the same, and we all look forward to our next outing with this great organization. It would be a glorious day if the USO had to turn people away because they were simply overwhelmed with volunteers wanting to thank our troops, and I think that if more entertainers knew what a fantastic experience it is, that day would be now. I got on the plane this first time because Gary Sinise, who gives more of his time in tribute to our Armed Forces than just about anyone, speaks so highly of his travels with the USO. I will do it again because of what a remarkable time it was, and what remarkable group of people the men and women of the United States Military actually are. I hope others give it a try as well.