Friday, April 4, 2014

My Wife Says This Story is Creepy

WARNING:  My wife read this story and said it was too creepy for a family blog.  It is a story I wrote about what I thought might happen if our base was attacked.  It is fiction.
One way I will be making the transition out of the Army is to begin writing stories set in the places I served.  In this story, Camp Adder, Iraq, gets attacked, which never happened during the time I was there.
-----------------------------




I died happy.  The bullet tore through my neck, sliced my aorta, and severed my spine. I grabbed my neck and tried to scream, but the scream in my head was just gurgling in my throat.  The men around me just saw me slump to the ground.  No sound from me.  Just the single shot that ripped the air and the hollow thunk as the round tore through my throat and spiraled through my chest.

I stopped breathing right away with all the blood in my throat.  I was dead as soon as my body hit the ground and brain dead as I bled out on the Iraqi tarmac.  The AK-47 round broke the titanium plate that held my neck together.  The neurosurgeon that had put in the plate said if I got hit by a Humvee that plate would hold the last three vertebra in my neck together.  He didn’t say anything about an AK round.

My last tour ended when the Blackhawk crashed and I broke my neck.  I left that tour on a MEDEVAC to Germany.  This time I would go home in a body bag.  No agony this time.  If I have to die, I am glad it was fast.

My soul was on its way to Purgatory.  Would I be there in a second, a minute, hours, who knows?  Time was smearing. I am not supposed to believe in Purgatory; I am a Presbyterian. But belief makes no difference here.  We think we know who God is when he is far away, like a star light years away is just a shining circle in the sky.  Here you know there is someone in charge.  Someone powerful and real.  Someone close, but mysterious too. The corpse bleeding out at the Camp Adder west gate is starting to seem like someone I used to know.

I can’t say any more now.  The OPSEC rules are tight in eternity.  But I can see the place I died.  The gunner on our MRAP armored truck is swinging the turret looking for something, someone to light up.  The rest of the squad is down at the gate or behind the berm looking for the Hadji motherfucker who killed me. 

I can’t tell anybody, but the little bastard is 200 meters out buried in the dune.  He knew this would be a suicide mission.  His Momma in Nasariyah is getting $2000 for this. Now he is out there with his gun under belly, stone still having seventy-second thoughts about getting his virgins. 

The Apaches are up.  If the little fuck can stay still he might last till morning.  Sergeant Blewell is on the radio.  Major Tedesco is in the lead Apache.  Blewell is cold furious about me being dead.  Not like I am a teacher’s pet or anything but she trained us and she was waiting for us at the gate. Now this little fuck dropped one of her boys and there ain’t no way she will sit still for that.

The gunner on the MRAP sees something on the dune 200 meters southwest of the gate.  Tracers slam into the sand.  The Apaches swoop down from their scan toward the impact zone. 

Nothing.  Minutes pass.

Then fifty meters right of the MRAP gunners aiming point, Hadji loses his nerve and bolts.  Tedesco and the .50 cal gunner both see the kid jump.  Three steps later he is vaporized by 100 machine gun rounds, as many 30mm cannon shells from the lead Apache and the rounds from a half-dozen M4s. 

Sergeant Blewell emptied the magazine from her M4.  As soon as the Apaches pulled up Blewell started running toward the body—or the smear.  “There better not be a piece left of him bigger than an ant’s asshole,” she said as the nearest fire team looked at each other then ran after her. 

The three men grabbed her by the arms and the vest.  “You know you can’t go out there Sergeant Blewell,”  the team leader said.  “They’ll bust your ass to E-fuckin’-nothin’.”  She struggled, but she knew they were right.  And she was NOT going to get dragged back.  She turned and walked back to the gate in the last light of the dirty sunset.

I was gone.  I was being pulled up so high or far or something that I could not tell what was happening. 

Then I was on my face in the dirt.  I picked up my head and saw a brown face in front of me.  He was lying on his belly too.  By the look on his face he had no more idea where he was than I did.  I could swear I knew this guy, but he looked like an Arab GQ model.  How would I know a dude from an airbrushed magazine cover? 

Then I knew who he was.  He was the vaporized little fuck that killed me. 

And I knew at that moment that we whatever we were going through we were going to be partners.

Shit!!!

Going to heaven is supposed some kind of family reunion with rainbows and unicorns and shit. 

Fuck.  It means I have to love the little shitbag who shot me. I knew this eternity shit would have a catch.

He smiled weakly and reached toward me with a dark, open hand. 

We grabbed each other’s hands.  They were real hands.  We had bodies. 


A mountain loomed in front of us. I knew we had to go.  I think he did too. 

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Review of The Intelligencer, a novel by Leslie Silbert






Christopher Marlowe, the playwright and spy for Her Majesty, was betrayed and murdered on May 30, 1597.  The story of Marlowe’s last month is told in parallel with a present-day tale of theft of Marlowe’s spy reports that leads to murder, betrayal, theft and deception in the delightful book The Intelligencer. 

This fast-moving thriller is the first novel by a woman whose background includes Renaissance scholar, private investigator and Harvard graduate.  I enjoyed the novel from the first page.  Silbert weaves the two stories together well, both in the way she moves from the present to the past and back and in bring the two tales together in the conclusion. 
While I enjoyed the whole book, the most memorable and vivid parts of the novel for me were the parts in Elizabethan England.  Silbert made me see and feel the vivid emotions of a world where death is always close at hand, and stench overwhelmed the senses. 

The modern scenes were intriguing, but less vivid.  One exception was the robbery gone wrong that is a bright thread that leads from the beginning to the end of the book.  While the robbery is set in the modern day, the robber is a baron gone bad with sensibilities that at least go back to Victoria if not all the way to Elizabeth. 


When I met the author on a train from Washington last month, she had three mystery novels she had just bought in Union Station.  She said she was doing competitive research.  I hope she writes another novel set partially or completely in Renaissance Europe.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a thriller, but particularly to readers who want a tale well told from a world lit by fire.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Preparing for Life After Army


I looked like this the night before my military career started.
I hope I make the transition out more smoothly!



Since August of 2007, this blog has been my external memory about life as a very old soldier.  Next year, that phase of my life will come to an end.  To that end, I decided to start writing about all of my life, not just the Army part of it. 

When I started this blog, rejoining the Army was a wide-eyed adventure for me.  It was a strange journey I could share with friends and family.  It turns out that many more people started reading my posts to get an idea of Army life.  Especially when I was in Iraq, I could provide a view of life for soldiers families that the soldiers themselves would not.

Beginning in July, I will start unraveling my identity.  This journey is in some ways more scary than becoming a soldier at 54.  Beginning in July of this year, I will no longer be employed full time.  If the arrangement I proposed is accepted, I will become a consultant, working just two days a week at what is currently my full-time job. 

I have worked full time since my senior year of high school.  From age twelve to seventeen, I worked full-time in the warehouse where my father worked during the summers.  Since 1970, I have collected unemployment twice for two weeks each time.  Full-time worker, either blue-collar or professional, is how I see myself.

Will I survive part-time work?  It seems like a great thing:  more time to read, write, ride, run and swim. 

I will be the primary parent for the boys.  Will that be my identity? 

Unless by some miracle I am extended again, I will leave the Army National Guard in May 2015 with 18 years an no retirement.  Even if I stay for 20, the arcane retirement rules may leave outside of the retirement system. 

Right now I shave every morning and cut my hair “high and tight” and do not have to think about growing a beard.  Not allowed.  What happens when I am a civilian and all things are possible.  Will I be a weird old guy with an Army haircut?  Grow my hair, a beard?

Will I return to being a bicycle racer?  I have a license.  I still ride.  Will I have enough time to ride 10,000 miles per year and become (somewhat) competitive again?  When I rode that much, I was not in the Army, I didn’t run, or swim or do much of anything (for exercise) except ride. 

When I work part time, I will be writing, but only those two days a week.  I could write more.  I will be a civilian.  I could write about anything.  Would writer be my identity?  I am a writer now because I get paid to do it.  I would like to write with no commercial purpose.  Right now I am on a plane listening to a crew member read a script about why I should sign up for a SkyMiles credit card.  I could have written that.  I don’t want to.

After today, I will write about all the rest of my life on what is an Army blog, because many things I do for the next year will be part of the transition out of camouflage and into spandex and denim.

So you will hear more about my wife and kids and friends.  I will still write about the Army stuff. This year in particular, I plan to write about more soldiers during summer camp.


Monday, March 31, 2014

Aviation Ball--Sorry, No Pictures

I went to the Aviation Ball, the annual full-dress dining out for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  Last night's event was bigger than last year with more than 300 soldiers and guests representing Pennsylvania Army Aviation.

Since I knew I was leaving for a meeting in New Orleans early the next morning, I gave Capt. Miller the memory card from my camera before I left.  So I have no pictures.  Eventually I will get the chip back.

It was a lot of fun.  The Hershey Lodge is big enough to hold an event for a group this size but without all the parking and traffic hassles of a city location.

In June all of my Army last-year countdowns start.  June 6-22 will be my last Army summer camp.  Every month thereafter I will do something else for the last time in our annual round of training.  Then in May 2015, I will go back to being a civilian.

More on that later.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman Triathlon



Three weeks ago, I climbed out of the Lancaster YMCA pool and sat in the hot tub:  In 2 hours and 8 minutes I swam 4,250 yards.  In ten minutes in the hot tub, I just sat.  The I grabbed some food, changed and rode 30 miles.

Since that Saturday, I have ridden almost 400 miles, run 30 miles and swam eight more miles training for an Ironman this August.

Training is the biggest difference between the Tough Mudder and the Ironman Triathlon.

My training for the Tough Mudder was running and keeping in shape for half marathons and the gyms workouts I was already doing for the Army Fitness Test.  If you can pass the Army Fitness test and run a slow half marathon, you have the fitness necessary to do the Tough Mudder.

The real challenge of the Tough Mudder are its signature obstacles.  You do not have to be in terrific shape to run and crawl through 10,000-volt wires, nor do you need endurance to swim 30 feet including passing under a wall in an ice-filled dumpster.

The Tough Mudder, true to its name, requires more toughness than fitness.  I got shocked badly enough last summer that I will not do the Tough Mudder again.

On the other hand, the Ironman is all training and little danger, relative to the Tough Mudder.

But the training swallows all the free time in the triathletes life.  Someone asked my kids what they do in the evenings.  "Go to the gym," was my sons' answer in unison.  In the gym I run and swim while they play basketball.

Now that the weather is better I will be on the bike training for my best event, the 112-mile bike.  The bike alone will take longer than a Tough Mudder and I will have a 2.4-mile swim behind me and a marathon ahead.

Which is tougher?  If ice, shocks and high platforms are your cup of tea, the Ironman is much, much tougher and requires much more training.  But if facing real pain and danger are not part of your plan, the Tough Mudder obstacles may be worse than the training required for an Ironman.

If I successfully complete the Kentucky Ironman this year, it will be my first and last Ironman.  In fact if I make the swim and the bike but drop out or pass out on the run, I will be happy.  I want to go back to bicycle racing in my old age.


Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 3

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 2

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman is Here

Second Tough Mudder Report

First Tough Mudder Finish

First Tough Mudder Photos

First Tough Mudder Entry

Ironman Plans

Ironman Training

Ironman Bucket List

Ironman Idea

Ironman Danger

Ironman Friendship

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Gas Chamber Training This Weekend

On Saturday morning, I went to the supply room to get a gas mask.  My company was scheduled for annual gas mask training.

We look lovely:


Last drill we got our masks properly fitted.  This weekend the training NCO filled a concrete blockhouse with something like tear gas.  We filed into the room, lifted our masks for a leak check and reseal drill, then pulled of the masks and ran out.


Ran out crying, coughing and choking.

And people ask me, "What are you doing in the Army at your age?"  I would have to travel to Kiev to have this much fun!!



Friday, March 14, 2014

Soldier on a Train: Talking about the Cold War with a Suspense Writer

Last week in one of the over-scheduled trips I make as part of my day job, I flew from Chicago to Philadelphia on the morning of Tuesday, March 4.  I was in uniform because there is no better way to fly than in uniform.  In 15 months when I get out, this is the benefit I may miss the most.

At about 3 pm I was on Rt. 95 driving to a Public Science meeting in DC.  Because of traffic at that time of day, I did not drive all the way to DC, but stopped at the BWI Airport rail station and took a train into Union Station then a Metro to Busboys and Poets Cafe where the meeting was being held.

The meeting was a science writers travelogue of two visits to North Korea.  He was very funny about his North Korean handlers, even while painting a very bleak picture of North Korea.

At 9pm I was back in Union Station and just made the 9:05 train to BWI.  I sat in cafe car and a young woman sat opposite me.  As she sat down she took three thick paperback novels from a bag and said, "I'm checking out the competition."  The woman I sat with for the next 20 minutes was Leslie Silbert, author of "The Intelligencer:" a spy novel set in 16th Century London and in New York today.  Her main character in the late 1500s is the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was a spy for Queen Elizabeth.

We talked a little bit about her book and that she is writing another suspense novel.  But with Ukraine and Crimea in the news, the conversation turned to the Cold War.  She asked me a lot of questions about being a tank commander on the East-West border and what we thought about war with Russia.  That question was easy:  We thought there would be a war and that we would die in the first ten minutes.

I bought the book and really like it so far, especially the parts about Marlowe and spying in 16th Century London.  As you would expect, she has a web site: http://lesliesilbert.com/

On the opposite side of the aisle was a guy who knew a lot about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.  It was an interesting conversation with two very bright people (and me).  It was fun to remember again how different the world looked during the Cold War when we had any enemy with planes, ships, tanks and uniforms.  I was thinking, at least if we go to war with Russia, we won't be trying to "win hearts and minds."

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Do You Want to Re-Enlist?

Today I got a call from the retention sergeant in my unit.  We have not met and he did not look very carefully at my file, because he left me a message saying I have 15 months before my discharge date and he wanted to know my re-enlistment plans.

So I returned the call when I left the meeting was in and reached another sergeant in the unit who knows me.  I told her about the call.  I asked her to pass on the message that I think it very unlikely I could get an extension beyond the one I am on already, but if he has some magic in that regard, I would definitely extend or re-enlist for as long as could write the contract for.

I am assuming he will not be returning the call.

It would be fun to stay in longer.  Also, if I could stay another two years I might be able to retire.  Another sergeant in my unit, the only enlisted man older than me in the PA National Guard, is 61 years old and applying for another two-year extension for himself.  Coincidentally, his name is Guzman.  The admin sergeant in our unit says if Guzman gets an extension, maybe Gussman has a chance also.

With all the news about military cutbacks, it seems most likely Gussman and Guzman are both going to be civilians in the next year or so.  But it's worth trying.

Good Luck Guzman!!!!

Monday, February 24, 2014

NCO of the Year Board--I didn't make it.

Four members of the six-member panel:  Command Sgt. Maj. Christine, CSM Livolsi, CSM Dowling and CSM Worley.  Not pictured 1st Sgt. Madonna and 1SG Williard.

Most of the day on Sunday's drill I was getting ready for or decompressing after the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade NCO of the Year selection board.  My company asked me to participate three weeks ago.  The sergeant who was their first pick had something wrong with his paperwork, so I was filling the space.  Still, I was happy to be the backup choice in a competition for NCO of the Year.

Then I got the study guides.  Wow!  To be the Soldier/NCO of the Year you have to know soooooooooooo much stuff!!!  

I tried to study on the train back and forth to work, but I had work to do also.  And there was so much to learn, I would have had to take vacation to learn a tenth of it.

Each CSM and 1SG asked me three questions in each of three categories.  The answers they wanted were specific:  five kinds of counseling, three types of judicial punishment, four reasons a soldier can be reduced in rank, six step of immediate action in the event of a misfire with an M16 rifle, and so on.  I correctly answered less than a third, partially answered more.  

Two categories I was perfect:  current events and Army history.  Current events is not scored. But at least I aced something.  Later at least a dozen of my friends said the reason I aced the history is because I served with General Custer.

It was stressful being in front of the board.  I did not study enough and I did not like missing the questions.

I talked to CSM Christine later in the evening and he said that the best candidates devote significant time to preparation.  He said, "With a full-time job and all your kids, I don't see how you could have had time to prepare."  Clearly I did not.  And it was kind of him to let me know he knew that.  

But it was fun to see first hand how tough these boards are, and to see how well I could do.



Monday, February 17, 2014

"Old" Soldiers on a Train



Today on the train ride to Philadelphia I sat with Drew Cluley.  He works for Amtrak and is a squad leader in a PA National Guard Engineer Battalion.  Drew has been on three deployments. The first was an active duty deployment with the Marines.  The second was to Camp Adder in 2009-10 where we were both in Echo Company, 2-104th.  The third was to Kuwait with his current unit.

The first thing we talked about was the food.  Would we ever eat as well again as we ate on deployment?  No likely.  We rhapsodized about our particular favorites:  the fresh-cut fresh fruit at Camp Adder and the first-rate cheesecake in Kuwait.

Drew said he had just spent the weekend in Lancaster and was with Brian Pauli, another Echo soldier.  Brian got commissioned after Iraq and is going to make Captain next month.

Then we started talking about when the Army went wrong--ending in the lamentable state it is in today.  Because to old soldiers (even when they are barely 30) the "old army" is always better.

But Drew had an idea I had never thought of.  He said that the post-draft Army of the 70s tried to sell itself as a "family" organization.  That worked well until Sept. 11, 2001.  If I had stayed in, I could have gotten to 20 years with only the Gulf War as a place I might deploy.  And that war was over so fast that no one redeployed.

Drew said if the Army had stayed with being "soldier unfriendly" it would be a better Army.  We were also talking about the book "Thank You For Your Service."  That book is a harrowing chronicle of how bad our protracted wars are for families as well as soldiers.

When I first enlisted, Drill Sergeants still said, "The Army would have issued you a wife if you needed one."

Most of the replacement soldiers in our tank battalion after 1975 fir this description: 19-year-old man with a 17-year-old wife pregnant with first or second kid.

Old soldiers never die, they just get more opinionated.

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.

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...