Review of The Intelligencer, a novel by Leslie Silbert

Christopher Marlowe, the playwright and spy for Her Majesty, was betrayed and murdered on May 30, 1597.  The story of Marlowe’s last month is told in parallel with a present-day tale of theft of Marlowe’s spy reports that leads to murder, betrayal, theft and deception in the delightful book The Intelligencer. 

This fast-moving thriller is the first novel by a woman whose background includes Renaissance scholar, private investigator and Harvard graduate.  I enjoyed the novel from the first page.  Silbert weaves the two stories together well, both in the way she moves from the present to the past and back and in bring the two tales together in the conclusion. 

While I enjoyed the whole book, the most memorable and vivid parts of the novel for me were the parts in Elizabethan England.  Silbert made me see and feel the vivid emotions of a world where death is always close at hand, and stench overwhelmed the senses. 

The modern scenes were intriguing, but less vivid.  One exception was the robbery gone wrong that is a bright thread that leads from the beginning to the end of the book.  While the robbery is set in the modern day, the robber is a baron gone bad with sensibilities that at least go back to Victoria if not all the way to Elizabeth. 

When I met the author on a train from Washington last month, she had three mystery novels she had just bought in Union Station.  She said she was doing competitive research.  I hope she writes another novel set partially or completely in Renaissance Europe.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a thriller, but particularly to readers who want a tale well told from a world lit by fire.

Preparing for Life After Army

I looked like this the night before my military career started.

I hope I make the transition out more smoothly!

Since August of 2007, this blog has been my external memory about life as a very old soldier.  Next year, that phase of my life will come to an end.  To that end, I decided to start writing about all of my life, not just the Army part of it. 

When I started this blog, rejoining the Army was a wide-eyed adventure for me.  It was a strange journey I could share with friends and family.  It turns out that many more people started reading my posts to get an idea of Army life.  Especially when I was in Iraq, I could provide a view of life for soldiers families that the soldiers themselves would not.

Beginning in July, I will start unraveling my identity.  This journey is in some ways more scary than becoming a soldier at 54.  Beginning in July of this year, I will no longer be employed full time.  If the arrangement I proposed is accepted, I will become a consultant, working just two days a week at what is currently my full-time job. 

I have worked full time since my senior year of high school.  From age twelve to seventeen, I worked full-time in the warehouse where my father worked during the summers.  Since 1970, I have collected unemployment twice for two weeks each time.  Full-time worker, either blue-collar or professional, is how I see myself.

Will I survive part-time work?  It seems like a great thing:  more time to read, write, ride, run and swim. 

I will be the primary parent for the boys.  Will that be my identity? 

Unless by some miracle I am extended again, I will leave the Army National Guard in May 2015 with 18 years an no retirement.  Even if I stay for 20, the arcane retirement rules may leave outside of the retirement system. 

Right now I shave every morning and cut my hair “high and tight” and do not have to think about growing a beard.  Not allowed.  What happens when I am a civilian and all things are possible.  Will I be a weird old guy with an Army haircut?  Grow my hair, a beard?

Will I return to being a bicycle racer?  I have a license.  I still ride.  Will I have enough time to ride 10,000 miles per year and become (somewhat) competitive again?  When I rode that much, I was not in the Army, I didn’t run, or swim or do much of anything (for exercise) except ride. 

When I work part time, I will be writing, but only those two days a week.  I could write more.  I will be a civilian.  I could write about anything.  Would writer be my identity?  I am a writer now because I get paid to do it.  I would like to write with no commercial purpose.  Right now I am on a plane listening to a crew member read a script about why I should sign up for a SkyMiles credit card.  I could have written that.  I don’t want to.

After today, I will write about all the rest of my life on what is an Army blog, because many things I do for the next year will be part of the transition out of camouflage and into spandex and denim.

So you will hear more about my wife and kids and friends.  I will still write about the Army stuff. This year in particular, I plan to write about more soldiers during summer camp.

Aviation Ball--Sorry, No Pictures

I went to the Aviation Ball, the annual full-dress dining out for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  Last night's event was bigger than last year with more than 300 soldiers and guests representing Pennsylvania Army Aviation.

Since I knew I was leaving for a meeting in New Orleans early the next morning, I gave Capt. Miller the memory card from my camera before I left.  So I have no pictures.  Eventually I will get the chip back.

It was a lot of fun.  The Hershey Lodge is big enough to hold an event for a group this size but without all the parking and traffic hassles of a city location.

In June all of my Army last-year countdowns start.  June 6-22 will be my last Army summer camp.  Every month thereafter I will do something else for the last time in our annual round of training.  Then in May 2015, I will go back to being a civilian.

More on that later.

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman Triathlon

Three weeks ago, I climbed out of the Lancaster YMCA pool and sat in the hot tub:  In 2 hours and 8 minutes I swam 4,250 yards.  In ten minutes in the hot tub, I just sat.  The I grabbed some food, changed and rode 30 miles.

Since that Saturday, I have ridden almost 400 miles, run 30 miles and swam eight more miles training for an Ironman this August.

Training is the biggest difference between the Tough Mudder and the Ironman Triathlon.

My training for the Tough Mudder was running and keeping in shape for half marathons and the gyms workouts I was already doing for the Army Fitness Test.  If you can pass the Army Fitness test and run a slow half marathon, you have the fitness necessary to do the Tough Mudder.

The real challenge of the Tough Mudder are its signature obstacles.  You do not have to be in terrific shape to run and crawl through 10,000-volt wires, nor do you need endurance to swim 30 feet including passing under a wall in an ice-filled dumpster.

The Tough Mudder, true to its name, requires more toughness than fitness.  I got shocked badly enough last summer that I will not do the Tough Mudder again.

On the other hand, the Ironman is all training and little danger, relative to the Tough Mudder.

But the training swallows all the free time in the triathletes life.  Someone asked my kids what they do in the evenings.  "Go to the gym," was my sons' answer in unison.  In the gym I run and swim while they play basketball.

Now that the weather is better I will be on the bike training for my best event, the 112-mile bike.  The bike alone will take longer than a Tough Mudder and I will have a 2.4-mile swim behind me and a marathon ahead.

Which is tougher?  If ice, shocks and high platforms are your cup of tea, the Ironman is much, much tougher and requires much more training.  But if facing real pain and danger are not part of your plan, the Tough Mudder obstacles may be worse than the training required for an Ironman.

If I successfully complete the Kentucky Ironman this year, it will be my first and last Ironman.  In fact if I make the swim and the bike but drop out or pass out on the run, I will be happy.  I want to go back to bicycle racing in my old age.


Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 3

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 2

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman is Here

Second Tough Mudder Report

First Tough Mudder Finish

First Tough Mudder Photos

First Tough Mudder Entry

Ironman Plans

Ironman Training

Ironman Bucket List

Ironman Idea

Ironman Danger

Ironman Friendship

Gas Chamber Training This Weekend

On Saturday morning, I went to the supply room to get a gas mask.  My company was scheduled for annual gas mask training.

We look lovely:

Last drill we got our masks properly fitted.  This weekend the training NCO filled a concrete blockhouse with something like tear gas.  We filed into the room, lifted our masks for a leak check and reseal drill, then pulled of the masks and ran out.

Ran out crying, coughing and choking.

And people ask me, "What are you doing in the Army at your age?"  I would have to travel to Kiev to have this much fun!!

Soldier on a Train: Talking about the Cold War with a Suspense Writer

Last week in one of the over-scheduled trips I make as part of my day job, I flew from Chicago to Philadelphia on the morning of Tuesday, March 4.  I was in uniform because there is no better way to fly than in uniform.  In 15 months when I get out, this is the benefit I may miss the most.

At about 3 pm I was on Rt. 95 driving to a Public Science meeting in DC.  Because of traffic at that time of day, I did not drive all the way to DC, but stopped at the BWI Airport rail station and took a train into Union Station then a Metro to Busboys and Poets Cafe where the meeting was being held.

The meeting was a science writers travelogue of two visits to North Korea.  He was very funny about his North Korean handlers, even while painting a very bleak picture of North Korea.

At 9pm I was back in Union Station and just made the 9:05 train to BWI.  I sat in cafe car and a young woman sat opposite me.  As she sat down she took three thick paperback novels from a bag and said, "I'm checking out the competition."  The woman I sat with for the next 20 minutes was Leslie Silbert, author of "The Intelligencer:" a spy novel set in 16th Century London and in New York today.  Her main character in the late 1500s is the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was a spy for Queen Elizabeth.

We talked a little bit about her book and that she is writing another suspense novel.  But with Ukraine and Crimea in the news, the conversation turned to the Cold War.  She asked me a lot of questions about being a tank commander on the East-West border and what we thought about war with Russia.  That question was easy:  We thought there would be a war and that we would die in the first ten minutes.

I bought the book and really like it so far, especially the parts about Marlowe and spying in 16th Century London.  As you would expect, she has a web site: http://lesliesilbert.com/

On the opposite side of the aisle was a guy who knew a lot about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.  It was an interesting conversation with two very bright people (and me).  It was fun to remember again how different the world looked during the Cold War when we had any enemy with planes, ships, tanks and uniforms.  I was thinking, at least if we go to war with Russia, we won't be trying to "win hearts and minds."

Do You Want to Re-Enlist?

Today I got a call from the retention sergeant in my unit.  We have not met and he did not look very carefully at my file, because he left me a message saying I have 15 months before my discharge date and he wanted to know my re-enlistment plans.

So I returned the call when I left the meeting was in and reached another sergeant in the unit who knows me.  I told her about the call.  I asked her to pass on the message that I think it very unlikely I could get an extension beyond the one I am on already, but if he has some magic in that regard, I would definitely extend or re-enlist for as long as could write the contract for.

I am assuming he will not be returning the call.

It would be fun to stay in longer.  Also, if I could stay another two years I might be able to retire.  Another sergeant in my unit, the only enlisted man older than me in the PA National Guard, is 61 years old and applying for another two-year extension for himself.  Coincidentally, his name is Guzman.  The admin sergeant in our unit says if Guzman gets an extension, maybe Gussman has a chance also.

With all the news about military cutbacks, it seems most likely Gussman and Guzman are both going to be civilians in the next year or so.  But it's worth trying.

Good Luck Guzman!!!!

NCO of the Year Board--I didn't make it.

Four members of the six-member panel:  Command Sgt. Maj. Christine, CSM Livolsi, CSM Dowling and CSM Worley.  Not pictured 1st Sgt. Madonna and 1SG Williard.

Most of the day on Sunday's drill I was getting ready for or decompressing after the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade NCO of the Year selection board.  My company asked me to participate three weeks ago.  The sergeant who was their first pick had something wrong with his paperwork, so I was filling the space.  Still, I was happy to be the backup choice in a competition for NCO of the Year.

Then I got the study guides.  Wow!  To be the Soldier/NCO of the Year you have to know soooooooooooo much stuff!!!  

I tried to study on the train back and forth to work, but I had work to do also.  And there was so much to learn, I would have had to take vacation to learn a tenth of it.

Each CSM and 1SG asked me three questions in each of three categories.  The answers they wanted were specific:  five kinds of counseling, three types of judicial punishment, four reasons a soldier can be reduced in rank, six step of immediate action in the event of a misfire with an M16 rifle, and so on.  I correctly answered less than a third, partially answered more.  

Two categories I was perfect:  current events and Army history.  Current events is not scored. But at least I aced something.  Later at least a dozen of my friends said the reason I aced the history is because I served with General Custer.

It was stressful being in front of the board.  I did not study enough and I did not like missing the questions.

I talked to CSM Christine later in the evening and he said that the best candidates devote significant time to preparation.  He said, "With a full-time job and all your kids, I don't see how you could have had time to prepare."  Clearly I did not.  And it was kind of him to let me know he knew that.  

But it was fun to see first hand how tough these boards are, and to see how well I could do.

Thank You For Your Service

My review of the book Thank You For Your Service was posted today on Books and Culture.

"Old" Soldiers on a Train

Today on the train ride to Philadelphia I sat with Drew Cluley.  He works for Amtrak and is a squad leader in a PA National Guard Engineer Battalion.  Drew has been on three deployments. The first was an active duty deployment with the Marines.  The second was to Camp Adder in 2009-10 where we were both in Echo Company, 2-104th.  The third was to Kuwait with his current unit.

The first thing we talked about was the food.  Would we ever eat as well again as we ate on deployment?  No likely.  We rhapsodized about our particular favorites:  the fresh-cut fresh fruit at Camp Adder and the first-rate cheesecake in Kuwait.

Drew said he had just spent the weekend in Lancaster and was with Brian Pauli, another Echo soldier.  Brian got commissioned after Iraq and is going to make Captain next month.

Then we started talking about when the Army went wrong--ending in the lamentable state it is in today.  Because to old soldiers (even when they are barely 30) the "old army" is always better.

But Drew had an idea I had never thought of.  He said that the post-draft Army of the 70s tried to sell itself as a "family" organization.  That worked well until Sept. 11, 2001.  If I had stayed in, I could have gotten to 20 years with only the Gulf War as a place I might deploy.  And that war was over so fast that no one redeployed.

Drew said if the Army had stayed with being "soldier unfriendly" it would be a better Army.  We were also talking about the book "Thank You For Your Service."  That book is a harrowing chronicle of how bad our protracted wars are for families as well as soldiers.

When I first enlisted, Drill Sergeants still said, "The Army would have issued you a wife if you needed one."

Most of the replacement soldiers in our tank battalion after 1975 fir this description: 19-year-old man with a 17-year-old wife pregnant with first or second kid.

Old soldiers never die, they just get more opinionated.

Today's Post on the NY Times "At War" Blog is Me Bitching about Marching Songs

Today's Post on the NY Times "At War" Blog is Me Bitching about Marching Songs.  You can read it there:  http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/the-song-doesnt-remain-the-same/

Or the text is here:

In January the U.S. military and I celebrated our 42nd anniversary. Sort of. I am one of those modern soldiers with commitment issues. I enlisted in the Air Force Jan. 31, 1972.

My current and final enlistment in the Army National Guard will end May 31, 2015, the month I turn 62. In between, I switched to the Army in 1975, the Army Reserve in 1981, then I took 23 years off between 1984 and 2007 before re-enlisting in the Guard.

To say a lot has changed since I flew to Lackland Air Force Base 41 years ago hardly begins to describe the difference between serving at the end of an unpopular war and serving today.

My military career started with a wicked hangover from pitchers of beer in Boston bars the night before an early flight to San Antonio, Texas. My shoulder-length hair was shorn by a gleeful redneck. My first drill sergeant was what the Air Force called a BB Stacker. His Vietnam War service had been in Thailand loading bombs on B-52s and living off base in a hooch that came with food, laundry, housecleaning and companionship for $50 per month.

This married-with-kids master sergeant loved telling us stories of loading bombs and getting loaded himself. Though I can’t remember that drill sergeant’s name, I thought of him several times during a 90-day military school I attended at Fort Meade, Md., from August to November of last year. The majority of the soldiers in the Army Student Company had just finished basic training. The rest of us shared their training schedule and their leaders.

In 1972, when we marched in formation, we sang songs about killing Viet Cong. We sang songs about the sex and heroism in our future. Most of all we sang about Jody. Marching songs used to be referred to as Jody Calls. Jody is the guy who is back home sleeping with your wife, eating your food, driving your car, emptying your bank account and, in the saddest versions, turning your own dog against you.

U.S. ArmyMr. Gussman on the airfield at Camp Adder, Iraq, in 2009 after a flight to Al Kut.

The songs we sang at Fort Meade during this summer and fall were more thoroughly bowdlerized than Sunday school stories. Cub Scouts could sing these songs in front of their mothers. No sex. No death. No cheating, lying, drinking or drugs. Certainly no songs with refrains like “Jody got your girl and gone” or “Napalm sticks to kids.”

When we ran in formation at Fort Meade, we almost always sang:

When my granny was 91, she did PT just for fun
When my granny was 92, she did PT better than you
. . and so on up to age 97. The song is clean, affirming of 90-year-old women, and mildly insulting to the wheezing 20-year-old struggling to keep in step at a run.
We also sang Airborne running songs:

C-130 rollin’ down the strip,
Airborne Daddy gonna take a little trip
Stand up hook up shuffle to the door,
Jump on out and count to four. . .
The songs we sang at Fort Meade never varied.

In Army tank training in 1975 we sometimes sang the version above and sometimes this:

C-130 rollin’ down the strip,
Blew a tire and the [two-word expletive deleted] flipped. . .
We were really loud on the second line of the verse. This version goes on to insult the Air Force.

When my daughters were in preschool, I taught them some very sanitized marching songs. The girls learned “They Say That in the Army” which is a complaint song about food, coffee and Army life in general. It has many verses such as:

They Say That in the Army the coffee’s mighty fine,
It tastes like muddy water and smells like turpentine. . .
Each of the various verses ends “Gee Mom I wanna go, but they won’t let me go.”

The girls also learned the “Yellow Bird” song:

A yellow bird,
With a yellow bill,
Just landed on,
My window sill,
I lured him in,
With crumbs of bread,
And then I crushed his (Slam left foot to the ground) little head.
The word emphasized with a stomp was not “little” when we sang the song. And just that one word makes a lot of difference.

A decade later my youngest daughter and some of her high school friends saw the movie “Jarhead.” Lisa came home and said with a smile, “Dad, you never told us the real words to those songs.”

Lisa also wanted to know who Jody was. The older guys in the audience were laughing at places she and her friends did not get the joke. I explained Jody. Lisa and her friends went back to the movie now that they had Jody decoded.

Most of the soldiers I marched with at Fort Meade were in their early 20s, around the age of my daughters are now. They had no idea who Jody was and had never sung a marching song laced with sex, violence and words they use every five seconds in the barracks. Those words make for very loud cadence. But we sang no bad words at Fort Meade.

When the Army fights wars without enemies, we have to sing about running, old ladies, jumping out of airplanes, bad food or wanting to visit Mom. Winning hearts and minds may be good policy, but it makes for lousy marching songs.

Sgt. Neil Gussman enlisted in the Air Force in 1972. He first served on a live-fire missile test range in Utah until he was blinded in a test explosion. When he recovered, he re-enlisted in the Army in 1975 serving as a tank commander on active duty and in the reserves until 1984. He re-enlisted in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in 2007 serving with 28th Combat Aviation Brigade. He deployed to Iraq in 2009-2010 with the 28th CAB and still serves with the unit today. He blogs about life in the Army. He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pa.

German Boys Visit the American Tanks in the Woods Near Their Village

On a beautiful afternoon in late October less than a month after 4th Brigade arrived in Germany, the five tanks of First Platoon, Bravo Company, moved into a defensive position on a hill outside a small village near Fulda.  The village was visible in the valley below more than a mile away.

All of the tanks were below the crest of the ridge.  We had an observer team on the ridge.  The rest of the platoon was working on the tanks or scouting out places to sleep near the tanks.  Five minutes after the the last tank was in position, three boys rode up the dirt road that connected the village with our position.  The oldest was ten years old.  

I used to play Army in an apple orchard near my home in Stoneham, Massachusetts, when I was their age.  I was thinking that if I saw a platoon of tanks in woods I would have been on my bike and getting as close as those soldiers would let me.  I also thought how different life in Stoneham would have been if a foreign Army could just park a platoon of tanks in the orchard.

I jumped down from the turret and waved for the boys to come to my tank.  No one else seemed particularly interested in having kids near their vehicle.  My driver and I lifted the kids up on the fender of the tank and let them sit in the driver's seat and gunner's seat.  They put on our helmets and talked to each other on the intercom system.  We gave the kids the waxy, canned chocolate that came in our C-rations.

They oldest spoke excellent English.  I asked if he would to go to the village and bring us back some food from the local baker and butcher shops.  He said he would right away.  I gave him ten Marks.  As he rode away, the driver of Bravo 13, who was from New Jersey, said, "Sergeant Gussman you are never going to see those kids again."  Some others joined in.  I was happy to see the platoon sergeant and the commander of Bravo 15, the only other soldier who had been to Germany before, did not say anything.  

The boys seemed like good kids to me.  Almost an hour later, the older boy came back alone.  He said the younger boys had to go home.  He had a backpack.  Inside was sausage, butter, two loaves of bread, and some small candies.  He spent 9 Marks, 98 Pfennigs, and gave me the two Pfennigs change.  My crew and I got our camp stove out right away while it was still daylight and started cooking that sausage.  I gave the boy some more C-ration chocolate and said to come back tomorrow, we were probably going to be there for the night.  He thanked me again and rode away.

My crew and I made a big show of cooking that sausage and talking very loudly about how you can't trust those German kids.  We also inquired about what the crews on either side of us were having for dinner.

The next time we stopped near a village and kids showed up, it was a competition to see who could get the kids to make a grocery run.  

That little boy is 44 years old today.  The other two are 40 and 42 if I guessed their ages correctly.  I wonder what they think now.  There has been peace in their country for their entire lives, but many foreign armies have lived in their country and trained for a war that, thankfully, never came.  I hope they have good memories of the soldiers who parked a platoon of tanks in their woods.  In fact, I hope they have nothing but good memories of American soldiers.

The Army Made Me a Writer, T-Mobile Made Me Lazy

Did I want to be a writer or a storyteller?  After talking to a friend this morning, I realized the key fact in my last post was the price of calling home from Germany in 1977.  I wanted to tell stories.  I could not afford to call.  So I wrote.

Fast Forward two decades.  In April 1998, I got a job with a global company.  I traveled overseas every month for the next three years--33 trips to be exact.  I flew to every continent except Africa and visited more than 20 countries on five continents.  I had not been outside America since I flew home from Germany in 1979.  By the time I left my job with Millennium Chemicals in 2000 my passport was full of visa stamps and I had paid to have 20 pages added to it.  

As part of the job, I had a global T-Mobile phone and no limits on usage.  All calls were free from anywhere to anywhere.  So when I told my wife, my kids, my friends how breathtakingly beautiful the Hong Kong skyline is at night, I used my phone.  If I had written my impressions, I would not even have to recopy them as I did in my tank turret in the 1970s.  Email would allow me to copy and paste to anyone.

But I did not write about traveling.  It was way too easy to call and talk.  So I wrote for my job and talked about the new life I was leading, traveling the globe.

The next time I was writing without getting paid for it was this blog.  When I first went back in the Army in August of 2007, I got a lot of questions about what I was doing.  So I promised myself to write every day I was on duty with the Army.  At first, this was one weekend per month.  Then we started training to deploy to Iraq.  So we were on duty for three weeks here, two weeks there, another week plus the weekends.

Then we were in Iraq.  Just like Germany in 1977, calling home was difficult.  And time was limited.  So I wrote every day about what I was doing--within the limits of mission security.  I could not write about upcoming flights, about attacks on the base, or about security.  But I could write about food, toilets, the trailers we slept in, laundry, bitching, and dust.

So I wrote every day about them.

Then I came home and went back to work getting paid to write.  The blog was back to one weekend a month.

In the past few months, I have been writing more.  A former co-worker at my day job is the editor of a literary magazine.  I submitted a story.  WITF FM had a writing contest.  I wrote another story.  The stories were about death in Iraq.  I don't know that I intended to write about death, but death is what the stories were about.  If they don't get accepted for publication, I will publish them on the blog.

The Army Made Me a Writer

A friend asked me when I decided to become a writer.  It was in Germany in the Spring of 1977. I was a tank commander, tank Bravo 12, based in Wiesbaden, West Germany.  It was the first time I had travelled outside America.  The first time I lived outside America.  Everything was new and wonderful in Germany.

In 1976 in Germany, calling America cost nearly one dollar per minute.  At the time I made less than $100 a week as an Army Sergeant.  Calling home and telling my family and friends about how beautiful, how interesting, how surprising I found Germany would have emptied my wallet.

So I wrote letters home.  I wrote on legal pads.  I am not sure why, but blue pen and yellow legal pads were my way to write.  I quickly started practicing to be a writer without knowing I what I was doing.  

Writers rewrite.  This blog is a terrible example of real writing.  With this blog, you get what I am thinking.  No revision.  I correct mistakes when readers tell me I made them.  The best writers rewrite several times.  

My version of this was the order of the letters I wrote.  First I wrote to my mother.  She did not really care what I wrote.  She wanted me to write.  So the first time our tank platoon set up a fire position on a wooded hill outside a German village near the East-West border, I had a wonderful story to tell.  As a matter of fact, that will be a future blog post.  

I told that story to my mother.  Next I wrote to my friend Frank.  He was studying to be an engineer and not a particularly critical reader.  Then I wrote to other family members or friends depending on the story.

The final version went either to my sister Jean or my Uncle Jack.  Jean wrote very funny letters to me in basic training.  She is a good writer and knew a good story.  Uncle Jack was near the end of his 20 years of service in the Air Force.  I always addressed his letters to Uncle Major and signed them Sergeant Nephew.  The letter that went to Jean or Jack was the version I would later turn in to an editor.  

In High School I had no ambition to be a writer; I did not want to go to college.  I wanted to be a soldier or a truck driver.  At the time I started writing those letters, I mapped my future in the Army.  I would finish the tour in Germany, go to college, become and officer and command a tank company.  

By then end of the summer of 1977, college had moved to the top of my ambitions and becoming an officer was receding.  I wrote about looking across the border at Fulda where World War 3 was supposed to start.  I wrote about the damage a tank company can do when a new lieutenant leads it though a tree farm.  I wrote about a collision between a drunk German in a tiny Renault and an M60A1 tank.  The Renault did not survive, but surprising the drunk German did. 

As I wrote and fewer letters came back than I sent, I learned that most people did not like to write.  But I liked writing.  And by Christmas of that year, I found a way to write full time.  

That is another story.   

Never Older Than When I Was 23

In May of 1976 I was a tank commander in the 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division.  We were just about to begin two months of training before 4,000 soldiers with 54 tanks, dozens of howitzers and hundreds of tracked and wheeled vehicles would transfer as a unit to Wiesbaden, Germany.

I have never felt older than I did that year.  It was not because I was going to Germany.  I read an article in the Army Times that month that said the 80th percentile age in the Army was 23 years old.

Wow!!  That meant I was older than 80% of the Army.  I could see it all around me.  My own crew:  Mercury Morris (He was Merc, I don't remember his real first name), Eugene Pierce and Richard Burhans were all younger than I was.  And that was the oldest active duty crew I ever had.  They were all in there 20s.  Before we left for Germany, each of them was promoted or discharged and I got a new crew.  All of those graying 20-year-olds replaced by 17-to-19-year-olds.

Losing my first crew and realizing I was in the oldest 20% of the Army really made me feel old at the time. I told my daughter Lisa that story last week when she celebrated her 23rd birthday.  I may have told Lauren the same story, but I can't remember.

Now that I am actually old, starting my seventh decade, I still don't feel quite as old as that sergeant at Fort Carson did in 1976.  I know when I was that age I was sure I would never live this long.  And if I had thought about it, I would have hoped to be a higher rank if I was still in the Army.

That didn't work out!!

"What did you do this weekend Dad?" Weekend of Media Training

I picked up my son Jacari after drill this weekend.  He asked, "What did you do Dad?" smiling and hoping to hear about Blackhawk helicopters or machine guns.

I told him my butt hurt from sitting all weekend in a Media Training session.  We changed the subject.  He did not really want to hear about the moment when I corrected the instructor who said we should hyphenate a compound noun.  I said if it was a compound modifier it should be hyphenated, but compound nouns should not.

It was just like knocking down the 300-meter target on M4/M16 qualification range (sort of).

Hapless hyphenation aside, it was an important weekend for the 15 months or so I have left before they will throw me out for old age.

The division commander, BG John Gronski, has made communication one of his top four priorities for the 28th Division.  So this seminar included assigned public affairs people like and the newly appointed unit public affairs people at each of the battalions in our brigade.  Instead of Captain Miller and I covering everything that goes on in the brigade (as well as we can), each battalion will have someone who can take pictures and write stories and Facebook posts.

The division commander and CSM spoke to our class for more than 30 minutes on Saturday.  Gronski has a Facebook page.  Both he and CSM Kepner have twitter handles.  But the class itself says just how serious the new commander is about communication.  Five soldiers from the aviation brigade were in the class and learning how to use social media to support the mission.

For me, it means I have a back up for promotions, awards, and other events scheduled at different places at the same time.   It also means that when there Chinooks are doing sling loads, Blackhawks are supporting air assault and the MEDEVAC is doing hoist training on the same day, we can get all three events.

Next drill we can get all the communications people together and talk about how to cover events and manage the Facebook page.  I can't wait!!

Nicknames

One of the saddest, angriest soldiers I met in Iraq was a staff sergeant with the nickname "Squishy Head."  He got the nickname at the aviation hangar at Muir Field on Fort Indiantown Gap.  As I heard the story, squishy was working near the massive doors for the aircraft when the doors were closing.  He dropped a wrench, reached between the closing doors to retrieve it and got his head caught.

He survived, but was forever after called Squishy Head, mostly behind his back.

The poor guy makes one mistake, some smart ass calls him a name and he is Squishy Head from then on.  But that is how real nicknames go.

I don't have a nickname, at least not one that I know.  Except at home.  Among all my kids I am "Dude."  For the past decade all of my kids have called me Dude.  It came from my daughter Lisa.  From age 12 to 14 she was a junior bicycle racer.  She rode up to 100 miles a week between March and September to train for racing.  Some of those miles were with me on the tandem we owned back then.  Once or twice a week Lisa would ride 35 miles with me between 4 and 6 pm on the daily training race.  Six to a dozen rider, mostly men, would be on this fast ride.  Many of them called each other Dude.  Some called me Dude.  Since I was 50 years old, from the East Coast, never surfed, and did not otherwise see myself as a "Dude," I smiled at this generic name.

One night, while we ate dinner with the rest of the family after the ride, Lisa was describing the way we passed some riders down Turkey Hill (tandems are fast down hill) and addressing me said, "Dude, did you see how we passed. . ."

Everyone looked and Lauren, the oldest child, said, "Did you just call Dad Dude?"

She did.  And kept talking.  Slowly over the next week, the other kids started calling me Dude.  And I have been Dude ever since.  I still get some odd looks in public places when one of my kids, particularly my adopted kids, turn to me and say something that begins "Dude,  . . ."

But it seems to be the rule of nicknames that they are more funny than fitting.

My daughter Lauren and Lisa, like me, were called Goose by coaches on the teams the played on.  Goose never really stuck with either of them.  Lauren, who is 5'10" and was the thug/enforcer on her high school basketball and soccer teams, still has the nickname "Sissy."  Which is like calling a fat guy "Tiny."  The whole family calls her Sissy.

Some nicknames make sense.  My bunkmate in basic was Leonard Norwood from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53.  He was, no surprise, "Bama."  In the next bunk was our mutual friend "Jersey."

An odd occurrence of nicknames was happened about the time my older daughters went off to college.  Nigel and Lisa were the only two kids in the house.  They started calling each other "Pumpkin" and "Muffin."  But the names were not for one person.  If Lisa left for school and said, "Goodbye Pumpkin" Nigel would say, "Bye Muffin."  The next time Lisa might be Pumpkin and Nigel Muffin.  They still do it occasionally now, seven years later.

Do you have an odd nickname?  Let me know what it is?

Fog on Muir Field Today

The hangar at Muir Field, Fort Indiantown Gap held four change of command ceremonies today.

Here's what the airstrip looked like.