Strac[k]

[W Brewer]

An addendum on strac[k]:


Somehow I ended up in the Infantry in ’68 & ’69. Since I was US (rather
than RA), I got away with being unstrack for a couple of years. Finally
DEROSed to Ft Riley, Kan’s-Ass, eventually ETSing, and live happily ever
after.


Chapman’s slang dictionary 1975 p.418b: *strack* *adj Army* ‘Very strict in
one’s military appearance and grooming [origin unknown].’



http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Glossary/Sixties_Term_Gloss_Q_T.html#Letter'S':

strac: smart, sharp, well prepared (from STRategic Air Command).

     Strack was part of Army vocabulary; I never fathomed its etymology nor
the bookoo other specialized expressions peculiar to the military milieu.
(One guy believed that ASAP was a Vietnamese word. Well, sounded like it.)
Anyway, it looks like Chapman couldn't track down strack, and the internet
glossary takes it from SAC.

     The etymology of strack in the Wikipedia article "Strategic Army
Corps" sounds convincing. You'd have to get an Air Farce guy who knows the
history of SAC to see if the Army could have borrowed the concept of strac
from them. Don't think that'll fly though. So, I cast my lot with strac <
Strategic Army Corps. Unless it's a Vietnamese word.


As Paul Harvey used to intone, “And now you know the rest of the story.”


-----Whiskey Bravo.

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