Bye-bye, bayonets.

The times, they are a-changin’:

The U.S. Army will stop training its recruits how to use bayonets.

Holy chow hall! This is the biggest shift in our military training since G.I.s stopped learning how to say in German or Japanese, “Put down your guns, you filthy sons of pigs; we have you surrounded!”

Generation after generation of draftees and enlisted men have learned how to wield carefully sharpened bayonets with skill and daring. Or at least enough to pass the basic training course, be loaded onto a ship or plane and dumped in a war zone.

No longer will eager recruits charge straw-filled dummies with fixed bayonets yelling “Yaaaaa!” or “Take that, ya lousy Commie!”

Instead, that time will be devoted to debating the benefits of Myspace vs. Facebook and when it is proper to Tweet during firefights.

I s’pose it had to happen. But the banishing of bayonets calls to mind a strange bit of wisdom from the “Humor in Uniform” section in Readers Digest many years ago.

It seems that a grizzled sergeant (aren’t they all?) was instructing his green recruits in the art of bayonet warfare.

Sarge casually mentioned that if you stuck your rifle’s bayonet into, uh, an enemy soldier’s body and it, ahem, didn’t want to come out easily, don't panic.

Simply fire a round from your rifle, and the recoil would help you pull the bayonet out.

One of the young recruits, wise beyond his years, drawled, “Sarge, if I got a round left in the rifle, I ain’t gonna use the bayonet.”