My Love-Hate Relationship with the Military

 

Next month I will be talking to a veterans support group about PTSD in the 70s Army and during the Iraq War.  It was fun to try to put my military career in 100 words:

Neil Gussman has a love-hate relationship with the U.S. military. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1972. He was trained as a missile electronics technician. For two year he did live-fire testing of missiles from the Sidewinder wing rocket to the Minuteman ICBM. He was blinded in a testing accident, left the Air Force, then a year later re-enlisted in the Army.

He then served four years as a tank commander in Colorado and West Germany. He left the Army in 1979, but served in a reserve tank unit from 1982-85.  He was a bearded civilian writing about chemistry and electronics until 2007 when he re-enlisted in the Army National Guard at age 54.  On his 56th birthday in 2009 he began a one-year deployment to Iraq with a Combat Aviation Brigade.  

He finally left the National Guard on May 2, 2016, on his 63rd birthday.  

Outside of the military, Gussman is the father of six children--three adopted, two the old fashioned way and one step daughter.  Between leaving the Army in 1985 and civilian retirement in 2015, Gussman worked for chemical and electronics companies as a writer and occasionally as a journalist.  

In his long life, Gussman has owned 40 cars, trucks and motorcycles and broken 40 bones, repaired by 26 surgeries. He was never the safety NCO in any unit he served in.

Vaccines and the Anthrax Chapel

 

The Anthrax Chapel, Fort Sill, Oklahoma

Twelve years ago, I got vaccinated for deployment to Iraq at the Anthrax Chapel at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  Fort Sill was one of the places National Guard soldiers went to train before the big trip east to the Middle East.  

The building really was a chapel before it was converted to a place soldiers lined up for vaccinations and other shots.  The anthrax vaccination was as useless as our gas masks in terms of actual threats to our lives, but we all had a gas mask and we all got vaccinated against a biological attack with the anthrax virus. 

During the forty-odd years I was in and out of the Army I got vaccinated for many things and had no particular ill effects beyond aches and a day of mild illness.  

I got vaccinated for COVID two weeks ago and was delighted to get  a vaccine I really wanted and needed.  I felt that way several years ago when I got the shingles vaccine.  I had two friends who had terrible cases of shingles. They, like me, had chicken pox as children, before that vaccine.  Having childhood chicken pox potentially makes shingles worse as an adult.  The doctor wasn't sure it was covered by insurance. I told him to give me the shot.

Vaccines are surely one of the five great medical innovations in all of human history.  To be anti-vaxx is simply to be as dumb as a bag of lug nuts.  Like seatbelts and motorcycle helmets, whatever the risk, it is vastly less than the risk of no seatbelt, no helmet and no vaccine.  

The Life of a Russian Monk and Holy Fool in the late 1400s: Laurus

 

In 2016, the ESL Book Group I am part of began when four of us kept asking each other, "Did you read this book? What do you think about it?"

The first of many books we would read was Laurus, a book about a Russian Monk and Holy Fool set in the late 1,400s.  Sarah Gingrich loved this book and convinced Andrea Bailey and I to read it. 

I just finished re-reading it yesterday. At my age, much of it was new again five years later.  This Sunday afternoon our book group will discuss Laurus and for the first time a monk will be part of our discussion.  My best friend Cliff became Bruder Timotheus after both of us left the military in 1979.  He stayed in Germany at a monastery in Darmstadt.  Here is an introduction to Cliff.

I am very much looking forward to discussing this strange and wonderful book.  Here is what I wrote about my first reading.

Celebrating a Million Views; Almost 2,000 Posts; Top Posts are Cold War, Iraq War and WWII

 

A Million Views

When I started this blog it was to record my deployment to Iraq in 2009-10. I landed at Camp Adder on my 56th birthday and thought it would be worth keeping a record of life for an Old Cold War Soldier in a 21st Century War.

When I returned from Iraq, I did not know how long I would stay. I kept writing blog posts about my part-time service in the National Guard. Over time and after I left the Guard, I wrote more about my service in the Cold War, then about books I was reading, and about soldiers I served with.  

I plan to keep writing about soldiers I served with. I will be going to a reunion of my Cold War tank unit later this year.  Once most of the world is vaccinated, I plan to visit more Cold War landmarks in Europe, Vietnam and Israel.  The wars in Korea, Israel, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Grenada and other places between 1946 and 1991 are also part of the Cold War legacy.  I hope to visit as many as I can and write about it.

All of life follows the exponential curve and my blog posts are no exception.  The top ten of more than 1,900 posts have almost 100,000 views, or one-tenth of all the views of my posts. Five of the top ten are about the Cold War, four from the Iraq War and one about a veteran of World War II.  

The top posts in order of number of views: 

A friend from the Iraq War promoted to Colonel:    https://armynow.blogspot.com/2017/12/who-fights-our-wars-sons-of-veterans.html

A World War II bomber pilot who flew with the author of Catch-22:    https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/08/reality-catches-up-with-fiction-70.html

My first military haircut, February 1, 1972:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/02/my-first-military-haircut-february-1.html

The best top sergeant I ever served with:    https://armynow.blogspot.com/2016/02/who-fights-our-wars-command-sgt-major.html

The smell of diesel takes me back to the Cold War Army:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2009/10/diesel.html

One of the most dramatic moments I experienced, watching a half dozen B-52 Stratofortress bombers scramble on Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in 1974:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/09/unforgettable-moment-b-52s-scramble.html

Outside Lowry Air Force Base in 1972 was the Topless Shoeshine Parlor:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-topless-shoeshine-parlor-draft-era.html

The saddest story on my blog about a World War II veteran and Cold War scientist:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/01/boris-libman-terrible-life-of-soviet.html

A Blackhawk helicopter pilot from my Iraq tour in 2009-10:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/02/who-fights-our-wars-doc-dreher.html

My Home Sweet Trailer Home in Iraq:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2009/05/home-sweet-trailer-home.html

And a few more of my favorites:  

Tanks from the inside and outside:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/06/tanks-from-inside-tanks-from-outside.html

C-Rations vs. MREs:   https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/01/mre-vs-c-rations-for-me-21st-century.html

Post-Cold-War Hero:  https://armynow.blogspot.com/2017/11/cold-war-hero-who-served-after-1991.html

 

Democrats Must Claim Patriotism, Family Values

At my Synagogue, our Monday Book Discussion Group is reading Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.  

As we finish the book, it is clear to me that in our divided country, the definition of patriotism is taking a severe beating.  If the Common Good has a chance of being restored in America, then the Democrats must define patriotism in public.  We must define what it means to be an American, or the anti-democratic party on the right will redefine America as a dictatorship.  

Since 2015, in every way possible, the right wing of American politics and culture has turned its back on democracy and grabbed for power to the point of celebrating immorality.  The attack on the Capitol on January 6 was promoted and orchestrated and blessed by the former President and his minions in Congress.  They celebrate the murder of police officers. They want more.

He is out of office, but his traitors continue to hold office in our democratic government.  That is wrong. Everyone who voted for the insurrection should be stripped of office.  The worst of them: Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the lawmakers who brought the terrorists into the Capitol should be jailed for their crimes.  

The Evangelical Church in America takes the words of Jesus and pisses on them. How could anyone who has ever read the Sermon on the Mount think the former President is sent by or chosen by God?  He is a bully, a coward, and brags about breaking commandments.  The preachers who promote him are worse because they know better.  

Democrats are the only leaders who voted to help poor and needy Americans with relief. The recent rescue bill passed the Congress with the votes of those who care about Americans who lost their jobs, their health, their health insurance, and family members during the pandemic.  

Democrats care about and promote Voting Rights, Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and LGBTQ Rights. President Joseph Biden is fighting the pandemic and working to undo the damage done by the former occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

We fight for families, 

we fight for kids, 

we fight for the poor, 

we fight for jobs with a living wage, 

we fight for the free exercise of religion, 

the other side spews hate and fights only for donors.

Democrats want liberty and justice for all. We are the patriots. The party of Qanon and hate is not America.  

Field Guide to Domestic Terrorists: Qanon

On January 6 when domestic terrorists invaded the U.S. Capitol Building, killed and maimed cops and sought to kill lawmakers, the Qanon conspiracy was at the center of the loathesome gang. 

Qanon is a dark cave full bat shit in which beliefs, like mushrooms, grow and flourish in dark and gloom.  The source of these believes is Q himself (herself?), someone inside the "Deep State" who knows everything and leaks secret information to the true believers.  

The New York Times published a deep dive into Qanon beliefs, which I recommend. 

Now Q has representatives in congress in the person of Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bobert and more to come.  They are anti-democratic authoritarian loons that should not hold congressional seats.  

From the Anti Defamation League:

• QAnon is a wide-reaching conspiracy theory popular among a range of right-wing extremists and even some public supporters of President Trump.
• QAnon, surfaced in 2017 on 4chan, is first and foremost an online trolling and disinformation movement. While it is difficult to gauge the size of the movement, it is likely that QAnon adherents number in the tens of thousands.
• Adherents follow the anonymous Q, and believe world governments are being controlled by a shadowy cabal of pedophiles (who will eventually be brought to justice by President Trump).
• The QAnon theory is scattershot and sprawling with anti-government elements; adherents actively sow distrust in democratic institutions.
• While the ADL does not believe that all QAnon adherents are inherently extremists, this is a dangerous theory that has inspired violent acts.

Books 2021: Red Sea Spies by Raffi Berg

 

In the late 1970s and early 80s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews escaped from their own country, through Sudan, another state that was an enemy of Israel.  The story of that escape and the Israeli Mossad agents who got the Ethiopian Jews to Israel is the subject of the book Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad's Fake Diving Resort by Raffi Berg. The dramatic events inspired a movie on Netflix also. 

Berg tells this amazing story with enough detail to show just how difficult and precarious the entire operation was from beginning to end, yet at a page-turner pace.  The two men at the center of the story, Dani the agent who organized the operation and kept it going, and Ferede Aklum, the Ethiopian Jew who worked from beginning to end to get his people to Israel, begin with getting a few Jews out with fake documents to the buying and running a diving resort on the Red Sea. The resort allows Jews to be taken out by sea and later is a base that allows hundreds to be flown out at a time on Israeli C-130 Hercules transport planes.  

It is a great story from beginning to end.  I knew so little about Ethiopian Jews and their exodus from remote areas of the country where they lived for more than a millennium.  Now I feel like a witness to a land, sea and air miracle in the late 20th Century.  

Enjoy! 

Field Guide to Domestic Terrorists: The Oath Keepers

Oath Keepers charge up the steps of the Capitol on January 6

 The Oath Keepers, a white supremacist terrorist group, had a big role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. A New York Times report names many of the conspirators and shows how many are military veterans.  

One of the moments in the coverage in which my heart sank on January 6 was seeing men in battle gear.  In the following days I realized how close we were to an overthrow of the government when I saw a video of the scene above when men in battle gear, Oath Keepers, charged up the Capitol steps. If they had found Mike Pence or other leaders, they would have killed them.  

In September of 2008 before I went to Iraq, I went to a Live Fire Shoot House. It was a week-long course with live ammo on how to storm and secure a building.  We went into the buildings we attacked in a line just like that used by the Oath Keepers.  The men in that line had military or police training or both. All of them should be tried for treason. 

This is how the Anti-Defamation League, ADL, describes the Oath Keepers: 

The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of anti‐government extremists who are part of the broader anti‐government “Patriot” movement, which includes militia and “three percenter” groups, sovereign citizens, and tax protesters, [Boogaloo Boys] among others. What differentiates the Oath Keepers from other anti‐ government extremist groups is that the Oath Keepers explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military members, police officers and firefighters (although they accept anyone as members). 

The ideology of the Oath Keepers most closely resembles that of the militia movement, whose adherents believe that the United States is collaborating with a one‐world tyrannical conspiracy called the New World Order to strip Americans of their rights—starting with their right to keep and bear arms. Once Americans are rendered defenseless, the theory goes, they too will be enslaved by the New World Order. 

The Oath Keepers aim much of their propaganda at military and police, reminding them that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic” and asking them to pledge to disobey unconstitutional orders they might get from superiors—orders that explicitly or implicitly refer to various militia‐related conspiracy theories, such as mass gun confiscation or rounding up Americans to put them in concentration camps. 

Each theory relates to the notion that the United States government is falling under global governance and will at some point use police and military members to enforce the New World Order’s dominance. The Oath Keepers urge military and law enforcement personnel to step up to stop the conspirators.

Being Wrong: A Normal Part of Life We Fight and Cover Up

 

I just finished the delightful book "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error" by Kathryn Schulz. The book is full of wonderful examples of how we are wrong, why we are wrong and the good side of our errors.  The book begins telling us why we are so delighted to be right and so defensive about being wrong.  We insist we are right about everything from loading the dishwasher to the origins of the universe and twist ourselves in knots to prove just how correct we are.  

My favorite passage in the book connects perception, the history of science and the universe that is the Model behind Dante's Divine Comedy. Schulz shows how thoroughly wrong we can be when all of our senses tell us we are right. 

"Step outside...in someplace truly dark: the Himalayas, say, or Patagonia, or the north rim of the Grand Canyon. If you look up in such a place, you will observe the sky above you is vast and vaulted, its darkness pulled taut from horizon to horizon and perforated by innumerable stars.  Stand there long enough and you'll see this whole vault turning overhead, like the slowest of the tumblers in the most mysterious of locks. Stand there even longer and it will dawn on you that your own position in the spectacle is curiously central. The apex of the heavens is directly above you. And the land you are standing on--land that unlike the firmament is quite flat, and unlike the stars is quite stationary--stretches out in all directions from a midpoint that is you. 

"It is, of course, an illusion: almost everything we see and feel out there on our imaginary Patagonia porch is misleading.  The sky is neither vaulted nor revolving around us, the land is neither flat nor stationary, and, sad to say, we ourselves are not the center of the cosmos. Not only are these things wrong, they are canonically wrong. They are to the intellect what the Titanic is to the ego: a permanent puncture wound, a reminder of the sheer scope at which we can err. What is strange, and not a little disconcerting, is that we can commit such fundamental mistakes by simply stepping outside and looking up."

Schulz surveys the history of being wrong quoting many of the great thinkers of history from Augustine to Groucho Marx, so everyone who has ever been wrong should find something to connect with in this delightful book.
 

I Became a NASCAR Fan in the Stoneham, Massachusetts, Public Library in 1961

 

Michael McDowell, the eighth driver 

To win his first race at the Daytona 500

On Sunday night I stayed up past midnight to watch the final laps of the 2021 Daytona 500. The race had started ten hours earlier and been stopped for a big wreck involving eighteen of the forty cars that started the race.  Then there was a rain delay. But the Daytona Motor Speedway has lights, so they ran after rain the rain stopped.

They ran in a fifteen car single-file line at 190 mph for most of the final 20 laps.  With a lap to go gaps opened as drivers started trying to move up. On the last lap the first two cars tangled. Michael McDowell who was in fourth place shot between the spinning cars and was in front of the field at the moment the caution lights flashed on, ending the race.  

McDowell started racing in NASCAR's top series in 2008, starting 358 races before finishing first at the biggest race on the 36-race calendar. On Valentines Day 2021 he became the eighth driver to win his first race in the Daytona 500. 

After watching nearly all the races for twenty years between 1985 and 2005 and being a fan since I was eight years old, I stopped watching the stock car series because they had eliminated the two things that initially got me hooked: real cars and real danger.  

By the 1970s NASCAR stock cars were purpose-built race cars, but they were the shape of their street-car counterparts.  Fords, Chevys, Dodges and Oldsmobiles looked different. And sometimes a particular body would outperform others. After Dale Earnhardt's death at Daytona in 2001, NASCAR went to the Car of Tomorrow which made every car exactly the same except decals. 

Some of the roulette of risk of racing was lost in 1992 when NASCAR went to radial tires.  I kept watching, but it was clear that radials would bring a different kind of driver to the front.  Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson would be the drivers of a new century.

Real Cars, Real Danger

While a driver scoring his first win after a dozen years of no wins is a compelling story, it's not the story that drew my eight-year-old self to follow a racing series hundreds of miles from my home in a suburb north of Boston, Mass.  The Stoneham Public Library had copies of Motor Trend, Hot Rod and Road and Track magazines. The pictures in these magazines showed real cars racing on paved and dirt ovals.  And unlike stick and ball sports, the drivers risked their lives.  Between 1952 and 2001 twenty-eight drivers lost their lives in practice and racing crashes.  

Later I would follow open-wheel and sports car racing, but the little boy in the library wanted to see Fords, Plymouths, Dodges, Chevys, Buicks, Pontiacs, and Oldsmobiles with roll bars going more than 150mph.  At that time there was about 30 minutes per year of racing on TV on the ABC Wide World of Sports, so reading the racing coverage was my only option. 

Tiny Lund

The first driver I followed was Tiny Lund.  When I read about his win at Daytona in 1963, it was like McDowell's win this year.  Lund had started 163 races over several years without a win, then won the biggest race of year for his first win.  He died in 1975 at the other NASCAR superspeedway in Talledega, Alabama.  

The Other Drivers Who Won Their First Race in the Daytona 500

There have been 39 different winners in the 62 Daytona 500 races since 1959. The dozen multiple winners are led by seven-time winner Richard Petty, four-time winner Cale Yarborough, four three-time winners and five who took two wins.  

Mario Andretti

Four years after Tiny Lund won his first NASCAR race by winning the Daytona 500, Mario Andretti notched his first win in the "Great American Race."  Andretti had just seven NASCAR starts. In the 60s top drivers in Formula 1, Indy Car and Sports Cars would race NASCAR races with big prize money.  Andretti won in all forms of racing and was a champion in Indy Car and Formula 1.

Pete Hamilton

Dedham, Mass. native Pete Hamilton took his first of three NASCAR wins at the 1970 Daytona 500 in a Petty Enterprises Plymouth Road Runner Superbird.  He won two more races that year at Talledega Superspeedway, the only wins of his brief career.  He left racing in 1974 with a neck injury.  

Derrick Cope

For me, the worst of the first-time Daytona winners was Derrick Cope. He won in 1990 in his 72nd start and won only once more in his NASCAR career. I don't begrudge him the win, but at the time I was on the edge of my seat cheering like crazy for Dale Earnhardt to win his first Daytona 500.  Earnhardt began the final lap in the lead with victory all but certain. He ran over a chunk of bell housing a mile from the finish and Cope sailed past the limping Earnhardt for the win.  

Sterling Marlin

In 1994 Sterling Marlin won after 279 starts in the Daytona 500. He won nine more races in a long career. Both Neil Bonnet and Rodney Orr died in crashes during that ill-fated speed week.   

As an aside, in 1998, Dale Earnhardt finally won the Daytona 500. He had won more than 30 races on the speedway but not the 500.  I was both yelling and crying to finally see him win the 500. Which made the next first time win the saddest of all. 

Michael Waltrip

In 2001 Michael Waltrip, brother of three-time champion Darrell Waltrip, broke NASCAR's longest streak without a win when he won the Daytona 500.  It was his 463rd NASCAR start. I had followed him for years hoping to see him win. Waltrip drove for Dale Earnhardt's team as did Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was Rookie of the Year in NASCAR's top series in 2000. 

At the beginning of the final lap, Waltrip was in front followed by Dale Jr. and then Earnhardt Sr.  A mile into the lap Waltrip and Junior pulled away. Earnhardt Sr. and Kenny Schaeder collided in Turn 3. Michael Waltrip celebrated in victory lane while his brother Darrell, one of the race announcers, teared up in the booth seeing his little brother finally win.

Then someone whispered to Michael Waltrip the Earnhardt Sr. was in grave condition and getting flown to a hospital. The celebration ended and soon we all learned Dale Earnhardt Sr. had died. Michael Waltrip won the Daytona 500 again in 2003. Dale Jr. would win the Daytona 500 in 2004 and 2014 before retiring in 2017. 

Trevor Bayne

In 2011 rookie Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500 in his second NASCAR start. He is the youngest winner of 500, just 20 years old.  By 2018 he was out of racing. He never won another race after the 2011 Daytona 500.

Which brings us back to 2021 Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell. I am also back as a NASCAR fan.  This year, the top series will have seven road course races and a dirt event at Bristol.  Seven road courses and a dirt race along with four superspeedway events will put enough variety in the schedule that the dull mile and a half ovals will not determine the who gets into the playoffs.  

Even when I stopped watching the series, this hangs in library/extra bedroom in my house.