Veteran AF: Iraq

Showing posts with label Iraq. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan to Retire on September 11

Master Sgt.Pamela Bleuel (left) in Afghanistan

In July 2009 I was pushing my bike toward a gap in the blast wall on Camp Adder, Iraq. I lived in a trailer on the other side of that wall. A soldier wearing a bandana over her nose and mouth walked toward me and asked why the hell anyone would ride a bike in wind like this.

I don't remember my answer, but Pamela Bleuel and I started talking about being old soldiers who enlisted late and had three college-age daughters back home. She was 43 at the time, I was 56.

Now she's 56, a master sergeant, and retiring on Saturday, September 11. She enlisted in the year 2000 at age 35 to pay off her student loans. She is a math teacher. She liked the army a lot more than she expected, became a drill sergeant and when I met her was training troops in convoy security on Camp Adder. She wanted to be convoy security but the rules at the time did not let her. She stayed in Iraq for two tours, then was in Afghanistan five years later.

I visited Pam in her home in Kentucky in 2010 and 2014 and was thinking I would be visiting again this year, but plans changed. Maybe next year. I wrote about Pam when I was in Iraq in 2009. Here's the story:

"I'd rather be digging a damn ditch than sitting on my ass in an air-conditioned office pushing FRAGOs (Fragmentary Orders)." That was one of the first things Staff Sergeant Pamela Allen Bleuel said to me when I met her walking across on open area in a sandstorm. She is a cheerful, imposing, funny woman of 43 who joined the Army Reserves on a whim just before 9/11 and now has an intense love-hate relationship with life in camouflage.

Until last month SSG Bleuel was the sergeant in charge of the convoy training school here on Camp Adder. She taught troops how to drive and fight in convoys and how to best use the ungainly MRAP fighting vehicles that are now the standard troop carrier across Iraq. She loved convoy training and did not mind when her tour was extended. When she did the unit she went to decided her training as a military police officer would be best used processing FRAGOs--the daily changes to orders that bubble through the military system day and night.

Bleuel loves being outside, moving troops, and has no desire to sit in air conditioning, but she will do the job as well as she can until the end of her extended tour.

She joined the reserves in 2000 at age 35 with no prior military experience at all, because she saw two soldiers hanging up a sign in the small town in Kentucky where she lives. The sign said the Army would repay student loans for reserve soldiers. She had three daughters between 8 and 13 years old at the time, taught math at the local high school and had $30,000 in student loans. She signed up. She went off to basic at the end of the school year, trying to fit basic and advanced training into the summer break. Training did not quite fit her school schedule and she was just about done with training when the 9-11 attacks hit.

At that point she just wanted to serve and was jealous of the regular Army soldiers who were whisked away to airborne schools and other assignments. She served as an MP until 2004 when she trained to be a drill sergeant. Every summer after that she would "push troops" through Fort Knox, Kentucky, during the 11-week summer break at her school district. Her experience as a drill sergeant and an MP lead her to convoy training here in Iraq.

Now she is ready to go back to being a drill sergeant part time and a full time teacher. "Each year it gets easier to go back to pushing troops and harder to teach school," she said. "It's not the kids. It's the damn parents." She then gave her version of the teacher's lament that parents call her, email her, come to school to say their little child is special. "In the Army you don't deal with that. Mom doesn't call basic training," she said.

She also likes the structure and clarity of Army life, at least in training. "We have a goal; get the trainees ready to be soldiers." She also likes the deference of soldiers when compared to civilians. "When I get back from Knox and I am in a crowd at Wal-Mart, I wish I could yell 'Make a hole' and have everybody get out of my way."

Bleuel's wall is covered with pictures of her three children. She is very proud of them--even the one who, "Is a liberal and wants to save the whole damn world. She voted for Obama. We don't talk about politics." Bleuel is somewhere to the right of Oliver North politically and hates everything about France, which is a double layer of irony given her name.

At age 43 she has eight years of service and will have to decide soon whether she will make the Army a career or not. I'm guessing she will. The look she has in her eyes when she talks about basic training and convoy ops is not there when she talks about Algebra 2.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Every Thursday, I Shave My Legs--Even in Iraq

Since one of my first big bike crashes in 1994, I have shaved my legs every week, usually on Thursday before racing on the weekend. I started riding seriously in 1989, but resisted shaving my legs until the crash at the Tuesday Night Training Race. I continued to shave my legs throughout my deployment to Iraq in 2009. I rode 5,100 miles on Camp Adder, Iraq, so it made sense to keep removing my leg hair.

So why do bicycle racers and most serious cyclists shave their legs?

Crashes.

In 1994 I crashed at 25mph on a rough road surface. I had deep cuts on my right side from my shoulder to my ankle. The worst was almost two square feet of shredded skin on my right thigh. Inside all of those cuts was the shaggy hair from my hirsute legs. I cleaned and disinfected my injuries, but within a few days, the big red mess on my right thigh was oozing green.

My doctor, General Internal Medicine, rotates many residence through the practice. That day I had a young, fit doctor doing a month-long family practice residency. He took a lot of care cleaning my many injuries. He prescribed antibiotics, then he leaned back, folded his arms and said, "You're the first healthy person I treated in three weeks."

I thought this was funny. I was bandages from ankle to shoulder. This fit young doctor, like others I had met and have met since, got into family practice to care for communities. But a quick scan of the waiting room anytime I am in the office says most of the practice is geriatric, bad lifestyle, or both. He seemed ready to switch his specialty to sports medicine or surgery.

And speaking of treating injuries, my oldest daughter, Lauren, was 5 years old at the time and very happy to help me change bandages every day. She was clearly disappointed when I finally healed up. Lauren did her first race that year and from age 8 to 10 was part of a kids race series. She was around so many bicycle racers as a kid she thought men with leg hair looked weird when she played sports in middle and high school.

After 22 years, I can't quite imagine having leg hair again. I still race, so I still shave.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

My First Day in Iraq, May 2, 2009

On my 56^th birthday, the ramp dropped in the back of the C-17 cargo plane at 1130 hours. We had taxied to the edge of the airstrip. More than 100 soldiers in battle gear struggled out of the five-across seats and walked down the ramp with short, unsteady steps. The same ramp in the picture above.

Heat shimmered on the concrete airstrip. The air temperature was almost 120 degrees already. The surface temperature of the airstrip was closer to 140 degrees.

“Happy fucking birthday, Gussman,” said Sgt. Jeremy Houck when I reached the bottom of the ramp. The baggage pallets were still on the plane. We would have to wait for the bags, then hope for a ride to our new homes behind 20-foot blast walls here on Camp Adder.

The base we were on was Camp Adder to the Army, Talil Ali Air Base to the US Air Force. It would be home for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, me included, until January of 2010.

On that day, the outside of me was hot, tired, confused and miserable. I was wearing 45 pounds of body armor, carrying 50 more pounds of weapon and gear, and I was melting.

But underneath the sweat, I was soooooooo happy. My dream was not comfortable or fun, but it was my dream. I wanted to be in Iraq. I enlisted during Viet Nam, but missed the war. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to be in the Army in a war. Now 50 years later, I arrived.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

More on Lt. Col. Joel Allamdinger

Yesterday I wanted to get the post about Lt. Col. Joel Allmandinger posted quickly. After I posted it I realized I forgot two links: one about racing in Iraq and one about his career.

As I mentioned in the last post, Allmandinger won the Thanksgiving Day race on Camp Adder, Iraq. The story is here on the New York Times "At War" blog.

The other story is about how Allmandinger left Army active duty after eight years of service in August of 2001, then re-enlisted after 9-11. His story was in the New York Times on the 10th Anniversary of 9-11. Here is the link.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

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.