Chinook Landing on a Roof in Afghanistan Honored in Original Art

On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter 

Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan.

Artist Larry Selman immortalized the event in a limited-edition print.

When I deployed to Iraq in 2009 with an Army helicopter brigade, nearly all the soldiers in our unit and every other unit were younger than me—a generation younger than me. But not the pilots.  Some were young, but many more were in their 40s and 50s.  Larry Murphy, a Chinook helicopter pilot, was one of the very few soldiers older than I was.  I was 56. He was 58. 

On Wednesday, 5 September 2019, Larry was honored with the unveiling of a painting commemorating an amazing bit of flying he and his crew did in Afghanistan in 2003.  Larry was deployed with a company of Chinooks and supporting equipment to Afghanistan. The tour was supposed to be a year and was extended to 16 months. The Chinook company was made up of soldiers from the Pennsylvania and Connecticut Army National Guard did not leave Afghanistan till 2004. They were in support of several companies of soldiers from the 10^th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, New York.

On 10 November 2003, Larry and the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 received an additional mission to pickup prisoners while they were on a resupply mission. These missions are a routine part of combat operations in Afghanistan.  But this mission was different. The prisoners had to be picked up from the side of a steep mountain at an elevation of 8,500 feet above sea level.  There was no place to land an aircraft with a 52-foot-long fuselage that is almost 100 feet long from tip to tip of its massive twin rotors. 

The pickup point was a shack on the side of a cliff.  Larry and the crew landed rear-wheels-only on the roof of the shack with the tail ramp lowered.  With the back of the helicopter on the shack roof, Larry and the other pilot, Paul Barnes, could not see the shack or any other close-in visual markers. From the cockpit, the pilots could see down the cliff to the valley 2,500-feet below.  The flight engineer James Duggan, crew chief Brian Kilburn and door gunner Margaret Haydock guided the pilots from the side and rear of the aircraft.  

Although technically a landing in the sense that the rear wheels were on the ground, the pilots were carefully keeping the full weight of the 25,000-pound (empty) helicopter from resting on shack, and keeping the front of the helicopter stable and level while the prisoners were brought aboard.

As soon as the prisoners were on board, the big helicopter returned to base. 

Five years ago, I was in a Chinook helicopter on Fort Indiantown Gap that landed rear-wheels-only on a cliff.  Twenty soldiers in full battle gear ran off the ramp and set up a security perimeter.  As the soldiers left the aircraft with their gear and heavy weapons, the weight of the aircraft dropped by 6,000 pounds, but the pilots held the helicopter level and steady.  I was looking out the door gunner’s window near the front of the aircraft. I saw nothing but sky above and rock-strewn valley hundreds of feet below.  I had heard about the roof landing since I joined the unit in 2007. It is amazing to see. It is more amazing to feel.

Larry Murphy signing prints at the Aviation Armory on 

Fort Indiantown, Pennsylvania  

The print by artist Larry Selman is available on his website.

In the years since the landing, the photo (above) has become an iconic image for Army Aviation, so much so that people question if the landing really happened.

Snopes.com answered the question: True. From their site:

I’m sure all of you have seen many choppers make some daring moves, but this one is spectacular. Hope you enjoy it. This attached shot was taken by a trooper in Afghanistan. Pilot is Larry Murphy, PA National Guard. Larry is a Keystone Helicopter Corp. EMS Pilot employee called to active duty. I must state that this is a “unique” landing operation. I understand that this particular military operation was to round up suspects.

We have some super reservists and National Guard folks out there in addition to our volunteer troops. God bless them all.

Unforgettable Moment, B-52s Scramble, Hill Air Force Base, 1974

B-52 Bombers taking off on full throttle on Strategic Air Command alert

I was stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, from 1972-74. Early in 1974, Strategic Air Command stationed a wing of B-52s on Hill.  

My duty station was four miles from the airfield on the north end of the base.  Sometimes I went to the hangar for electronic parts.  On a warm spring day, I happened to be in the hangar when I heard an enormous roar, then another, then another, and another.  

Six B-52s filled the air with black smoke and the howl of 48 jet engines on throttle. The planes took off one after the other less than a minute apart. When all six formed up in the sky above the base, the giant airplanes flew east toward the Rocky Mountains and disappeared.

It was magnificent.

I was 21 years old when those planes took off.  Those airplanes were about my age, first entering service in 1952, a year before I was born. Like me they have had a lot of maintenance, but still have an active life today. Some of them, like me, are in their 60s.  

Reality Catches Up With Fiction 70 Years After World War II

B-25 Bomber Pilot 1st. Lt. Bernard "Bernie" Steed Receiving 

the Distinguished Flying Cross for Bravery 

on a Mission over Avignon, France.

Last month a friend started a Facebook discussion about the worst book we ever read. One of the books that came up was Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Published in 1961, the novel was based on life in an Army Air Corps bomber squadron flying B-25 "Mitchell" medium bombers over Italy, Southern France and across the Mediterranean Sea.

B-25 "Mitchell" Medium Bombers

I jumped into the discussion saying Catch-22 was one of my favorite books. I put the comment on my own page and one of the responses was from a guy I worked with almost 20 years ago.  Joseph Steed’s comment:

“My Dad literally lived Catch 22. He was assigned as a pilot to his bomber squadron in Europe within a month of the arrival of a young bombardier from New York City named Joseph Heller. Heller flew as Dad's bombardier on several missions. In the Avignon mission which was a significant scene in the book, like the author, Dad saw one of his friends shot down for the first time. On the same mission, Dad's plane lost an engine and he had to ditch it in the Mediterranean. Dad had told me about the ever-increasing number of missions required before being allowed to leave (he flew 66), and about the one guy in their unit who refused to fly again after reaching 40, the latter becoming the model for the guy who claimed he was crazy to avoid flying but whose sanity was proved by his not wanting to fly -- the original catch 22. When I discovered the Heller connection, Dad was in his 80s. He had heard of the book, but was not aware it was written by one of his bombardiers about their shared time in Europe. We looked up an old picture of Heller, and Dad remembered him as a little guy always running around with a notebook in his hand and writing things down. I got a copy of the book for him, but he made it only a couple of chapters in. He couldn't deal with being satirical about the experience.”

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Joe’s Dad, Bernard “Bernie” Steed was drafted in 1942 at 19-years-old. He qualified for flight training and within a year was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and training to fly B-25 “Mitchell” twin-engine bombers. These planes were made famous in the “Doolittle Raid” in which the big planes flew from aircraft carriers and bombed Tokyo in 1942. Bernie Steed’s life included the terror and humor of war. While still in pilot training in Georgia, shortly after landing in his trainer plane from a routine flight, a second plane’s propeller began chewing through their plane’s tail section, destroying it most of the way to the cockpit. The guy never saw them until he hit them. “Pilot inattention."

Bernie Steed in pilot training

By May 1944, Bernie Steed was 21-year-old pilot flying bombing missions from a base in Corsica across the Mediterranean theater of operations. On one mission Steed lost an engine, but managed to land the plane safely in the sea and get all of his crew into the life raft. They were rescued by a seaplane just a few hours later.  Bernie Steed earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for that mission and earned many other awards and decorations for flying 66 combat missions.

Joseph Heller was from Brooklyn and was a year younger than Bernie when he was assigned as bombardier in the 488th Bombardment Squadron in May 1944. He flew a couple of missions as part of Bernie’s six-man crew.

Joseph Heller in the Bombardier Compartment of a B-25 Medium Bomber

The characters in Catch-22 were composites of more than one person, Heller said. But about the action described, he said, “All the physical details, and almost all of what might be called the realistic details do come out of my own experiences as a bombardier in World War II. The organization of a mission, the targets—most of the missions that are in the book were missions that I did fly on.”

Thanksgiving Dinner, 1944, on the 488th Bomber Squadron Base, Corsica

A month before I learned about Bernie Steed, I saw a copy of Catch-22 at a book sale and bought it, thinking I would like to re-read it. Now that I know more about the author and one of the heroes in the squadron the novel is based on, I will definitely be re-reading the book.

Military Pilots Really Have "The Right Stuff"

Tammie Jo Shults, F-18 Fighter Pilot

Today I listened to the audio of pilot Tammie Jo Shults calmly speaking with Air Traffic Control in Philadelphia after the Number 1 engine exploded on her Southwest Boeing 737 aircraft.  Her voice had the kind of calm I have heard on headsets when I have been on military aircraft in serious trouble.  You would never know the danger from the voices of the pilots.

The Exploded Engine on Southwest Flight 1380

Shortly after I enlisted in 1972, I discovered that active duty soldiers could fly anywhere for $10. After I settled in to my first permanent duty station at Hill Air Force Base in Utah late that year, I decided to take a week’s leave and fly military from Utah to Boston and try out Space Available Flying.

I showed up flight operations at Hill the morning my leave began.  The first flight out was to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver.  It was an executive jet flying empty to pickup a general. I was a 19-year-old Airman First Class at the time.  They signed me up for the flight. I was the only passenger for the 500-mile trip over the Rocky Mountains.  It was glorious.  I had a drink and snacks served by the sergeant who was the steward on the plane.  I arrived in Denver thinking that flying “Space A” was about the coolest thing that ever happened to me. 

C-130 Hercules Transport Aircraft

I strolled to flight operations in Denver.  The next thing going anywhere east was a C-130 Hercules on its way to Atlanta, Georgia.  I think the plan was actually to go to Warner Robbins Air Force Base, but in the end, Atlanta was where we landed. Atlanta sounded good to me. I had never been to Georgia and I would be on the Atlantic Coast. 

The C-130E Hercules of that era cruised at 300 mph, less when fully loaded as we were today. After the one-hour trip across the Rockies, it would be more five hours inside the engine roar and wind noise of the four-engine Hercules.  The plane was fully loaded with palletized cargo under straps including what looked like Army mobile radar.  I walked up the tail ramp and past the cargo to the front of the plane.

Behind me, more than 50 high school ROTC cadets filed in for a trip to Georgia for a convention of some kind.  For some of these kids, it was their first flight.  In a C-130, everyone sits in fold-out seats made from nylon strapping material facing the middle of the plane.  The few windows were behind the heads of the cadets. Most of the cadets had their official USAF bag lunch as did I: two bologna and cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread, chips, a cookie, and a carton of milk.  Those lunches would keep me busy for much of our ill-fated flight. 

Before we took off, the loadmaster handed me a set of headphones and asked me to help with the cadets.  I said sure and started checking seat belts.  The loadmaster told the cadets not to look at the cargo while we were in flight and to keep their seatbelts on unless they had to get up.  If you have never been in a C-130 or other cargo plane with seats down the sides of the fuselage, it is great advice not to look at the cargo, but it’s pretty much impossible.  The shaking cargo in flight will shift even a good digestive system into reverse. 

The flight was smooth for the first hour.  Many of the cadets laughed and joked and ate their bologna and cheese sandwiches.  An hour later we hit turbulence.  I watched some those happy teenage faces go pale, then green.  I grabbed a stack of airsickness bags and passed them out, open and ready for use.  Then I collected them. 

The kids kept me busy for the next few hours. While I was helping one of the kids out of the toilet, I left my headphones hanging on the bulkhead.  As we sidestepped toward his seat, the plane shuddered. When the kid was safely buckled in, I went back and grabbed my headset.  I heard the pilot say, “No fuel to the right wing. Engines three and four inop. Feathering props.”

The plane was crabbing in the sky. With power only on the left wing, the plane would try to spin clockwise, then flip back when the counterforces built up.  So we oscillated as if there were an axle sticking up and down between the wings and we rotated on it.

The pilot had been talking to air traffic control. He came back on the intercom. “We’re 70 miles out. Runway at Hartsfield will be clear for us. Ten years ago in the ‘Nam I landed a model B with one engine and some big chunks of wing missing. We’ll be fine. Big bump, when we first touch down, then we’ll be fine.”

We slowly descended. Our slower airspeed made crabbing less violent. The loadmaster and I double-checked seatbelts and told all the kids everything was fine and we would land soon. We were lying with a smile.

Ten miles out I went up to the flight deck and looked ahead though the cockpit.  Red lights were everywhere on the airstrip. The pilots and the rest of the crew were perfectly calm, but it seemed like the rest of the world thought a plane with two dead engines was a problem. 

We descended. As we neared the ground the pilot pulled the nose up hard.  When we touched, the plane took one big bounce, skidded right for a couple of seconds, then settled down and stopped quickly. 

I waited until all the kids had filed out before I grabbed my duffel bag and walked down the ramp.  Fire trucks and ambulances ringed the area. I couldn’t count all of the emergency vehicles that were waiting for that big bounce to turn into something worse.  I sat on my duffel bag and waited for the crew to come out of the plane.  When the pilots and the flight engineer came down the ramp, they were talking like nothing had happened.  The loadmaster came over and shook my hand. He thanked me for helping out with the kids. 

A couple of decades later I would read Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff” and know that the “Cool” those astronauts brought to the Mercury space program came from learning to fly in the military.  Alan Shepard, John Glenn and the other astronauts, the heroes of my Cold War youth, are now pilots like Tammie Jo Shults and Chesley Sullenberger, military pilots, masters of the complex skill of flying and who remain calm and competent when engines fail.

   

My First Military Haircut, February 1, 1972

The night before my Basic Training haircut.

When I arrived at Lackland Air Force Base on February 1, 1972, among the first order of business was the haircut.  For me and many other recruits, this was a matter of no small delight for the three barbers shearing our shoulder-length locks down to military crew cuts.  We paid for the haircut, twenty-five cents if I remember correctly. When it was my turn, the thin, grinning guy with several teeth missing said, “Lookie here fellas, another pretty one.” 

My wavy, shoulder-length hair fell to the floor joining a pile that could have been a couch cushion.  As my hair hit the floor, the third barber took a break and started sweeping the curls and waves into a waste bin in the corner. 

Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” was released more than two years before in September of 1969.  The barber was humming while my hair floated to the floor.  I had not heard “Okie from Muskogee” at that point in my life.  I would hear the song in Denver after basic training when country music would become part of the background sound of my barracks life. 

Whether the humming hair harvester was serenading me with Haggard’s Hippie-Hating Hymn of some other country call to arms, he enjoyed sending my transient tresses to the floor. 

With shoulder-length hair and head-to-toe discomfort, the barber knew I was a Yankee.  Because I was at Air Force basic training in February he could assume I was a Liberal, but not rich enough to buy my way out of the draft and took the safer route of the service in which about one percent were in the line of fire and 99 percent were on big bases protected by the Army.  

He would not have guessed that the skinny recruit he was shearing was the son of two enthusiastic Goldwater Republicans, my uncle was on his third tour flying F4s over Viet Nam and that I had, in fact, enlisted before my draft number was published.  Two months later, my sister would send me that draft number, 269, written on a small poster she sent in a large, brown envelope, much to the amusement of my fellow basic trainees.

The Topless Shoeshine Parlor: The Draft-Era Military Really was Different

After Basic Training, the Air Force sent me to a technical school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado.  The base is now a community college, a golf course, and a museum of the many missile and weapons technicians trained there during Cold War. 

In 1972, Airmen with free time could take a bus or walk the 108 blocks west to downtown Denver.  The first time I went to Denver was in April. The weather was nice so ‘Bama (my basic training bunkmate) and I walked to the city.  A few blocks east of the base on Colfax was proof positive we were serving in a draft-era military composed of mostly 19-year-old single men.

We walked east past taco stands, pawn shops, pool halls, stripper bars, bars without strippers, tattoo parlors, burger joints, military surplus stores, camera shops, and other stores of interest to young men easily parted from their meager incomes.  At about the 9300 block of East Colfax Avenue, ‘Bama stopped and said, “Lookie here Gussman. Son. Of. A. Bitch.”

We were staring in the front window of the only Topless Shoeshine Parlor I have ever seen before or since. My 19^th birthday was still a few days away, so as far as I knew I was still the only 18-year-old virgin in the United States Air Force, or maybe in the world.    

‘Bama, being a man of the world, insisted it was a rip-off and we should just keep walking.  I took his advice, but as we walked away, I was twisting my neck farther than normal anatomy allows to look at the hypnotic motion that occurs when a woman wearing just a skirt rhythmically rubs a shine cloth on a boot.

Topless shoeshine parlors were a 1970s phenomenon. They were also part of the culture around military bases that began to disappear with the all-volunteer Army. From its beginnings with the end of the draft in 1973, the volunteer army recruited more and more married soldiers. With the bad economy of the 70s, especially after the oil crisis, the Army recruited men who needed medical care for their wives and kids.  All through the late 70s, the replacement soldiers who came to our unit fit this profile: 19-21 years old, married, one child, wife is pregnant. Like most soldiers, that young man was from the south or the west.

With more married soldiers, wives had more influence on the culture on and off the base. The stripper bars and other family unfriendly businesses moved away from the gate of the base.  It’s not like the soldiers stopped going to strip clubs, topless shoeshine parlors or pool halls, but with so many wives going on and off base, they went to strip joints away from the gate. 

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Who Fights Our Wars? "Doc" Dreher, Blackhawk Pilot

Darren "Doc" and Kate Dreher at the Aviation Ball

Through Facebook, I just saw that a friend I deployed with in 2009-10 is off to another overseas adventure. 

Darren “Doc” Dreher is a Blackhawk pilot. We first met during training for deployment to Iraq. We were at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, getting ready to fly to Kuwait and meet up with our helicopters and equipment. Then we went into Iraq. 

Like nearly everyone in the 28^th Combat Aviation Brigade, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, Doc is from the mid state, not the city.  He lives in vast 570 area code that, together with 814 covers the majority of the population of the Keystone State.

When Doc and I first started talking it was because one of the other pilots let him know there was an old sergeant who was a liberal in Echo Company.  We started arguing about whether the TEA Party were just the nicest, cleanest most well-behaved people who ever graced the National Mall with their presence, or they were out-of-the-closet racists trumpeting Birther and other conspiracies inflamed by idiots like Glenn Beck. That was the starting point for several discussions.

Believe it or not, we kept talking.  We could clear a room with soldiers rolling their eyes about more political bullshit, but they could also see we were having fun.  Doc is smart and quick and won most of our discussions.  In fact, it was pretty clear after a while that he continued the arguments for his own amusement. He would smile just a little before announcing the latest outrage by President Obama. 

But Doc is not just razor wit and a pretty face (there were many jokes about which of us was better looking), he was by every indication I could see an amazing pilot. It seemed everyone wanted to fly with him, both other flight crew members and the soldiers we carried on missions.  One time I flew with Doc was up to Camp Garry Owen on the Iran-Iraq border.  On the flight was Colonel Peter Newell, commander of the 4^th Brigade, 1^st Armored, the unit that provided security for our main base at Camp Adder.  Newell put his unit patch on the nose of Doc’s Blackhawk helicopter.  So when Newell went to the border to oversee anti-smuggling operations or some other mission, Doc was often his pilot.

"Doc" Dreher flying over the Ziggurat of Ur

Another time I got to fly with Doc was for a video camera crew visiting Camp Adder. I think it was a British crew, but it may have been a British cameraman working for an American network.  The camera crew wanted to get a flyover shot of the Ziggurat of Ur, a huge monument to the prophet Abraham that was close to our base.  The wind howled out of the west most days. Doc hovered a hundred feet above the Ziggurat and a few miles west with the aircraft perpendicular to the wind. When the cameraman was ready to roll film, Doc trimmed the rotor blades and we flew sideways at 30 knots with the doors fully open.  It was spooky and exciting to be moving only sideways. I had taken some weird twists and turns flying in Army helicopters, but flying completely sideways was new to me.

After Iraq, I saw Doc only occasionally, if I happened to be on flight when he was on duty, or at the annual Aviation Ball with his wife Kate. He first introduced me to Kate as his “favorite liberal.”  Wherever he is, I hope Doc finds another liberal to argue with. Defending myself from Doc’s wit and encyclopedic knowledge made me a better liberal.  Thanks Doc! 

I hope my favorite conservative has a safe deployment. And Congratulations on your promotion to Chief Warrant Officer 5.

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Boris Libman: The Terrible Life of a Soviet Hero

The phrase "No good deed goes unpunished" is of uncertain origin, but certainly applies to the Soviet soldier and chemist Boris Libman.

Libman was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Latvia in the brief period between the World Wars. 

Libman was just 18 years old in 1940 when the Russians invaded and made his country into a Soviet state.  During the occupation, the invaders confiscated his family’s property and possessions and drafted Boris into the Soviet Army.  

He was seriously wounded in combat twice; the second time he was left for dead.  He survived, but (as we shall see) his paperwork was not so healthy.  After the war Libman applied to study at the Moscow Institute for Chemistry tuition-free as an honorably discharged disabled veteran.  He was turned down because according to Army records he was dead.  With months of work, he was able to prove he was in fact alive and not trying to steal a dead man’s benefits. 

In 1949 he earned a master’s degree and went to work in Stalingrad to develop a production facility for Sarin--nerve gas.  Despite his treatment by the Soviets, Libman believed in communism and wanted to help with what he saw as the defense of his nation.  Libman worked on lab studies and on setting up a pilot plant.  The main source of information of the Soviet team was captured German scientists who were less than fully cooperative.  Libman was not only a talented chemical engineer, but was fluent in German—a fact he kept from the captured scientists.  Libman listened as the Germans spoke among themselves and was able to get information that the Germans were hiding from their captors. 

Most of the hardware for the Sarin plant was confiscated from a German wartime production facility.  For the new parts, Libman had to work with Soviet producers, and so the projected ground to a halt several times.  In the centrally planned Soviet economy, production was measured by the weight of delivered machinery.  So the small, specialized parts Libman ordered for completing the Sarin plant were of low priority and often poor quality.  It was a full decade before the Sarin plant at Stalingrad was in full production.  The year before, in 1958, Boris Libman was named chief engineer at the Stalingrad plant.  In 1961 he led development of a new facility to produce Soman nerve agent.  Again poor quality parts slowed development of the plant.  By 1963, Soviet plans for war against NATO called for a surprise attack with overwhelming use of chemical agents, including nerve gas.  Libman was under considerable political pressure to get the Soman line in production.

So he cut corners.  In particular, the Stalingrad plant had a containment pond with toxic breakdown products of nerve agents in concentrations 100 times acceptable levels.  In February 1965, snow melt caused flooding throughout the region.  The containment pond overflowed its dikes and spilled into the Volga River.  In less than two days the dike was repaired and no immediate problems were evident. 

But on June 15 tens of thousands of sturgeon floated belly up in the Volga, making the river white with dead fish for 50 miles downstream from Stalingrad.  Experts determined that it took four months for the toxins to build up to deadly levels.  Outrage swept down the river and across the region.  The government needed a scapegoat.  On March 9, 1966, Boris Libman was stripped of the Lenin prize he earned in building the Stalingrad plant, fined two years pay, and sentenced to two years at a labor camp. 

Unlike so many others, Libman’s tale does not end in a Soviet labor camp.  After just a year he was released: the Soman plant was so complicated that the Soviets could find no one else who could run it.  Boris returned to the land of the living once again.

In 1999 he left the Russian Federation and came to America. He lived in Philadelphia until his death a decade ago. 

Some of the mess created by chemical weapons was eventually cleaned up by French chemists, including Armand Lattes.

MRE vs. C-Rations: for me, the 21st Century MRE is the Winner!

When I first enlisted in 1972, C-Rations, or more properly the MCI--Meal, Combat, Individual--was breakfast, lunch and dinner in the field if there was no hot chow until I left the Army Reserves in 1984.

In 2007 when I re-enlisted MRE--Meal Ready to Eat--was the field food.  MREs are delicious compared to MCIs. In fact, when I was in the field and the 20-year-olds complained about MREs, I would wish they could be given cold ham and eggs in an olive drab can until they were begging the First Sergeant to give their MREs back!

In 2010, after I returned from Iraq, I made a video comparing the two.  This week it went over 100,000 views on YouTube when a soldier who went to Basic Training in 2007 commented on the video.

Who Fights Our Wars: Sons of Veterans

Myles B. Caggins, III, promoted today to Colonel

Today, I heard one of the best speeches of a man honored in his profession that I heard in years, maybe ever. 

Two kinds of people make acceptance speeches for honors and high awards.  One thanks everyone who helped and guided the awardee to the honor they just received. These speeches can sometimes be overly long and not finish well.  Today's speech was the right length and finished on a surprising and passionate note.

The other kind of speech I have often heard is the one that says it was all me.  Today's speech was definitely not that kind.

This afternoon, Myles B. Caggins, III, was promoted to Colonel on the top floor of the National Press Club. Caggins is an ROTC graduate of Hampton University in his 21^st year of military service and way ahead of the average trajectory to achieve the highest rank below general officer. 

He could very well have talked about leading a company in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a young captain in command of a support company.  He could have talked about switching to Public Affairs then serving as the Public Affairs officer for 4^th Brigade, 1^st Armored Division in Iraq where we met in in 2009.  Or his subsequent service in the Pentagon and on the National Security Counsel in the Obama White House. 

But he didn’t talk about what he did.  He talked about what others did for him and how they put him where he is today.

When Caggins mentioned his combat command in Iraq, he introduced a staff sergeant who was one of his troop leaders. Caggins said this sergeant "Kept me straight."  

When Caggins talked about his various public affairs assignments from Camp Adder, Iraq, to the Pentagon, to the White House, he introduced soldiers he served with at each of those places.   

He then introduced his parents, Myles and Ann, and the rest of his family. His father is also a Colonel: Myles B. Caggins, Jr., retired and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.  Caggins introduced his sister’s family and other close relatives.  He then introduced his Hampton University ROTC classmates and other friends including a major he is mentoring who served as master of ceremonies. 

After all that warmth and honor for people throughout his life, Caggins ended his speech with a passionate account of the struggle his father faced 50 years ago as a young officer in the U.S. Army. With his voice breaking slightly with emotion, Caggins repeated part of the oath he just swore in front of all of us to “Support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

Then Caggins talked about the world his father served in as a young officer in the 1960s Army, an Army with bigots who would walk across the street or duck in a doorway to avoid saluting an officer who was not white. His words painted a picture of the struggle Black officers faced before Civil Rights became the law of the land and Jim Crow was abolished.

“My Dad and his generation served an America which did not serve them, when they were not allowed to vote in free and fair elections,” Caggins said. “I couldn’t do it, but he did.” 

Caggins closed by saying this may be the last time he is promoted in the Army, but for as long he serves he will, “Use these wings (colonels wear eagles) to help others soar.”

When his talked ended, he received a standing ovation from an audience that filled the ballroom and the balcony.  

This year Caggins is a National Security Fellow at Harvard University’sKennedy School of Government.   

Tasks, Conditions and Standards--How to Do Everything!

Tasks, Conditions and Standards is how we learn to do everything in the Army.  If you are assigned to be the machine gunner in a rifle squad, the first thing you will do is get to know your machine gun:  the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW).

Before you fire the SAW in combat, you will go through many different Tasks, Conditions and Standards blocks of instruction to learn the weapon, maintain the weapon, fire the weapon and fix the weapon.

Are you an Army cook and you need to fry eggs?  There are Tasks, Conditions and Standards for that. A scientist friend pointed that in the computer world this is algorithm thinking.  Break down every task into steps, clearly define the steps, evaluate.

A complex operation pulls together dozens and dozens of different Tasks, Conditions and Standards and turns that into one smooth operation.  The posts I did recently on Tank Gunnery represented hundreds of individual bits of training from how to zero each of the three weapons on the tank, how to drive with the hatches open and closed, how to determine range, how to maintain the tracks on the vehicle, etc.

When we pass the tests at the end of Tasks, Conditions and Standards, the Army says, "We got Skillz!"

Who Fights Our Wars? Command Sgt. Major Christopher Kepner

Command Sergeant Major Christopher Kepner, the top NCO of the 28^th Infantry Division, is a big man with a big personality.  On any duty weekend, 28^th ID soldiers can expect to see Kepner anywhere—on a range, in a dining facility kitchen, in a motor pool, or walking into an administrative section office.  He strides faster than everyone one around him.  It’s usual to see him striding down a hallway with a soldier breaking into a trot to keep up.  And just as usual to see this marathon runner with a Ranger Tab stop in mid stride to correct a deficiency or encourage a soldier doing a good job.

In 2010, soon after Kepner became the top in Command Sergeant Major in the 28^th Combat Aviation Brigade he led an NCO Development course for all the sergeants in the brigade.  He began that course saying,

“You need to do only two things to be a leader in the United States Army. 

First, keep the men safe as much as possible.

Second, make sure your soldiers maintain standards in every area.

And how will you know if you are doing these two things?

You will eat lunch by yourself for the rest of your career.”

Kepner went on to tell the 28^th CAB sergeants how maintaining standards saved the eyesight of one of his soldiers when he served as Command Sergeant Major of a Stryker Battalion in Iraq in 2008 and 2009.  As the young soldier was being loaded into a MEDEVAC he thanked Kepner for “staying in our shit about Eye-Pro[tection].”  Let’s hear a little more about how the Command Sergeant Major looks at his world:

I am a product of . . .

. . .the Army, more so than anything else. I owe the Army a lot.  I graduated high school when I was seventeen.  I was living at home.  I had a Gremlin.  I was a cook at the IHOP.  The only thing I cared about when I got out of high school was, whether I could make enough money to pay for the insurance on my Gremlin, and where was the next party. And, one day on the way home I thought, “Hell, I’ll join the Army.” I had no goals and I had no direction at seventeen.  So, I really, I really, I think, owe the military for who I am and where I am at today for instilling that discipline.

 

Relaxation is . . . .

. . .Sitting on my deck, looking out over the mountains, sipping a Tullamore Dew (12-year-old Irish whiskey, ed.), and smoking a good cigar.

 

There’s value in . . .

. . .taking stock in your life and understanding where you’re at and using that to determine where you want to be. 

You can have the best idea . . .

. . .But, it doesn’t mean squat if you can’t, execute it. The same way with ideas.  There are big-idea guys that couldn’t lead a squad across the street.

My home is. . .

. . .my sanctuary.  It’s very isolated.  I have fourteen acres at the bottom of a mountain. I can be or do whoever I want to be there and the outside world is very secluded from that, and I need that. 

There’s drama . . .

Everywhere! Oh, lord!  There is drama everywhere. Everywhere you have people who interact you have drama.  So, we all have to learn how to live within it and work within it. To accomplish your goals, you’ve got to be able to manage drama. If you say, “I hate drama,” and ignore drama then you’re, you’re not going to be able to do anything.  If somebody says to me, “Oh, I can’t stand the drama.”  I say, suck it up and do what you need to.

War is. . .

Here’s what I will say about war.  I believe that as Army volunteers, we have given up our right to decide which wars are correct and which wars are incorrect. So, so for me to say, make a statement like, “War is,” does not lead to “This war is right,” or “This war is wrong.”  As volunteer members of the service we don’t have that right.  We’ve given that up that right. So, so that being said I would say that war is necessary but it is certainly also horrible. 

Do you get “whiplash” switching from military to civilian life?

The short answer is No. I’ve been in the military since I was seventeen.  Came on active duty when I was seventeen.  Spent the first seven years of my adult life on active duty so I was certainly influenced by military people, growing up in that environment.  That carried over into my civilian job as an operations manger for Schnieder Trucking.  So, I would say I do not have whiplash but I do have to step it down a little bit for the civilians.

But civilian or military, I am I’m pretty much always that focused and intense, and I’m up front with my direct reports at work. Not too much gray area there. As a matter of fact, I had to have a conversation, a performance conversation the other, the other day with one of my direct reports and the conversation was, “You’re not getting it done.  We’re not achieving excellence.  And, because we’re not achieving excellence your work, your work-from-home one day a week has just been revoked.”  So, No. I don’t have a great change. 

How do soldiers see you. . .

When we deployed, I was on patrol walking with one of the platoons.  During the patrol, the Platoon Sergeant said, “You know, Sergeant Major, my soldiers call you The Velociraptor.”  They think I just swoop in from the sky to jump in their . . . [correct them].

“They dare each other to walk past you with some kind of uniform or standards violation,” he said, “and they all talk [deleted] about it, who will really do it.” 

And, I think that sums up the way people see me.