Home for a Day

We were released from Saturday afternoon through Sunday evening. I lived close enough to go home. More than half the students in the class went to Washington DC with the instructors all day Sunday. I got to do half of the Sunday ride with my riding buddies, go to Palm Sunday service with my family, watch the F1 GP of Australia with Nigel and even sleep in past 9am. The guys who went on the DC field trip left at 8 am on Sunday. There's no sleeping in on Army time, even on a day off.

Berets are a Big Deal

Our unit wears patrol caps, but here at school berets are the uniform of the day for everything. My classmates have showed me how to make the beret fit my head. With time off this weekend I will be "shaving" my bhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giferet so it will fit tighter on my head. Here's the official info on the beret.

Army School: Free Food or Fitness

For those of us who prefer to work out in the afternoon instead of 5 am, the Army school schedule means I have to choose between free food and fitness. We get an hour for lunch. I can go the chow hall in the van or ride for about 30 minutes and get fast food at a base concession. I have opted for fast food to take advantage of the 50-60 degree weather every day. Same thing for dinner. We are done with class by 6 pm and the gym closes at 8pm. So the last few days I have ridden or gone to the gym to work out and run, and missed the free food at the mess hall. Tonight I tried to have it all. I rode for an hour and 15 minutes, showed up at the mess hall at 1850--ten minutes before closing, left at 1910, gym at 1920, 20 minutes of upper body, 20 minutes on the treadmill and out the door at 1956. Next time I will wait until after the run to eat. Free food is not worth the feeling of running on a full stomach.

At Least They Have the SPEED Channel

It's 11:35 and I will be tired in class tomorrow because tonight is the beginning of the 2008 Formula 1 season. So even if our residence has some tendency to catch fire, they have the SPEED Channel. The F1 season is broadcast live on Speed, so that means Friday's 1pm practice in Australia airs at 11pm on Thursday on the US East Coast. For fans, Ferrari is back on top of the practice speed charts. Fernando Alonso is back at Renault and is mid pack.

My Training Unit

So who is training to be a chemical and quartermaster repairer? There are nine of us in the class from Army National Guard Units across the nation: 3 sergeants (SGT), 5 specialists (SPC) and 1 corporal (CPL). One of the SGTs is my roommate, he is from Kansas and another is from Michigan. Both of them are 50 years old. The other SGT and one SPC are brothers, both from Las Vegas. Strangely, all three of the SGTs are ex-Navy. There is an SPC from North Dakota, one from Virginia, and one from W. Virginia, besides yours truly from Pennsylvania. The CPL is from Long Island. All of the students are men, which our instructors tell us is unusual. Our instructors are both women, a sergeant from Pennsylvania and a staff sergeant from West Virginia.

Running To. . .or From

I have been writing for months about what I see and what I do. Many of the questions I get from friends and family are about what the Army is like for me. But partly they are asking what is the Army like at all. Most of my co-workers and friends don't know a serving soldier except as an acquaintance or a cousin from somewhere else.

But today when I was tired and miserable from being up late and then watching the smoke roll out of the hotel where we are sleeping, I thought, "What happens when I get deployed, and I am up all night with something more serious than a kitchen fire? Can I handle that?" I had opposing urges to let my one-year enlistment run out and leave and to see a regular Army recruiter and volunteer for a tank unit.

I am in this to both run to what I believe is my eternal future and run from the life I have been leading. I don't mean my family. I mean the guy who over the past two decades has transplanted himself from high-school-educated soldier and Teamster (four years on the dock at Yellow Freight) to "communications professional." I have a lovely family, a big house, and have made more than 40 trips overseas on business in the past decade.

To paraphrase CS Lewis, I am in the world, but more importantly, the world is in me. I do love the world in a way that I did not when the world was a big, hostile, mysterious place. I joined the Army to run away from the privilege that has become part of my life. Eventually we will say to Our Lord, "Thy Will Be Done" or He will say the same to us and we will be eternally undone. And the life I have been living is increasingly dominated by my will. But the Army is the opposite. On duty, I do what I am told by whomever is in charge. I do what they say, when they say. I eat when the chow is available, or not. But I don't choose meal times or menus.

So I am running away from my love of this life and running toward the next, but it is already difficult at one weekend per month and now a two-week school. I have enough money to skip the mess hall when I want to. So I do. I am already equivocating and I am three days in to some of the lightest duty the Army has--a school. Just two weeks of beign clean, well-fed and learning about equipment.

My long-term plan is to get the training I need, go on active duty for a year, then live a simpler life making less money. No more expensive clothes, no more expensive food whenever I want. I still think it is the right thing to do. But I have to keep running. If I stop, I will turn back.

And a Longer Night!!!!

I got to bed late Monday night. BAD Choice. At 1:45 am the fire alarms went off in the hotel where we are staying. Anyway, the kitchen caught on fire and by 2 am we were out in the parking lot watching eventually seven fire trucks arrive. No one was hurt and everybody was back in their rooms by 330 am.
It wasn't enough sleep though. I was tired all day. We got done just before 6pm. I passed my first exam, which was on the 350GPM pump, and we started on a 120,000 btu heating unit.

Long Day with a Pump

All of today and most of tomorrow we learned to maintain and operate the Army's 350 GPM Pump. This aptly named, diesel-powered, trailer-mounted device, pumps 350 gallons per minute of either water or fuels--but not both. We read schematics, did mechanical and electrical troubleshooting, and took the whole pump body apart and put it back together. If you were wondering what a 3-cylinder pump has to with chemical weapons, this course is about maintaining the equipment that helps to clean up after contamination. The various steam cleaners and field showers and laudries need water and diesel to get where they need to be and operate while on site--so we start with a pump.

We Are National Guard on an Active Army Post

The classes I and the other 30+ students are in are for National Guard and Reserve soldiers. This was evident Sunday morning. We were told it was very important to begin class at 0800 Sunday because that was the only time we could have a soldering class during our two weeks. Every other day was booked. So at 0815 after waiting 15 minutes outside a locked building, our instructors went to Plan B and took us to another building for the afternoon's lesson. The school staff person assigned to let us in did not show up. Our instructors tried to arrange for a class in the same place in the afternoon, but for reasons they were polite enough not to share with the students, that option was out also. They did say that we must remain flexible throughout the two weeks because the active Army soldiers would have priority.

Army Meet and Greet

If it was not evident in the last post, an Army meet and greet is different than the civilian version. At 4pm Saturday, our 1st Sergeant said we would a 1900 hours formation that evening for a meet and greet. Between 1900 and 2000 hours we 30 or so students sat in a conference room and met and were greeted by the senior NCOs who gave the briefings I described yesterday. In summary: be safe, don't speed on post, don't go near the active Army students, don't get drunk and if you do stay in the hotel, formation at 0715 hours every day. Have fun!

Reporting for Duty

Chemical & Quartermaster Equipment Repair School (MOS 63J10) started with in processing this afternoon. Report time was No Later Than 1600. I arrived at 1500 hours. The training school headquarters is located off post. After filling out some forms, I had to change into my PT uniform and get weighed and measured. I am 71 1/2 inches tall so I can weigh up to 197 pounds. With winter PT uniform I weighed 193, so they let me continue processing.

By 1600 the first inprocessing was completed and I drove to our quarters--just two men to a room for the entire two weeks.

After formation, I tried to get on the internet in the room, then in the lobby using wireless. No wireless in the room, slow in the lobby. My roommate, a sergeant from Kansas also here for 63J training, told me how to use the ethernet connection in the room, now I am on line.

Formation tomorrow and every day is 0715. Tomorrow we have a mandatory safety briefing after dinner. The training schedule every day runs from 0715 to 2000, so I wont have a lot of free time. It should be an interesting two weeks.

My Blog Featured in Medill News Service Article

Medill News Service posted an article about military blogs and I am one of the bloggers quoted.

Letter on Science Education and Medicine

This week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News (Washington DC, weekly, 140,000 subscribers) published a letter I wrote in support of science education based on the technology that put me back together after several bad accidents. It's a subscription Web site, so I am copying the letter rather than posting a link.

Broken neck, evolutionary biology

One of the few moments I remember from the hours following the bike accident that splintered my seventh vertebra and broke nine other bones is the neurosurgeon saying: "You have two choices. Get the surgery or we can put you in a halo cast for a year and see what happens." I said, "surgery." And I have walked three to 10 miles per day since I left the hospital eight days later. Since the cervical collar came off on Aug. 2, 2007, I have been back on my bike.

But 10 or more years ago I would have had no option but the halo cast. My seventh vertebra was in pieces. Cadaver bone replacement was not a routine option in 1997. I would still be screwed into a cage or maybe in traction or recovering from surgery to "harvest" bone from my hips. In 1967, I would have been quadriplegic or dead.

C&EN writes well and regularly about modern science and why evolution is so important to our intellectual life. Understanding how the body works at the molecular level is key to accepting donor body parts. So for me the insights of Darwin and Mendel, which led to the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick, then to huge advances in medicine and all biosciences in the past 50 years, allowed me, a 54-year-old bicycle racer, to walk out of the hospital eight days after a 50-mph crash that would have left me caged for a year, quadriplegic, or dead if it happened earlier in my life.

I am also a believer. So in addition to thinking rejection of modern science is crazy, I also think it is very bad manners. I would respect those who believe in science-rejecting young-earth creationism more if, consistent with their beliefs, they lived in caves and refused all of the technology that comes directly from science in the past century. But who in America does not benefit from modern medicine or high technology?

In my adult life I have been blinded by shrapnel, seen the bones and ligaments inside my knees after a motorcycle crash, and in 2007 was saved from paralysis by the latest trauma medicine. I certainly support modern science on an intellectual level, but for me I am also a fan of modern medicine, as passionate as my fellow Penn State alums are about football.

Obviously, I am writing with no specific expertise, just an ACS member who thinks support of modern science and rejection of pseudoscience is not just right—it's a matter of life and death.

Neil Gussman
Philadelphia

My Father and Fort Indiantown Gap

My father, George Gussman, served in Pennsylvania for most of World War II. His first enlistment was in 1939 at 33 years old. When the US declared war on Japan in 1941, Dad was close to discharge. Of course, no one got discharged after December 7, 1941. My father was the fourth of six sons of immigrants who came to America just before the turn of the 20th century to escape the pogroms in Russia. My father went to school only through the 8th grade then went to work. He liked to say he was a Teamster when there were really teams of horses. His first job was stable boy, working the wrong end of those horses.

When the war broke out my father was twice the age of the other recruits and had real experience in warehousing, what the Army calls the quartermaster corps. Despite his lack of education, he went to Officer Candidate School. As a brand-new 36-year-old 2nd lieutenant, my Dad was soon put in command of a Black maintenance company at Camp Reynolds in the northeastern part of Pa. He was very proud of that command. I still have scrapbooks of clippings and photos of the men he commanded. He kept in touch with some of his sergeant's long after the war was over.

Then he got assigned to Fort Indiantown Gap. More on that later.

Passed Phase 1

I just passed the last module for Phase 1 of the 63J course. A week from tomorrow I report for Phase 2 school at Aberdeen MD. I'll be blogging daily from the school--everything from wake up calls to lights out if I can.

Orders for 63J Training

I just got orders to report for 63J10 training at Aberdeen MD on March 8. So the clock is ticking now for me to complete the seven modules that make up phase 1 of the training. I just returned from a business trip to Boston. I took the train and went through most of one of the modules on the way up and back. Here's a picture of the steam cleaner that is part of the latest module.

Laser Fire

Saturday morning I was able to join another company is a laser fire exercise. I fired an M-16 with a laser device attached tot he end of the barrel at electronic targets. It has been so long since I fired an M-16--in tanks my personal weapons were a .45 Cal pistol and a "Grease Gun" submachine gun--that I was happy to practice aiming, squeezing the trigger, and assuming firing positions. Firing prone I put together a 3 cm shot group. Kneeling and standing, not so good. I also had a good shot group sitting, but that's not part of qualification fire. I am looking forward to live fire at summer camp.

PT Test

Sunday morning I took the PT test again with a couple of guys who missed the previous tests. The morning was cold and because of a snow squall the track was icy in some spots and wet in others. My run time was 16:23, 42 seconds slower than September, but I did 11 more pushups and 14 more situps (42 and 66 respectively) so I got my overall score up to 271. Next fall I hope to get my score up to 290 by get my run time down to 14:40 (max for age 52 to 56) and adding a few more pushups.

My New Washer Dryer

Here it is!

I Flunked Laundry!

No Kidding. So the fifth of seven modules in my phase 1 training is how to maintain and operate a field laundry. I have four kids and do the laundry at my house. I thought the laundry module would be a cinch. But it's mostly about maintenance and operation of a diesel-powered field set up. I scanned the material, took the test and scored 53%. Unlike the other modules, I am going to have to study this one thoroughly--even though this is the one thing so far I actually do in the course of a normal week. But troubleshooting a diesel powered laundry is nothing like doing the laundry for one household. Oh well.