Silly Punk Mother F**ker: 1st Sgt. Robert V. Baker

When Bravo Company, 1-70th Armor went to Germany in 1976, our First Sergeant was Robert V. Baker.  Top Baker was a veteran of both Vietnam and the Korean War.  He was not old enough to serve during World War 2, but none of us believed it.  Top Baker to us was REALLY old.  Nearly 50 according to the unit clerk who peeked at his records and told everyone just how old Top Baker was.

Top Baker was a very sharp guy and a very good tanker.  But this tall, thin, graying soldier had a wandering indirect way of speaking that drove us crazy on several occasions.  Once in the Spring of 1977 we were in formation on a cold morning in short sleeves because the Army said it was summer.  Top Baker told us one of the washing machines in the barracks was broken and could not be repaired any time soon.  With great gestures, but without actually looking at us, Top went on for almost 20 minutes talking about washing clothes in Viet Nam which led him to remember that the maintenance people responsible for that field laundry facility were a bunch of "Silly Punk Mother F**kers."  Once he wound himself up to using SPMF we knew he would be talking for another ten minutes at least.

I personally got the SPMF treatment once when during major maintenance of my tank.  We turned in all 63 rounds of main gun ammo.  It was during this part of my life that I started signing documents with an "N" followed by a wiggly line.  The Army required 63 signatures of the tank commander for ammo turn in and 63 signatures to reload the tank.

The trouble this particular time was one of the rounds was missing.  I was signed for that SABOT service round.  I was an SPMF and Top Baker was going to make sure that I was busted right down to SPMF Private!!!

It was a clerical error so I did not get "busted right down to Private."  I noticed to my great relief that during the period in which my sergeant stripes and my future in the Army were in jeopardy, Top Baker never referred to me as a "Non-Tanker."  Anyone could make a mistake and be an SPMF until the mistake was corrected, but a Non-Tanker was a fundamental flaw.

Whew!!!

I heard at the 70th Armor reunion that Top Baker passed away not long after he returned to America in the early 80s.

Even when I was shivering in the cold, waiting for Top Baker to wrap a 20-minute digression on washing machines in the Army, Top Baker was one of my favorite first sergeants.

Baby Killers, Climate Change and Conspiracy Theories

In the past week, I spoke with people who remember the Viet Nam War and what many Americans thought of soldiers back then.  Many soldiers serving now don't like being thanked for their service.  They think of it as insincere or shallow.  They take for granted that the public loves us.  That just shows how fast public opinion can change.  When the young men in the photo below came home, they might have been greeted with "Baby Killer" instead of "Thank you for your service."  I have heard both.  I like the Thank You.

I enlisted in 1972, during Viet Nam, but never got closer to Viet Nam than Nevada.  Even though I never went to Viet Nam, I was part of the military, so I was a "Baby Killer" in the eyes of many.  It is certainly true that Lt. Cali and some others killed civilians, but the people who thought of the military as "Baby Killers" had to believe that more than two million Americans enlisted and suddenly became murderers of children.  And they had to accept the word of Jane Fonda and others who were not soldiers about the character of soldiers.  

In retrospect, it seems crazy that millions of Americans could have believed that about soldiers from their own towns and neighborhoods and that anyone could have accepted the word of Jane Fonda on military matters.  But they did.  Could anything be more ridiculous than thinking the children of World War 2 veterans were suddenly transformed to monsters?

As a matter of fact, yes.  

People who deny man-made climate change must believe that more than a million people with advanced degrees in science are involved in a conspiracy to defraud America and the world.  And on top of that, they have to accept the word of Senator James Inhofe, who knows as much about science as Jane Fonda knows about the military, on the science of climate change.   

The other expert climate science deniers on Fox News are lawyers, not scientists.  Like Inhofe they receive millions from oil-industry-backed groups, most notably Koch-brothers-sponored organizations.

I know many Americans accept the most idiotic conspiracies.  They believe that the same government that lost the Iraq War by saying we "Would be greeted as liberators" and the war would "Pay for itself" is somehow involved in staging 9-11.  Some Americans think fluoride is a Soviet Plot and have not noticed the fall of the Soviet Union.  Others fight vaccination.  

And in the late 60s and early 70s they accepted Jane Fonda's evaluation of our military.  

James Inhofe believes he is smarter than all those striving, high achieving people who earn doctorate degrees in chemistry, physics, math, geology and related sciences.  

Many members of my family have advanced degrees in physics, math and other fields.  They all accept the work of people who work in climate science.  

In the Army, I serve with many people who think Fox News is credible.  

When Jane Fonda called American Soldiers Baby Killers, I was in High School and my Uncle Jack was on his second of three tours flying close air support in Viet Nam.  Anyone who believed her was talking shit about a man I admired more than anyone else in the world except my Dad.

When someone says sincerely that all scientists are involved in a conspiracy, they are talking about my wife, my in-laws, one of my daughters and many of my friends.  

I despise conspiracy theories for that reason.  They are an excuse to dismiss or hate an entire groups.  And like prejudice, they are an excuse to lump people together instead of dealing with them as they are.   

Jack is Back

My Uncle Jack's response to my blog post on military rating systems:

I believe you captured perfectly the essence of the rating systems for enlisted and officer members of the military. The goals of the troops in the trenches are tacitly accepted but seldom stated. Unfortunately, all the parties involved have different opinions of what the goals really are. The ratings are therefore essentially based on "feelings," the supervisor's perceived needs, personal bias, etc, etc and isolated events, good or bad. I think this applies from the President- Joint Chiefs level on down.

Civilian organizations, at least the ones I've been in, don't usually have such clear-cut systems for rating performance but involve high-minded processes that require a development of "goals," which one commits to. This is followed by events and direction from above that ignore the agreed-upon goals and substitute instead the urgent problems at hand. This is also known as fighting fires. The flaw is that the agreed goals are usually crisply defined, while fire-fighting accomplishments are amorphous and hard to define or measure. The rated party is supposedly empowered to invoke his goals statement as a defense against fire fighting but this doesn't usually work and may even be dangerous to one's tenure. At the end of the rating period the system breaks down into the same personal bias as the military system.

Breakfast with Jack

This morning I had breakfast with my Uncle Jack. He retired from active duty with the Air Force in 1978 and is currently living in the Orlando area. I am attending an analytical instrument conference in Orlando, so we could get together for a visit.

At a small table in Einstein's Bagel Shop we talked about the military from various angles. One subject I have not written about that was on both of our minds is how the military evaluates soldiers and airmen and how one bad evaluation can end a career. Jack told me about a colonel he worked for who looked like a future general. this otherwise rising star made a high official in the Ford administration angry and his career ended there. He talked about other people he knew who got the one bad evaluation and Poof! career blows away.

And the technique is simple. All evaluations are terribly skewed so that the actual "average" score for any given rank is far above the middle of the scale. When I was on active duty in the 1970s, Army enlisted evaluations were on a 125 point scale. The "average" score was 117 for Sgt. E-5s. For a 1st Sgt. it was 122. Back then, a good evaluation had each block completely filled superlatives if you wanted to say that a given NCO was really great. Lots of people got 125-point scores, it took more to say that someone was truly outstanding.

On the other hand, if you wanted to screw someone, all you had to do was put an honest score in the boxes and less than gushing prose in the comment boxes. The sergeant with a score of 110 or less and half-filled comment blocks was a shit bag. Everybody reading the form knew this for the rest of that soldier's career.

Some of the best people in my unit got screwed in exactly this way. More on that later.

Uncle Jack's Airplanes

F-4 Phantom II





KC-135 Tanker






My son and oldest daughter, Nigel and Lauren came to visit for a couple of hours last night. It was dark so we could not see the big transport planes on McGuire Air Force Base very well. But on the way over at traffic circle there is a static display of two planes Uncle Jack flew in the skies over Viet Nam: the F4 Phantom fighter plane and one of the original KC-135 refueling planes. I could tell Nigel how his Uncle Jack flew in both of these planes. Nigel judged the KC-135 as "really big" which it is when you are a 10-year-old walking underneath it and the F4 as "Awesome."

Both planes struck me as being very small. The KC-135 is based on the Boeing 707 airliner, which is long replaced by newer planes in most of the world. The F4 just sitting on a slab was also very small and very odd looking with its droopy tail and nose and angled surfaces.

It's still at least a week till I get home. I am in the Air Force library four miles from my barracks using the only reliable internet that I have access to right now.

Catch 22

My Uncle Jack who served in Viet Nam responded to my post yesterday. Here's our messages:

Sgt. Nephew,
I feel your pain and I applaud that you have kept your daughters out of public schools, aka government indoctrination centers. That said, knowing you are a devoted reader and lover of literature I recommend the greatest anti-government/military book extant: Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. I'm also an avid reader but mostly on the surface level. I seldom look for the symbolism buried deeper in the text. It took me a couple of readings of Heller's book to realize he was using irony, if that's the right word, to illustrate the lunacy of government and especially the military. Rather than an expose' or an angry diatribe he used subtlety to insinuate his point without bludgeoning his readers. By doing so, he engaged a far larger audience and perhaps changed the minds of people who never suspected what he was up to. If you haven't read it, try it.

The movie alluded to this in a few scenes but mostly treated it as a comedy farce.

Uncle Major,
I loved the book and did not like the movie for that reason—it kept the farce and lost the point. Catch 22 also makes the point that in all bureaucracies, paperwork is reality and reality means nothing. This worked out decidedly to my advantage in my 2nd enlistment. I was never a resident of PA but got a better deal from the PA recruiter. I gave him a PA post office box—P.O. Box 334, Brownstown PA. When I went to get out in 1979, I thought I was going to Massachusetts. They would not ship my stuff to MA. I would have to retain a civilian lawyer to prove I was an MA resident because my DD Form 4—even though Ma and Dad were living in the same house I enlisted from in 1972 and lived in since 1957. It turned out I got to go to Penn State as a resident because of that form.
Joseph Heller would just smile.

Sergeant Nephew,
I wondered how you ended up in PA.

Bicycles in Thailand at the End of the Viet Nam War

From my uncle who served in Viet Nam several times and other parts of South East Asia for almost a decade:

This is another Thailand story but a very ordinary one. At Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base in 1974 bird colonels had staff cars, the rest of us whatever we could find. The Thais, seeing an opportunity, opened for business on the base selling (very) used Honda mopeds, provided repair services and sold gasoline by the pint, actually probably a half liter. A moped will run for a long time on a half liter of gas. Guys would buy a moped, ride it daily everywhere and sell it back when they rotated away.

The counter culture was bicycles. The BX did a bustling business in Japanese bikes. Most guys, me for instance, bought a bike, dutifully had the Air Police mark various parts of it stamped with an ID number--bike rustling was a big issue-- and rode it everywhere as if it was a car. After a while guys referred to their bike as their "horse." Korat was as as flat a table, being in the central highlands of interior Thailand, so a bike was ideal. The difference from mopeds was that most guys took their bike home when they rotated away, fully intending to ride it. I did. When it arrived I discovered that the seat stem had been replaced with one that was too large and driven in with a hammer. I had to use a wheel puller to extract it. Didn't matter. I never rode that bike once I got home. Eventually, I gave it to some charity when I was cleaning out the garage.

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. . .

Response to Army Morality

B52 BOMBER TAKING OFF

I received this email from a Viet Nam vet writing the moral dimension of his war. I thought you would like it as much as I did:

We deployed as a unit in the Summer of 1968: A B-52 Bomb Squadron, a KC-135 Air Refueling Squadron and various maintenance and support units and personnel. The B-52's were based in Guam with a detachment in Thailand. The KC-135's were based in Okinawa with detachments in Thailand and Taiwan. Both Guam and Okinawa had large populations of resident US citizens (round eyes), AKA "American League," and open access via commercial airlines for more. Thailand and Taiwan were vibrant economic cultures with lots of ways and places to spend money and meet members of the indigenous opposite sex, AKA "National League." The atmosphere in all these places was Fly and Party. You were doing either one or the other. A phenomenon developed in which guys were writing home, saying in effect, "I'm being good, but guess what Joe did!" It's no surprise that Joe's wife soon got a full briefing.

As it turned out, the same sort of thing was happening back home. The wives left behind were partying too, encouraged by flocks of party animals flying in on weekend cross-country "training" flights to bases where the cats were away and the mice were ready to play. I personally began receiving anonymous letters keeping me up to date on my wife's activities and upon whose couch my 4 year-old daughter had spent the night.

When we returned home after six months the divorces began. In all, among just the flight crews and the flight line maintenance troops there were 40 divorces. For some of these guys it was a second divorce, the first having occurred at a different base after a similar deployment. My marriage began to disintegrate during the interim before the next deployment.

In the Summer of 1969, we did it again. This time before we departed the Chaplain included in his "God be with You" briefing,remarks to the effect that we were not our brothers' keepers; it was not up to us to write home and chronicle the misbehaviors of our friends. When we returned from this second deployment the unit was taken out of the line for upgrade to a new aircraft, the FB-111, AKA MacNamara's Folly. The effect of the second deployment on crew force matrimony was diffused by hundreds of personnel reassignments.

There is one funny story worth relating. In 1968, a major typhoon (hurricane) blasted through the western Pacific. The island of Guam, home for dozens or even hundreds of B-52's was threatened. A sanctuary had to be found for them all. International negotiations were conducted at the State Department level to assure governments, such as China and North Korea, that this was strictly a matter of safety, not aggression. So, in due time a flock of B-52's arrived at our KC-135 base in Taiwan and the crews were billeted at the largest hotel in the nearby city of Taichung. Whoever made the arrangements was unaware that the hotel was a notorious brothel. I'll leave the rest of the story to your imagination. Such is the fog of war.

More Chicken Shit

I was going to let this subject go, but today I was talking with another soldier about the latest rule and remembered that as Chicken Shit takes over, the divide between higher and lower ranks becomes more obvious.

The latest rule says No Tactical Vehicles are allowed to park next to Living Areas. The reason given is that there have been minor collisions between tactical and Non Tactical Vehicles (NTVs). Tactical vehicles are Humvees and the bigger trucks soldiers ride in to go to work, especially when several soldiers work the same hours in a remote area. NTVs are the air-conditioned SUVs and Crew-Cab pickup trucks used by first sergeants, sergeant majors and higher-ranking officers. So when I ride back to my living area, I pass through two rows of gray and white SUVs on the way to my room. So those who drive NTVs walk out of their rooms and drive to work. Those who live in an area without tactical vehicle parking walk to the bus stop.

Whether the intent of the rule is to inconvenience soldiers and benefit officers, the result is just that. Of course, this is nothing new. Again quoting my uncle Jack:

"I don't want to overplay this old soldier bit but the CS entry hit home. When I attended Squadron Officers' School (SOS) in 1966 it was a hotbed of daily CS. They valued themselves very highly. Something I've never forgotten was a loooonng wall of shelves in the Air University library filled end to end with looseleaf notebooks, to a height of 7 or 8 feet. The notebooks contained all the regs and policies of the Air Force from HQ at the Pentagon down through Major Command, numbered Air Force, Air Division. Below that Wing and base level stuff was not on file.
The Air Force at all levels tried to have a reg or policy for every possible situation. Of course they failed, but they never stopped trying so far as I know."

In French the expression that corresponds with CS is enculage de mouche . Literally it means the person in question is having a very unhealthy relationship with a housefly, but the common meaning is giving too much importance to small details. I suppose every country with a military has an equivalent expression to CS.

Calling Home During Viet Nam

My Uncle Jack who served in Viet Nam and other parts of South East Asia for several years between 1965 and 1974, had this response to my post on stress:

I was intrigued by your blog about stress. This is completely opposite my experience during remote interludes in the years 1965 to 1974. As late as 1974 calling home from Thailand was impossible. When if you got to the Philippines you had an opportunity. Even then it was a hassle: Go to a special location, file a request with a clerk to call a certain stateside number, then wait. When the call went through you'd be summoned and directed to a booth to which the call would be connected. Then for, as I recall, a dollar a minute you could talk for a limited time, say ten minutes. Pretty much things were even worse in Greenland and other garden spots SAC (Strategi Air Command) populated. There was no internet/email.

In those circumstances it was impossible to be involved in the daily life of your family at home. They had to solve their own problems--or, more likely, create them. As a junior officer of modest means writing a check from the joint account you shared with your wife took two weeks or more of coordination via snail mail. This was in an era when bouncing a check was a serious offense. Of course, trusting your spouse to actually balance the checkbook and keep you from doing that was a stressful gamble. On-line checking didn't exist.

I never considered the circumstances families now face: more or less instant communication and the blessing or burden of participating from a distance. I imagine there is lots of real-time involvement, "Where did you put the vacuum cleaner bags? I can't find them anywhere!" "Do you know what your son did now?!"

Father's Day

Father's Day has been my favorite holiday (or whatever it is) for more than a decade now. It's early in the summer so school is out but summer camps haven't started yet. I spend most of the day with my kids. This Father's Day I was with my family from the time I woke up until just a few minutes ago when they all went to bed.

Just before 8am, my daughter Lisa and I rode to the Greenfield Criterium, a race that has been one of the Pennsylvania State Bicycling Championship races for more than a decade and has always been held on Father's Day. From 2001 - 2004 Lisa raced at Greenfield in individual races and with me on the tandem. Today we both used the ride to the race as a 7-mile warm up: me for the bike race, she for a five-mile run that is part of her summer training for cross country in the fall.

I warmed up with my teammate Kevin then we lined up at 9am for the 55+ State Championship race. The field was small, just over 20 riders, but included several masters state and national champions. Worse than that for me, each one-mile lap of the 20-lap race ends with a 1/4-mile 5% climb. On the positive side, my wife and kids were on the side of the road near the start-finish line cheering every lap. They only cheered for me for five laps. I was hanging in for most of five laps, but at the end of the fourth lap they rang the bell for a premium prize or "preem" as they are called. For the first four laps there were a few half-hearted attacks that got sucked right back into the pack so I could hang on. After that bell rang, one of the stronger riders took off on the long, shallow downhill. By the flat stretch at the bottom of the hill we were strung out in a line going 32mph. I was 8th at the beginning of the lap and last as we turned up the hill to the start-finish line. By the time they crossed the start-finish line I was gasping, wishing I had skipped breakfast, and watching the rest of the riders disappear.

But I only expected to last three laps, so I felt pretty good. We cheered for my teammate and for Scott Haverstick for a few more laps then Lisa and I rode home to change for a day trip to NYC. It was fun to be in a pack again and riding fast, even if it was not for very long. I am going to need a lot of hill training when I get back from Iraq.

Just after 11 am we were on the road to NYC. We drive to Newark, park the car and take the train to Penn Station when we go to NYC. When we first got to NYC my kids walked south on Broadway from 32nd to get some lunch and I went up to 6th and 47th to the NY Post office. I visited a friend there for a few minutes, but like every major daily they do maximum work with minimum staff, so after we chatted for a while I went across the street to Pret a Manger (Ready to Eat) for a sandwich and a drink since the kids had already finished eating.

While I was eating, a tall man in his early 60s strode in. He was dressed casually in expensive clothes. He had a theatrical air enhanced by his well-dyed, well-coiffed red hair (NO ONE his age has red hair). He was waving a $20 bill over his head and saying "I need change." He passed three other people in line and shoved the bill toward a young woman behind the counter who took it then continued to wait on the customer in front of her. Mr. Drama paced left, turned and looked at me (I was in uniform) and said "Gussman, what MOS are you?" in a very Broadway voice. I kept eating. He said, "I was a 95B20 in Quan Tri in 1967. I used to drive lifers like you crazy." Then he grabbed his money and strode out.

This dramatic draftee was in when soldiers wore their rank on their sleeve or collar. He had no idea what rank I was and assumed I had served for the last three decades or more. You just don't get guys like him in the Army without a draft.

Then I met my kids at 23rd and we went to Chinatown to shop at the street vendors. Lisa's senior project was a study of street vendors. She took me to a shop that had a basement storage area where a street vendor had taken her to show her the best stock she had. We walked back to the north on Broadway. Nigel and I got coffee and watched people go by while Lauren and Lisa shopped. We then took the Subway to Penn Station and cuaght a train to New Jersey. I have been trying to eat food I can't get in Iraq. Almost every day I buy bread from a bakery. Today it was NY Challah from Zaros. We at Chinese food in New Jersey (Chinese food at the DFAC is not very good.) then drove the 150 miles back to Lancaster singing along with a playlist of songs from Lauren's iPod:

Boom Boom Boom -- the outhere brothers
Spice up your life -- spice girls
Because you loved me -- Celene Dion (Very funny when sung by a 9-yr-old boy)
Back at one -- brian mcknight
Could you be loved -- bob marley
Baby baby -- Amy Grant
I know you want me (calle ocho) -- pitbull
Number one -- john legend (featuring Kanye west)
She hates me -- puddle of mud
The lion sleeps tonight -- lion king soundtrack
Let it rock -- kevin rudolph and lil wayne
Paper planes -- M.I.A.
Wake me up before you go go -- Wham!
Beautiful Girls (remix) -- sean kingston
Hello, I love you -- the doors
Get off of my cloud -- the rollingstones
Boom Boom Pow -- Black Eyed peas
Single ladies -- Beyonce
Welcome to the world -- kevin rudolph
Let's call it off -- drake
Get silly -- V.I.C.
Girl talk songs
New Soul -- yael nai m
1234 -- feist
Hot Revolver -- lil wayne and kevin rudolph

Father's Day doesn't get any better than this.

Tanks for the Memories

Shortly after joining Echo Company I realized that part of my suffering in 2009 would simply be showing up in the motor pool. The glacial pace of motor pools, the problems that can only be diagnosed by experienced mechanics, the whole fellowship-of-the-falling-apart-truck is something that excites me just as much as death-metal music, sitcoms, comedy movies, and zombie movies.

So I spoke to my squad leader already about the form 4100 evaluations we will be receiving in the fall, that's when Sergeants are evaluated for promotion to staff sergeant. I am already at the top grade of 63J so I will have to be retrained to be promoted, as an air conditioning mechanic, a wheel mechanic, or a generator mechanic.

Right.

So I had the bright idea of submitting my paperwork in my job specialty from before 19E--actually 19E30, tank commander/section leader. That way when we got back to the states I could revert to the job I had when I left in 1984, get familiar with the new tanks and finish out the final year of my enlistment working on a vehicle I get to shoot at least a couple of times per year.

Wrong.

An armor unit just moved in. I had a latte with one of their soldiers last night and ate dinner with two soldiers today. They both told me about a "chat" they had with their sergeant major saying tanks are being phased out in the Middle East and probably someday from the Army in general.

It makes sense. Tanks were invented in World War 1 as land battleships. They dominated land combat in World War 2, were massed to fight World War 3 in Europe, then in Viet Nam, Afghanistan (Soviet) and our wars, they are not exactly central.

So I'll have to think of something else. As tanks disappear from armor units, the soldiers who want to stay in armor will compete for fewer and fewer slots. So at least for me, by the time I get home, tanks will be on the way to being just memories.

Linking Viet Nam and Iraq

Today's Philadelphia Daily News has a 20-page section on Viet Nam. I am quoted in the lead of the first article in the section--partly about the Starbucks story below. Here's the link: PDNews