Live Fire Shoot House

For one week beginning September 29 I will be getting Urban Assault training in a Live Fire Shoot House. What's that? Here's the Army video news.

And a first run through for a rifle squad.

And a six-second version.

Juniata College Women's Soccer to Wear Flags in 2009

My oldest daughter Lauren is the goalkeeper for the Juniata College Women's Soccer Team. they are in the midst of pre-season training. Lauren called yesterday to say that her head coach told her that her team will get new uniforms next year with American flags on the shoulder. Coach McKenzie told Lauren that the team will wear American flags during the season I am Iraq.

I thanked Coach McKenzie, but hardly knew what to say. It's quite an honor.

Go Eagles!!

Last Race, Best Race

Since my Army training for the weekend was on hold, I could enter a race right in my neighborhood. Beginning with the end,
--Joe Manacchio, my teammate, won the 50+ race,
--Scott Haverstick, the guy I have ridden with more than anyone else for the past five years, won the 60+ race,
--I stayed with the lead pack for the full 24-lap distance for the first time this year (previously I stayed on the lead lap in most races, but not with the main pack)
--Because no one attacked early, I got to lead lap 2. I haven't done that for a couple of years.
--My wife Annalisa and my son Nigel cheered for me in the middle of the uphill front straight which helped--it was the worst part of the course for me, especially when there were attacks.

There are a few more races this year, but with Army training and other commitments, I won't be able to enter them. So if this is going to be my last race before getting deployed, it's a good one. Definitely my best since my 2007 crash.

Nigel, who is 8, entered the 8&9 year old race, which is just 300 meters, and the 10-12 year old race, one full lap. He was somewhere in the middle of the 18 kids in the 8&9 year old race at the finish. The short distance meant a lot of swerving and Nigel is careful in a pack. In the 10-12 year old race he started at the back and finished sixth. He was very happy because he passed so many other kids.

Course Full

This weekend I was supposed to be in an ammo handlers course--learning how to properly load and store ammunition. I volunteered for the course, because I thought ammo handling might be a skill I could use next year. But I just got a message that the course is full.
So I'll be racing a half-block from my home at the Race Avenue Criterium. Like every other race I did this year, I will be trying to stay with the pack as long as possible, but eventually get dropped. This is one of the first races I ever rode in back in the 90s. Rich Ruoff, the promoter, is reviving it after more than 15 years.

And a Word About Pain

I am sitting on Amtrak train 600 in the middle of my 2-hour-each-way commute to Philadelphia. Yesterday someone asked me about pain. I thought it was obvious that a guy my age exercising an average of two hours each day would be sore somewhere most of the time. This person was surprised to find my exercise program is designed around training that will get me stronger without pushing to the point of injury. I try to run one day and ride the next so I won't run on consecutive days and hurt myself. It doesn't always work. I ran a 5k race and Monday morning and did a fast 4-mile run on Tuesday. My left knee started hurting on Wednesday. I ran three miles slow last night and this morning I am moving my feet every couple of minutes to keep my knee from hurting.
The change in my push ups bothers my right shoulder, so I added a couple of exercises every other day to strengthen my shoulders. On some days I skip the sit ups because my lower back hurts. On some running days I ride and walk because my ankles hurt.
I am not complaining. I know that various pains are part of any serious training. My main goal is not to get an overuse injury that will have me otherwise healthy and sitting on my butt. Worse still, I do not want an Army profile--a paper that excuses a soldier from duty. When we are assigned training, I do not want to be sitting on a log with a profile.

Nature Update

And following my last post, here's Katharine Sanderson's view of running in Philadelphia on the blog at Nature magazine.

You're Going Where?

I haven't been home since my last post. I am in Philadelphia for a meeting of the American Chemical Society. Almost 20,000 chemists from all over the world are here for several days. Even though I live just 70 miles away, I have meetings as early as 0630 and dinners that run as late as midnight so I just stayed in town. In fact, I just finished running across the Ben Franklin Bridge and back with a Katharine Sanderson, a science writer from the UK. She is here reporting on the Convention for Nature magazine and writing about Trees That Eat Pollution among other things.
We covered the 4-mile distance from where I work across the bridge and back in 35 minutes. Katharine actually ran six miles, because her hotel in on the other side of Center City so she ran a mile each way to and from the run.

Several times during this meeting events on next year's calendar came up and I said I would be gone from work in 2009. When I said where I would be I going I got stunned looks and versions of "You're going where?!" After they recover from the initial shock, they are supportive, but there are just not that many people who work in my field that take a year off for an all-expense paid trip to Iraq. Tomorrow night I go home for the evening, then back to work on Thursday.

Promotion Picture

Here's a picture of Lisa, my youngest daughter, pinning on my sergeant stripes. This is a simulated photo since we did not take one from the actual ceremony. The twisted collar is just to simulate an action shot!
Photo by Lauren Auster-Gussman

PT Reality Check

At drill this weekend one of the guys on my parking lot detail was a specialist in line for sergeant who just completed the Warrior Leadership Course. The PT is part of that course and I expected this very fit soldier to tell me he maxed the test. He didn't. He ran 2 miles in 13 minutes, 76 situps in 2 minutes and 75 pushups which should have put this 35-year-old Greek God at 300 points. But he said you have to do all exercises in correct form. They did not count five of his pushups and he scored 295.
My form is right for the situps but wrong for the pushups. I either need to keep my head up or drop my body a lot lower. In either case when I do the pushups right I can't get near 56 in 2 minutes. But I have till November, so I will practice a lot more. When I do the correct pushups, it's clear I did not entirely work out all the kinks from the crash last year, so these pushups should work out the last problems in my right shoulder.

First Job as a Sergeant

On Sunday morning our platoon sergeant said I should go and see the first sergeant after formation--he had a special job for me. From the smirk, I expected something ugly. As it turned out, my first official job as a sergeant was to be in charge of four soldiers directing cars to parking spaces at the ceremony for the new battalion sergeant's major. That made me HMFIC of the parking lot (Head MF In Charge--a very old Army acronym, maybe as old as FUBAR). The ceremony was at 1400 Sunday.

Before going to the motor pool that morning, I got 20 orange traffic cones from supply and marked 20 spaces for the ceremony. Then the first sergeant decided the parking lot "looked ragged" because of a half dozen pallets in a crooked line which had not been picked up by the line companies. So I sent the two biggest guys on the detail to get a pallet jack and straighten up the unclaimed freight. Then we went to the motor pool.

Later in the the morning, my three men and I left the motor pool to go to a briefing for everyone involved in the ceremony. My fourth soldier was getting his wisdom teeth pulled.

As is the Army way, we joined the color guard and the men who were in the parade for each company for a briefing and practice at 1100--we didn't have anything to do, but we were part of the event so we showed up.

At 1230 I made sure each soldier had water and sent them to their parking lot posts. For the next 90 minutes I walked from the parking lot out to the entrances on either side of the building to make jokes with the three soldiers.

Seven cars showed up for the ceremony 90 minutes. After the ceremony started, we picked up the cones, returned them to supply and went back to the motor pool.

In my day job I am supposed to make every moment count. When I was a consultant, I had to account for my time and bill for what I did. The Army works on a completely different system. Four of us waiting 90 minutes to direct seven cars to parking spaces is not the way to make money if you are paying by the hour. But we are paid by the day so as long as we are where we are supposed to be we are doing our jobs--directing (on average) one car every 15 minutes to a parking space.

Promotion Ceremony

After we got our sergeant stripes, the two of us who got promoted read the NCO Creed passing a framed copy back and forth. I had never read it out loud before. Last drill I read the Declaration of Independence before morning formation. It's not very long and it makes clear how strange the whole idea of starting this country was. It also make clear how much compromise there was. America should have been the first country to free the slaves, not be the last western country to free the slaves, then add to the shame with a century of Jim Crow laws. Despite all the problems--like the British Army--America became a country that never had a monarch and always had peaceful transitions from one government to the next. No country bigger than Switzerland can say that.

Promotion Yes--PT Test No

This morning at 0800 formation two of us got promoted to sergeant. That was the good news. Just before formation, I found out there would be no PT Test today. That was the bad news. At the end of the formation, our First Sergeant announced he is retiring. But overall, it was a great day. Since I went back, a lot of people have asked me what my rank is. I had to explain that Specialist is a rank between private soldiers and sergeants. Their eyes would glaze about four words in. But Sergeant they can understand. Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Fury, Sgt. Bilko, Sgt. Schultze, whoever. A sergeant wears a uniform and is in charge of some people. For the many civilians who don't have a clue about military rank, a sergeant is something like a captain or a colonel or a general or an admiral. They are all people who wear uniforms and are in charge of people.

On Sunday afternoon there will be a change of command ceremony. I am in charge of the usher detail. My four soldiers will lead people to their seats. I won't be one of the generals in the front-row seats, but I will be a soldier in a uniform who is in charge of people.

I'll post a picture of my daughter pinning on the stripes in a few days.

Beijing Food

The Olympics are starting tomorrow. Some friends reminded me of what those attending could be eating. From 1998 to 2000 I traveled overseas every month to every continent except Africa. On my first trip to Beijing, I flew direct from Detroit, leaving at 1230 and arriving at 1330 the next day after a 13-hour flight. I went to work then the local rep took us to dinner at the Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing. We began dinner with a Lazy Susan with every part of the duck cooked separately. I ate liver, gizzard, duck tongue and cow face soup, etc until the feet came around to me. I was next to an Australian who said he loved this stuff and ate feet with gusto. Next to the feet were scorpions. I skipped the feet unnoticed because I ate two big scorpions hoping they would be like crawfish. They were. I was fine.

But we had rice wine with dinner and by the time I collapsed in my bed in my clothes near midnight I had been up for 36 hours. At 3 am I woke up because I heard a man yelling—it was me. I was soaked with sweat and convinced those two scorpions had reassembled themselves and were marching up my throat to kill me.

I actually liked the scorpions, but have not eaten them since.

A Bike for Iraq

I asked my local Bike Line shop about getting wheels that would stand up to sand. Instead they showed me a bike on close-out that costs less than a pair of good wheels and will be a great bike for Iraq. It's a Trek T1 track bike, one speed, huge chain, no gear changing. It's the kind of bike people ride in Velodromes, (the indoor bike race tracks with 42-degree banked turns you'll see in the Olympics next week) and on beach vacations because they need so little maintenance. When we are in Iraq there is a chance I will be able to ride a bike inside the wire at the air base. If so, this is the bike.

A Sex Book for my Daughters

Last week I read a new book by the science writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer called The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man by Faye Flam.
The next day I ordered a second copy so each of my daughters could have one. They are 17 and 19 one in college and one on the way. They each have boyfriends who are good guys--I have met them and liked them. But I am going to be gone next year and this book is an entertaining look at the biology that led to males and females from dividing amoebas and how that biology helped to make guys what they are today--for better and for worse. The recurring theme in the book is Flam talking about a seminar she attended in New York where men pay $2150 for a 9-step program on how to pick up women. From flatworms to giant squids to gorillas, we see males fighting to mate with females, but not staying around to set up household. The book alternates between science and mating rituals among modern humans. The book is definitely for readers as interested in learning about science as about sex, but for that kind of reader the book is a lot of fun.

Extra Drill Weekend

I volunteered for an extra drill weekend on August 23-24. I am going to learn how to load and drive an ammo truck. The unit needed volunteers and it seemed like a good thing for me to know how to do safely. A lot of ammo gets moved around an air base getting helicopters ready for missions, and it seemed like one of those jobs for which there are never enough people properly trained.

PT Test in One Week

Unless the schedule changes, I will be taking the PT Test next Friday right after morning formation. Because I work out regularly, many people assume the test will be easy. It's not. In fact, I changed my workout schedule a lot since I joined. It's not that I am worried about passing, but if things go well next week, I have a good change of scoring 290 out of 300, or maybe even 300. To do that, I work out an average of two hours a day. In July that meant walking 94 miles--about half of that with a 25-pound pack; running 54 miles, usually 2.5 to 3 miles at a time; 440 miles on the bike, 960 pushups, 798 situps, 218 pull ups, 7 hours in the gym and three hours of yoga. To score 300 I need to do 56 pushups and 66 situps in 2 minutes each and run two miles in 14:42. To pass I need 21 pushups, 31 situps and 19:30 on the run.
I won't do any exercise next Wednesday and Thursday.
Want to see what the standards are for you? Click here.

Are you going to miss your family?

I get that question at least weekly, often from very earnest people who must think I have not considered that getting deployed might involve being separated from the people I love. With 181 days to go till we go on active duty, and at least 35 of those days in training, I do think about being separated from my family--a lot.
Our motor officer has been deployed twice--once with 48 hours notice, once with almost a year's notice. He prefers 48 hours. "You don't have to keep thinking about it," he said. "Just pack your shit and go." Our motor officer is a warrant officer, the rank between enlisted soldiers (like me) and commissioned officers (captains and generals and so forth). Warrant officers are like consultants in the business world--experts, but not managers. So people turn to them for advice about everything--in the same way kids expect teachers to know everything.
In this case, I'll disagree with Mr. Consultant. (Male Warrant Officers are called Mister as opposed to Sir for commissioned officers.) I like having time to spend with my friends and family, to get things in order at home and at work before I go, and I like being aware of the clock ticking.

Making Sergeant for the Third Time

On Friday morning, August 8, at 8 am, my youngest daughter will pin sergeant stripes on me at morning formation. This will be the third time I have been promoted to sergeant.The first time I was promoted to sergeant was in the Air Force in 1974. At the time the pay grade of E-4 was called sergeant. In 1976 it split into sergeant and senior airman--the Army equivalent of Corporal and Specialist--same money, but corporal is supervisory, specialist is not.

The second promotion was in 1976 when I was promoted to Sergeant E-5, the Army rank I will return to in two weeks. At the time I was a new tank commander on the way to three years in Germany. I left the Army the first time in 1984, a Staff Sergeant (E-6). Maybe in 2010 or 2011, I will be able to get back to where I was in 1984. At the last drill, one of my friends said at the rate I am going (Sergeant at 55) I should make Master Sergeant by the time I am 82.

My Post on a Novelist's Blog

I got an e-mail saying I should post what I wrote for the Mrs. Lieutenant blog here. So I will:

When I first enlisted in the Air Force in January of 1972, General David Petraeus was a sophomore at West Point. When he threw his hat in the air at graduation in 1974, I was a sergeant recovering from being blinded by shrapnel in a missile testing accident at Hill Air Force Base, Utah.


I got out of the Air Force that year, joined the Army the following year and served as a tank commander in Germany from 1976 to 1979. Our alert area was the Fulda Gap, right where the prophet of all things NATO, Tom Clancy, said World War Three would begin.

World War Three didn't happen on my watch, so I got out and went to college, and served in a reserve tank unit in Reading, Pennsylvania, until 1984. I got out for good then (I thought.) and got a job writing ad copy.

Last August, I re-enlisted after 23 years as a civilian. Writing this post I am 55 years old and have 196 days and a wake-up until my unit deploys to Iraq.

In the past year, a lot of people asked me why I joined. But the more fun question to answer is what is different about serving then and now. I can feel myself smile every time I answer that question.

What's different? I grew up in Boston. The difference is like being a Red Sox fan in the 1970s and being a Red Sox fan now. In fact joining now was the difference between playing for the 1972 Patriots (3-11) and the 2007 team (16-0).

In the mid-1970s, the sergeants who really had their shit together were in their late 20s. They were young, tough, motivated and were not combat veterans. The worst senior NCOs (not all, but a way more than there should have been) had combat patches on their right sleeves and had picked up a serious dope smoking or drinking habit in Vietnam.

I am currently in an Army National Guard aviation brigade. In the 1970s the National Guard was notorious for being badly trained. Today's National Guard is part of the total fighting force. On soldier skills, attitude, and combat readiness, my current Guard unit is better than the tank unit I served in on the East-West German border. The men and women with the combat patches on their sleeves in this army are leaders.

The difference certainly continues outside the gate. In the 70s no one wore their uniform home on leave--at least not those of us who were going home on leave to the Northeastern US. I was proud of my uniform, but the few times I wore that uniform outside the gate, I felt hostility, like I was a foreign soldier in someone else's country.

But today if I stop at Starbucks on the way home from a drill, someone might offer to buy my coffee or the clerk might just give it to me. People walk up to me in restaurants and thank me for my service. I really wish some of the other guys I served with in the 1970s could join up for just a month or two now and get the gratitude they missed out on back when long hair was in style and we were not.

Of course some things are exactly the same:


-- O-Dark-30 is wake up time for everything – even if all we do is stand around.


-- My weapon in 1972, the M-16 rifle. My weapon today, M16A4.


-- All through the 1970s if we went to the field for training, it was crammed in the back of a "Deuce-and a-half" 2 1/2 ton truck. My "ride" at pre-deployment training this year--the M35A2 Deuce-and-a-half truck.


-- The Army has all records on computer. So when I went to Aberdeen, Maryland, for two weeks of training, the e-mail said "Bring 10 copies of your orders." I couldn't believe it. I brought five. When I got there, I needed more. But all of the processing was in one room. Didn't matter. Every processing station needed a copy of my orders so they could collect all my records in one folder at the end of the day.

But even if I have to make 20 copies of my orders and hand them to a guy who has a PDF of my orders on a computer right in front of him, I am happy to be
back.