The Crash of the Powerpoint Briefing

 * Sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
(And with all regrets to Gordon Lightfoot…)

  The legend lives on from the Fifth Corps on down
of the thirty meg Powerpoint briefing
The software its said never gives up its dead
when the God of Electrons grows angry
With officers galore, maybe a hundred or more
it was said that no one could outbrief them
The good ACE and crew was a bone to be chewed
when the God of Electrons came calling

  The ACE was the pride of the German countryside
when they left Wuerzberg bound for Tuzla
As MI units go, they were bigger than most
with a battlecaptain well seasoned
Major Holden in lead, quite a large man indeed
and a master with mouse and a laptop
In charge of the ACE, he set a fast pace
and demanded his graphics and bitmaps

The fingers on keyboards made a tattletale sound,
and the Bubbavision TV only flickered.
The network was taxed, always pushed to its max,
but the Term Shop was bound and determined.
The dawns came late and the sleep had to wait,
with the turnover of April upon them.
When mid-April came, it was analysis time,
or the G-2'd be left with no briefings.

When BUB time came round, LTC Rapp came in
sayin' "Fellas, the room is a'fillin".
At six PM, the main harddrive crashed,
he said "fellas it's been good to know ya".
SFC Taylor called down, "we got generals coming in"
and the good ACE and crew was in peril
And later that night while the troops ran in a fright,
came the crash of the Powerpoint briefing.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
when the briefings turn minutes to hours?
The G-2, they say, would've made Colonel that day
if he'd put ten less meg on the hard drive.
He might have compressed, or he might have zipped files,
He might have enlarged his server.
But all that remains is the faces and names
of the spouses, the sons and the daughters

In a musty old tent in Tuzla they prayed,
In the room that houses the Great Bubba.
The churchbell chimed til it rang twenty-nine times,
for each meg in the Powerpoint briefing.
The legend lives on from the Fifth Corps on down,
of the thirty meg Powerpoint briefing.
The software they said, never gives up her dead
when the God of Electrons grows hungry.

  Written By:  CPT Joe Paschall, USMC, JAC LNO to Task Force Eagle’s ACE, 18 Apr 97 Contributed by LTC Rich Holden from the Bosnian Frontier