48!

This is something very few Americans alive today could know about or would remember, but I longed to hear it Tuesday night.

First, let me assure you I cannot imagine a finer group of young people than the West Point cadets who listened to President Obama's speech Tuesday evening. Among them, discipline is an art form. Count on them to be always dependable. For that I am grateful. But, my baser instincts yearned for a lesser PC group of Americans who once saved the world from tyranny.

During World War Two, our mostly drafted Army consisted of Americans of all walks of life who obeyed their mandatory call to duty because of their unshakable love of country. But these people were rarely inclined to go along with political b.s.

Starting in the ETO (European Theater of Operations) G.I.'s developed a way to quickly and uniformly express their collective dislike for some sort of bureaucratic edict. This practice spread around the globe, but quickly faded once the shooting stopped. Which is why it is little remembered today (unlike "SNAFU", another G.I. creation, which survived).

It went like this: Following some sort of pronouncement to a large, assembled group of unimpressed soldiers, a lone voice in the crowd would suddenly shout "48". A second voice would immediately yell "49". A third would follow with "50", whereupon the entire assembly, in one unified voice, would say "s-o-m-m-m-me shit!".

Tuesday night, when President Obama finished his speech, I pleaded to the sleepy cadets on my TV set... "Someone yell 48!"