Israel and Singapore: Best Small Armies Surrounded by Muslims

In the late 90s through 2002 I made a dozen trips to Asia with Singapore as the destination or one of the stops on the way from Europe to Australia or Hong Kong.  I always brought my bicycle. I rode at odd hours of the day or night.  Singapore is the farthest point in the world in the Northern Hemisphere from the the Northeastern U.S. so I was always dealing with jet lag.

Singapore is so well lit everywhere on the main island that I seldom bothered with bike lights.  I would ride out to the airport before dawn or in the evening.  Sometimes I would see a sight like the one above: a Royal Singapore Air Force jet fighter screaming into the air on full afterburners. At the time I was visiting, their main fighter was the F-5, now it is F-15s and F-16s.

Singapore has one of the best equipped, best trained militaries in the world.  It boasts the largest air force in Southeast Asia with more than 100 fixed wing fighters, plus helicopters including Apache Longbow attack helicopters and transport aircraft. The Singapore navy has new submarines and destroyers. This small, rich nation spends 20% of its annual budget on the military. The $12 billion annual expenditure is about the same as neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia combined, though they have nearly 300 million people.

Singapore shares a lot in common with Israel:

Singapore has a population of six million and a land area about 2/3rds of New York City.

Israel has a population of 8 million and the area of New Jersey.

Both countries have the same motivation for their armies: they surrounded by nearly 300 million Muslims.

This summer I will be visiting Israel for the first time. I might see fighters scramble there if I am riding a bicycle at dawn or dusk.

These two small countries are young, surrounded and have the two best armies for their size in the world.

Worst Retirement Plan Possible

In May of 1984, I had a total of eleven years and two months of active and reserve service.  At the time I was a staff sergeant, a tank section leader and had just filled out the application for Officer Candidate School (OCS).  

At that critical point, I had to decide whether to stay and finish 20 years or more of service, or get out, grow a beard and be a real civilian.

SPOILER ALERT!  I grew the beard.  

How did I make this momentous decision to leave the military with nine years till retirement? 

Because of advice from my uncle Jack, the only other recent veteran in my family.  Jack retired in 1978 from the Air Force after 20 years of service.  He had three full tours in the Vietnam War and three temporary duty (TDY) assignments to that war that stopped short of the 180-day line of counting as a full tour.  He flew back seat in an F4 Phantom fighter and was also a navigator in a refueling plane.  When he was not in Southeast Asia, he was often assigned to Thule, Greenland.

Jack said that if I stayed in I should go to OCS.  But if I stayed in I would be in a desert war before I got out.  More importantly, he reminded me that with a reserve retirement I get no money till age 60 and I would be subject to recall to duty any time until age 60 if I was enlisted, age 63 if I was an officer.

He went on to describe the most unhappy people in the Vietnam War as retired aircraft mechanics reactivated in their 50s and taking incoming mortar fire while trying to fix aircraft.

Jack said, "If you take the retirement, here's the choice.  You either go to war or forfeit all pay and benefits for life."  

Wow!!

With all that clarified, I left the military, grew a beard and got a job with an ad agency.  You may think I could have gotten the job anyway, but not really.  During the three years I was in the 6th Battalion, 68th Armor in Reading, Pa., I worked on the loading dock at Yellow Freight near Lancaster, Pa.  I was a Teamster.  With a union job, I could simply sign out for reserve duty any time I needed to.  As a section leader, I had monthly meetings on Wednesday nights, drill set up on Friday, and other additional duties beyond reserve weekends.  In a union job, the extra Army time was no problem.  In a white-collar job, that meant choosing between work and Army.

Most reserve and National Guard leaders are government or union workers.  

My decision was rational, but the irony is sadly funny.  At 54 I re-enlisted.  At 56 I go to the desert war Jack predicted and at 63 I get out one year short of a retirement and three years past the date I would have started receiving my Army reserve retirement pay.  

The 68th Armor did not mobilize for the Gulf War, and not many tankers were activated for Iraq and Afghanistan.  As a reserve tank officer, I would almost certainly have missed the Gulf War, and most likely would not have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan since I would have had almost 30 years service by then.  

As a military career move, I should have stayed in my reserve unit.  But if I did stay in the reserves, I would have had a lot of reasons to either stay in the Teamsters union or try to get a government job. I could not have had the world-traveling civilian career I had during the 90s and first decade of the 2000s.  

Jack and I talked in 2005 about all the places I had been in the world, versus all the places he had been with the military. My job took me to the capitals of every thriving economy in the world.  The places I went most were Paris, London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sao Paulo.  Jack's big destinations were war-torn Asian airfields with winters in Thule, Greenland.  

I would have liked a military retirement, but the travel with my civilian job really was amazing--and incompatible with reserve service.

Command Sgt. Major Christopher Kepner Named Top NCO of Army National Guard

In a ceremony yesterday one of my favorite people in the Army was named the top sergeant of the Army National Guard.  Christopher Kepner is now the Command Sergeant Major of the entire Army National Guard.

He will move to Arlington, Va., and serve full time in his new job.  You can read my interview of Kepner here. He is a strong leader and has strong opinions on leadership.  The fist time I heard him speak it was at a leadership meeting for all the sergeants in the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade:

He led an NCO Development course for all the sergeants in the brigade.  He began that course saying,

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

First, keep the men safe as much as possible.

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

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

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

Army, Adoption, Racing and Faith: Don’t Start Unless You Are Ready to Suffer

Beginning in 1971, Army recruiters advertised “Be All You Can Be” to pitch enlisting in the Army.  They used just five words with thirteen letters to suggest that you can fulfill your dreams, learn a career and otherwise let that wonderful person inside you bloom and grow in the fertile soil the Army would provide. 

They did not say you could also be maimed or killed.  Every soldier is a rifleman and the Army teaches you first to be a rifleman before they teach you turbojet engine maintenance or auto repair. 

I quite obviously love the Army.  I love bicycle racing.  And I love my adopted children.  But I am also the sort of person who thinks a good life is impossible without risk and suffering.  So when people ask me if they should enlist, race or adopt, I tell them, “Yes!”  But if they ask, as has happened many times with racing, “Is there a way I can race without crashing?” I suggest they take up knitting. 

I give the same advice when someone asks about joining the Army. “Yes, enlist!”  But I suggest enlisting for combat jobs, because Army skills really don’t transfer that well to civilian jobs unless you work for a government contractor or the government itself.  In the Army, the infantry, armor, artillery and aviation do the really fun stuff.  I am also very clear there is no safe way to be a soldier.

Recently a woman I have worked with for several years asked me about adopting.  She and her husband have a six-year-old son.  Her husband wants to adopt.  She is less sure. 

We talked about the various kinds of adoption.  Her husband would like to adopt a kid that needs a home.  My wife and I adopted three children and tried to adopt three more with that same goal foremost.  It is a lovely and lofty goal, but the underlying fact is that someone who needs a home has lost a home.  More importantly, something bad happened to the home they had.

So I gave the adoption version of the warning I give to prospective soldiers and bike racers:  If you race, enlist or adopt, you will suffer.  If you really commit to any or all of these, your life will change or you will lose your life, either practically or actually.

In my years of military service, I have been blinded by shrapnel, had surgery to reattach my fingers, been thrown in a ditch by my hair by a sergeant saving me from a missile blast, held another soldier’s hand with his thigh bone sticking through his uniform, heard and saw a soldier’s pelvis break when he was caught between a tank and a truck, had so many fly bites that my eyes swelled shut, stood guard in a sideways snowstorm thinking I would be found dead frozen in a drift, and suffered many other minor discomforts over the years, like wearing a 45-pound armored vest in 130-degree heat in Iraq.

But bicycle racing really tops my injury list, a spreadsheet I keep of broken bones, surgeries and hospital stays.  Bicycling accounts for half of the 33 broken bones and 19 surgeries I have had in my long life. When I really go all out racing or training, my throat aches, my body aches and for a couple of days after I suffer intestinal distress.   Becoming merely a mediocre racer meant a commitment to training that blocked so much of the rest of my life.  I worked as a consultant 15 years ago when I got serious about racing. I limited my work hours, and my income, so I could train more.  When I took a full-time job, the big negotiation was a schedule that would allow me to ride.

But, of course, the thrill of victory (occasionally) in bike racing and the intense pride of wearing our nation’s uniform to a war compensated for some of the suffering of being a soldier and racing. 

With adoption, the feeling of giving a family to a kid who needs a family is among the greatest joys of this life.  But then there are the persistent sorrows.  Adopting a kid with in utero drug exposure means the child will always have difficulty reading and have many limitations in school and in life.  Children who grow up in a family other than their birth family are going to wonder why they are not with their birth families.  And kids who are torn from their birth parents and put into foster care will spend the rest of their lives with an enflamed survival instinct.  When our adopted kids do things that leave me wondering what they were thinking, I try to remember they were not thinking they were surviving. 

Part of the reason my wife and I adopted is because the most clear command in Scripture after loving God is to care for widows and orphans.  Paired with that clear command is the equally clear promise that suffering is the mark of a Believer.  When I get an email telling me I need to come to school right away and talk about my son’s behavior, or I open the on-line grading report and find a series of assignments never started let alone completed and D is the highest grade, I am suffering.  I try to remember this is a mark of True Faith. 

I am in counseling.  I started last fall after one of the inexplicable episodes adoptive parenthood put in the center of my life. 

So I told my friend if you adopt, you will suffer.  But I working with the counselor helped me to realize if I had a chance to do this all over again, I would.  

Recently, my son with the most troubled past has become a boxer.  He lost his second match earlier this month and decided to really train, including running the two miles each way each day to the boxing gym.  He is rapidly becoming a tough, determined young man. 

As with Faith and the Army and Racing, Adoption has made my life richer and more vivid than it ever could have been on safe path.

In Our Army, The Generals are Fat, The Sergeants are Thin

In the Spring of 1977, a group of Soviet General officers made an inspection tour of our base in Wiesbaden, West Germany.  In October 1976, the 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division relocated from Fort Carson, Colorado, to what was formerly an air base in Wiesbaden.

Our 4,000 mechanized troops were meant to be a show of force to the Soviet Union by America.  We were reinforcing NATO.  Within 48 hours after we landed, we were on the border in our fully loaded tanks at Fulda, where World War Three was supposed to begin.

The following spring, a group of Soviet Generals toured our base.  My unit, 1st Battalion, 70th Armor, stood in formation in front of our tanks for the inspection.  One Soviet General spoke to us after the inspection.  He said, in English, that "In our Army, the generals are fat and the sergeants are thin.  In your Army, the generals are thin and the sergeants are fat.  I wonder why that is?"

I don't remember much else about that day, except that the sun was out--not the norm in Wiesbaden.  But that one line said so much about our respective armies.

The Soviet General command draftees from his own country and other Warsaw Pact countries.  They were underpaid, badly treated, hungry and hoping just to survive their enlistment.  The American Army was in the fourth year of being a Volunteer Army, which means professional army.  The men who made a career of the Army were divided between those who loved the military and those who just wanted the early retirement--LIFERS, we used to call them.

Even in the 70s, that General saw enough overweight soldiers to make his comment.  I was reminded of this because I have seen several of the Generals in the Pennsylvania National Guard at events recently and they are thin, tough and walk fast.  I also saw a Master Sergeant who hasn't passed a physical fitness test in this century.  He looks like the General in command of the New Jersey National Guard.

Another reason I thought of that Soviet General was a news report on Sputnik (Russian State News) announcing that the 1st Guards Tank Army has been reformed to defend Mother Russia.

We still have thin generals and too many fat sergeants.  And the Russian Army is recruiting more of those skinny draftees for a huge new Mechanized Army.

My Last 12 Days in the Army

My last official day in the Army will be May 3, 2016, but I only have 12 days left of actual service.  Those 12 days will be over six weekends between mid-November and mid-April.  December drill is the Christmas party.  January or February I turn in my field gear.  So I am a short timer for the fourth time in my multi-stage military career.

While serving in the Army has been fun, it is time for me to leave.  I was going to try to extend for one more year, but Annual Training eats away the bicycle racing season, and since another year would just be for fun, I decided to have fun another way.

Also, now that I am retired as a civilian, I have been thinking a lot about who my people are and why I re-enlisted in 2007.  While I do not regret re-enlisting, being in the Army was not what I imagined or hoped it would be.  It was fun, it was a challenge, but in many ways I fit in as well as a vegan at a barbecue.  But more on that later.

Writing About the Army, and Writing on Paper with a Pen

My first real writing job was in the Army.  I started writing on yellow pads with blue felt-tip pens.  But working for an Army newspaper meant I had to graduate from pen and paper to the typewriter.  The first typewriter I used for writing was gray, to match the gray Army furniture in the office.  That furniture blended well with the beige walls in the stone headquarters building of 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Wiesbaden Air Base, West Germany.  

Now I am taking a Creative Writing course at Franklin and Marshall College.  Part of the course is writing in class.  I have white paper and a ballpoint pen and am back to writing with my left hand on paper.  Weird.  I have not written on paper, except to take notes, since the 80s.  Writing is something you do on a computer--as I am doing right now.  

But I like the feeling of writing on paper.  We have to turn in our work in Microsoft Word, so it also means that anything I write on paper will have to be re-typed on a computer.  I began my writing life with multiple drafts.  Now I will be back to multiple drafts.  

Of course, for this blog, I will continue to write what I am thinking as I think it, hit publish and move on.

Dad's Last Fist Fight

This year I am the age my Dad was when he fought and won his last fist fight.  And on Friday of this week, my adopted son Jacari will follow in Dad's very large footsteps taking his first boxing lesson at Nye's Gym in Lancaster.

George Gussman was 62 years old on the summer day of his last fight.  He was a working foreman at the grocery warehouse for the Purity Supreme supermarket chain.  They had dozens of stores in New England in the 60s and 70s.  I am sure they have been bought and sold many times since.

On that day, I was also working in the warehouse.  I was 15 years old and had been working summers and Saturdays since I was 12, sweeping floors and cleaning garbage out from the truck and train loading docks.

On that afternoon I was on the west end of the warehouse cleaning out the area where the freight cars unloaded.  On the opposite end of the three-acre building in Charlestown, Massachusetts, near Sullivan Square, was the truck loading dock.  I had not cleaned the garbage there yet.  School just got out for summer, and cleaning dozens of truck and train docks of months of dropped groceries and produce was a job of many weeks--job security.

So I was a quarter mile away under a freight car when a 30-year-old driver from Texas walked up to the Receiver and said he had waited long enough and he was unloading next.  The big Texan, complete with a white cowboy hat shoved the Receiver.  One of the two hundred-plus warehouse workers ran and got my Dad.  The janitor I worked for could sense trouble and ran to get me.

Dad was a middleweight boxer when he was in his 20s and pitched for the Reading Phillies.  He was one of the toughest guys among those two hundred Teamsters.  I saw none of what happened next, but heard roughly similar accounts from at least a dozen guys.

Dad walked up to the angry Texan and said, "What's the problem here?" The Receiver was my Dad's age and had a heart condition.  At that time, a heart condition meant staying calm, or you die.

The Texan looked at my Dad and said, "What is this, a retirement home?  Look you old bastard, I'm unloading next or I'll kick both your asses."

Dad stepped closer.  The Texan took a swing.  He missed.  Dad hit him somewhere between five and 100 times (I think ten was the most agreed upon number) and knocked him flat on the loading platform.  The platforms were hinged and tilted down.  By all accounts Dad shoved the Texan with his foot and rolled him off the platform into the garbage I had not cleaned yet.

Dad stood over him, threw his hat down and said, "You'll wait your fucking turn.  Get back in line."  Then Dad turned and walked away.  I saw him walk back to work.  When he was out of sight, a dozen guys came up to me and said, "Did you see that?  Your Dad kicked his ass."

Now that I am the age my Dad was for his last fight, I remember how much I wanted to be as tough as him all the time I was growing up.  I wanted to be a soldier because Dad was a soldier.

Dad was tough to the end.  Three years later at 65 he started his last and longest fight.  Dad had brain tumor, probably from multiple concussions.  He had had his nose broken four times.  The operation that followed nearly killed him, but he recovered and lived another twelve years.

Saved from a Skunk by a Range Official

During Annual Training 2013 at Fort AP Hill, Virginia, we had convoys travel across the post that got hit by simulated roadside bombs.  Above is one of the pictures of a "roadside bomb" going off.  The technician setting up and setting off the munitions was a retired infantry sergeant working as a technician.

During the eight days I was at AP Hill I rode almost 300 miles on my bicycle going from convoy to MEDEVAC to Air Assault taking pictures and collecting information for stories.

The day after this picture, I came up behind the munitions technician on the main road through AP Hill.  He was in his big, white pickup truck.  I was catching up to him, which was strange.  When I got near, he frantically waved me off the road.  Just ahead, waddling out of the woods was a fat skunk.  I could have gotten close enough to get sprayed if he had not signaled.  I slowed, waved and took off in the other direction.

Riding on post is definitely something I will miss when I leave the Army.  On post, everyone gives me plenty of room and even signals for skunks!!  The rest of the world mostly hates bicycles, but on post we are treated like real humans, especially when riding in uniform.  Most of the 300 miles I was in camouflage.

Stupid, and Army Stupid

"If you've got a low IQ, you can be  soldier too." (from the Army marching song "Sound Off")

To me, the movie "Forrest Gump" is proof that anything can be romanticized and therefore distorted. I was talking to an old friend from the Army back in the days during and after the Draft.  We were talking about the truly, profoundly stupid soldiers we had known, served with and served under back in the 1970s.  

The conversation started because I found out at the 70th Armor reunion that one of the soldiers we served with had died a few years ago.  This soldier could not operate an open-end wrench without supervision.  He was funny.  But then we talked about stupid soldiers who were in charge of us.  We both thought of "Jaws." Jaws was our toothless, angry platoon sergeant for a few months.  He had two tours in Viet Nam and if he were serving today would be treated for PTSD.  But he had been brave and he was staying in to "get his 20 (years for a pension)."   Jaws was only funny in retrospect. 

Jaws could not write.  Jaws could barely read.  Jaws also liked to hear himself talk so he would keep us in formation for a half hour or more sometimes saying whatever popped into his head.  If he decided something was wrong, he could not be dissuaded by any argument.  He controlled our lives and tormented us not so much by design, but by our knowing that stubbornness is how stupid people get control of the world swimming around them.  

Which led us to bitch about Forrest Gump.  No one who had ever been under the arbitrary authority of a stupid person could be entertained by that movie.  We both hated it.  

When I re-enlisted in the Army eight years ago, my first squad leader was Army National Guard Stupid--beyond any level of stupid in the regular Army.  Like Jaws, he was missing many teeth and disliked wearing dentures.  He could not write, mumbled, was profoundly paranoid, and was overweight and out of shape.  If Fox News had existed in the 1970s, Jaws might have been as bad, but we will never know.  Clearly, every delusion Glenn Beck could dream up lodged in my squad leader's head.  He was a generator mechanic who could not read wiring diagrams and did circuit troubleshooting by touching wires together to see if they sparked.  He carried a 3-inch thick binder with him everywhere that had paperwork he might need to claim benefits.

My squad leader was eventually barred from re-enlisting in the National Guard, but managed to find a reserve unit that would take him.  While the quality of National Guard soldiers today is far above what it used to be, a few like my 52-year-old squad leader managed to hang on.

"If you've got a low IQ, you can be  soldier too." 

Leadership Reaction Course--Groups Solve Problems

The Army Leadership Reaction Course gives a problem to a group and has them solve it in ten minutes or more depending on the problem.  The problems usually involve moving something or someone across an obstacle:
Move a drum across a stream
Move an unconscious pilot across stream on a cable
Move an ammo box through a pipe and across a water obstacle

Here are some photos of soldiers in my company attempting those obstacles.

It's Not Just Me: Rejected by the Allentown Morning Call

Today one of my public affairs colleagues complained that he has sent stories for years to the Allentown Morning Call and they never pick up any of them.  Other media in central Pennsylvania run stories about local National Guard soldiers, but not the Morning Call.

I just searched Army on the Morning Call web site and got no results about current soldiers.  I did get a World War 2 veteran.

Two people in the same profession, finding the same difficulty can make each other feel better by sharing difficulties.  I could do that very thing today.  I told my colleague that one of the best stories I ever had about a National Guard soldier got rejected by the Morning Call, but later was picked up by the New York Times.  It was one of the soldier stories the New York Times used in a feature about the tenth anniversary of 9-11.  The whole story of Lt. Col. Joel Allmandinger leaving the Army just before the 9-11 attacks and then re-enlisting is here.  Or you can scroll down to The Officer.  I also copied that section of the New York Times story at then end of this post.

You can also read my story about him from 2010 here.

When I can back from Iraq, local newspapers picked up my stories about several other soldiers from sergeants to colonels.  I thought the one about then-Major Allmandinger was the best of the bunch, but he is from the Allentown area and the Morning Call did not pick up the story.

 My colleague was relieved to hear I also got rejected by the Allentown newspaper and may use my story about the New York Times picking up the story the Morning Call rejected to say "It's not just me" to his commander.

Getting rejected is part of this job, but getting this story rejected really surprised me.  But if I had to choose between the New York Times and the Morning Call, it turned out for the better.

The Officer

He had graduated from West Point, served eight years as a Black Hawk pilot and wanted to try his hand in business. It was June 2001, and Joel Allmandinger was leaving the Army.

He was in California for a wedding when the attacks occurred. The groom, a firefighter, held a vigil at his wedding and introduced Mr. Allmandinger as a soldier, though he no longer was one. And that troubled him. 

“I didn’t feel part of that brotherhood of the uniform anymore,” he recalled. “These guys could immediately identify with what happened in 9/11.”

So back home in eastern Pennsylvania, he signed up for the National Guard. On his first day of duty, he wore his uniform into a store and someone thanked him for his service.

“It was odd and uncomfortable,” he recalled. “But when I got into the car and started driving to the armory, I thought, ‘That was neat.’ ”

His unit deployed twice: first in Kosovo in 2004, to fill in for an active-duty unit being sent to Iraq; and then in Iraq in 2009, where he flew dozens of missions.

A one-year commitment turned into a decade. Today he is a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander. He is also the director of sales for a national food company and a father of two.

“I think I have a much, much better appreciation for the civilian soldier,” he said. “In some ways, I see it is an even bigger commitment, the sacrifices people have. There is a duality to it that is tough.”

Riding to Do My Army Job

Part of my Army job is taking pictures of Army training, Army living and sometimes Army relaxing.  To get to these various places I ride my bike when I can.  Today I was shooting photos at the extreme ends of the ten-mile long Fort Indiantown Gap training area.  In the course of riding to and from both events I put 31 miles on my single-speed mountain bike.  Since the terrain here is hilly, it was a good ride on rolling hills.

In the middle of the day I took pictures and videos of teams of soldiers on the Leadership Reaction Course.  This is a team obstacle course.  Later I rode to the other end of the base to take pictures of a field kitchen.

I don't have those pictures downloaded yet, but I have a few from Land Navigation the day before:

In Back of an LMTV (Army Truck)

Today I went to a land navigation course in the back of an LMTV--a big Army truck.  Very much like the one below.

Here is the view from inside:

The ride was short and pretty smooth for the back of a truck.  When former soldiers and retired soldiers talk about why they would never want to be back in the Army at my age, riding in the back of trucks and sleeping in open-bay barracks are among the things they never want to do again.

Ever!!!

Not to mention my recent meals.  Like these hot meals served in the field:

Or for that matter, the MRE I had for lunch:

Even if people of my age mostly don't like this kind of living, I am having a lot of fun.

At least for one more year.

Getting Around. . . With a Little Help from My Friends

Since early May I have been driving a 1996 Mazda Miata!  I did not buy a new car.  We are officially a one-car household.  We have one old car, a 2001 Toyota Prius, and ten bicycles as described here by my wife Miser Mom.  It looks like one below.

But for Annual Training this year I am driving a Miata loaned to me by Kristine Chin and Rick Chu.  I loaned them my tandem in 2009 when I went to Iraq, so they loaned me their two-seat vehicle this year.  Having the Miata allowed me to have a car at Annual training, which will allow me to go home once or twice during the two weeks.

Like sooooooo many other parts of my life, I am different than my Army surroundings.  The Prius is not the average soldier's car.  The Miata less so.  As you can see above, the Miata is MUCH smaller than the typical vehicle in the Army Parking lot.

It has been fun to drive a car so small I sort of fall back into it.  My sons were delighted.  They just like the idea that their family has a really cool car, even if it's temporary.  The kids at their (Lancaster) school brag about their family's vehicle--and especially when the family vehicle is a big, red crew cab Dodge Ram or Chevy Silverado pickup truck.

But the Miata is a two-seat convertible so it has real cache.  Unlike when I was a kid, the five-speed stick shift is irrelevant.  Few modern kids are serious motorheads.  A car is just designer jeans with wheels.

It is convenient to have a car, and fun to have such an interesting car.  Thanks Rick and Kristine!!!

Taxi, Take Off and Hover Videos of Chinook Helicopters

Every time I take photos and videos of Chinook helicopters, I am too close and getting buffeted by the amazing wind from their blades.  A reasonable distance from an Apache or Blackhawk helicopter is just too close to the big double-main-rotor Chinook.

Four Chinooks just after starting their engines on the flight line.

The moment of take off.  I am behind a metal emergency equipment container so I don't get blown over.

Another takeoff.  You can see the flattened grass from the wind.

Leaving My Day Job at the End of June

The Othmer Library at Chemical Heritage Foundation

Last July 1 I began working two days per week to spend more time at home.  I tried to do my job in two days per week, but the growing museum and library I work for decided they need a full-time person in my job.  Since that's not me any more, I will be leaving at the end of June.  I have worked here since March 2002--tied with the longest I worked anywhere.  I worked at Godfrey Advertising in Lancaster PA from 1985 to 1998.

Here's the message to the staff from my boss:

Dear colleagues,

Last July Neil Gussman shifted from working full time to working two days per week in order to spend more time with his family. But as CHF continues to grow and evolve, so do our communications needs. It’s become clear that we need a full-time, on-site public relations manager, and Neil has decided to move on. His last day at CHF will be June 30.

Neil began working for CHF as a consultant in 2002 and was hired as a staff member in 2005. He has persuaded editors and reporters far and wide to feature CHF’s work, from a 2006 CHF conference on alchemy that was covered by the New York Times and Marketplace, to the recent review of Books of Secrets in Nature, to repeated coverage in chemical-industry trades such as Chemical & Engineering News and Chemistry International.

As Neil plans his next adventures, please join me in wishing him the very best. CHF will feel a profound lack of puns when he leaves, and holiday parties will never be the same.

The Army Made Me a Writer, Then a Professional Writer

The Army made me a writer.  Last year I wrote here about how six versions of letters home taught me to write and rewrite and helped to make me writer.

By the end of 1977 with 14 months in Germany, I had become a writer, but not a professional writer.  Then the Army gave me that too.  Specifically, Command Sergeant Major Cubbins gave me the chance to become a professional writer.

Cubbins was one of those Top Sergeants for whom his part of the United States Army was HIS Army.  The 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division went to Wiesbaden, West Germany, en masse in October 1976 as Brigade '76.  Cubbins took over as Brigade Sgt. Major in the fall of 1977.

Cubbins was a tall, rail thin, leathery-skinned, wrinkled veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.  He was over 50 years old which we 20-year-olds thought just amazing.  He had 33 years of enlisted service when he came to our unit--11 service stripes on the left sleeve of his dress uniform and a half-dozen combat stripes on the right.

At the time Cubbins joined the Brigade, we were doing regular 4-mile runs on the airstrip at Wiesbaden.  These were brigade runs with dozens of company formations running in a long procession.  As soon as he took over the brigade, Cubbins started leading those runs.  We were amazed.  In the 70s, men in their 50s did not exercise.  But here was this old guy running in front, calling cadence too.  The world was very different then.

It was Cubbins' Army.  So just before Christmas he gathered all of the sergeants in the Brigade for an NCO meeting in the Weisbaden Air Base Theater.  I don't remember most of the meeting, but I do remember one subject he covered.  Cubbins said 4th Brigade was being ignored by The Stars and Stripes, but Armed Forces Radio, even by the Wiesbaden Post.  He wanted a combat arms sergeant to volunteer to work to get 4th Brigade in the local and regional news.

He wanted a "real soldier" who could write about training.  He did not want a "goddamned sissy journalist who could not tell a muzzle brake from a parking brake."

I noticed that Cubbins wrote with a blue pen on a yellow pad.  As soon as that meeting ended, I went to the PX and got a new blue pen.  I already had a yellow pad.  And I walked out onto the airstrip to look for something to write about.

There on the edge of the airstrip were a dozen German soldiers and as many American soldiers planning to have a partnership event that weekend.  I had my story.  Before lunch was over, the story was on the sergeant major's desk along with a biography noting that I loved to write and that I fired Distinguished as a tank commander my first time out the previous year.

I found out later Cubbins liked that I had something written the same day.  The other entries came in a few days later.  I got the job.  I was a paid journalist from then until I left the Army nearly two years later.

Army Bike Week! Riding to Re-Enistment!

This week will be Army bicycle week.  Last week, I thought I might be riding to the Pentagon tomorrow to ask them to reconsider turning down my re-enlistment.

No need for that trip.  Re-enlistment got approved.  And I need to re-enlist quickly so I can volunteer for a second annual training this summer.

So tomorrow I am going to ride to Fort Indiantown Gap and reenlist. Riding to Fort Indiantown Gap is 40 miles each way. I am going to leave it at nine in the morning and reenlist at noon. That should get me back to Lancaster in time to ride home from school with my son Nigel.

This weekend the 1st Battalion 70th Armor is having a reunion in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles away. On Saturday I will ride to Gettysburg, go to the reunion dinner, then ride home the next morning. With the other writing I will be doing this week I will ride more than 300 miles. I don't often get to ride that much and I don't usually have an army reason to ride so it will be fun to ride to stay in the army longer and then to see the guys I served with 40 years ago. I served with 70th armor in Colorado and in Germany between 1975 and 1979.

I'll try to get some reenlistment pictures tomorrow and reunion pictures on Saturday.

 

One More Year! In the Army Till I'm 63!

Today at 2pm I got a voice mail from SSG Steinmetz in the Admin section of 28th CAB to call her.  When I called she read me a line from a message from National Guard Bureau in the Pentagon saying that "SGT Gussman's request for extension for one year has been approved."  

With that I am staying one more year.  The journey that began January 31, 1972, with the guy in the picture below getting drunk in a bar in Kenmore Square, Boston. . . 

Saw the same guy straighten up, make sergeant and become an Army tank commander.  In the photo below I am on a field training exercise in Germany in 1977.

The guy in the photo above left the Army and went to college in 1980, then re-enlisted in 2007 and in 2009 deployed to Iraq--with a bicycle.

 And ended that tour with the guys below and "The best job I ever had."

One more year.  Thirteen more weekend drills.  I am hoping to do Annual Training twice this summer.