Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Today's Post on the NY Times "At War" Blog is Me Bitching about Marching Songs

Today's Post on the NY Times "At War" Blog is Me Bitching about Marching Songs.  You can read it there:  http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/the-song-doesnt-remain-the-same/
Or the text is here:
In January the U.S. military and I celebrated our 42nd anniversary. Sort of. I am one of those modern soldiers with commitment issues. I enlisted in the Air Force Jan. 31, 1972.
My current and final enlistment in the Army National Guard will end May 31, 2015, the month I turn 62. In between, I switched to the Army in 1975, the Army Reserve in 1981, then I took 23 years off between 1984 and 2007 before re-enlisting in the Guard.
To say a lot has changed since I flew to Lackland Air Force Base 41 years ago hardly begins to describe the difference between serving at the end of an unpopular war and serving today.
My military career started with a wicked hangover from pitchers of beer in Boston bars the night before an early flight to San Antonio, Texas. My shoulder-length hair was shorn by a gleeful redneck. My first drill sergeant was what the Air Force called a BB Stacker. His Vietnam War service had been in Thailand loading bombs on B-52s and living off base in a hooch that came with food, laundry, housecleaning and companionship for $50 per month.
This married-with-kids master sergeant loved telling us stories of loading bombs and getting loaded himself. Though I can’t remember that drill sergeant’s name, I thought of him several times during a 90-day military school I attended at Fort Meade, Md., from August to November of last year. The majority of the soldiers in the Army Student Company had just finished basic training. The rest of us shared their training schedule and their leaders.
In 1972, when we marched in formation, we sang songs about killing Viet Cong. We sang songs about the sex and heroism in our future. Most of all we sang about Jody. Marching songs used to be referred to as Jody Calls. Jody is the guy who is back home sleeping with your wife, eating your food, driving your car, emptying your bank account and, in the saddest versions, turning your own dog against you.
Mr. Gussman on the airfield at Camp Adder, Iraq, in 2009 after a flight to Al Kut.U.S. ArmyMr. Gussman on the airfield at Camp Adder, Iraq, in 2009 after a flight to Al Kut.
The songs we sang at Fort Meade during this summer and fall were more thoroughly bowdlerized than Sunday school stories. Cub Scouts could sing these songs in front of their mothers. No sex. No death. No cheating, lying, drinking or drugs. Certainly no songs with refrains like “Jody got your girl and gone” or “Napalm sticks to kids.”
When we ran in formation at Fort Meade, we almost always sang:
When my granny was 91, she did PT just for fun
When my granny was 92, she did PT better than you
. . and so on up to age 97. The song is clean, affirming of 90-year-old women, and mildly insulting to the wheezing 20-year-old struggling to keep in step at a run.

We also sang Airborne running songs:
C-130 rollin’ down the strip,
Airborne Daddy gonna take a little trip
Stand up hook up shuffle to the door,
Jump on out and count to four. . .

The songs we sang at Fort Meade never varied.
In Army tank training in 1975 we sometimes sang the version above and sometimes this:
C-130 rollin’ down the strip,
Blew a tire and the [two-word expletive deleted] flipped. . .

We were really loud on the second line of the verse. This version goes on to insult the Air Force.
When my daughters were in preschool, I taught them some very sanitized marching songs. The girls learned “They Say That in the Army” which is a complaint song about food, coffee and Army life in general. It has many verses such as:
They Say That in the Army the coffee’s mighty fine,
It tastes like muddy water and smells like turpentine. . .

Each of the various verses ends “Gee Mom I wanna go, but they won’t let me go.”
The girls also learned the “Yellow Bird” song:
A yellow bird,
With a yellow bill,
Just landed on,
My window sill,
I lured him in,
With crumbs of bread,
And then I crushed his (Slam left foot to the ground) little head.

The word emphasized with a stomp was not “little” when we sang the song. And just that one word makes a lot of difference.
A decade later my youngest daughter and some of her high school friends saw the movie “Jarhead.” Lisa came home and said with a smile, “Dad, you never told us the real words to those songs.”
Lisa also wanted to know who Jody was. The older guys in the audience were laughing at places she and her friends did not get the joke. I explained Jody. Lisa and her friends went back to the movie now that they had Jody decoded.
Most of the soldiers I marched with at Fort Meade were in their early 20s, around the age of my daughters are now. They had no idea who Jody was and had never sung a marching song laced with sex, violence and words they use every five seconds in the barracks. Those words make for very loud cadence. But we sang no bad words at Fort Meade.
When the Army fights wars without enemies, we have to sing about running, old ladies, jumping out of airplanes, bad food or wanting to visit Mom. Winning hearts and minds may be good policy, but it makes for lousy marching songs.
Sgt. Neil Gussman enlisted in the Air Force in 1972. He first served on a live-fire missile test range in Utah until he was blinded in a test explosion. When he recovered, he re-enlisted in the Army in 1975 serving as a tank commander on active duty and in the reserves until 1984. He re-enlisted in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in 2007 serving with 28th Combat Aviation Brigade. He deployed to Iraq in 2009-2010 with the 28th CAB and still serves with the unit today. He blogs about life in the Army. He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pa.

Friday, February 7, 2014

German Boys Visit the American Tanks in the Woods Near Their Village




On a beautiful afternoon in late October less than a month after 4th Brigade arrived in Germany, the five tanks of First Platoon, Bravo Company, moved into a defensive position on a hill outside a small village near Fulda.  The village was visible in the valley below more than a mile away.

All of the tanks were below the crest of the ridge.  We had an observer team on the ridge.  The rest of the platoon was working on the tanks or scouting out places to sleep near the tanks.  Five minutes after the the last tank was in position, three boys rode up the dirt road that connected the village with our position.  The oldest was ten years old.  

I used to play Army in an apple orchard near my home in Stoneham, Massachusetts, when I was their age.  I was thinking that if I saw a platoon of tanks in woods I would have been on my bike and getting as close as those soldiers would let me.  I also thought how different life in Stoneham would have been if a foreign Army could just park a platoon of tanks in the orchard.



I jumped down from the turret and waved for the boys to come to my tank.  No one else seemed particularly interested in having kids near their vehicle.  My driver and I lifted the kids up on the fender of the tank and let them sit in the driver's seat and gunner's seat.  They put on our helmets and talked to each other on the intercom system.  We gave the kids the waxy, canned chocolate that came in our C-rations.

They oldest spoke excellent English.  I asked if he would to go to the village and bring us back some food from the local baker and butcher shops.  He said he would right away.  I gave him ten Marks.  As he rode away, the driver of Bravo 13, who was from New Jersey, said, "Sergeant Gussman you are never going to see those kids again."  Some others joined in.  I was happy to see the platoon sergeant and the commander of Bravo 15, the only other soldier who had been to Germany before, did not say anything.  

The boys seemed like good kids to me.  Almost an hour later, the older boy came back alone.  He said the younger boys had to go home.  He had a backpack.  Inside was sausage, butter, two loaves of bread, and some small candies.  He spent 9 Marks, 98 Pfennigs, and gave me the two Pfennigs change.  My crew and I got our camp stove out right away while it was still daylight and started cooking that sausage.  I gave the boy some more C-ration chocolate and said to come back tomorrow, we were probably going to be there for the night.  He thanked me again and rode away.

My crew and I made a big show of cooking that sausage and talking very loudly about how you can't trust those German kids.  We also inquired about what the crews on either side of us were having for dinner.
The next time we stopped near a village and kids showed up, it was a competition to see who could get the kids to make a grocery run.  

That little boy is 44 years old today.  The other two are 40 and 42 if I guessed their ages correctly.  I wonder what they think now.  There has been peace in their country for their entire lives, but many foreign armies have lived in their country and trained for a war that, thankfully, never came.  I hope they have good memories of the soldiers who parked a platoon of tanks in their woods.  In fact, I hope they have nothing but good memories of American soldiers.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

The Army Made Me a Writer, T-Mobile Made Me Lazy



Did I want to be a writer or a storyteller?  After talking to a friend this morning, I realized the key fact in my last post was the price of calling home from Germany in 1977.  I wanted to tell stories.  I could not afford to call.  So I wrote.

Fast Forward two decades.  In April 1998, I got a job with a global company.  I traveled overseas every month for the next three years--33 trips to be exact.  I flew to every continent except Africa and visited more than 20 countries on five continents.  I had not been outside America since I flew home from Germany in 1979.  By the time I left my job with Millennium Chemicals in 2000 my passport was full of visa stamps and I had paid to have 20 pages added to it.  

As part of the job, I had a global T-Mobile phone and no limits on usage.  All calls were free from anywhere to anywhere.  So when I told my wife, my kids, my friends how breathtakingly beautiful the Hong Kong skyline is at night, I used my phone.  If I had written my impressions, I would not even have to recopy them as I did in my tank turret in the 1970s.  Email would allow me to copy and paste to anyone.

But I did not write about traveling.  It was way too easy to call and talk.  So I wrote for my job and talked about the new life I was leading, traveling the globe.

The next time I was writing without getting paid for it was this blog.  When I first went back in the Army in August of 2007, I got a lot of questions about what I was doing.  So I promised myself to write every day I was on duty with the Army.  At first, this was one weekend per month.  Then we started training to deploy to Iraq.  So we were on duty for three weeks here, two weeks there, another week plus the weekends.

Then we were in Iraq.  Just like Germany in 1977, calling home was difficult.  And time was limited.  So I wrote every day about what I was doing--within the limits of mission security.  I could not write about upcoming flights, about attacks on the base, or about security.  But I could write about food, toilets, the trailers we slept in, laundry, bitching, and dust.

So I wrote every day about them.

Then I came home and went back to work getting paid to write.  The blog was back to one weekend a month.

In the past few months, I have been writing more.  A former co-worker at my day job is the editor of a literary magazine.  I submitted a story.  WITF FM had a writing contest.  I wrote another story.  The stories were about death in Iraq.  I don't know that I intended to write about death, but death is what the stories were about.  If they don't get accepted for publication, I will publish them on the blog.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The Army Made Me a Writer



A friend asked me when I decided to become a writer.  It was in Germany in the Spring of 1977. I was a tank commander, tank Bravo 12, based in Wiesbaden, West Germany.  It was the first time I had travelled outside America.  The first time I lived outside America.  Everything was new and wonderful in Germany.

In 1976 in Germany, calling America cost nearly one dollar per minute.  At the time I made less than $100 a week as an Army Sergeant.  Calling home and telling my family and friends about how beautiful, how interesting, how surprising I found Germany would have emptied my wallet.

So I wrote letters home.  I wrote on legal pads.  I am not sure why, but blue pen and yellow legal pads were my way to write.  I quickly started practicing to be a writer without knowing I what I was doing.  

Writers rewrite.  This blog is a terrible example of real writing.  With this blog, you get what I am thinking.  No revision.  I correct mistakes when readers tell me I made them.  The best writers rewrite several times.  

My version of this was the order of the letters I wrote.  First I wrote to my mother.  She did not really care what I wrote.  She wanted me to write.  So the first time our tank platoon set up a fire position on a wooded hill outside a German village near the East-West border, I had a wonderful story to tell.  As a matter of fact, that will be a future blog post.  

I told that story to my mother.  Next I wrote to my friend Frank.  He was studying to be an engineer and not a particularly critical reader.  Then I wrote to other family members or friends depending on the story.

The final version went either to my sister Jean or my Uncle Jack.  Jean wrote very funny letters to me in basic training.  She is a good writer and knew a good story.  Uncle Jack was near the end of his 20 years of service in the Air Force.  I always addressed his letters to Uncle Major and signed them Sergeant Nephew.  The letter that went to Jean or Jack was the version I would later turn in to an editor.  

In High School I had no ambition to be a writer; I did not want to go to college.  I wanted to be a soldier or a truck driver.  At the time I started writing those letters, I mapped my future in the Army.  I would finish the tour in Germany, go to college, become and officer and command a tank company.  

By then end of the summer of 1977, college had moved to the top of my ambitions and becoming an officer was receding.  I wrote about looking across the border at Fulda where World War 3 was supposed to start.  I wrote about the damage a tank company can do when a new lieutenant leads it though a tree farm.  I wrote about a collision between a drunk German in a tiny Renault and an M60A1 tank.  The Renault did not survive, but surprising the drunk German did. 

As I wrote and fewer letters came back than I sent, I learned that most people did not like to write.  But I liked writing.  And by Christmas of that year, I found a way to write full time.  

That is another story.   

Monday, February 3, 2014

Never Older Than When I Was 23

In May of 1976 I was a tank commander in the 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division.  We were just about to begin two months of training before 4,000 soldiers with 54 tanks, dozens of howitzers and hundreds of tracked and wheeled vehicles would transfer as a unit to Wiesbaden, Germany.

I have never felt older than I did that year.  It was not because I was going to Germany.  I read an article in the Army Times that month that said the 80th percentile age in the Army was 23 years old.

Wow!!  That meant I was older than 80% of the Army.  I could see it all around me.  My own crew:  Mercury Morris (He was Merc, I don't remember his real first name), Eugene Pierce and Richard Burhans were all younger than I was.  And that was the oldest active duty crew I ever had.  They were all in there 20s.  Before we left for Germany, each of them was promoted or discharged and I got a new crew.  All of those graying 20-year-olds replaced by 17-to-19-year-olds.

Losing my first crew and realizing I was in the oldest 20% of the Army really made me feel old at the time. I told my daughter Lisa that story last week when she celebrated her 23rd birthday.  I may have told Lauren the same story, but I can't remember.

Now that I am actually old, starting my seventh decade, I still don't feel quite as old as that sergeant at Fort Carson did in 1976.  I know when I was that age I was sure I would never live this long.  And if I had thought about it, I would have hoped to be a higher rank if I was still in the Army.

That didn't work out!!

Monday, January 27, 2014

"What did you do this weekend Dad?" Weekend of Media Training

I picked up my son Jacari after drill this weekend.  He asked, "What did you do Dad?" smiling and hoping to hear about Blackhawk helicopters or machine guns.

I told him my butt hurt from sitting all weekend in a Media Training session.  We changed the subject.  He did not really want to hear about the moment when I corrected the instructor who said we should hyphenate a compound noun.  I said if it was a compound modifier it should be hyphenated, but compound nouns should not.

It was just like knocking down the 300-meter target on M4/M16 qualification range (sort of).

Hapless hyphenation aside, it was an important weekend for the 15 months or so I have left before they will throw me out for old age.

The division commander, BG John Gronski, has made communication one of his top four priorities for the 28th Division.  So this seminar included assigned public affairs people like and the newly appointed unit public affairs people at each of the battalions in our brigade.  Instead of Captain Miller and I covering everything that goes on in the brigade (as well as we can), each battalion will have someone who can take pictures and write stories and Facebook posts.

The division commander and CSM spoke to our class for more than 30 minutes on Saturday.  Gronski has a Facebook page.  Both he and CSM Kepner have twitter handles.  But the class itself says just how serious the new commander is about communication.  Five soldiers from the aviation brigade were in the class and learning how to use social media to support the mission.

For me, it means I have a back up for promotions, awards, and other events scheduled at different places at the same time.   It also means that when there Chinooks are doing sling loads, Blackhawks are supporting air assault and the MEDEVAC is doing hoist training on the same day, we can get all three events.

Next drill we can get all the communications people together and talk about how to cover events and manage the Facebook page.  I can't wait!!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Nicknames



One of the saddest, angriest soldiers I met in Iraq was a staff sergeant with the nickname "Squishy Head."  He got the nickname at the aviation hangar at Muir Field on Fort Indiantown Gap.  As I heard the story, squishy was working near the massive doors for the aircraft when the doors were closing.  He dropped a wrench, reached between the closing doors to retrieve it and got his head caught.

He survived, but was forever after called Squishy Head, mostly behind his back.

The poor guy makes one mistake, some smart ass calls him a name and he is Squishy Head from then on.  But that is how real nicknames go.

I don't have a nickname, at least not one that I know.  Except at home.  Among all my kids I am "Dude."  For the past decade all of my kids have called me Dude.  It came from my daughter Lisa.  From age 12 to 14 she was a junior bicycle racer.  She rode up to 100 miles a week between March and September to train for racing.  Some of those miles were with me on the tandem we owned back then.  Once or twice a week Lisa would ride 35 miles with me between 4 and 6 pm on the daily training race.  Six to a dozen rider, mostly men, would be on this fast ride.  Many of them called each other Dude.  Some called me Dude.  Since I was 50 years old, from the East Coast, never surfed, and did not otherwise see myself as a "Dude," I smiled at this generic name.

One night, while we ate dinner with the rest of the family after the ride, Lisa was describing the way we passed some riders down Turkey Hill (tandems are fast down hill) and addressing me said, "Dude, did you see how we passed. . ."

Everyone looked and Lauren, the oldest child, said, "Did you just call Dad Dude?"

She did.  And kept talking.  Slowly over the next week, the other kids started calling me Dude.  And I have been Dude ever since.  I still get some odd looks in public places when one of my kids, particularly my adopted kids, turn to me and say something that begins "Dude,  . . ."

But it seems to be the rule of nicknames that they are more funny than fitting.

My daughter Lauren and Lisa, like me, were called Goose by coaches on the teams the played on.  Goose never really stuck with either of them.  Lauren, who is 5'10" and was the thug/enforcer on her high school basketball and soccer teams, still has the nickname "Sissy."  Which is like calling a fat guy "Tiny."  The whole family calls her Sissy.

Some nicknames make sense.  My bunkmate in basic was Leonard Norwood from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53.  He was, no surprise, "Bama."  In the next bunk was our mutual friend "Jersey."

An odd occurrence of nicknames was happened about the time my older daughters went off to college.  Nigel and Lisa were the only two kids in the house.  They started calling each other "Pumpkin" and "Muffin."  But the names were not for one person.  If Lisa left for school and said, "Goodbye Pumpkin" Nigel would say, "Bye Muffin."  The next time Lisa might be Pumpkin and Nigel Muffin.  They still do it occasionally now, seven years later.

Do you have an odd nickname?  Let me know what it is?



Saturday, January 11, 2014

Fog on Muir Field Today

The hangar at Muir Field, Fort Indiantown Gap held four change of command ceremonies today.

Here's what the airstrip looked like.






Monday, January 6, 2014

Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Culture--Dismissing Women Soldiers

One of the books I read over the holidays was Anthony Esolen's Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Culture.  This 357-page book is a delightful guide to western culture from its beginnings in Greece through Rome up until about the 19th Century.  At that point about two centuries ago, Esolen thinks our culture went off the rails.  The book continues through the time just before the Great Recession began at the end of the Bush administration in 2008.

This is the fourth book I have read by Esolen.  The other three I read in Iraq: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, Esolen's excellent translations of the three sections of Dante's Divine Comedy.

Throughout the book Esolen makes points for the Conservative view of politics and rarely concedes its excesses.  He does at one point admit Senator Joseph McCarthy might have been a bit much, but the entire right wing talk radio universe gets not a whisper of criticism.

Although Esolen is pro-military, he throws scorn on women soldiers.  He said that any "Private Benjamin" would be crushed by a third-string, bench-riding high school football player.  That may be true, but the modern military is not all about brute strength and Esolen, along with most leading Conservatives in America, helped to create the circumstances that made women an integral part of the modern volunteer Army.

When I enlisted during the Viet Nam War in 1972, the draft still technically existed but it was clear that suburban boys like me from the Northeast were not getting drafted.  Women were a small part of the military.

When I enlisted, Mitt Romney and William Kristol were deployed at Harvard University seven miles from my home town.  Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly and thousands of other big names in the Conservative movement got deferments and let poor kids serve in their place.  After the draft was over and military service was optional, Esolen and other men younger than draft age did not serve.  Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck or most other Conservatives in their 50s fall in this category.

Now you could say that those who did not serve had every right to avoid the draft by legal means, or choose not to enlist when the draft was over.  And you would be right.  But when draft evasion is the norm someone else has to serve.  Women stepped up while Esolen got a PhD.  And in his book, Esolen admires the Athens of Pericles where all the men were required to be fit and ready to defend their city.

In 2007 I was able to re-enlist at 54 years old after 23 years as a civilian because the Army had temporarily raised the enlistment age. I was too old to re-enlist when 9-11 happened, but I got in with a waiver six years later when the law changed.  Why did the law change?  Because right when The Surge was in full swing in Iraq, a country that claims to have nearly 100 million Conservatives could not fill its recruiting goals.  So old men like me and women filled the of the places left vacant by those who did not serve.

When I was in Iraq, I saw women take off in horrible dust storms to rescue soldiers attacked on the roads and at Forward Operating Bases around Camp Adder.

Until that bench-riding football player flies a Blackhawk Helicopter into a sandstorm to rescue fellow soldiers or jumps out of that helicopter and runs to care for that wounded soldier, like the female pilots and flight medics I knew, the fact that he could possibly beat one of them in a school-yard brawl means nothing.

Esolen and Limbaugh and other Conservatives can make fun of women in the military, but that bench-riding football player will most likely get a college education and never serve while a women steps up and takes her place in the military.




Saturday, January 4, 2014

“That Was a Wake Up Call” Optimism Bias and Death




In five months I will be 61 years old.  Each year I am alive I am more likely to hear the phrase “That Was a Wake Up Call” from someone I know, either about themselves or someone they hold dear. 

I don’t know who will say it, or the exact reason, but the person who says it will be the only one surprised about the heart attack, stroke, or other near-death experience that lead to the comment.

In November of last year, I went to a business lunch at the Yale Club in New York.  The speaker was the CEO of a billion-dollar chemical company.  His topic was how he led his company to grow nearly double in size during the preceding five years, the worst recession in the last 80 years. 

This genial, affable man spoke easily about encouraging the previous management team to “seek new opportunities.”  In a near quote of Mitt Romney, he said a couple of those people thanked him when they found better work.  He closed plants, moved production to countries with “more attractive work environments” and did what managers do to succeed in a global market.

When he talked about the key moves he made on the road to success, important hires, deals closed, these events occurred during dinners at expensive restaurants.  “Get him to dinner and I’ll close the deal,” he said with a smile about one important acquisition.  He looked the part.  Five feet, nine inches tall, a tailored suit draped over a mid-section created by many dinners and missed gym workouts.

While he spoke, I looked up his bio on the web.  He is 66 years old. Toward the end of the talk he said he planned to lead the company for two or three more years to complete plans he had then retire. 

Won’t that be fun.

Let me hazard a guess that the successful CEO currently takes a dozen prescription medicines to stave off the effects of eating too much and exercising too little—or simply of being too short for your weight.  By age 69 or 70, Mr. Success will be on more medication.  He will suddenly lose the adrenaline rush of leading a successful company. 

If he survives the heart attack, stroke, or other health catastrophe he will tell his family and friends “That Was a Wake Up Call.” 

Really???  A wake up call?  So for 40 years you overate watched your toes disappear in the shower, moved to the next waist size in you suit pants every three years, and the heart attack is a wake up call?  Were you in a coma?

It turns out that most humans have a view known in psychology as Optimism Bias.  Even when we understand risk, we think it will happen to everyone but us.  In this case, the CEO, if he took a survey, would rate the likelihood that a fit person his age would have a heart attack at something less than 20%.  He would rate the likelihood for someone with his height, weight and exercise pattern as 70+ % likely to have a heart attack.  But he would rate HIS OWN likelihood of having a heart attack as roughly the same as the healthy man his age.

We all do it.  College students who drink think those who drink to excess are more likely to be robbed, assaulted, flunk courses etc.  They think non-drinking students have little danger.  If they themselves are binge drinkers, they rate their own danger as similar to non-drinkers. 

Mr. CEO will very likely have a near-death experience within a year after he retires, if not before.  “That Was a Wake Up Call” will be what he says.  He will say it because Optimism Bias has lulled the otherwise hard-nosed man who can close a factory with no regret into a sunshine and rainbows view of his own health.

Many of the soldiers I serve with are already on the path to their own Wake Up Call.  Some are in their 20s, flunking the fitness test, overweight and building up to a sad later life.  And at 60 years old, 60 pounds overweight and 60 beers a week, that heart attack will be a shock. 

I smoked a pack a day for more than 15 years.  I stopped at 33 years old and haven’t smoked since.  One thing that helped me to stop though not immediately was writing obituaries.  Back in the 80s when more than a third of adult males smoked, obituaries of men came across my desk in two groups:  non-smokers died between 75 and 85 of various diseases, smokers died between ages 57 and 63 of heart attacks and lung cancer.  After a year of obituaries, I lost my Optimism Bias.



Tuesday, December 31, 2013

More Christmas Hats from Iraq 2009

I'll keep posting these pictures from the 2009-10 deployment.

Jesse Kline

Aaron Trimmer

Ashley Soulsby

Rashine Brunner

Timothy Huss

Huss and Brunner
 Mike Dolinsky
Mike Dolinsky

Monday, December 30, 2013

More Christmas 2009 in Iraq

Another group of Christmas pictures:
 Jonathan Marak
 Brian Marquardt
 Brett Feddersen
 Scott Perry

Laura Miltenberger

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Christmas in Iraq 2009

Posting some photos from Christmas in Iraq, 2009


 Jeremy Houck


Dan Lake





Dan and Jeremy





Glen Valencia

Kimberly Stekovich and Andrea Magee

Kimberly Stekovich and Andrea Magee


Thursday, December 19, 2013

44th Anniversary of My Driver's License!

On December 19th, 1969, I got my driver's license after taking the test at the Metropolitan District Commission office in Woburn, Mass., the next town over from Stoneham, where I grew up.

Getting my license was the best thing that happened in my life up to the moment.  I was obsessed with cars and all things with engines.  I still am obsessed with wheels, but am more crazed with bicycles than cars and motorcycles.

When we drove down the highway on family trips, I was counting the wheels on trucks passing in the other direction.  On the trips in New York state I could count the wheels on double-trailer rigs that had up to 34 wheels and tires.

My Dad was a warehouseman and drove occasionally when the grocery company where he worked was short of drivers.  Dad did not try to make me obsessed with cars and trucks, but his actions had that effect.  He worked six days a week and fell asleep watching football every Sunday afternoon.

The times we spent together were always a drive.  He did the grocery shopping and I went along. Sometimes in the evening he would say, "Let's go for coffee."  We would drive to Howard Johnson's or a diner he liked.  Dad would tell jokes to the waitresses and the customers.  I learned that coffee and jokes were the best part of life.  (Health note:  I drank hot chocolate.)


But the day my father made me completely car/truck crazy was in 1961.  I was in Miss Bovernick's 3rd Grade Class at Robin Hood Elementary School.  Dad knew which class was mine.  The windows in our class faced the semi-circular driveway in front of the school.

Dad was taking a load of frozen food to New Hampshire on a Friday afternoon in the Spring.  He stopped on the way to pick me up at school after lunch.  He parked the 40-foot semi with a bright red Mack B-61 tractor right in the driver.  The idling diesel engine rattled the windows.  The whole class ran to the windows to see the truck.

My Dad walked in class and asked Miss Bovernick is he could take me out of school early.  Third grade doesn't get any better than leaving school early to ride to New Hampshire in a bright red Mack truck.

If you want to get a little boy crazed over cars and trucks, that's the way to do it.

I joined the Teamster's Union and worked in the warehouse after graduation, but never became a truck driver.  Though I did drive a lot of diesel vehicles in the Army.



Friday, December 13, 2013

Photos From Drill Weekend

Frozen flight line

Cold in Johnstown

Inside a Chinook on the flight to Johnstown


On the Chinook

The walk back to the hangar

Lunch in Johnstown

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!!




Sometimes I wonder, 'Why did I re-enlist at my age?'
Or 'What am I doing in the Army at 60?'

Then I get a chance to do something that only a soldier would think is awesome and then I think, 'I re-enlisted because I love this shit!'

On Saturday, the boys and I gave one of my friends a ride to the Philadelphia airport.  We were in Philadelphia so it should have been a 15-minute trip.  No problem.

We got on I-95 and drove quickly past the stadiums.  I looked ahead at the long approach to the bridge over the Delaware.

We had just passed the last exit on this side of the Delaware River and all the traffic was stopped.  I was in the left lane.  It was a clear day.  I could see a mile ahead.  Just before the bridge itself all four lanes of traffic were stopped.

Nothing was moving and traffic was stacking up.  Within seconds we came to a stop.  I looked up the road at nearly a thousand cars four lanes wide.  And I got angry.  I knew at least one lane could get through no matter how bad the accident was.

I stopped the car and asked my passenger to get in the drivers seat.  I happened to be wearing running shoes, so I took off running fast along the left side of the road past all the stopped cars to the accident site.  Three cars were wrecked and twisted.  The left lane was clear.  A guy standing there was half-heartedly waving cars through.

I told him I am in the Army and can handle this.  He went back to help with the accident.

I pointed at the first car in line, waved my arm and put my whole body into the motion.  He moved, fast.  Next car followed.  I kept waving.  Third car the driver's eyes wandered to the accident.  I pointed straight at him and waved to get moving.  If his windows were down he might have heard me yell encouragement using short words with CK sounds.

I kept wave, the cars started merging and moving.  When anyone started gawking, I moved toward the car and waved to get moving.  One guy slowed.  His passenger rolled down the window and started video recording.  I stood between him and the scene and told him to keep moving in a way that indicated his IQ was lower than a bag of ball peen hammers.

It was so much fun.  Less than 10 minutes later, my car was passing the accident site.  I jumped in and we took off.

Thanksgiving weekend was a lot of fun in many ways, but that ten minutes on the approach to the bridge showed me why I should be a soldier.  I'm too old to be a cop.



Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on t...