Chinook Landing on a Roof in Afghanistan Honored in Original Art

On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Larry Murphy signing prints at the Aviation Armory on 

Fort Indiantown, Pennsylvania  

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

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

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

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

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

Accidentally Stumbling into Happiness

The Declaration of Independence

The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, along with Life and Liberty, as the foundational rights we should have as Americans--and a good reason to rebel against the English King. 

Pursuit of happiness, like pursuit of wealth, is not the same a having it.  Annie Grace, author ofThis Naked Mind helps people get alcohol out of their lives and live happier lives as a result. She is brilliant and very much data oriented. When I heard about her, I was impressed. So who has a happy life?  

It turns out that the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence were doing many of the things that lead to real happiness. They were committed to a cause bigger than themselves; they had strong relationships (a real possibility of "hanging together" as Benjamin Franklin famously said); each one had a goal in life; and they were helping others. In their pursuit of happiness, they were doing the things that actually make people happy.

Annie Grace puts exercise and meditation at the top of her list of things that lead to true happiness and she uses a lot of data and brain science to show why this is true. Since I did not hear about Annie Grace until this week, I had not plan to follow her advice, but it turned I am doing most of the things she says lead to a happy life.

According to Grace people who have a happy life:

1.     Exercise, not just exercise but exercise with others toward a personal goal. Most of my rides are training rides with other racers.  When I was in the Army, I went to crowded gyms and trained to score high on the fitness test.

2.   Meditation. I started meditating this year. The program I use calls meditation, “a vacation for your mind.” They are right.

3.     Strong relationships.  It has been my immense good fortune to have a variety of strong relationships. I have Army buddies I am still in touch with from both the 70s and recent years. I have a wonderful family. I have friends from racing and friends who are as intensely into books as I am.  Recently I have added friends who share an intense interest in politics. I hang out with some of my former co-workers more than three years after I retired. Social media keeps me in touch with people I only rarely see in person.

4.     Having a goal in life. From the time I left home at 18, I have joined groups with shared goals and had goals of my own. In each of the four military organizations in which I enlisted, I was part of the mission. My professional jobs were in communications—my mission was to tell customers and other influential people that the place I worked is wonderful. I did far and away my best work when the communication goal was clear.

5.     Gratitude. Annie Grace recommends a gratitude journal, writing down five things I am thankful for each day. I am going to start.

6.     Helping others. I don’t do enough of this.

7.     Active leisure: Do sports, don't watch sports, at least while the sun is up. I am a member of book discussion groups and even had a couple of book groups in Iraq. My current college course is learning Modern Hebrew. 

8.     Belonging to something bigger than us. In real life, the Lone Ranger was miserable.

I really do have a happy life, but it’s nice to have data that confirms why I am happy.

I didn't start meditating or Yoga until this year. It's never too late to make changes. 

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

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

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

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

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

It was magnificent.

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

Reality Catches Up With Fiction 70 Years After World War II

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

the Distinguished Flying Cross for Bravery 

on a Mission over Avignon, France.

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

B-25 "Mitchell" Medium Bombers

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

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

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

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

Bernie Steed in pilot training

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

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

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

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

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

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

My First Military Haircut, February 1, 1972

The night before my Basic Training haircut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darren "Doc" and Kate Dreher at the Aviation Ball

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Doc" Dreher flying over the Ziggurat of Ur

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

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

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

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Boris Libman: The Terrible Life of a Soviet Hero

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Fights Our Wars: Sons of Veterans

Myles B. Caggins, III, promoted today to Colonel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Different Water for Sinks and Toilets--Camp Beuhring, Kuwait, and Amtrak

On the train to Philadelphia recently, the toilets had water, but the sinks did not in the last two cars. I walked three cars away from my seat to wash my hands. On the way back, I let the conductor know about the lack of water.  He said there are different water systems for the sinks and the toilets.  Then smiled and said the water is blue in the toilets.  

I told the conductor about a morning at Camp Beuhring, Kuwait, in April 2009. We were there for training before we went to Camp Adder, Iraq.  During our two-week stay, we slept in 77-man tents.  Outside the tent were several sinks and mirrors just standing in the open on the sand. I wish I had a picture.  

About twenty yards away were Porta-Johns or Shit Ovens, which everyone called the plastic enclosures when the temperature approached 120 degrees.  One morning just after down I went out to the sinks, brushed my teeth, then walked toward the Porta-Johns.  One of the soldiers just stepped out of one and was walking toward me.  

He looked at my toothbrush, smirked, and sweeping a hand toward the Porta-Johns said, "Sergeant Gussman, there's some blue mouthwash in there."

"Thanks," was all I said.

Kuwait Porta-Johns

Home Sweet Home in Kuwait

Cliff Has More Than 200 years of Connections to American and German Military History

Cliff and Dmitri during our visit to Point Alpha.

I wrote about Dmitri here.

During the last week in June, I stayed in the Guest House at the Land of Canaan. My friend Cliff Almes, now Bruder Timotheus, is a Canaan Franciscan Brother at Canaan in Darmstadt.  In the late 70s Cliff and I were both sergeants and roommates in the barracks at Lindsey Air Station, Wiesbaden. He put away his U.S. military uniform and donned the uniform of the Franciscan community after leaving the military almost 40 years ago.

Darmstadt is in the state of Hesse in central Germany. During my stay at Canaan, I found out Cliff has more connections to Darmstadt and Germany than I would have imagined.

First, Cliff's great-great......grandfather was a soldier from Lower Saxony who became a mercenary for the British during the American Revolution. He was what Americans call a Hessian.  After the war ended, the very elder Almes decided to stay in America.  When Cliff's brother came to visit Cliff and look into the family history, he found men with the name Almes who died in World War II.

Immigration was salvation for the Almes family, as with so many others.
Fast forward to World War II and the connections of Cliff's family to the Canaan and Darmstadt are as strange as they are close. On September 11, 1944, the British made a night raid on the city center of Darmstadt. It was not a strategic raid, it was a terror raid, and it was the dress rehearsal for the fire bombing of Dresden five months later.

On that the British bombed the residential center of Darmstadt in an asterisk pattern, intersecting lines that crossed in the middle. First the British dropped high explosive bombs to blow the roofs off the houses, then they dropped firebombs into the houses to start a firestorm. The center of Darmstadt was completely destroyed.

But just outside the center of the city center was the Technical Institute. This Institute was the center of research for the missile V-2 missile program sending rockets to attack England.  The firebombing raid missed the institute. So a week later, the Americans sent a daylight precision bombing mission to destroy the institute. The American B-24 Liberator bombers hit their target. One of the American gunners flying that mission was a young man named Sergeant Almes who would have a son named Cliff in 1956.

The mission was successful. Cliff believes that one of the young women who was a student at the Institute was almost killed. That same young woman would later join the Canaan ministry as a Sister of Mary. Canaan began as a sisterhood in 1947. The student almost killed by the raid in which Cliff's father was a crewman on one of the bombers, would later work together with Cliff in ministry at Canaan. The Land of Canaan itself is located just outside Darmstadt, just three miles away from the city center firebombed to such devastating effect.

When I was stationed in Germany, Darmstadt had a huge American military community. Cliff reminded me that I drove him from Wiesbaden to Darmstadt to join the new Novices at Canaan on my birthday, May 2, 1979. For several months after that I went to the Darmstadt military community once a week, usually on Wednesdays. Many of those Wednesdays, I had a chance to eat with Cliff and the other Novices at Canaan.

Soviet Armor vs. American Armor, Israel 1973

In July and August 1975, I went to the U.S. Army Armor School in Fort Knox, Kentucky, after three years in missile weapons testing.

We learned the basics of armor and about our tank, the M60A1.  We also learned about a serious flaw in our tanks that was fixed at great cost by the Israeli Army.  The Israelis fought and defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan using the M60A1 among other tanks.  It turns out the hydraulic fluid in our tanks was prone to catch fire.  After the Israelis lost crewmen to these fires, the hydraulic fluid was changed.

We also learned how important mechanical reliability is to combat tank crews.  The Arab countries used Soviet tanks, primarily the T-55 and T-62 main battle tanks.  We learned the difference between "live" and "dead" track.  Soviet tanks used dead track, like bulldozers that does not use rubber bushings.  In hard use, especially at high speeds, dead track is more prone to break.  According to one report, the Syrian Army lost one-fourth of its tanks before they reached the battle in the Golan Heights due to automotive failure.

After the 1973 War, the Israelis installed American-made drive lines in captured Soviet tanks to make the Soviet armor more reliable.

To people who have never trained and lived in a tank, they can seem like the indestructible behemoths of movies.  But real life in a tank is a life of wrenches and rags.  As a tank commander of one of the most reliable tanks of its time, my crew and I spent five hours or more maintaining our 54-ton tank for every hour of operation.  Each of the 80 track blocks on each track were held together with a center guide and two end connectors.  Each of the 160 center guides and 320 end connectors could work loose and had to be checked, often.  The center guides ran between six pairs of road wheels, three pairs of return rollers, the drive sprocket and front idler wheel for adjusting track tension.  Each of the wheels had inner steel plates bolted to the aluminum wheels.  The road wheels were attached to torsion bars.

We tightened bolts all the time.  Our tanks would received major service at 6,000 miles of operation, usually including a refurbished V12 diesel power plant and transmission.

And our tanks were so much more reliable than the Soviet counterparts that the Israelis ditched their drivelines and installed American-made drivelines to make the Soviet tanks more reliable.

War shows strengths and weaknesses.  Reliable, effective armor is definitely an American strength.

Where Have All the Liars Gone? Killed by Facebook Every One

Of all my memories of basic training in at Lackland Air Force Base in 1972, the two most vivid are marching in the rain at 4 a.m. and listening to the other 39 guys in my platoon tell incredible lies. 

A pimply-faced 19-year-old Lothario told me with no shame at all that a half-dozen cheerleaders were back home in Arkansas were pining for his embraces.  We all grew up in during the peak of the “Muscle Car” era in America.  The same studs who left a bevy of beauties each had a Corvette, a Hemi Cuda, a 440 Six Pak Road Runner, or an SS427 Chevelle waiting in the barns and backyards back home for their return.

Their erotic and automotive attainments were even more impressive when you considered that in February 1972 when we started basic, trainee pay had just doubled from $168 to $283 a month.  You would think that young men who could afford six paramours and Corvette would not take a job for $71 per week, even with free room and board. 

Lies that would make Mark Twain blush were as much a part of the atmosphere as the smell of shoe polish in the pre-Facebook military.

I served on active duty with the Air Force then the Army until 1979 when I went to college while serving in the reserves, then decided to get completely out in 1984. 

I reenlisted in 2007 after almost a quarter century as a bearded civilian.  I was 54 years old.  Shortly after I was back in uniform we started pre-deployment training for Iraq.  During the first three-week training period we lived in an open-bay barracks, carried M16s and rode to the field in “Deuce-and-a-Half” trucks.  We also formed up and marched in the rain.  Our barrel-chested first sergeant would smile at the soggy soldiers standing in front of him and say, “If it ain’t rainin’ we ain’t trainin’.”

With rain, M16s, and Deuce-and-a-Half trucks just like the old days, imagine my surprise when I was not confronted with a fresh flurry of adolescent lies.

When we were finished with evening chow and returned to our barracks, almost nobody talked.  Everyone had a computer and some kind of music and or video device if they did not have a smart phone. 

In 1972, we shined our boots, ironed our already starched uniforms and talked.  And in those shine and iron groups, the stories got bigger and bigger.

In the new Army we wore no-shine boots and no-iron uniforms.  The entertainment was what each of us brought.  Soldiers went outside to call girlfriends and wives.  They did not stay inside and tell stories about their love lives.

Everyone under 30 was on Facebook. 

Because of Facebook, no one could lie about girlfriends and cars.  Once a soldier said he owned a Subaru WRX Turbo showing a picture of him at the wheel.  “Fuck You, Douche Bag,” was the response from three bunks down. “That’s your brother’s car.  He would never let your dumb ass drive it. I’m surprised he let you sit in it.”

Social Media acts as a lie detector against anyone who wants to brag about cars, women and parties. 

The rain, weapons and trucks might have been the same as ’72, but social media completely changed the atmosphere.  No shine boots, no iron uniforms and no lie barracks made Army life very different.  In 1972, forty anonymous young men talking led to competition in telling lies, but it also helped all of us to grow up and develop bullshit detectors while making some good friends.

In 1972, I was a sucker for all the lies about love, cars, and the other big category, dysfunctional families. I was an 18-year-old virgin.  By everything that I heard from the other 39 guys in my basic training platoon, I was the only virgin my age in America.  My parents married eight years before I was born and would remain married until death did them part.  There were no divorced families in my neighborhood.  I had no step-anybodies and I knew little more about sex than what I learned from the awkward presentations in 8^th-grade Health Class. 

I suspected my platoon-mates were lying or exaggerating, but did not have the experience to judge what they said. My bunkmate saved me from my ignorance.  He was Leonard Norwood from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53.  He always said population 53 when he referred to Sawyerville. 

Once he saw me listening intently to a story about an evil step mother.  ‘Bama (that really was his nickname) said, “Gussie, he’s just full of sheeeeit.” 

‘Bama and Jersey (guess where he was from) and a few other guys helped me to sort out the stories that had a grain of truth from the NFW (No effing Way) stories. 

Jersey also raised my status within the platoon.  Although I knew nothing of step families and sex, I actually owned a 1969 Ford Torino 428 Cobra Jet with a factory Holley carburetor, Hurst shifter, and positraction.  My father got me a Teamsters job in May of 1971 when I graduated.  I made enough money to buy the Torino five months later.  When I enlisted at the end of January, I left the car with my 16-year-old sister Jean. 

Jean wrote me letters about parking lot burnouts, street races she got in, and scaring the crap out of a hitchhiker.  I read these funny letters to Jersey, ‘Bama and a couple of other friends.  Jersey showed one to the drill sergeant.  For the rest of basic, when Jean would write, the drill sergeant read the letter to the whole platoon.  My blond-haired, blue-eyed sister made it very clear that I really owned a Torino Cobra.  Jean wrote about how she and my Dad were going to drive the car to my tech school in Denver from Boston.  So my car not only existed in the real world, but everyone who went to school in Denver would actually see it. 

It’s not like the reality of my car in any way diminished the stories from the rest of the platoon.  Some felt obliged to explain why they were not bringing their cars to their next bases.  One guy said he was going straight to ‘Nam, after weapons school, so he might as well leave the car home. 

Do I like Facebook Army better than the 70s Army?  At the risk of being just another grumpy old soldier, I like the liars, shined shoes and starched uniforms better. My best friends from the Army in the 1970s are still my best friends.  The shared time talking helped me to find those friends.  During this tour I have hundreds of Army Facebook friends, but I know fewer soldiers at any real depth than I did last time. Part of re-enlisting at 54 years old was to leave the shallow end of life in the civilian world and spend the kind of time together that it takes to have deep friendships. 

But, like me, soldiers of today are fully connected on social media and live their virtual lives even on Camp Adder, Iraq.  We can’t lie to each other about cars and paramours.  When we have a minute, we check our phones.  That’s how life is.