Protestant Palm Sunday Service at Aviation Armory

The Chaplain from the 628th Aviation Support Battalion, Captain De Vaughn-Goodwin, Conducted the Protestan Service.  SGG Mike Pavasco player Guitar.

Catholic Palm Sunday Service at Aviation Armory

The 2-104th Chaplain is Capt. Raymond LaVoie, a Catholic Chaplain.

Learning to Drive an Army Truck

Here are some shots from my last drill weekend of soldiers learning to drive the LMTV--the Army utility truck that replaced the legendary Deuce and a Half.

Drones as Anti-Terror Weapons

At dusk as I circled Ali Air Base, Iraq, on my bicycle I would first hear the model-airplane buzz and then see a Predator drone wobbling its spindly wings and landing gear as it descended slowly to the airfield.  Predators are completely unimpressive aircraft on an airstrip taking off and landing C-17 and C-130 cargo ships and every helicopter in the Army.

Buzzing slowly at take-off and landing they do not look like the best anti-terror weapon, but they are.

Cruising at 84mph with a top speed of 135mph they barely seem to move as they hover over a target area, scanning with cameras and waiting to launch a HellFire missile.  It is just that slow moving scan and precise targeting that makes Predator attacks the opposite of terror strikes.

Terrorists choose a target that will get attention, not caring who is killed.  American terrorist Timothy McVeigh killed babies in a nursery in order to strike back in his demented way against the government.  Arab terrorists wipe out markets full of women and children--Arab women and children.

Against this indiscriminate horror, the Predator waits to find and identify the cowards who send kids to blow themselves up.  The leaders of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups get targeted where they live.  When the terrorist gets into a car the Predator is cruising in the air, the pilot (far away on the ground) waiting for his target to move away from other people to give him a clear shot.

When the target is clear of other people, the pilot launches a HellFire missile.  The HellFire travels at Mach 1.3, faster than the speed of sound.  The target never hears the missile as it flies into his Toyota Land Cruiser at nearly 1000mph.  Everyone for miles around the target heard the missile break the sound barrier as it flew on its one-way mission.  The terrorist and his entourage are dead.  Everyone in the area knows who got killed and why.

The man who killed randomly is killed precisely.  The man willing to kill innocent people and hide among other innocent people is killed precisely and instantly.  I have heard ill-informed drone critics say HellFire missiles "Rain down" on a target.  They don't.  The missiles don't rain down, they strike like Zeus hurling a thunderbolt--precise and deadly.


Our government is responsible for where and when drones are used and I trust our government to use them wisely.  And when I hear that one of our enemies is killed by a drone, I think immediately of how many American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen could have risked their lives to do the same job.

You Go Drones!!!!

Making a New Friend in a Locker Room

When I got home last night I said exactly that to my wife:  "I made a new friend in the YMCA locker room tonight."

After many years of listening to my jokes, she was waiting for a punch line.  But it was not a joke.

And she thought I made this friend in a "Very Neil" way.

I stopped at the YMCA to swim after driving back from Philadelphia.  The pool is not very crowded after 9 pm, so I swam my exhausting 300 yards--my next post will be how hard it is to learn how to swim at 60 years old.

After swimming I went to the locker room to change.  There was no one in my section of the locker room, but across the row of lockers another guy was changing and playing Rap music on his iPhone.  In three months of going to the Y I never heard anyone play music in the locker room.  I didn't want to hear his music and I had my iPhone, so I started listening to my current audiobook:  The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  It is read by a guy with a British accent.

A couple of minutes later, another swimmer opened a locker near mine to get changed.  I shut off the audiobook.  He asked "Was that a British recording?"  I told him what it was.  He said he went to high school with a girl who married Solzhenitsyn's son.  I asked if it was the son who plays the piano.  He said yes and as we got dressed to leave we started talking about Russian lit, Medieval lit. and science education.

We kept talking outside.  It was a lot of fun to meet a guy half my age who has read Tolstoy and wants to read Dante.

It was a great way to end an evening--thanks in part to Rap music.

Not Going to Afghanistan

As some of you know, I had some hope of deploying one more time with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

That will not be happening.

As you may have heard in the State of the Union message, the number of troops in Afghanistan is being cut more rapidly than the original plan.  The unit I was going to go with is not going.  And at my very advanced age even the most hawkish in Congress could not start a war fast enough for me to deploy again--at least let's all hope so.

But it is not like I will be bored. Yesterday I heard from Xavier on Facebook. Xavier is the 14-year-old from Haiti we hope to adopt. The paperwork on the adoption is stuck in the bottomless morass of Haitian government bureaucracy. Haiti combines Carribean urgency with French bureaucratic efficiency. He can only get on facebook occasionally, but it was nice to chat with him.

If you pray, please pray for Xavier and his orphanage.

Sergeant Major Moves Up

Today Command Sergeant Major Dell Christine took over responsibility as top NCO of the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  He takes over from CSM Christopher Kepner who is now the top NCO in the 28th Infantry Division.

CSM Christine takes the sword of NCO Leadership from COL David Wood, 28th CAB Commander.  Looking on are CSM Kepner (left) and CSM Dowling.

Command Sergeant Majors are, for the most part, men with big personalities who take care of the smallest details.  CSM Christine runs the state aviation safety office as his day job.  CSM Kepner is the operations manager for Schneider National, a long-haul trucking company.  Both men spend their working life making sure that their soldiers/workers track the details that keep trucks safe on the road, aircraft safe in the flight, and soldiers safe while they train for war.  

I guess we all admire people who skills we will never have.  I have never played golf, but love to watch a golfer loft a little white ball 300 yards toward a little flag and see that ball drop, roll and stop just feet from the hole.  Or gymnasts on a balance beam!!!  

Maintaining Army standards for thousands of American soldiers--all of who want to do their own thing--that is a job I can admire from a distance, but know it is as far from my abilities as rodeo riding!

NCO Induction Ceremony

At the end of today's drill, I went to the auditorium in the training center at Fort Indiantown Gap (Building 8-80) to watch an NCO Induction Ceremony.  Command Sergeant Major Worley of the 628th Aviation Maintenance Battalion decided he would have a formal ceremony after NCO Development Training for 11 new sergeants.

The eleven new sergeants stood in front of the the rest of the battalion's NCOs (about 150 of 256 were able to attend the ceremony) and recited the NCO creed.

One of the best parts of the Public Affairs job is that people ask me to go to the things they are proud of.  CSM Worley wants to make this ceremony part of the quarterly training for the NCOs in the battalion.  It reminded me how serious I was about making sergeant--before any of the sergeants in the photo above were born.

Private D-Bag and Mr. Money Mustache

In 2008 during our first three-week pre-deployment training I was in the bunk next to a perpetual whiner--wheel call him Private D-Bag.  This young, overweight, out-of-shape soldier had many problems in his short life.  One of the biggest, in his eyes, was a lack of money.  He bitched about being broke, wondered how he was going to make it to payday, and generally saw life as a platoon of evil trolls who lived to trip him at every step.

One day I was sitting in my bunk and D-Bag walked in furious that some member of his family refused to loan him money.  He unloaded his pockets.  In seconds his bunk was littered with cigarettes, a high-end cell phone, candy, a wrapper from McDonalds, and an iPod.  He also brought a TV and a PC with him.

(He wasn't this bad, but. . .)

I exploded.  "You are bitching about being broke and you smoke, eat candy, have a cell phone and a $200 iPod.  You could have spent three weeks eating Army food and not spent a dime.  You have no money and your pockets are full of stupid."

If I ever share a 40-man room with another idiot like D-Bag, I will be able to tell him to read the blog Mr. Money Mustache.  MMM is a delightful blog by a guy who retired at age 30 by spending his money as little as possible.  He is an engineer who looks at every part of life as a way to increase efficiency.  The link above is to a recent post titled "The Oil Well you can Keep in your Pants."  

My wife loves the MMM blog and has been reading his posts to me at the rate of one or two a day.  MMM would fit well in a barracks.  He is a great storyteller and his language would help him fit right in.  He does not swear in all posts, but it is odd to hear my wife reading financial advice in her soft voice and read "If you don't have $1,000 saved for an emergency start selling your stuff and stop fucking spending until you do."


http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

Basic Training Plus 41 Years, One Week

Today is 41 years and one week since I went through USAF Basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Tx., in 1972.  At the end of the first week, our flight had the first of seven days of KP--Kitchen Police.  At that time KP started at 3am and ended at 6pm.  The first time was just luck--each flight (platoon in Army language) was supposed to have KP once.  We took KP for the seven of the other other eight flights in our group because we failed our tenth-day inspection so miserably.

We never go a weekend off like the other trainees.  It was more than 30 years later that I saw San Antonio.  We had KP both days of the weekend the other flights went to San Antonio.  On Sunday we served a Soul Food dinner.  Among the entrees were Chitterlings or Chitlins.  Pig's intestine!!  I stirred a 50-gallon vat of this southern favorite while it simmered.  

Chitlins cooking smells like boiled urinal!  I had no trouble staying awake on that job!  

Bucket of Raw Chitlins.  Mmmmmmmmm!!!!

Why I Got Out in 1984

In July of 1984 my Army career came to an end.  At least that was the plan.  At the time I was a tank section leader in charge of two M60A1 tanks like the one pictured below.  I really liked playing Army in the reserve unit I was in, but my uncle Jack, a Viet Nam vet, convinced me it was time to leave.

Reserve service is never just one weekend a month for the leaders.  So I was coming in the night before drills, going to meetings the Wednesday night before drill weekends, etc.  It was also time to go to Officer Candidate School if I was going to stay in.  I decided I could not have a professional civilian job and be an Army leader, so I left.

Jack also reminded me that, as a reservist, the retirement money did not begin until I was 60 years old (I was 31 at the time) and that if I did retire, I was subject to recall by the government until age 63.

So I left.

When I came back, I was so old I could no longer go to any leadership schools, so I thought it would really be one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.

But now I am in charge of our unit's Facebook page.  I just wrote an interview article with the division command sergeant major, I will be writing another one next week after drill.

My part time job is leaking back into the rest of my life.  This time, at least, I knew what I was in for.  But it is funny that as I approach retirement age that my decision 29 years ago led me to a place where I am 60, working well beyond drill weekends and not able to retire because I was a civilian for so long.

Going Legit on Facebook

Some of you know I have a Facebook page for my unit.  The Pa. National Guard does not authorize Facebook pages below the brigade level, so this battalion page is not an official Army page--it is a fan page connected to my personal Facebook page.

This weekend I will be meeting with an Air National Guard sergeant in the Public Affairs Office to make my page legal!  The battalion page will officially become the page of the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, with the approval of the brigade commander.  So I will be legal as of next week.

Mostly it is a matter of me getting Facebook training and filling out paperwork--it's the Army, nothing exists without paperwork.

So I will be maintaining the brigade page until they put someone in the brigade PAO slot who can keep the page running, or move me to that slot.  There is some possibility that I will officially or unofficially move to brigade.

An Assassin??

Ten years ago, I was an assassin.  Not actually, but according to my daughters' friends I was.  

My daughters were Lifers at Lancaster Country Day School, kindergarten through high school.  LCDS is a small, private school that graduates about 40 or 50 students per year.   the girls were two years apart, played on the same sports teams in middle and high school and had friends in common so they sometimes attended the same parties.

A lot of the girls on the teams had been to sleepovers at our house and knew me as they Dad who sometimes rode to sports games.  They also knew I had a job that took me overseas every month. So the girls would sometimes get calls from Hong Kong or Australia or Argentina.  I was also one of the only parents who had served in the military.  

So at one of the sleepover parties, my older daughter told one of her friends that I was an assassin--that's why I was overseas all the time.  The company I worked for had an office in Paris and often the round-the-world trips I took began in Paris, then continued to Singapore, Beijing, Perth, Hong Kong and other mysterious sounding places.

My daughter told the other girl not to tell anyone which meant within a week every girl and many boys in the school had heard Lauren and Lisa's Dad was an assassin.  It was month's later when I heard about, when the story had been pretty well debunked.  But for a while I was the coolest Dad  at LCDS!  There were a lot of cool Dads--heart surgeons, lawyers, and CEOs, but only one assassin. 

 

Army Sizes Run Small. . .Or NOT

Last weekend during drill I was on a list to go to the Inaugural Ball.  So I needed a dress blue uniform.  I told the supply sergeant my sizes.  He got a uniform in the sizes I specified, but I could not fit in the pants!!!

The new Dress Blue Uniform

Since my supply sergeant could not get the next size of pants, I went to the clothing sales store and bought a pair.  When I went to try them on, the sales clerk said "Army sizes run small."  

Actually, the Army might be the last place with reality sizing.  My Army dress pants are size 36, just like the pants of my older suits.  The pants fight tightly in the winter and loosely in the summer.  

But my Gap jeans are another story.  Six years ago I bought a pair of Gap jeans.  I tried on the 36 waist pair.  I could take them off zipped up.  The 34s fit.  I bought them.  

Last year I wanted to replace those jeans after rips that were beyond repair.  I picked up a 34 waist pair.  When I tried them on it was like the 36s five years before.  So bought 32s.

I have not shrunk.  But most retailers are flattering their customers with waist sizes disconnected from reality.  The Army is in pants reality.  

Not Going to the Ball

No pumpkin is turning into a coach for me.  My First Sergeant called me up to say they are taking a lot fewer soldiers than he first heard and I am one of the many not going to the Inaugural Ball.

Oh well.

Low Rank Might Mean High Life

I might be going to President Obama's inaugural ball!!!  

Is it because I am such an important link in the chain of command in the defense of our nation?  

Not a chance.

It's actually the reverse.  PA National Guard has a few slots for soldiers and their wives to attend the Inagural Ball, but they are mostly for soldiers who are staff sergeants and below.  I am low ranking enough for an evening of very high life.

Of course, nothing is for sure.  I got the email an hour after the very short deadline (my fault, not the army).  But my first sergeant was kind enough to forward my name anyway.  

If we get to go it will be January 21.  I will need a dress blue uniform.  I currently have the old dress greens which are OK for the National Guard for another year, but not OK in Washington DC.

Today I will get the new uniform and start getting it ready--just in case I get the call!

Happy New Year

As this new year begins, the flight companies of my unit are on the way to or are already in Afghanistan.  If you follow me and my unit on facebook you have seen now photos going up in both places.  Several soldiers are posting and sending photos from training and from Afghanistan. Our MEDEVAC unit was in a feature story on army.mil about a new program they are testing to save more soldiers.  Here's the link to the story.

Wish I was along for the ride, but not this trip.  I will continue to write about life in the National Guard until May of 2015 when my enlistment extension is up.

Here a picture from the army.mil story:

Happy New Year!!!

Stewie Caldwell and the Magic Roach Clip

One of my best friends when I was stationed at Hill Air Force Base in Utah was Stewart "Stewie" Caldwell.  He was a smart, funny kid from San Francisco with a bright yellow Superbeetle who smoked a lot of weed.  We worked in live fire munitions testing.  I worked connecting the missiles to the testing equipment, Stewie was one of the ammo handlers who brought the missiles to the test-firing range.

Stewie and I would hang out together in the barracks and went to Salt Lake City almost every weekend so he could resupply his stash and we could meet girls who were possibly more interested in Stewie's stash than in us.

On one of these trips, a sudden Rocky Mountain blizzard blew out of the west turning I-15 white with zero visibility.  Then the gas pedal broke.

The pedal!!!

It came apart and we were idling downhill trying to think of what to do and how to get off the road so we would not be crushed by a semi.  I am not sure which one of us came up with the idea, but the throttle was operated by a cable that went all the way back to the engine in the rear.  There was a bit of cable sticking out of the floor with a crimped piece of metal on it.  Stewie kept his Roach Clip hanging on the dash.  A minute later I was upside down under the dash.  I put the roach clip on the throttle cable and became Stewie's throttle.  This was tricky in the snow with a stick shift, but he would ask for more or less gas and after a while, I could get the throttle in about the right place.

The next challenge was going through the gate.  Stewie showed the air policeman the broken gas pedal and said it was my turn to be head first under the dash.  They let us in the base!

Stewie would never go anywhere without a roach clip before it saved our lives.  Now he also bragged about his roach clip to every girl he tried to impress.

My Unit's Facebook Page Nearing 500 "Likes"

Over the holidays I will be putting captions on family photos.  The pictures were taken at the departure ceremony for Alpha Company and at our unit's Christmas party.

Here's the link if you haven't yet "Like"d the page.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy any other holidays you might like.

Neil

In Sunlight and Shadow by Mark Helprin

On the train to Philadelphia yesterday, I finished Mark Helpin's latest novel, In Sunlight and Shadow.  I came pretty close to crying.  Helprin is a soldier who writes love stories.  In this most recent book, the central love story was vivid, between two people iridescent with love.  The love story is set in New York, from the eastern end of Long Island to the reservoirs north of the city.  And it is a love story about New York City, set in the years just after World War 2.

For those who have read other of Helprin's books, this one is more down to earth.  The exaggerations in A Winter's Tale, in A Soldier of the Great War and A Dove of the East rival Mark Twain in being colossal and very American.  In Sunlight and Shadow, the hero lives for love and honor and finally is caught between the demands of both.  The same choice comes to the hero of many of Helprin's tales, but in the latest novel, the choice is more vivid and final.

If you think modern literary novels have squishy irresolute heroes (if they can be called heroes) and you would like to read a love story with strong admirable characters, this novel is for you.  As is almost everything Mark Helprin writes.

Getting Promoted with a Splash!

Specialist Daniel Krott was promoted to Sergeant at formation today, December 8.  He is being led in pushups by his supervisor, SSG Elizabeth Barger.  Giving him the traditional ice-water shower for new Sergeants is SGT Joseph Diebert and SGT Jeff Guckin.

Three other sergeants read the NCO Creed to the company formation before the big splash.  PFC Robert Woodring on the left read the promotion order.  SGTs Jeana Frederick, Rene Kicklighter, and Francis League read the NCO Creed.

SGT Krott was promoted by CPT Aaron Lippy, 1SG Jeff Huttle and SSG Elizabeth Barger.

Alpha Company Flies to Training Base

On Friday afternoon I was standing on the south side of Muir Field on Fort Indiantown Gap PA watching eight Blackhawk helicopters take off together on their flight to their training base.  Alpha will train for deployment to Afghanistan when they arrive in Texas.

On this bright, clear afternoon I was standing with the families and friends of the eight aircrews flying away from home for a year.  Wives and Moms were the most obviously sad.  Fathers tried to remain composed, but a couple of the grandfathers were very emotional.

I took a lot of family pictures before the final ceremony and will post these on line soon.  If things had worked out differently, I might have been going to Texas with Alpha.

 Families

 Flying to Texas

 Putting away the flags after the Blackhawks disappear from sight

Inside the Two-Ton Bubble

 Once on my daily circuit around the airfield at Camp Adder, Iraq, I was in a sandstorm so strong that it stopped me on the bike.  Because I can “track stand” the bike, keep it upright when standing still, I held the bike in place for a minute then jumped off.

Curled up in a ball, back to the wind, I thought about what to do next.  I could turn around and fly back in the other direction, but I would eventually have to turn the north then back to the east, then get stopped again.  Just then, one of the special ops black Suburbans pulled up and told me to get in.  They said, “Dude, get inside.  This storm’s gonna last all day.”

I got inside and they drove me to battalion HQ. 

Today I was riding in a 20 mph wind with 30 mph gusts.  I was going up a shallow hill at 6 mph—way slower than normal, but straight into the wind that was the best I could do.  Many cars rolled past me on that mile-long stretch of PA Rt. 999.  I was thinking about how many times I heard about people “In the bubble” during the political season just passed.  Here I was, the perfect example of why people stay in a bubble—it sucks being outside!!!!

The people in the cars going past me were getting no exercise, they were missing a clear, cold, clear brilliant late Fall day.  Compared to keeping my bike upright and rolling uphill into a headwind, their lives were DULL.

Let’s assume, most of them wanted it that way.  After a while I did.  I turned back early and rolled to the bike shop to buy a better pair of cold weather gloves and hang out in the warm shop for a while.

For people who are in bubbles of belief, their avoidance of facts has an effect similar to being in a two-ton, two hundred horsepower car in a head wind.

Mr. Bubble, looking out through the windshield, can see everything the guy on the bike does, but Mr. Bubble does not experience the world as it is.  He is in a climate controlled, sound-deadened environment moving fast enough that he seldom sees the messy details of reality. 

One of the great things about serving in the Army is realizing—even in America—that individual freedom can only be preserved by people who give it up.  And that health and safety for many means that some must risk their lives. 

I am sitting in a comfortable, well-lit room, in a centrally heated house writing on my unbelievably powerful computer which is connected to the whole world through an incredibly reliable cable modem.  I love my bubble.  But I know it is a bubble which is more than I deserve and much more than 98% of the world will ever have.

Happy Thanksgiving!