My Father's First Command: A Black Supply Company

Louis Armstrong Played for My Father's Soldiers at Camp Shenango, Pa.

My father, George Gussman, enlisted in the Army at the end of 1939.  He was 34 years old and at the end of his career as a middleweight boxer and a pitcher for the Reading Phillies.  He was the fourth of six sons of Jewish immigrants from the Russia.  They arrived at the beginning of the century.  My father and his older brothers only went to Boston Latin school until the 8th grade.  The younger boys got all the way through high school--business was better by that time for grandpa.

Dad was a warehouseman in a bad economy and the Army was a steady job.  He took a two-year enlistment which was to end in mid-December 1941.  Dad was packed up to go home in the second week in December.  He never left.

On December 8, 1941, all discharges were cancelled and enlistments extended for the duration of the war.

With war declared many rules changed and the Army sent George to Officer Candidate School.  In 1942 he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and sent to Camp Shenango, Pa., near Erie.  His first command was a black company, a supply company that also repaired stoves for camps and bases across Pennsylvania.

Dad kept a scrapbook of his soldiers which I am hoping to scan and post later this year.  Among those pictures is a picture of Louis Armstrong signed with a a note saying "To My Boy Guss."  It is one of the many pictures my father carefully kept from his first command.  Dad kept in touch with several of the soldiers he served with long after the war ended.

After more than a year in charge of the company in Shenango, Dad went to Fort Indiantown Gap where I serve now.  Then as a captain, he took command of 600 Afrika Korps German prisoners in what is now the Reading Airport.

It hadn't occurred to me until today, but it is possible my sons are related to one of my Dad's soldiers.  Most of his men came from Pennsylvania.  My adopted sons were born in Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.  It's not likely, but in a world so different from the one Dad lived in, there might be a direct connection between his first command and his son's family.

  

My People: Real Americans, Refugees Running from Killers

Millions of Americans came here from around the globe running from torment and death. They came here as my grandparents did, running from persecution and wanting a place where they could live and raise kids without being suddenly murdered in God's name or the Tsar's name.

My grandparents, Hyman and Esther Gussman, came to America from Odessa, Russia, in about 1900, coming ashore in Boston.  The picture above is one of the big reasons they left--pogroms by the Cossacks that killed at least a million Russian Jews.

It is clear when you look at other countries around the world that America does a better job of assimilation, of making immigrants into Americans, than any other country.

The reason, I believe, is that we have a common culture that is easy to understand and easy to adopt.

For good or for ill, the common culture of America is success and money.  To become American is to leave extremism and make money.  It used to be called making good.

In a cruel parody of faith, America even assimilated Christianity.  We lead the world in millionaire preachers.  Hellfire has almost disappeared from our pulpits.  Now the most popular Churches preach some version of health, wealth and success.  These Churches love celebrities and millionaires, and set them up as the Blessed, replacing the martyrs of the suffering Church.

My grandparents went from being oppressed Jews in Russia to being Americans.  In Russia a million Jews were killed for being Jews.  America takes people suffering under radicals of all kinds and gives them the possibility of health and wealth.

My father was the fourth if six boys born to Esther and Hyman Gussman.  In the names of the six boys you see assimilation. Beginning with the oldest they are Abraham, Emmanuel, Ralph, George, Lewis and Harold.  Every time my father spoke of his oldest brothers they were Abe and Manny.  The Gussmans lived on Blue Hill Avenue, a street known as Jew Hill Avenue at the beginning of the 20th Century.  In the 1920s, the Gussmans had 14 cars, trucks and motorcycles parked somewhere in the vicinity of the family home.  Hyman had a successful fruit business.  And his one return trip to the old country turned into two years of being hunted by the Russian Army.  He never left Boston again.

Although all of my uncles married Jewish women, none of my relatives were particularly religious. My mother was not Jewish.  Growing up we had a small tinsel tree Dad called a Channukah Bush.   My father stayed home from work on some Jewish holidays because the warehouse where he worked was owned by Jews from the old neighborhood.  But we never went to Synagogue.  We went out to eat.

My father's family are real Americans.  They went from a place where religion meant death, and they embraced life in America.  Grandpa ran a successful business most of his life.  My uncle Lewis went into the same business and became a millionaire when that was a lot of money.  Lewis, like my grandmother Esther, lived to be 100. All of the the other brothers had houses in the suburbs and families.

Of all the uncles and cousins in the Gussman clan, only my father and I ever served in the Army.  We both were very old soldiers.  The rest of the family, like nearly all well off families in the northeast, did not join the military.  I enlisted partly because I had heard my Dad's stories from World War 2 all the time I was growing up and it was clear they were the best years of his life.  I also enlisted because my favorite uncle, Jack, my mother's half brother, was on his third tour in Viet Nam when I graduated high school.  Jack was the coolest guy in our family by far.

My aversion to Fundamentalism in any form, to religious extremism especially in politics, and to religion masquerading as science comes from my upbringing.  Because my family has kids later than most, I am just one generation away from people who escaped the Pogroms of Tsarist Russia.

My people run away from religious radicals.

When real Americans see fanatics, they change the channel.

Who Are My People?

When I was in Iraq, I started writing under the general title “Who Fights Our Wars?” when I wrote about the soldiers I served with.

At the end of June last year, I retired as a civilian.  In May of this year or next year I will leave the Army.  When I leave the Army, there will no longer be anyone in my life I am paid to hang around with.  Everyone in my life will be a friend, a family member, or someone I chose to associate with.

Which has led me to think about “Who are my people?”  So in the same way I have been writing about soldiers I served with, I will write about people with whom I share some activity, which means we share time and space together.  Some of these people are or were soldiers.  Some are not. 

I decided to write about these people because one of the reasons I had for going back in the Army at 54 years old was how much I missed the deep connection I had with some of the people I served with on active duty in the 1970s.

It turned out this ability to connect with people had to do with the circumstances we were in.  The regular Army puts people close together for weeks and months on end.  The National Guard brings people together for just one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.  When we trained for and deployed to Iraq and really were jammed together, it should be no surprise to anyone that a 55-year-old guy does not quite blend into a group of 20 year olds.  Socially, I blended in like a Vegan at a Bull Roast.

So I have been thinking a lot lately about who my people are, what they do, what we do together. 

In his book “The Four Loves” C.S. Lewis writes about Friendship.  The key moment in finding a friend he says can be the moment of “You too?’  That moment in which we find someone else interested in something we thought no one else loved the way we do. 

So in addition to writing about the people who fight our current wars, or were ready to fight the Soviet Union, I am also going to write about people with whom I share one particular interest, even if the rest of our lives are very different.

Grace Got Married Yesterday

Today I got a wedding picture on Facebook posted by Grace Pak, front row, left.  She was married on December 31.  Earlier this month Lisa Vines was married. She is 6th from the left, next to the Marine, Tyler Giguere.  Ben Simon, fifth from the left, back row, next to me, got married last year.

I know it's not a crazy number of people getting married.  But almost half the class was married when we showed up so 30% of the class got married in just two years.  For that matter 20% got married since December 12.

Being in school with this group was a lot of fun.  I still am in contact with most of them through facebook, even Bill Howard who may or may not actually exist!

Congratulations to Grace and Cris:

To Ben and Heather:  

And to Lisa and Chris:

A World of Friends I Met in Iraq

Today is Fred Lameki's birthday.  He is my only Facebook friend from Kenya.  In fact, the only people I know personally from Kenya, Uganda and several other central African countries are people I met in Iraq.  Fred, like many people from Africa and south Asia worked on Camp Adder, Iraq, and at bases across the country making food and performing a hundred services for to keep the bases working while the soldiers patrolled the ground and the skies.

Most of the baristas in the Green Bean coffee shop were from Nepal, the affable Fred Lameki was one of the Africans who worked making designer coffee for soldiers.

As this new year begins, Iraq seems long ago and far away.  I am glad that with all the money we spent winning the war and losing the peace in Iraq, that some of it went to providing good-paying jobs for men like Fred.

Happy Birthday my friend.

I hope to see you again some day.

Year End Wrap Up: Exercise Turns Civilian, Reading Tops Riding

For the first time since I started riding a bicycle again in 1987, the total number of book pages I read exceeded the number of miles I rode.

This year I rode more than 8,000 miles, probably 8,300 by December 31, but I have read more than 10,000 pages in more than 50 books.  

Also, because I had trouble with my shoulder, I stopped doing pushups.  Every year since I re-enlisted I did more than 6,000 pushups, nearly 15,000 in 2011, but this year, less than 300.  

And I pretty much gave up running after the Ironman triathlon.  I also stopped swimming in September when I took four college classes.  But in the weirdest stat for the year, I swam more miles than I ran:  87 miles swimming, 74 running.  

The most troubling, beautiful, sad book I read this year was "Life and Fate" by Vasily Grossman.  It is the 20th Century version of "War and Peace" centering on Stalingrad.  

Eleven of the 52 books I read this year were written by Russian authors, but all were in English.  I am continuing to study Russian language, but not at the point where I can read Russian.  I can still read French well enough that one of the books I re-read this year was an abridged "Three Musketeers."  

Next semester I will be taking Russian language and 19th Century Russian Literature, so I will continue to have Russian in my mind.  If I leave the Army in May, I will definitely be riding more.  My plan will be to ride 10,000 miles in 2016 to get ready for racing in the 65+ category in 2018.  It's great to be the youngest in an age group!

Our Former Allies: Training Iranian MIssile Technicians at Lowry AFB

Until the Ayatollahs took over in 1979, Iran was an ally of the United States.  They were a very close Cold War ally, bordering the Soviet Union.  Until the Shah's government fell, tens of thousands of Iranian soldiers and airmen trained in the United States.

For eight weeks in 1972, I was part of the training.

After Basic Training in April 1972, I went to Lowry Air Force Base near Denver, Colorado, for an 8-month missile electronics school.  The first eight weeks was basic electronics.  I learned basic electronics from a Ham Radio operator in the town where I grew up, so I tested out of the course, but had eight weeks to wait.

During that eight weeks, I was a tutor for lagging students and foreign students.  During the Spring of 1972, many of those students were Iranian sergeants.  They needed help with vocabulary in addition to the electronics themselves.  It was fun to be able to teach these older guys how a capacitor worked or how to calculate resistance and power in a circuit.

The Iranians really wanted to learn.  The chance to go to school in America was a big privilege, so these guys worked hard.  It was weird to have these mid-20s and older sergeants addressing me formally:  "Airman Gussman, may I ask. . . ".

Iran has always been and still is the most sophisticated and civilized of all the Middle Eastern countries.

The guys I trained would be in their 70s now, if they survived The Revolution.

Right now, Iran is the enemy and no one wants a nuclear Iran.  But Iran was our ally until their particular group of Fundamentalists took over.  They could return to sanity.  Some day.

Cold War Tanker and Star Wars

In May of 1977 the first Star Wars movie was released in America.  Several months later the hit movie came to Armed Forces theaters in West Germany, including the theater on Wiesbaden Air Base.

But many soldiers in 1-70th Armor missed the new film.  We and most other combat arms soldiers were on REFORGER 1977.  When we got back, the next movie was in the theaters.  The only way we could watch it was in dubbed German in town.  We Cold War soldiers missed Star Wars.

I did not leave Germany until November of 1979 and was not on post when the movie came back.  I finally saw Star Wars in the spring of 1980 in an independent theater that was re-running the film just before the June release of the second (and best) of the the first three films, "The Empire Strikes Back."

But I did not see that film until fall in that same theater.  In June of 1980 I had the worst motorcycle accident of my life.  I spent two weeks in the hospital and had surgery on both legs to repair the damage from a 75mph crash.

I saw the third movie when it was released, because I was in the 68th Armor in the Army Reserve in Pennsylvania in 1983.

My Favorite Star Wars Magazine Cover--About a Real War

In 1980, just two months before "The Empire Strikes Back" premiered in America, Britain declared war on Argentina and sent a fleet 8,000 miles to take back the Falkland Islands from an Argentine invasion force.

Newsweek ran this cover.  My favorite magazine cover ever.

I have a longer Star Wars post tomorrow, but I wanted to post this separately.

Adultery and Hypocrisy in the Army

"Don't drink! Don't watch porn! Don't commit adultery!"  These warnings were at the top of the list of the many warnings soldiers received on their way to deployment in Iraq.  I got a half-dozen of these briefings during training for deployment in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and in Kuwait before we actually flew to Iraq.

These briefings were always ironic, sometimes funny.  In 2009 I wrote about one briefing by our 25-year-old company commander who told the married guys about keeping their wedding vows.  He was not married, but he did have a girlfriend.  His lecture is here.

Of course, the hookup culture on the big bases in Iraq was as vibrant as on a college campus.  What the Army was trying to stop was the very common and toxic relationships in which a young enlisted woman becomes the deployment girlfriend of a senior sergeant or officer.

More senior officers than that young commander were more gentle in their warnings.  They said don't sleep with other soldiers.  They could not say watch porn when you are horny, but twisted themselves in verbal knots to suggest the trouble you would get into for porn was much less than for sleeping with another soldier.  That lecture is here.  In that blog post, I mention General Order #1.  One of the stern briefings we received was from General David Petraeus on video telling us we better not commit adultery or it will end our careers!  Turned out it was true in his case.

For the tens of thousands of soldiers lectured by Petraeus, the general's downfall for adultery was sadly funny.  Even more funny because the title of the biography written by his lover is "All In."

But the oddest thing for someone like me who served in the 70s was how different the moral lectures were during the Cold War and the Viet Nam War.  As I wrote yesterday, the main warning on bases in Europe was "Sleep NATO."

No one expected 20-year-olds to be paragons during the draft or the post-draft volunteer Army.  

When I first re-enlisted, I called my best friend.  We were both tank commanders in West Germany in the late 70s.  I said at the time in 2007 that Petraeus and I were about the same age when we were joking about what it meant that I was a 54-year-old enlisted man.  Abel said, "That's right Gussie, you Petraeus both have college degrees, you are both in the Army, except he's a success and your 54-year-old Spec. 4."  Four years later we were joking about how I was a sergeant and Petraeus was a civilian.

But the best line I heard on this whole topic was from a 52-year-old sergeant who was missing several teeth and did not like to wear his dentures.  After one of the morality lectures this sergeant turned to me with a toothless grin and said, "This ain't about us Gussman.  It's about those young bucks."

Speeches, Spys and Sleeping NATO

One of the first things we soldiers of 1st Battalion-70th Armor were told when we deployed to West Germany was, "Sleep NATO."

Even in the 1970s, people from Soviet-controlled nations were fleeing for the West and prosperity.  And among the immigrants were spies.  Spying is a profession with both men and women, but our leaders were mostly concerned about female spies.

Men are most likely to forget their inhibitions and talk too much when their egos are inflated and they are feeling adored and impressive.  In my work in corporate communications, I have occasionally dealt with the aftermath of a CEO or other top executive who gives a speech then answers a reporter's questions afterward saying way too much.  Once in Singapore the CEO I worked for gave a speech that got a resounding ovation.  A reporter asked him about a plant we were building in China and our proud, happy CEO told the reporter, "Yes, it is ahead of schedule." 

We had never admitted in public we were building in China.  The next day, our CEO wanted to know who had leaked the information.  He did, but post-euphoria amnesia made him forget what he said.

A female spy can do exactly the same thing by asking questions at the moment a guy rolls over on his back and smiles at the ceiling.  And he may not remember that he told the spy who just loved him when his unit will be leaving for the border.

I watched the show Alias with my family.  We also watched the series Nikita together.  Sydney Bristow of Alias (Jennifer Garner) and Nikita (Maggie Q) of the series of the same name, are both married to handsome co-stars and manage to conduct successful spy operations around the world without sleeping with their targets.

The Army expected that the soldiers living in Germany during the Cold War would be looking for and finding sex.  They tried to warn us not to sleep with spies. I am sure there were soldiers with conflicting priorities.

Flight Medic Article on Defense.gov

The article I wrote recently about Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Kwiecien just got published on here "Faces of Defense" on defense.gov.  Jeff is a great guy.  I'm glad the story got republished.

Μολων Λαβε: The Tattoo and the Myth

When I re-enlisted in the Army in 2007, I saw several soldiers with Μολων Λαβε tattoos and Μολων Λαβε stickers on their pickup trucks.  I can read Ancient Greek so I looked up the phrase and found it attributed to Leonidas of the Spartans, the leader of the 300 defenders of Thermopylae.

According to one version of the battle, when Xerxes, King of Persia demanded the surrender of the vastly outnumbered Spartans (100,000+ Persians against 300 Spartans), Leonidas answered "Μολων Λαβε" or "Come and take them."  The phrase has come to be seen as the inspiration for the sentiment "I won't give up my guns until you pry my cold, dead hands from them."

 I am currently taking a course in Ancient Greek in which we are reading the Histories of Herodotus.  Right now we are reading the account of the Battle for Thermopylae.  Herodotus wrote about 50 years after the battle and does not mention the exchange between Xerxes and Leonidas.  I asked the professor.  The only account directly mentioning Μολων Λαβε is in Plutarch written more than 500 years after the battle and centuries after Greece was conquered by Rome.

So the historicity of the account is in some question.  And Sparta was a state ruled by tyranny in which the majority of the people were slaves.  There was nothing like the 2nd Amendment in Sparta. If Leonidas said these words, he said them as a man who represented a warrior class, an upper class caste of warrior, nothing like armed common people.  Since the only mention of the phrase is five centuries after the battle, it could well be a myth.

Μολων Λαβε, if Leonidas said it, are the brave words of a King facing certain death.

Leonidas would roll over in his honored grave to think his words would be used as a rallying cry for rebels and anti-government conspiracy theorists.  Leonidas was the government, just as every soldier in every army, especially the "well regulated militia" our founders envisioned in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Μολων Λαβε, on a pickup truck next to a rebel flag means the owner of the truck is an ιδιοτης, an idiot, which means a person having his own ideas apart from his community and therefore is a fool.

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For Greek Geeks:  The two words in the phrase Μολων Λαβε are verbs.  The aorist participle Μολων can be translated "having come or coming" and Λαβε is the imperative singular "Take."
Inflected languages can say much with few words and this phrase is a beautiful example of that.  You can parse it yourself in context here.

How to Lose an Empire

When you hear Conservatives bemoaning America's loss of power, prestige and leadership, the blame will be somewhere other than in themselves.  

The problem is in full view on every Republican debate and and from the top down in the most recent Bush administration.  NOT the previous Bush administration.

The reason the Roman Empire fell will be the same reason we eventually collapse.  Rome went from city to state to ruler of the known world with an Army in which every citizen served.  To be a senator, to be a noble, meant fighting for Rome.  From the founding of America until the end of the first Bush administration, American leaders were men who served their country.  Some were great soldiers, some just showed up, but everyone served unless, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they could not even walk.

The beginning of the end for Rome was when the nobility stopped serving in the Army.  Further deterioration came when the Army went from being mostly Roman to mostly Gauls and Goths and others.  Later the Army was really a mercenary Army.  The Empire split.  The Empire dissolved.

Among the more than 20 candidates of both parties, all of the actual veterans have either dropped out or are barred from the debate:  Rick Perry is gone.  Jim Webb, the only actual combat veteran, is gone.  Lindsey Graham and Jim Gilmore were barred from the "kids table" debate on the eve of Veteran's Day.  

At the center of the debate stage are Donald Trump with five deferments and Ben Carson with three. They actually dodged the draft and let someone else serve in their place.  John Kasich also avoided the draft.  The rest of the candidates simply chose not to serve.  

When the leading citizens of the a country avoid military service and the poor and minorities and immigrants are overrepresented in the Army, then the reason for decline is clear.  Draft dodgers like Rush Limbaugh can make up a thousand other reasons for America's decline, but Rome fell when its leading citizens acted just like America's leaders now.

Terrorism and Gun Violence on Both Sides of the Ocean

A good friend who has been traveling to America on business for more than a decade left Brussels, Belgium, for her current trip to America just days after the Paris shootings while Brussels was still on lock down for a possible second attack.  

Part of her trip to America is to visit her brother in Colorado Springs for Thanksgiving.  So she was there yesterday when a gunman shot eleven people in a Planned Parenthood clinic.  She will be returning to Pennsylvania before going back to Europe.  I hope nothing like this happens in here in Pennsylvania.

But it could.  

Because Fundamentalists of every kind share a common belief that they are right and everybody else is both wrong and can be killed for The Cause.

So murderous Muslim Fundamentalists attack the most civilized city on the planet, and a lone Fundamentalist, reportedly armed with the same weapon, the AK47, shoots eleven people on the day after Thanksgiving.  Because whatever kind of nut-job Fundamentalist he is, the faux God he has made up in his head told him that killing innocent people is the right thing to do.  

Who Fights Our Wars? Flight Medic Leaving For Fifth Deployment

Nearly 100 years ago, young American men were leaving farms across America, joining every branch of the military to fight in World War One.  One in three Americans lived on a farm during the first decades of the 20^th Century so just about every squad of soldiers had farmer.

Today fewer than two in 100 Americans live on farms, but one of those Americans with a small family farm is headed for his fifth deployment.  Sgt. 1^st Class Jeff Kwiecien, a flight medic with nearly 20 years of service, will be leaving for Southwest Asia later this year.  He is deploying with Detachment 1, Charlie Company, 2-104^th General Support Aviation Battalion where he will serve as Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge (NCOIC) of the unit. 

On 4.5 acres in mid-state Pennsylvania, Kwiecien and his family raise chickens, ducks and guinea hens.  He is considering adding goats and bees along with the flock of nearly 50 birds, but those plans are on hold until after deployment.  Raising poultry for eggs and for the table is one of several hobbies Kwiecien has, including making medical apparel, rock climbing and playing the drums.   

Kwiecien joined the Army in 1996, serving on active duty for six years.  He joined the Army National Guard in 2003.  In 19 years of service he has deployed to Bosnia, Saudi Arabia and twice to Iraq, most recently with the 56^th Stryker Brigade in 2009.  He has served on active duty with the Guard since returning from deployment in 2010. 

In a phone interview while he was on a weekend pass, Kwiecien talked about his view of life before going on another deployment. 

I am a product of….

Years of failure.  I am very persistent.  I think that persistence has paid off because after 19 years and many failures I feel like I’ve learned a lot, and like Thomas Edison who figured all the ways not to make a lightbulb, I move on and stick with the things that work.  It’s better to try and fail than to never give your dream a shot.

Several years ago, Kwiecien went to a weekend-long evaluation for a National Guard Special Forces Unit in Maryland.  He got through the first weekend and was told he could come back for the second round of evaluations.  In between he got promoted and by taking the promotion took himself out of the program.  Although he did not make it into the Special Forces, he does not regret the attempt.

Relaxation is…

The search for serenity. Finding the situation or the place that is completely calming.  My big plan after deployment is to go to Zion national Park in Utah with my family. Getting away from civilization and being one with nature. Rock climbing and hiking are things I really look forward to on visits to national parks.

You can have the best idea…

But execution makes a good idea real. A good plan put into motion today and refined as needed is better than a great plan that hasn’t been started.  Hesitation and indecision kill good plans and good ideas.

There is drama…

There’s always drama it’s nothing new and it’s never going away. I tell my soldiers keep your private life private and your professional life professional and I won’t need to be involved in your private life.

The best lesson I ever had…

My dad told me when I was graduating from high school and we were looking at colleges that people should always have a skill in addition to higher education.  When he returns from deployment, Kwiecien will be starting a business making medical clothing for first responders. 

Kwiecien at work:

Wikipedia Loves Weapons, Not Soldiers

This week I had a meeting with a "Wikipedian in Residence" at a history of science museum.  I was asking her about how to put people on Wikipedia.  Specifically, I wanted to write about National Guard First Sergeants and Sergeant's Majors and I thought it would be possible to create Wikipedia pages about some of the top sergeants I would write about.

Not possible.

My friend the Wikipedian went through the rules for creating a page about a person, and it is not possible to create a page about an enlisted soldier, or any soldier below the rank of Major General unless they have received the Medal of Honor or the Distinguished Service Cross.

I understand they have to have rules, but there is no weapon or vehicle that does not have a page. Also, in the context of the entire world of who gets on Wikipedia, it is very clear soldiers are not all Heroes.

Because the real heroes of our culture can and do have Wikipedia pages:

• Every professional athlete in any sport
• Every actor who has ever appeared in a movie
• Every porn star
• Every televangelist
• Every serial killer

The culture may use the word "hero" to refer to the guy who lives down the street and goes to war every few years, but our real heroes get fame and money.  A first sergeant who spends a year in the desert making sure his men are ready to fight and hopefully get home, that guy does not does not meet the athlete/movie star/porn star/televangelist/serial killer threshold required to be the subject of a Wikipedia page.  

More Pictures from Aircraft Refueling in Phillipsburg

More photos:

Fueling Aircraft in Phillipsburg

Last weekend I flew to Mid State Airport in Phillipsburg in a Chinook helicopter.  Aboput 100 soldiers had set up a refueling site at the end of the abandoned airstrip in the middle of the state.  In addition to the fuel site, they set up air traffic control, a tactical operations center, and a maintenance area.

It was bitterly cold.  Here are some photos of the cold soldiers putting fuel in "hot" aircraft.  Hot fueling is putting the fuel in while the aircraft is running.  Cold fuel is when the engines are shut down.