Screwtape in Iraq

This post is a repost from Iraq.  I haven't seen this post in years.  It was fun to write and mimic Screwtape.  But if you want to hear Screwtape at his best, the Audiobook is read by John Cleese!!!  No one could be a better mid-level bureaucrat in Hell than John Cleese.  The book is no longer available with Cleese as the narrator, but the letters are collected at the link above.


CLICK here for Screwtape in Iraq.

CLICK here for the book.

More Snow on the Way? Armor Still Looks Good

This weekend began with snow all over Fort Indiantown Gap, including the Armor displayed at the main intersection.  Armor looks good in the snow, as you can see below, but it is not made for snow driving.  The the 53-ton M60A1 tank I drove and commanded would slide easily in two or more inches of snow.  Wide tracks mean low ground pressure--the same ground pressure as a Corvette.

So if someone offers you a ride in a fully-tracked vehicle in the snow, say "No Tanks!" unless you want to slide.

Faith in the Military: Continuing with C.S. Lewis

While I learned about the true, the good and the beautiful in a secular university and the weird, the bad and the ugly in Christian pop culture, I kept reading and re-reading C.S. Lewis.  Here was the one person I knew for sure that had his feet planted firmly in that tiny part of the world where Christianity and culture and history were at peace.  

Mere Christianity made clear that every Church put the same roof over believers and people who had some other reason to be inside the building.  But that was just the beginning of a life-long habit or obsession with reading Lewis.  

Once Lewis showed me that a believer could have a brain, he started showing me the intellectual world is much more vast than the material world.  

Then I went underground, or at least into the underworld.  Next of Lewis' 39 books was The Screwtape Letters.  In each of the 31 missives, Uncle Screwtape, a mid-level bureaucrat in Hell writes a letter of advice to his nephew who is a field agent trying to tempt a patient into Hell.  

Letter #4 changed my life.  It defined humor from Hell's perspective.  I decided after reading this letter to never watch a sitcom again after M*A*S*H went of the air.  Since 1983, I have not watched a sitcom or a comedy movie.  

MY DEAR WORMWOOD...I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy.
You will see the [Joy] among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday...
Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us....it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.
The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field...The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction...it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame...
But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny.
Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.
If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter.
It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.
Your affectionate uncle, SCREWTAPE

Medal Inflation (Background): Specialist Sunshine and Sergeant Oblivious

When everyone dress alike personality almost jumps out of the camouflage clothes. Two guys who served together from the beginning of our deployment, wore the same uniform, but are a stark contrast in their personalities are Specialist Sunshine and Sergeant Oblivious. On the outside, they are both over forty, both need to spend more time at the salad bar than at the main course line, both initially struggled to pass the fitness test, and both are the kind of soldiers who cause pre-emptive groans when they open their mouths to speak at a formation.

Twins?

Not even close. Specialist Sunshine never seemed to get dragged down by circumstances. At every mission change, he just kept working. As his squad leader Sergeant Oblivious deteriorated throughout our deployment, Sunshine was one of the few people who did not make fun of him behind his back. Sunshine makes jokes, keeps to himself, works hard, and ran as much as ten miles in a day to get ready for the PT test after living a very sedentary lifestyle. Sergeant Oblivious barely passed the PT test then ordered a three-foot pizza to celebrate, because he could now forget about the PT test for several months.

Sergeant Oblivious failed as a squad leader almost as soon as we mobilized. But he had friends who, like him, were on the deployment because it was the only way they could keep their jobs as Army National Guard technicians back in America. Finally, after two months in Iraq, Oblivious was so bad he was relieved of duty as a squad leader. A week later, he was watching the sergeant who replaced him struggle with some of the paperwork involved in the job (which Oblivious so bad at as to be legendary). But it had been a week since Oblivious was relieved of duty for incompetence so, in his usual way, all of the actual events had been erased in his mind and he had replaced them with a new history of his own creation. Oblivious looked at his replacement and said, "That job's not hard."

Luckily, I was not drinking coffee when I heard this. Otherwise I might have spit it across the room. Next Oblivious was assigned a security job a pay grade lower than his own. He failed within a day. Which caused a junior NCO to be stuck on five weeks of guard duty with about 2 hours notice. And, of course, none of it is the fault of Sergeant Oblivious.

Like Sergeant Rumpled, Sergeant Oblivious is also convinced that he is quite attractive to women, despite being bald, unkempt, missing a lot of teeth, and being in known across the battalion as lax on personal hygiene. Oblivious believes many conspiracies both of the global variety (he does not know WHO caused the World Trade Center Towers to fall, but someone. . .) and knows people at every level of the military are out to get him. He keeps records. He takes notes. They are in a secret code. He cannot write an English sentence.

CS Lewis, comparing military service with a term in prison, said the military can put you under the arbitrary authority of a very stupid man. That is much less true today than during than 100 years ago, but it is still possible. Sunshine had good-naturedly worked for Oblivious for almost six months. I am glad for him that Oblivious is headed for some sort of oblivion and is out of any position of authority.

But even that is a cause of some anger and envy among his peers. Because he is prone to outbursts and incompetent, Oblivious was relieved of the duties of a squad leader, but he is still getting paid as one. And he may end up in an MWR tent signing people in and out of the public access computers. He gets an all-day air-conditioned job because he is under too much stress to work outside with everyone else.

When the military rewards failure, it ties a camouflage bow on the package.

And as the believers may already have guessed, Oblivious goes to Church and will start arguments about faith. Sunshine does not believe.

Who Fights This War? -- Me

My commander wrote about me for the latest issue of the newsletter. Thought you might like to read it.

By Lt. Col. Scott Perry
During a play in 1639, Cardinal Richelieu uttered the phrase, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” He was certainly not the only to have this opinion, joining greats like Euripides, Shakespeare, and Thomas Jefferson. The sentiment has been germane through the ages, and the current era is no different.
Although serving in a Task Force consisting of awesome strength, firepower and mobility, it is a camera and computer that Sgt. Neil Gussman aims in order to shape the face of the modern battlefield. While bullets and brute force may subdue the most tenacious enemy, over the course of history, opinions, sentiments and perception have been used to greater affect in influencing kings, dynasties and nations. As an accomplished writer, this is something Neil Gussman knows well.
Even so, I had to ask myself, who is this world-influencing neo-gladius whose stories seem to touch the world as easily as he qualifies with his assigned weapon?
As I have learned through my interaction with him, Sgt. Neil Gussman is an eclectic series of mutually un-supporting disciplines, dichotomies and passions that somehow have blended into an exceptional communicative force.
Neil Gussman was 56 years old as of May 2nd, but he doesn’t mind that you can’t keep up with him during Army physical training. And don’t even think about challenging him in a bicycle race. But I’m getting ahead of the story and Neil wouldn’t appreciate that.
Like any other red-blooded American young man, Neil had a passion for fast cars and racing. For those who can appreciate such things, he once owned a ‘69 Cobra Jet Torino featuring a 428 C.I. power plant with a factory 735 dual-feed Holly carburetor and Hurst 4 speed shifter. When he owned a TV that he kept in the basement, the only thing he was interested in watching was NASCAR during the good old days of Cale Yarborough, Alan Kulwicki and Dale Earnhardt Sr. For the purist in Neil, that all ended when the sport departed from bias ply tires.
No problem.
There were other fascinations to occupy the time of this undefined thrill seeker. He had suppressed a motorcycle obsession because his father opposed them. Once on his own, he started out with a Honda 175 and soon was risking his life on the likes of VFR 700s, Interceptors, Hawks and other popular crotch-rockets of the late ‘80s. After a disappointing day at the track he determined he wasn’t practicing enough and he gave up riding having decided he wasn’t really good enough to race.
Neil joined the Air Force in 1972. The next year, he spent over a week in the hospital after being blinded by shrapnel at Hill Air Force Base, Utah during a live-fire exercise of interstage rocket detonators. Incidentally, he had grown up nominally Jewish, but became a Christian while recovering from the blindness. He left the Air Force in 1974 but joined the Army in 1975 as a SP4 Tank gunner and progressed to Tank Commander stationed at Fort Carson, Colo. and Wiesbaden Germany. In 1979, he left the military to go to college.
After departing the service, he used his GI bill benefits to attend Penn State University where he completed his BA in Humanities and an MA in American studies consecutively. After graduating in 1985, he started working for an advertising agency. He noticed others in the agency were out of work when their client left. Recognizing the volatility of the advertising world, Gussman set out to find his own clients. Being familiar with chemistry and calculus, he decided to write about technology for continuous employment and covered electronics until the ad agency acquired a chemical company account. Concentrating on chemistry, in 1998 he became manager of global communications for Millennium Chemicals and was travelling overseas every month. Having no interest in managing as he puts it, “free form-people who each want to rule the world,” in 2001 and 25 countries later, he left to work as a consultant. Now he is the communications manager for the Museum and Library of the history of chemistry and early science which he characterizes as a science museum for grown-ups. The non-profit Chemical Heritage Foundation was founded in 1982 and is located in a 160 year old building located next to the Liberty Museum and Independence Mall in center city Philadelphia.
Having given up motorcycles, he got serious about bicycle riding in 1992 when he logged 8,000 miles. In recent years he’s been racking up over 10,000 miles annually. In April 2007, he broke his neck while riding at 50 MPH down Turkey Hill in Lancaster, PA. The crash resulted in 10 broken bones including three vertebras. Now his 7th vertebra is from a cadaver. His riding repertoire includes cycling on five continents and if you spend any time at Tallil with your eyes open, you no doubt have seen Sgt. Gussman on a bike. He shipped 2 here, bought 2 others since we arrived and he’s met his goal of riding 5000 miles at Tallil Iraq.
I’m sure Neil doesn’t think he’s obsessive or particular. But, how else do you describe a person who goes to a 300 year old Presbyterian Church because he can’t help but criticize the sermons of anything newer? And how else do you explain a person who has organized a spreadsheet enumerating of all the books he’s read as well as an accounting of all his broken bones? -- 32 by the way. An avid athlete, it’s no surprise that he also charts all his physical activities including the mileage he’s run, ridden, pushups, pull-ups, sit ups, etc…
At the age of 54, Neil Gussman re-enlisted in the Army in August 2007. He joined an aviation unit because he was concerned about joining a ground unit, thinking he couldn’t keep up with the 20 year olds. His assessment was wrong. His 26 year old, commanding officer put Gussman in charge of remedial PT to train all in the formation who are unable to pass the test—most of them half his age.
Gussman always wanted to be a writer but prior to college read only science or religious books. Since his first class at The Pennsylvania State University where he read Dante’s Inferno, he has been involved in a love affair with literature. Sgt. Gussman now reads an average of 25 books per year and is hosting 2 separate reading clubs while in Iraq. USA Today recently featured his efforts. When home, he reads other’s stories to his wife and four children; while he’s in Iraq he writes the story of Task Force Diablo’s mission for others to tell the world.

New Year's Eve--2009 by the Numbers

What an odd year for a 56-year-old guy who works at a museum. This year I have lived in two US states and two middle eastern countries--Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Iraq and Kuwait. Lance Armstrong wrote a book titled "It's Not About the Bike." If I wrote that I would be lying. so the first numbers are about the bike.
Miles: 7100 total
PA--500
OK--1300
Kuwait--100
Iraq--5200
I competed in four races. Three in PA while I was on leave, one in Iraq.
I rode four bikes outside PA. Two I bought for the trip and broke them both. The single speed 29er and track bike are in Conex containers on the way to America. The post chaplain at Fort Sill OK loaned me his bike while I was there (May the Lord bless him!) I bought a $100 bike for the two weeks I was in Kuwait in the spring, broke it and traded it for a latte at Starbucks. I bought a bike for $250 in Iraq in December after I broke the 29er. I sold it the day before I left for $250 and threw in a pump.

I read only 15 books this year--lowest total since I started keeping track. And almost all of them were re-reads: six by CS Lewis, Inferno & Purgatorio, Aeneid, and The Three Musketeers (an old edited French version). New to my reading list were George Orwell's Essays, another of John Polkinghorne's books on theology and physics, and The Audacity of Hope by President Obama.

The unabridged Democracy in America is my first book for 2009. I am halfway through The Oak and the Calf by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a second (very different) abridged French version of the Three Musketeers and should finish them during the long hours in Kuwait.

By a rough calculation I have written more than 75,000 words on my blog and am just short of 50,000 visitors too my blog since I started keeping track in June of 2008.

Since August I have written more articles than I ever have in my life. The 16th weekly issue of the newsletter goes out Monday. I also wrote four newsletters for Echo Company and had stories picked up by many Web sites and newspapers--none cooler, of course, then the New York Times "At War" blog on Thanksgiving!

Although many are different angles of the same shot, I have taken more than 5000 pictures. It will be very strange to have no camera when I leave active duty.

Counting each take off and landing as a flight, I have been on two dozen helicopter rides, mostly on Blackhawks, but also on the big Chinooks. It was the Chinooks that turned out to be the best single photo subject. It was wonderful watching them hover, six feet above a container with a flight engineer on top of it who hooked the 5,000-pound load, jumped to the ground and ran through the hurricane-force winds as the big helicopter flew away with 2.5 tons dangling 20 feet underneath.

I bought just two meals the whole time I was in Iraq--pizzas at Ciano's. But I bought a few hundred lattes at Green Bean's. The last one was free. I am sitting in Green Bean's in Kuwait writing this post.

I fired a lot fewer rounds this year than I did as a Cold War tank commander in the 1970s. But then we were training for a real war that seemed immanent. Now we are in a real war that is ending.

Oh right. And I made 387 blog posts in 2009. I will continue posting every day until we are released from active duty. Then I am going to take a break during the 17 days I am still on terminal leave. And when I am finally and officially a civilian again, I might write about some of the stuff I can't write now.

Happy New Year.

Screwtape Loves Creation Science

Screwtape: The Devil as a mid-level bureaucrat.

We are currently reading Screwtape in the CSL group here in Iraq. I wrote this a few days ago. It's how Screwtape would look at Creation Science. 

If you haven't read The Screwtape Letters, this won't make much sense--and if you had to choose, it would be better to read a the real Screwtape Letters than my imitation. 

My Dear Wormwood, 

Very true, I did tell you in my very first letter to keep your patient away from science, but I meant real science based on math in which theories are the best current description of observed reality. And the theories are not absolute: the latest discovery can make last year's greatest theory obsolete.

Of course you should let your patient immerse himself in Creation Science. That ridiculous pairing of words is one of the many recent triumphs of our Infernal Marketing Division. 

Real science is wretched for us. The Enemy has made the material universe so complex that the deeper the humans penetrate reality the more surprised they are at what they find. And He made it so vast that in time and space that no one can fully comprehend it. 

We know he did this for the sophomoric reason that he wants the human vermin to be free to choose to Love Him, or not. The universe is so complex from the micro scale to the galactic, that no amount of mere facts can convince anyone of the Enemy's existence. All this disgusting beauty is more of what He calls Love. 

Creation Science does away with all that. It says Einstein was wrong, Darwin was wrong, Mendel was wrong, Watson and Crick were wrong, and an Australian biology teacher who built a museum with saddles on dinosaurs is RIGHT! 

All the messy reality of life, the universe, and everything is tied up with a bow in Creation Science. All of modern science that does not conform to their particular literal view is wrong. Wormwood, it is wonderful. I could show you cages full of proud fools who watched a four-hour Deep Science video series and from that day were able to look down on the millions of people who have held science PhD degrees in the last hundred years. 

Pride, Wormwood. It is the best path to Our Father's House and who could be more sneeringly proud than a man who cannot solve the equation that describes a falling rock yet believes he knows physics at a deeper level than Einstein. If we spirits had lips I would kiss the man who dreamed this heresy up. 

Your Affectionate Uncle, Screwtape

Dust Clouds

Tonight I rode through clouds of dust to get to my office. I went to the office after the CSL book group. The night was absolutely beautiful when I left our living area. You can only see up where we live. Twelve-foot-high blast walls surround our trailer homes. So I looked up and saw Orion's belt and sword so clearly I almost thought the mythical warrior could step out of the sky and come to our base. So I looked up at the blue-black sky till my neck hurt then rode south to my office. On both dirt stretches the air was brown from long convoys raising dust. The front of the convoy was stopped and the back closing up to the front as they stopped and waited. Dozens of flatbed semis waiting to load with containers and drive to the port. It's strange how the sky can be clear and beautiful just a mile from where it is choked with a stagnant cloud of dust.

At my office I am trying to copy all of my photos off the hard drive of the computer I am using. The computer is cheap and sometimes quits. It is a PC and I am a very committed MAC user. Every time I use a PC I become more convinced that I love my MAC. I did not work very much. I have been up early and am too tired to work effectively late.

Eleven days till Christmas.

A Report for the New York CS Lewis Society

The following is a report I just wrote for the New York CS Lewis Society. I have been a member since 1980 and, as far as I know, the only member in Iraq.


One of my big goals when I knew I was getting deployed to Iraq was to start a CS Lewis book group and, if possible a Dante group. We arrived here in early May 2009 after two weeks in Kuwait and two months at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I thought about starting the groups right away, but I went on leave five weeks after I arrived, so the book groups started in late July. The CSL group, Beyond Narnia, met on Monday nights at 8pm. Our first book was The Weight of Glory. The Dead Poets Society started meeting on Tuesday nights at 8pm reading Inferno--it would be hard to find a more appropriate book. We read five cantos a week for six weeks. During each of those six weeks, the mid-day tempo topped 130 degrees.

The first night of the Beyond Narnia Group, I talked about CSL's life and works. Then we read "Why I am Not a Pacifist." I thought it would be good to start with an essay that describes CSL's clear-eyed view of pacifism and his service. On the following night, the Dante group had a long discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins and their order in Hell. From the first week the two groups had a surprising (to me) difference in
participation that has carried on right to the end (as I write there will be just two more weekly meetings before I go to Kuwait and back to America).

The Beyond Narnia Group was older, almost all officers, and was very steady in attendance except when on missions. The Dead Poets Society was almost all enlisted soldiers and airmen under 30. When I say old I mean 40s. At 56, I am beyond Methuselah in Army years. I was surprised because I had the idea that the Narnia movies (which I have not seen) would inspire someone to read more of Lewis. The Captains and Colonels in my group all had wanted to read CSL long before the movies ever came out and for one reason or another had not got around to it. After The
Weight of Glory we read The Four Loves and are finishing with The Screwtape Letters. Over time the group became more and more animated.

One of the Chaplains in the group disagreed with CSL on something every week, but was very happy to discuss more. The meetings were set for an hour, but The Four Loves discussions went almost two hours.

After Inferno, the Dead Poets Society voted to read Aeneid. We are now reading Purgatorio and should finish it by the time I leave Iraq. This group was very taken with Virgil and upset that Dante kept him in Hell, especially when they found out Cato was going to go to Heaven.

These groups allowed me to meet and talk with soldiers who really care about books and ideas and the Faith--at least in the case of the CSL group. The Dead Poets Society included non-believers. Despite everything and anything I had to do, I never missed these meetings. And I am sure I will miss them when I return to America where weekly
meetings to discuss books is simply impossible. But I am also very ready to go home.

Flags at Half Staff

All the flags on Camp Adder are at half staff to honor the dead at Fort Hood. One of the national guard brigades where a friend of mine works flies the Texas State Flag next to Old Glory. Last night at dinner she was saying everyone in her shop mobilized out of Hood and went through the facility where the shooting occurred. 

Many of the national guard soldiers are full time and work at Hood. They know people, civilians and military, who work at that facility and were frantic for a while wondering of someone they knew was a victim. No one was. It seems the victims soldiers getting ready to deploy. How horrible for their families to lose their soldier before he or she even gets on the plane. 

Earlier this year when an American soldier was captured in Afghanistan, most soldiers turned and watched the news when there was something about that soldier, then turned back when that segment was over. It has been that way since the shooting. If there is a report from Hood, people watch, if not they turn back to their conversation. 

The darkest comments are of the WTF variety "What the F#$k were they thinking when this scum bag was admiring suicide bombers on blogs and trying to get out of deploying." I was talking to another friend before this tragedy about chance and Providence. CS Lewis, following Boethius (The Consolation of Philosophy), says we live in a created world in which chance and randomness rule the lives of every creature except those who are following God's will for their lives. 

This may seem like abstract theology, but at times like this and 9/11 and other tragedies, if you believe the created universe is determined down to the movement of particles, then an event like this can only be God's will. A field-grade officer murdering his fellow soldiers is not God's will. The Lord gave us free will and at times like this I wish it were otherwise. But we are free to love, or not. So right now to this random act of violence we are all free to do the Lord's work in caring for the victims and their families.

The Race is On!!!!! Task Force Diablo Biathlon on Thanksgiving Morning

It's Approved. It's on. We are ready to roll!!! The First EVER Task Force Diablo Biathlon begins at 0700 hours on Thursday, November 26. The Run/Bike event will begin with a 5k run followed by a 15k bike. We will have individual and team competition. We are hoping to have medals. We do have water bottles and a couple of helmets and several other prizes courtesy of Bike Line of Lancaster, Pa.

The course profile is the same as an ironing board--flat. I am hoping to have 100 teams or individuals. I am going to make the race flyer in the morning. Advertising should begin by Saturday. Three weeks today till the start.

When I went to the garrison sergeant major's office to get approval for the race, he said we first had to talk about a Veteran's Day ceremony on Wednesday the 11th. I am going to be the emcee. I contacted the guy who will (I hope) be the featured speaker--one of the chaplains who is a regular at the CS Lewis book group.

This Monday I am going to send the newsletter I do to everyone I sent it too a month ago. This seventh issue really is good. With the help of Sgt. Matt Jones at 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, the simple layout I use is starting to look better. And I got some really good shots that I am using full page so they would not look as dramatic on the blog.

Too many great things happened this week to even write them all down. One sad thing for me I realized this morning is the Charlie MEDEVAC Company is leaving. They have been the source of some of my best stories and are one of the best units it has ever been my pleasure to be associated with. They are going back to Alaska soon and another MEDEVAC will take their place. I re-wrote the Eight Minutes and Gone blog post from two months ago as a tribute/goodbye to them and re-cropped some pictures for the past page of the newsletter.

DUST!!!!! and Good Friends

My big idea about a 1,000-mile month might be dead already. We had a HUGE dust storm today. When I rode to the south side of the base in the morning the sky was clear and it looked really nice outside. Then at 10am the visibility went from miles to feet. I let the bike sit all day then rode back to the North side for the Aeneid book group. The whole four-mile trip the sand was hitting me like rain, I could hear it on my helmet and shoulders. It was accumulating in the creases I my uniform like some kind of foul snow.

Last night we discussed Eros in the CS Lewis book group. The discussion went on for all but two hours. So we were talking about Romantic love and going back to define friendship (philia) again to be sure the contrast is clear. In the course of discussing Eros, I became very aware that I was part of a group of friends. Steve, Abbie, Gene, Ian and Edgardo--the regular members--really do bring their own perspectives to the group and, as Lewis says, bring things out in the other friends that would never be as clear otherwise. Gene and Edgardo are both chaplains and both orthodox in their beliefs, but are very different politically. With Edgardo gone home on R&R leave the last week, we only have one chaplain and not the interplay between Edgardo and Gene. Abbie and Steve are both Air Force and both friends outside the group, but Abbie is intuitive and Steve is logical. They play off each other very well. Ian is younger than all the rest of us and, like Abbie, goes to both book groups. He is about 6'6" tall and quiet until a subject hits a chord in him, which Eros did. Ian could give us the single-guy perspective on Eros in new Millenium, showing CS Lewis needs some updating.

I said I would start to talk about what I would miss in Iraq. This group of friends is at the top of my list.

500 Feet Above the Ziggurat of Ur

Today I will upload images from flying above the Ziggurat of Ur on Thursday afternoon. This area, Ur, is the hometown of Abraham. People call this place the birthplace of civilization. If civilization was born here, it has had a very complete change of address. Jared Diamond's most recent book Collapse chronicles other places on our planet which are on the way to becoming arid ruins.

USA Today--Today

The cover article on today's edition of USA Today was about troops killing time and what they do to fill the hours. One of the people quoted at length in the article was me. The reporter talked about the two book groups I lead and even provided links to CS Lewis, Dante and Virgil. Here's the article. Meredith will be calling me an ink slut again--but somebody has to do it.

New Office--Great Discussion

This is my new office--the top of the line in trailer living. I thought you might like to see my new digs.
Last night's CSL group book discussion was great. We talked about the Affection (storge) in The Four Loves. In describing each type of love, Lewis follows an arc taking us to the highest and best expressions of love, in this case domestic affection, then dropping us like a Six Flags roller coaster with descriptions of Mrs. Fidget, Mr. Pontifex and Professor Quartz. Two members of the group are counselors and another is a negotiator, so the love gone bad section of the chapter was very useful for them. Next week Friendship or Philia.

Thank You to Several (actually 22) People

To Sarah Reisert for Propel Packets and razors (not to be used together) and for sending me a weird web site every Thursday.

To 2LT West's Dad for sending copies of Inferno, we just finished reading it in the Tallil Dead Poet's Society.

To Brigitte Van Tiggelen for sending copies of Aeneid which we are starting next Tuesday as well as for the copies of The Weight of Glory we are reading now in the CS Lewis book group.

To Larry Wise for putting hand grips on the 29er bike so I won't burn my hands on the 130+ degree days and the other bike repairs.

To my Uncle Jack for connecting Viet Nam to the current war and reminding me how much I would have loved to tell my Dad about all of this over a cup of coffee.

To my sister who was upset when I enlisted in 1972 and no happier this time but is very brave.

To Matt Clark who spent the worst hour of this year with me--he drove me to the airport for the return trip to Iraq.

To my roommate for putting up with "livin' in a friggin' library."

To Kristine Chin for editing all three issues of the Dark Horse Post. The current issue will go out tomorrow.

To Amy Albert who wrote me a few days ago asking if she could help by sending us stuff and will be sending some of the future books for the book group.

To Meredith Gould for various reality checks she has given me about life, the universe and posting.

To Robin Abrahams for the Clerihew contest and for sending the her book Mind Over Manners (available on amazon.com!) and to Marc Abrahams for asking (bemused) questions no one else asks.

To Jan Felice and Scott Haverstick for laughing at me as well as with me about this whole Iraq thing.

To Abel Lopez and Brother Timotheus who have been my friends so long they take this whole Iraq thing in stride.

To Lauren, Lisa, Iolanthe and Nigel for being proud of me even though having their Dad gone for a year was not in their plans.

To Annalisa for dealing with everything back home, taking care of Nigel and letting me know when the blog posts go too far.

And now the bad joke. . .

My Job and Envy

CS Lewis wrote in many places that the trouble with writing about the Devil, in his book the Screwtape Letters, was that thinking too much about the Devil hurt his own spiritual life. So I have been writing about envy a lot lately concerning the on-line article about our brigade and have been seeing how much envy is in my own life.

First, let me make clear that all the fuss I made about my job here had no real outcome. I thought one of the good things about a year on active duty would be I would lead some kind of Simple Life. I would have a job. I would do that job and leave it when I was done. As it turns out, I have a primary job as a squad leader and as Sergeant Tool Bitch in the motor pool, but when they are done, I am also the battalion public affairs sergeant, the PA sergeant for our company, I put together the newsletter, and have a couple of other additional duties. Beginning recently, I do the newsletter and some of my other work during motor pool hours. No Simple Life for me.

Which brings me to Envy. Our brigade is primarily two battalions. The guy who does the PA work for the other battalion does not have another job. He just writes and takes pictures. And every time I have seen him lately he is driving an SUV. So he only goes to the motor pool when his air-conditioned vehicle needs service. I am seriously envious of him.

And I am also the subject of envy. Since I became militant about doing my PA work at least partially during duty hours, I have been in air conditioning working on the newsletter or battalion PA work when my fellow motor pool soldiers are out in the sun. And this week has been particularly hot because the wind has died down. So they think I am doing nothing because I am working partially inside.

Book Groups and the Education Center

A couple of weeks ago I was worried I was giving a Pollyanna impression of life in Iraq. During the last two weeks you could wonder if chicken shit and job confusion are the sum of my days. That would be just as wrong. Yesterday, after all the job drama was over, I finished my work in the motor pool, then spent a couple of hours before dinner transferring and shrinking photos for the company newsletter.

At dinner I saw a young woman in my squad eating dinner with two older female sergeants. This might be the third time I have seen them as a dinner group in the last week. The young sergeant-to-be is 23 and will be a lot better off with female mentors.

Next was the first meeting of "Beyond Narnia" as CS Lewis reading group I started. There were four soldiers at the first meeting and four more who should be coming next week. Three of the four people were from the Dante group, so the fourth, a chaplain with a unit that arrived recently, introduced himself, then I told the group about CS Lewis's life and work after which they asked questions for about 20 minutes. It was a lot of fun. One asked about Shadowlands (the CSL movie) and about his family. Another asked for more details about CSL's conversion.

We will be reading the book of essays titled The Weight of Glory and out first essay will be "Learning in War Time." Thanks go out again to the father of one of the lieutenants in our unit who sent us most of the books. Three more were sent by Brigitte Van Tiggelen, a historian who regularly visits the library/museum where I work.

Today I worked in the motor pool until 3pm then drove over to the repair hangards on the other side fo the base to shoot pictures of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter going through major maintenance. I got some good shots of a crew removing the rotor hubs from the top of the bird. Tomorrow I will get more shots of the overhaul work.

After the photos, I went to the education center. I helped a couple of soldiers with word problems then spoke to the woman who coordinates the tutoring sessions. Barring schedule changes, I should be able to volunteer an hour on Tuesday and two hours on Thursday.

At the Dante group tonight, the first order of business was voting on the next book. Aeneid won by one vote over Purgatorio. But everyone agreed we would go back to Purgatorio after Aeneid. We should be able to read Inferno, Aeneid, Purgatorio and start Paradiso before I rotate out, and maybe someone else can take over.

We got our first question for the translator tonight. Tony Esolen, who translated the version we are reading, agreed to take questions by email if I can't answer them. Tonight's question: Cleopatra and Dido are suicides, why are they in the higher part of Hell where Lust is punished (easier punishment) not five levels down with the suicides?

Life is mostly good.

Hell Boy at the Chapel

Yesterday as I was leaving the 9am traditional Protestant service, the choir for the 11 am service was starting to arrive. I remembered the very enthusiastic young captain from Tennessee who jumps when he sings. When I was about to walk through the door, in walks the subject of my June 8 post, the silent guitar player on the bridge. The guy who wants to make a comeback with a metal band when deployment is over. He told me that evening last month he had a home in Hell. and there he was walking in the door with his enormous 12-string electric bass.

I guess the Chapel band gives him a chance to play.


Who the Wannabe Wants to Be

The Catholic Chaplain from NYC is on the way to a base up north, so my pastor can quit worrying that I will become a Catholic simply to hang around with former Fordham philosophy professor who loves New York.

A week from tonight I will be starting a CS Lewis reading group. The first book is "The Weight of Glory." One of the chaplains said he would attend. This book group will also be in the library in the recreation center. I can't lead a book discussion like this inside the Chapel because official religious activities have to be led by a Chaplain. I'll start out with one essay per week and see how that goes. I can either start with "The Inner Ring" CSL's advice on how to navigate the murky waters of cliques or "Why I am not a Pacifist." CSL's reasons for disdaining pacifism are very similar to George Orwell's. They are contemporaries, but certainly different on philosophy and religion. I am planning on saving the title essay for last. If the group decides to continue, we can move to the Screwtape Letters or some other book they would choose.

Today's picture is from my leave. They are of the doctor who fixed my broken neck and I at his office. The practice he works for hired a writer to do a freelance article on him and I am his success story.

Back to Tallil

At 0730 this morning we were told to return at 0820 with our bags. We would be flying by 1130! I packed up and told the guy on the top bunk I had packed up before and would be reclaiming my bottom bunk if the flight was cancelled. He promised to be ready to move and I was off to the next formation. We waited in a tent for a couple of hours and then we loaded our gear, loaded on the bus and we were off to load up on a jet for a very short flight.

On the bus I sat with a 23-year-old regular Army soldier returning to duty after R&R leave like me. Unlike me, he is on his second deployment and is planning on being deployed to Afghanistan. His current job is body guard for a colonel. Last deployment he was on convoy duty. Five times he had a vehicle blown out from under him by an IED. He has been temporarily blinded by concussion and has shrapnel lodged in a couple of places, but, at least by his own standards, he is OK. After his next deployment, probably ground combat if he gets the assignment he is looking for, he plans to get out of the Army and go to college to work on computer networks.

"I figure three deployments will be enough," he said. He will finish his third tour at the ripe old age of 25.

Back at Tallil, my new bike was waiting in the post office. I signed for it, put it together but because of a sandstorm, I decided not to ride around the base and cleaned up my dust-filled room instead. My roommate is still away at another base, so the CHU was unoccupied for a month and got very dusty. More tomorrow.