Minutes of Excitement, Hours of Drudgery

Minutes of This

Is Followed by Hours of This. . .

And This. . .

In the Army, anything that is really exciting will require hours of drudgery before and after.  Much of life is like this.  Think of the hours that go into preparing a perfect meal.  The most exciting moment is the first taste of the sizzling scallops or the crunch of the the perfect salad.  

Add all the bureaucratic bedevilment with safety and the Army brackets each minute of real excitement with an hour of boredom before and after.  This is so true of firing weapons.  Before a soldier steps on the range, that soldier will have two or three hours of Primary Marksmanship Instruction.  For someone like me who fires once a year, this class is a good reminder of some of the fundamentals, especially of zeroing the weapon (lining up the sights and the barrel of the weapon for the particular shooter).  

But most of the class own a dozen guns, talk about gun safes at lunch, know who sells ammo cheapest, and fire on a range or hunt every month.  Yet these guys have to go through the same repetitive rehash of firing procedures.  If all goes well, the soldier is actually on the zeroing range firing for 10 or 15 minutes.  The procedure is to fire three-round groups, adjust the sights and fire again.  Once the weapon has a zero, the soldier can go to the qualification range.  

At the "Qual" range, the soldier fires 40 rounds at pop-up targets from 50 to 300 meters away from the firing position.  This is very exciting, especially for the once-a-year shooters like me who have not memorized the target order and have to look for and fire at the targets for the few seconds they are visible.  

This year I had trouble with the battlesight, but a friend who is an armorer and an expert marksman switched out my sight.  I fired six rounds to zero.  All six were in the 4 cm circle at the center of the target.  On the range itself, I fired the best in my life with 33 of 40 target hits.  During my first enlistment, I carried a pistol so M16 marksmanship wasn't part of my Army life.

After the sight switch, I had an exciting ten minutes getting six rounds in the center of the zero target, and an exciting five minutes hitting 33 of 40 on the pop-up target range.  Immediately after shooting, we carefully pick up the spent cartridges

Then it was time to clean weapons.  For most of the next three hours I cleaned my weapon and started cleaning another soldier's weapon who had to go to a ceremony.  So in all, 15 minutes of excitement in a ten-hour day.

But wait!!! There's more.

At the end of the next day, our brass turn-in was was 400 less than the 10% allowed for loss on the range.  We needed 400 rounds of brass--the spent cartridge that is ejected from the side of the rifle.  For those who have not been on a range, finding brass is a painstaking job.  Most shooters from long years of habit begun in basic training carefully pick up all their brass.  Some ranges require you to turn in 40 rounds of brass when you step off the range after firing 40 shots.

At 5:30 pm, the first sergeant picked a dozen of us to head to the range and find brass.  We were joined by many staff officers.  We kicked the grass and crawled along the edges of the firing stations combing the ground looking for spent brass.  We found about a hundred rounds of brass on our range, then moved to another range, hoping the soldiers who fired there had left some brass in the grass.

An hour later, the Brigade Command Sergeant Major called a halt to the search and we headed back to the armory with the brass we could find.  

I will probably never know what happened to the missing brass.  The most common speculation I overheard on the range is that someone "misplaced" several hundred rounds of ammo.  

In any case, I was happy.  I fired the best I ever fired in my life with a rifle.  My zero was as near perfect as I will ever get.  And crawling in the grass looking for spent cartridges 42 years after the first time I fired on a military range was just too funny.  I was smiling the whole time while most everyone else was bitching.  For me this was the perfect Army end to my last session of qualification.  In the Army those minutes of excitement always begin with safety briefings, long lines to draw weapons and end with hours of waiting, picking up brass and cleaning the weapon.

That missing brass let me have a full Army experience.

SEALS and Green Berets are from Lake Wobegon

The commander of the garrison at Camp Adder, Iraq, when I was stationed there was a Lieutenant Colonel who was a Green Beret.  Because I helped with some garrison events I got to talk to the colonel a few times about being a soldier.  Once he said, "The difference between [Green Berets] and other soldiers is that we meet Army Standard in every area.  Most soldiers are good in some areas, great in one or two and bad in many others."  The applies to SEALS, Recon Marines and other elite units.  

Like the children of Lake Woebegon who are all above average, elite soldiers are fully qualified on their own weapon and every other weapon in their unit.  They know field medicine.  They are beyond Army Fitness Standards.  They can survive, escape, and evade capture.  

Outside these elite units, the Army looks very different.  Outside the combat arms fields--infantry, armor and artillery--soldiers tend to specialize in their job.  And competence breeds contentment so some of these skilled pilots, mechanics, technicians slip into pushing basic soldiers skills and fitness onto the back burner of their lives while they become the Iron Chefs of their particular specialty.

I have been in units in which the supply sergeant was an absolute wizard of Army paperwork and could pass inspections without any worry--either to himself or to his commander.  But that same guy could not even pretend to pass the annual fitness test.  I know motor sergeants, weapons sergeants and instructor pilots who are beyond out-of-shape and are obese, yet are incredibly good at their jobs.  And they believe their technical skill means they should be exempt from the fitness requirements of their career.

When the Army cuts the force in the coming years, they will do it the way it was done under President Clinton in the 90s.  By tightening height and weight and fitness standards, many mid-career officers and NCOs will decide getting in shape and staying in shape is not the way they want to live their lives.  

As you can imagine, the SEALS, the Green Berets, the Army Rangers, Army Airborne, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command and Air Force Aerospace Rescue and Recovery units will not be affected by the cutbacks.  But the rest of the military will be smaller in numbers and wear a smaller size uniform once the cutbacks are complete.

Army Life: A Real Day as a Weekend Warrior

For those of you who think every drill weekend is shooting machine guns, flying in helicopters, or marching with a 40-pound pack, the following is my actual day at drill from a few minutes before sunrise until well after dark.

Drill weekend begins at 0530 hours when my alarm goes off.  I get straight out of bed and get cleaned up before waking my sons up.  This drill weekend both of my sons were leaving with me and getting dropped off at Jacari's former Foster Mom's house.  They will sleep over and get picked up on my way home Sunday night at abut 2000 hours (8 p.m.).

By 0615 hours we are on the way to Fort Indiantown Gap by way of Fredericksburg where the boys will be dropped off.  By 0730 I am in my seat in the main meeting room for morning formation.  The Brigade Headquarters Company has often has formation sitting in a briefing room rather than standing to attention outside or on the drill floor.  

As soon as we enter the room it is clear why we have formation here.  The PowerPoint screens are lit.  First Sergeant Craig Madonna calls us to seated attention saying "Good morning HHC."  To which we loudly respond, "Good morning first sergeant."  

After announcements about what we will be doing for the day and the weekend from the first sergeant and other leaders, JoAnn Tresco comes to the front of the room and leads a 90-minute presentation about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.  Her particular emphasis was heroin and alcohol.  She told us the National Guard had a drug and alcohol problem and she was there to explain the dangers of drugs to us.  

Because the Army is a socialist as America gets, we all have get any training deemed mandatory by the leaders.  And since the presenter was upbeat, interesting and had professional videos made by Accenture, the 90 minutes went by more quickly than many presentations like this.  But I could not help scanning the room and noting the people like the Brigade Command Sergeant Major, Executive Officer, First Sergeant and others who seemed at very low risk for heroin abuse.

While she spoke I took a page of notes for this blog post, wrote out the Lord's Prayer in Greek, and wrote the Russian counting numbers from one to 89  (один к восьмидесяти девяти).  I don't knit so I write out things I have committed to memory when I watch videos.

After the briefing, I met with Capt. Miller,my boss, about the events I would be covering for the rest of the day:  a change of command at 1300 hours (1 p.m.) another an hour later, and an award ceremony at 1630 hours (4:30 p.m.)

Next, I went out to my car and got my extra camera.  The army issued me two Nikon digital cameras.  The spare one is the one I used in Iraq.  The other one is newer.  I signed my spare camera over to the battalion administrative NCO in my old unit. He has the unenviable task of taking picture of all tattoos on soldiers which can be seen in the Physical Fitness (PT) uniform.  New Army regulations restrict tattoos.  And the best way to be sure a soldier is not adding new tattoos is take pictures of those he or she has as of a given date.

Again, Socialism means we all dress alike--and look alike when wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  

So I spent 45 minutes tracking down the admin sgt. and signing over the camera.  Next was records review.  The HHC full-time training NCO Sgt. 1st Class Dale Shade sat down with me and went through all my records to make sure they are up to date.  Since I am getting out within a year, this review was not terribly important to my career, but it was time for records to be reviewed, so we did.  Dale and I worked together for the last few months of the Iraq deployment.  He is a funny guy.  We made jokes as we went through the records, several of them about whether some of my orders were signed by Patton or Custer.

And with that finished it was time for lunch.

This lunch was actually Sgt. Amanda Spangenberg's lunch which she allowed me to photograph.  I had mostly the same meal, but also had the cake for dessert which Amanda skipped.  I skipped the chocolate milk.  

At lunch I sat with fueler and new father Staff Sgt. Matt Kauffman.  He had baby pictures of his second child in his iPhone.  Halfway through lunch the Echo 1st Sgt. came by and offered Kauffman a ride to the fueling site 30 miles away at Zerbe Airport, and he was off to the fuel site.

At his point I checked out my camera and flash and got ready for the first change of command ceremony.

I will write about the afternoon and evening in my next post.

Pissed Off At Dante: "Virgil Got Screwed!"

I just finished Purgatorio, the second book of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.  Next week I will be having lunch with Brian Pauli who was part of the Dead Poet's Society book group at Camp Adder in Iraq.  Re-reading Dante in Iraq gave me new insight into this beautiful epic poem because I read it with younger soldiers.

Easily the biggest surprise I had was when most of the soldiers in the group got angry at Dante because of Virgil.  At the end of Purgatorio, just before Dante crosses Lethe and begins his ascent into Heaven, Virgil gets sent back to Hell.  Virgil, with other great and good pagans, gets to stay in Limbo, the penthouse of Hell.  Limbo has none of the torments of Hell proper, but it is Hell and has the greatest torment of separation forever from God.

The first time I read Dante, I remember feeling sad about Virgil, but the poet creates his own world so I accepted Virgil's condemnation.

But in human terms, the injustice is glaring.  Virgil was only in Hell because his birth pre-dated Christ.  This is consistent with the theology of the Catholic Church, but strikes modern readers as eternally cruel.  I can't remember which soldier said, but one said, "Virgil got screwed!"

I was surprised at the time, but have since come to agree with the group.  I will push on through the very Roman version of Heaven in Paradiso, but believing that the Virgil was, in reality, dealt with more justly than by Dante.

US News and World Report Article on Mid-Life Crisis Includes My Enlistment

This was posted today on US News and World Report on line.  Looks like I am one of the examples of how not to have a mid-life crisis.

My Last Summer Camp--Photos

M249 SAW and M2 .50 cal. machine gun ranges.

The History of Rome

For the past several weeks I have been listening to podcast called "The History of Rome." 

So far I have listened to more than 60 of 200 twenty-minute episodes.  The podcast takes the listener from the Fall of Troy to the Fall of the Empire.  The next episode I listen to will be Claudius as emperor.

The narrator has a voice made for history, interesting but not given to great excitement.  I listen every chance I get.  And I am sure I will listen to his new one "Revolutions" when I have gone all the way through The history of Rome.

As many of you know, I am nearing the end of my Army career and am officially working part time at my job beginning this coming week.  I have two teenage boys and triathlon training to fill my time, but listening to Rome made me think I could do a podcast on the history of tanks.

I love tanks.  And a big advantage I have over many who could do a podcast on tanks is that I spent seven years as a tank commander.

Those of you who like military history, please give "The History of Rome" a listen.  And let me know if you would like to listen to a history of tanks.  If you have trouble with commenting on the blog--it is a hassle--email me at ngussman@gmail.com or just send a message on facebook.

Last Annual Training--Found What I was Looking For

Yesterday was the last day of my last National Guard Annual Training.  By the time my unit heads for next year's two-week session of playing Army, I will be a civilian again.  As I drove home from Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa., I realized that during this Annual Training, I finally found one of the things I was looking for when I re-enlisted seven years ago.  

When I first enlisted back in 1972, I made some friends for life.  I know that this time around, I was hoping to make those kind of friends again.  In civilian life it is much harder to make real friends than it is in the Army.  Companionship is the soil friendship grows in and no one with a family, a job and even one hobby has time for anything else.

During this annual training, the State Public Affairs Office on Fort Indiantown Gap let me work at a desk in their office.  I even got a key to work on the weekends and at night.  It was great to have internet and a real workspace--I have neither at my unit.  But the best part was being in a large room for hours with other people doing the same job, facing the same difficulties, and laughing at the same misunderstandings--by civilians and by the people we work for.

It reminded me of how much fun it was to work at an ad agency because there were a dozen other writers.  We could all bitch about clients, check each others work, suggest revisions and share jokes.

C.S. Lewis said that the way to find happiness in your work is to work with people you like and admire.  For nearly 30 years, I have tried and mostly succeeded in working with people I really like.  The days I spent at the Public Affairs Office during annual training are some of the best days I spent since re-enlisting.  I am very glad that before I return to being a civilian, I got to spend several days with people who work hard and handle difficulties with skill--and with good humor.

Dinner with the New Commander

Last night I had dinner with the new brigade commander, Col. John Kovac.  It was not planned, we just happened to be the last two people in the chow hall.  So we got our trays of chicken and dumplings and biscuits and talked about being old soldiers.  We both joined the Army shortly after high school.  I joined in 1972, he joined in 1979.  We both spent three years in Germany.  He arrived in 1979 just as I was leaving active duty and going home.  Both of us remembered our time in Germany as some of the best years we spent in the Army.

Col. Kovac started his career as a crewman on the CH-47 Chinook helicopter.  The Chinook went on active service in 1962, when I was nine years old and the colonel was two.  He was commissioned later and has flown most helicopters in the Army inventory in the years since.  Before taking command of the brigade, he commanded 1-104th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion which deployed to Afghanistan in 2012.

Chinook Helicopter Creates a Rain Shower!!

This was so cool!! Literally.  I stood near enough to get soaked on two water drops by the Chinook helicopter.  A Chinook can carry 16,000 pounds (2,000 gallons) of water, a lot more than the 300 gallons of water carried by a Blackhawk helicopter in a water bucket.

I stood close to water drops by Blackhawks on three previous occasions.  They were fun to watch, but much smaller than the Chinook drop.  When the Chinook lets the water go, the spray covers thousands of square yards of ground.  In this case, dropping water across the length (300 yards or so) of the Lake Marquette.

Combat LifeSaver Training

One of my most vivid memories of training for Iraq was Combat LifeSaver Training. In 2008 it was a 3-day class ending with a hands-on exam, including starting an IV in your buddy's arm.  My training partner was Sgt. Kevin Bigelow.  We both got promoted to sergeant on the same day in June of 2008.  I was training for my first deployment.  Kevin had deployed to Afghanistan several years before.  I am 30 years older than Kevin, but was also a new guy in many ways.  Kevin teamed up with me in this and other training.

Most significantly Kevin and I started IVs in each other.

In the years since, the Army has removed the dreaded IV from Combat LifeSaver Training and has made the training more realistic.  In the picture above, the training dummy moves, yells in pain, and blood pumps from his severed limb.

Medics oversee the trainees as they attempt to treat and evacuate the "wounded."  The sounds of gunfire and screaming echo in the rooms.  The rooms are dark, but have strobe lights firing to simulate gun flashes.

I was tired and streaked with face blood from taking pictures during the training exercise.  It ewas fun.

June 6, 1944

Let me first acknowledge that 10,000 brave men lost their lives on this date in 1944 assaulting the Normandy Coast by sea and air.  I grew up playing Army and wanting to be the kind of man who was brave and strong enough to take part in a great and worthy enterprise like freeing Europe from Nazi domination.  

Today is the first day of Army Annual Training for my unit.  At morning formation our first sergeant reminded us of this 70th anniversary of D-Day.  

History is one of the huge gaps between me and the young soldiers I serve with today.  I grew up reading books about World War II.  I also saw movies, but it was the books that gave me the specifics that I still have in my mind.  The dates, the numbers of men, the generals, the weapons, the weather, the time of year, the vehicles, the terrain, the buildings, the food--I was a sponge for the specifics of the war in Europe.  

Since I learned about war from books and not from video games, I was aware of logistics.  I knew that the real issue deciding many battles was which army could get their troops to the weak point in the enemy line, or to reinforce the weak point in their own line.  When I was in an armor unit, war games were mostly moving our tanks and support vehicles from wherever they happened to be to where they were needed.  

Soldiers stuffed into troops ships, landing craft, transport planes, gliders, jeeps, trucks, armored cars, and anything else with wings, keels and wheels determine the outcome of battles.  

D-Day reminds me of the great tradition I share with everyone who served then and now.  And it reminds me of how much the reality of war is logisitics, moving soldiers, ammo, fuel and food to the fight.

May God Bless all those who are still with us who fought on this day 70 years ago.

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 2

Both times I did the Tough Mudder, this was the obstacle that showed me Tough Mudder is a team sport.  At each event I ran as hard as I could toward this curved wall three times.  Twice I slid back down.  The third time I reached up.  Two strong men at the top of the wall dragged me over the top.  Strong guys hang out on the top of the wall and pull the rest of us up.  If Tough Mudder was a pure solo event, this obstacle would be a fail for me--unless I brought a ladder.  All through both Tough Mudders people were helping and encouraging me.  I helped them when I could.  If I ever do another, I will get together a group of three or more.  Tough Mudder is a dirt-covered party.

On the other hand, with 74 days left until the Kentucky Ironman, I am withdrawing more and more into the solo world of Ironman training.  This past Thursday I swam 3000 yards, rode 80 miles in rain and a headwind to Philadelphia then took the train home.  On Friday, I was going to ride with my friends, but then I took a train to Philadelphia and rode back to Lancaster, another 80 miles.  There was no rain, but the wind reversed and was stronger than the day before.

To be ready for the Ironman, I have all but stopped bicycle racing and mostly ride alone.  Even though my wife and I are training for the same event, we might as well be training for two different events.  She is much faster than I am in the water and is running about 100 miles a month.  I am not running now because of knee trouble and plan to cram the run training into the last five weeks.  We can't run together.

On the bike our training speeds and riding styles are so different we only occasionally ride together.  I plan on surviving the swim and run and making as much time as possible on the bike. My wife will crush the swim, post a good time on the run and survive the bike.  In the 17 hours of the event, we will be together when I pass her on the bike and when she passes me on the run.

The current issue of Christianity Today includes a feature article on a guy who did the Tough Mudder as part of self-administered therapy for a mid-life crisis (I would include the link but it is subscribers only).  The author was right to pick a Tough Mudder instead of an Ironman.  At the Tough Mudder, you suffer together and laugh about it.  The Ironman means more and more time alone until the event wrings everything out of each participant.  A very tough friend and I rode to and from the Tough Mudder together on single-speed bikes--35 miles total.  If you can run a half marathon and do 50 pushups you can finish a Tough Mudder.  The Ironman is the toughest thing I have ever done that I planned to do.  Recovering from a broken neck was tougher, but I did not plan that.


Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 3

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

A Tough Life Goes On

My first crew chief in the Air Force was a short, quiet guy named Randy with very thick glasses.  They weren't quite as bad as the ones in the picture, but so thick his blue eyes sort of swam if you looked straight into the lenses.

Randy retired less than a year after I enlisted.  He came to Hill Air Force Base after the "final tour" before 20 years, the rotten assignment most airmen get just before 20 when there is now way they will turn it down.  Randy's rotten assignment was a listening post near Mount Ararat in Turkey.  Randy worked 12 hours on 12 off keeping the listening equipment operational so we could listen to Soviet radio traffic across the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine. Twelve months in a place more remote than Bum Fuck Egypt had Randy ready to leave the Air Force.

His thick glasses were not the result of eyestrain from fixing listening equipment on top of Mount Ararat.  He joined the Air Force in the early 50s with normal eyesight and a lot of confidence.  In the mid-50s he volunteered for a program that would test the limits of G-Force a human could withstand.  Randy volunteered to ride a rocket sled that hit 7 Gs accelerating and 8 Gs slowing down.

Randy told us they had an eye doctor among several doctors at the test site during sled runs.  On one of the runs, Randy's eyes popped out of their sockets.  Randy said the doctor popped his eyes back in--with some considerable pain--but Randy's eyesight was never the same.

Randy retired.  He was not blind, or an amputee.  His service in the Vietnam War was uneventful.  But he gave up a lot for his country.  It may not have been the ultimate sacrifice, but he helped to make the space program possible.  By the way, one G is a change in speed of 20 mph in one second.  That rocket sled accelerated to nearly 400 mph in about 3 seconds and slowed a little faster than that.  Thanks Randy.

Recruiting Souls and Soldiers, Sadly Similar: Faith in the Military, Part 15

In His brief ministry on Earth, Our Lord was a lousy recruiter and an utter failure at marketing.  In all of the Gospel accounts, Jesus gathers huge crowds then, just when he should be signing them up for The Lord's Army, he sends them away.

The crowds were attracted by healing, by food, by His words.  He had them.  Then he told them that following Him would lead to suffering and loss and the crowds left.  Jesus was the opposite of a recruiter or a marketer.  The Lord wanted committed people willing to suffer and die, people who knew what they were facing before they decided to follow Him.

Inside the military, becoming a believer actually meant some suffering.  Believers serving in the military back in the 70s were sure to be hassled.  And tempted.  A believer who was living his faith in the Army had to take a lot of shit from fellow soldiers.  While his friends were getting high and getting laid, he (there were no women in combat units in the 70s) had to live in some semblance of Biblical morality:  certainly no drugs, no booze, no women.  the other five men in the typical six-man room were sure to be making fun of the guy who was reading his Bible, praying and not partying.

When I got back to the civilian world, Church recruiting was a lot more like marketing than Jesus telling followers to "count the cost."  Mega Churches became "Seeker Friendly."  Instead of presenting a life of denying this world to gain the Kingdom of God, preachers are following marketers, finding out what people want in a Church and modifying the Church to suit the converts.

So standards for entering the Church became more flexible.  Divorce, drinking, dancing and other devilish Ds became acceptable.  Not encouraged, but some former sins clearly became less sinful than others.

The Army did this during the worst days of the Iraq War.  I would not be serving in the Army now if Congress did not raise the enlistment age by seven years in 2006.  The Army took back a 54-year-old after 23 years as a civilian because they needed bodies.  Two years into the recession with the Iraq War winding down, the enlistment age dropped back again and recruitment standards went up.

All of the military is now in the process of cutting its numbers of troops.  As in the 1990s, the cuts will be aimed at mid-career NCOs and Officers, both the save money and to make room for new younger leaders in a smaller Army.  The way this will happen, as in the 1990s, is primarily through tightening fitness standards.  In the 1990s a marketing firm determined that mid-career technically competent soldiers dislike the PT standards above everything else in the military.

So the new smaller force will literally be smaller.

Will the Church ever tighten its standards the way the military did?  Yes, but not from the inside.  The Church will gets smaller and stronger when it is persecuted.  People who want to be a success in this world want to be members of popular Churches where the Lord is promising riches to the faithful.

Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Pat Robertson and the dozens of televangelists promising health and wealth to their flock will disappear when their bank accounts are at risk as will their followers.





The Church will become smaller the same way.  In every Church through history that has come under persecution, the faithful stay with the Church, even becoming martyrs.  Those who were brought in under Seeker Friendly conditions will melt away like butter in the Mojave Desert.

Faith in the Military: Continuing with C.S. Lewis

While I learned about the true, the good and the beautiful in a secular university and the weird, the bad and the ugly in Christian pop culture, I kept reading and re-reading C.S. Lewis.  Here was the one person I knew for sure that had his feet planted firmly in that tiny part of the world where Christianity and culture and history were at peace.  

Mere Christianity made clear that every Church put the same roof over believers and people who had some other reason to be inside the building.  But that was just the beginning of a life-long habit or obsession with reading Lewis.  

Once Lewis showed me that a believer could have a brain, he started showing me the intellectual world is much more vast than the material world.  

Then I went underground, or at least into the underworld.  Next of Lewis' 39 books was The Screwtape Letters.  In each of the 31 missives, Uncle Screwtape, a mid-level bureaucrat in Hell writes a letter of advice to his nephew who is a field agent trying to tempt a patient into Hell.  

Letter #4 changed my life.  It defined humor from Hell's perspective.  I decided after reading this letter to never watch a sitcom again after M*A*S*H went of the air.  Since 1983, I have not watched a sitcom or a comedy movie.  

MY DEAR WORMWOOD...I divide the causes of human laughter into Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy.
You will see the [Joy] among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday...
Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us....it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.
The Joke Proper, which turns on sudden perception of incongruity, is a much more promising field...The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction...it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame...
But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny.
Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.
If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter.
It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.
Your affectionate uncle, SCREWTAPE

Faith in the Military: Civilian Life is a Feast of Learning and a Spiritual Famine

Recently I read an article about the explosive growth in Christian colleges recently.  For many Christian kids, the choice they have is Christian college or no college.  Inside the Christian community, the secular college and university is supposed to be a place where the kids will lose their faith, led astray by unbelieving professors.  

But my first year after the military was just the opposite.  My college courses at Penn State were opening new vistas of faith and beauty beyond anything I could have imagined.  In the same course that introduced me to Dante and Machiavelli, I read Utopia by Sir Thomas More in the Norton Critical Edition. We were assigned several critical essays in addition to the text.  One was by C.S. Lewis.  It was the first time I read Lewis in his "Day Job" as a Cambridge professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature.  Lewis' essay made sense of Utopia.  Many other commenters simply wanted to claim More for their position.  

The following summer, I had a Russian literature course taught by a chain-smoking Serbian, who had escaped communism.  He taught us Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov and Gogol.  I have read an re-read Russian works ever since, particularly Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych which I have read five times and just bought in a new translation.  More on the Russians later.  

At the same time Dostoevsky showed me how central suffering is to the living the Gospel, I was trying to navigate a Christian culture that went out of its collective mind during my time in Germany.  In my first year back, I fell for an Amway pitch from a very nice couple at Church.  I went to one of the big meetings with a thousand people cheering success.  The main guy on stage had made millions.  He was wearing what I would later learn was a $3,000 suit.  He was driving a 7 Series BMW.  He lived in mansion that, as he was describing it, I could only imagine had "one long staircase just going up, and one even longer coming down, and one more leading nowhere just for show. . ."

My Christian brother was telling me that what I should do was forget college, go into business, make a fortune and then I could bless many people.  Wow!!!

He really believed that.  And he thought it was the best thing for me.

But then I thought of Cliff entering the monastery in Darmstadt, Abel fasting for two weeks to find his ministry, and the life of The Lord Himself which did end in health and wealth.

The Liberals were showing me eternity.  The Conservatives were showing me self interest and greed.  Life was weird.

Jerry Falwell Made Me a Democrat: Faith in the Military, Part 12

Among the many contradictions in my life, I am a Democrat.  That might not seem surprising for someone who grew up in Stoneham, Massachusetts, just seven miles from Harvard and eleven miles from Boston.  But both of my parents were Barry Goldwater Republicans.  My father served in World War 2.  My favorite uncle flew three combat tours and had three additional short tours in Viet Nam.  And I enlisted in 1972, less than a year after I graduated from High School.

Then, I became a believer.  Since I started my faith journey in a Baptist Church, I accepted what my Church taught until I had a reason to believe otherwise.  If there is one thing that is clear in a Baptist Church, it is that we are all sinners who need to repent.  Every week, every Baptist Church I ever attended has an Invitation to know Jesus.  Everyone who answers that invitation is told to repent of their sins.

In Germany, we had one channel of American TV, the Stars and Stripes newspaper, and Armed Forces Radio.  We got TV programs more than a year late.  The culture in America was remote and in the years I was gone, the American Evangelical view of politics and political action changed radically--at least it seemed so to me.

Among the gifts I received as a new believer was a subscription to the weekly Sword of Lord newspaper.  Before I left for Germany, Baptists tried to Evangelize Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics and almost anyone else who was not a Bible-believing American.

When I came back from Germany, I read Machiavelli and got a very good primer on how politics worked.  Reading Dante, Aquinas and Sir Thomas More made me quite sure Catholics were part of the community of believers.

When I left for Germany, Evangelical Christians stayed out of politics.  Their hope was focused on the next life not on amassing power in this life.  Jerry Falwell changed that in 1979.  He decided that Christians needed political power and founded the Moral Majority.  The name itself is a flat contradiction of Baptist doctrine.  You can't make a Moral Majority out of sinners.

No reading of the New Testament can show Jesus either taking or recommending political power.  The Church would have power from on high, not from politics.  Dante's Hell is full of Popes and high officials of the Church.  They are not there because they are Catholic, they are there because they used pursued political power.  Falwell dismissed the lessons of the Reformation and two millenia of Church history when he decided to grasp the levers of politics.

Once it was clear to me that the Evangelical Church was going to sell out for power, I decided I would vote for the other party.  And in every election since that is how I voted.  The record of the right wing Church in politics is one of betrayal on both sides, but that's what any reader of Machiavelli would expect.

Although Falwell denied Original Sin to enter politics, he never ceased to call out the sins of others.  He blamed the attacks on America on 9-11 on gays.  Until his death, Falwell reminded me of why Christians risk their own soul when they grasp for political power and they certainly bring the Church into disrepute.  If someone tries to write a new Inferno in this century, Falwell, Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy, James Dobson and many others will be roasting in the flames of that 21st century Gehenna.

"When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world."

-CS Lewis

Faith in the Military: Reading Expands the Universe

In November of 1979 I left the active duty Army.  In January I started college at Penn State's Capitol Campus in Middletown, Pa.  The campus was a former Air Force Base and was set up for only for Junior and Senior years of college and graduate school.

Since I was starting in 2nd semester in a trimester system, one of the courses I took in my first semester was Western Traditions II, taught by Theodora Graham.  It was one of the two courses that most influenced my thinking for the rest of my life.  One of the first books we read was Inferno by Dante Aligheri, book one of the three-part Divine Comedy.  I was in love almost from the first page.  Dante created an entire world based on the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.  The world was coherent, beautiful, terrifying and orderly from the very bottom of Hell to highest Heaven.  Dante wrote the book in the late 1200s in exile from his home in Florence, Italy.

Later in the semester I read another book by a Florentine political exile.  Niccollo Machiavelli wrote a short book on politics called The Prince trying to get back into the good graces of the prince who ruled Florence.  Dante gave his readers a tour of the cosmos and pointed to the wonder of Heaven.  Machiavelli never took his eyes off the Earth.  At about 70 pages in most translations, The Prince is an evening read and easily the most concise book on how to go to Hell every  written.  Machiavelli says the only job of a prince (leader) is to take power and keep power.  Otherwise the prince can do nothing.  And Machiavelli makes no recommendations as to what to do with power--only that it is the first goal of a prince.

I felt like a butterfly crawling out of a cocoon.  So much of the world made sense, in good and bad ways, through just these two books.  In the years since these two books have been at the top of my re-reading list.  I read The Prince every four years in January of the years in which we elect presidents.  Machiavelli reminds of the goals and the limits of politics.  

Currently, I am re-reading the Divine Comedy for the seventh time in a new translation by Clive James.  I have read The Prince nine times.  

And while I was in Heaven in Western Traditions II, the world seemed to be going to Hell and Machiavelli showed me just how that was happening.

Faith in the Military: Another Friend For Life

In 1979, I was assigned to the Wiesbaden Military Community Headquarters.  For the first few months of the year I shared a room with Air Force Sgt. Cliff Almes.  His discharge date was May 2, 1979, my 26th birthday.  He did not go home like everyone else.  On that day I drove Cliff from Wiesbaden to Darmstadt in my 1969 Renault TS with a 4-speed shifter on the column. 

Also on that day, Cliff began 10 months in the novitiate of the Franciscan Brotherhood at the Land of Kanaan in Darmstadt.  He later became Bruder Timotheus. He is still there. He is also an American so he fixes things at the monastery and for the last 15 years has been the network administrator for Kanaan Ministries. 

Every week from May until I left for America in November, I visited Cliff in Darmstadt.  I worked for the base newspaper at that point.  It was printed in Darmstadt so I volunteered to go to the printer each week.  I would have lunch at Land of Kanaan and eat with the novices.  Kanaan was created in the rubble of Darmstadt after World War 2 by two women who ministered to bombing victims during the war.  

Seeing these young men from all over the world training for a life of poverty, chastity and obedience opened another world to me beyond America.

Bruder Timotheus is another friend who I have kept in touch with and occasionally visited since our time together in Wiesbaden.  It is one of the stranger aspects of modern life that Abel and Cliff, two men I consider the best friends I have, are a continent and an ocean away in Germany and San Diego.  But the modern life that allows us to be so far apart also lets us keep in touch no matter where we are.  Going to Iraq in 2009 was no interruption in our monthly phone calls.  

I visited Cliff in Germany twice in the past 15 years.  I hope to do it again someday.  

Faith in the Military: Never So Ignorant

All the reading I was doing and all the sermons I was listening to was making me feel pretty smart for a guy who never went to college.  Then the chaplain said, "You like C.S. Lewis' writing, why not read his autobiography?"

He loaned me a copy.  Next week I gave it back.  I stopped at page 13.  I did not even try to re-read the book until my senior year in college.  That book, more than any other book I had read (or tired to read) before or since let me know just how ignorant I was of history and culture I am a part of.

In Surprised by Joy Lewis writes about the shape of his early life up to the point of his conversion.  To tell this story he uses books and authors as short hand.  He explains none of the books and authors he mentions.  Why would he?  If you read the autobiography of an author who is the leading Medieval and Renaissance scholar of his generation, who would not expect books and authors to be the touchstones of his entire life?

Fifteen years later I created an index of the book for the New York CS Lewis Society.  In the 246 pages of text are 250 books and authors from Aristotle to Wordsworth, from Aeneid to the Well at the World's End.

In 1977, college was in my future, but my will to go was set.  So much of what I was trying to understand would be more understandable when I understood the culture I lived in.  When I understood and knew the great works of literature and of philosophy that were the context in which the Church grew.

The other thing that was becoming clear with my reading was that the founders of America, and every man or woman of learning from antiquity to now was multi-lingual.  One of the biggest gaps in my understanding of the Bible was not really getting the idea of how immensely far the modern English Bible is from Jesus speaking Aramaic and Hebrew in Roman-occupied Israel.  For thousands of years, serious Bible students learned Biblical languages.

So I signed up for a course in Biblical Greek from Fort Wayne Bible College.  My last year n Germany, I completed two semesters of Greek.  It was fun, but I was alone learning Greek until a German Jehovah's witness came to my door.  We talked for a while and I found out he was also learning Greek.  For the last few months I was in Germany, he was a regular visitor.  When he came over, we parsed Greek verbs and talked about the difficulties of translating Greek in to modern languages.  Just before I left he invited me to his wedding.  I had to leave Germany before the ceremony, but I was delighted he asked.

Faith in the Military: Friends for Life

In the middle of the picture above is Sgt. Abel Lopez.  This shot was taken in the Bravo Company, 70th Armor, motor pool in 1977.  We wore gas masks two hours at a random time every week. While we were masked we continued normal activity.  On this rainy day in Germany, normal activity included a Can-Can Dance.

And they are good.  I believe it is Gene Pierce on the left and Donnie Spears on the right of Abel, but I am not sure.

I listened to dozens of sermons and read books the base chaplain suggested.  Abel and I talked about everything we both were learning.  We were both trying to figure out what it meant to be a believer and what we should do to follow the Lord.  

C.S. Lewis said in his book The Four Loves that friends separated by time and distance will, when reunited pick up the conversation where they left it.  All through 1977 in the motor pool or in the field, when we had down time, Abel and I would start talking about prophecy, worship, versions of the Bible, books about the Bible, a sermon one or both of us heard, or a thousand other topics.  

In 1978, when I got assigned to Brigade HQ, the conversation had more interruptions, but it kept going.  In 1979, Abel finished his tour and went home.  Ever since we have talked about once a month, though sometimes circumstances keep us from talking for a few months at a time.  Thirty-five years later, we are discussing what we each read, where we go to Church, who we fellowship with, and should a Christian be involved in politics.  Less than a week ago, prophecy came up again when Abel and I talked.

One of the things that led me to re-enlist in 2007 was the hope of finding really serious believers to talk with.  I never met civilians who talk about faith the same way soldiers do.  

This series is clearly going past Holy Week.  I want to get to Iraq and I have not yet said how Jerry Falwell made me a Democrat.  I will get to that later this week.

Faith in the Military: Looking for the True Church in a Tank in Germany

The picture above is the commander's machine gun mount in an M60A1 tank.  Once I stopped looking for all the signs of the Tribulation, I started trying to figure out which Church I should belong to.  

When I went to a Baptist Church, they taught me the elect were only those who were saved by Jesus, but they strongly suggested that unless you knew how to ask correctly, you were not among the true elect.  When I joined a Charismatic fellowship, they said the same thing in a different way.  If you did not have the "Full Gospel" then you probably were not among the elect.  They were nicer, but also pretty much believed the Narrow Way to Heaven was through them.

I was uncomfortable thinking how many billions of people were going to Hell and I also thought some people who were sure they were going to Heaven were overconfident.  C.S. Lewis turned my thinking around with Mere Christianity.  Lewis said the elect were in every Church.  Those in every Church who were looking for the Lord and striving to do what He wanted were in every Church.  So the "True Church" was wherever believers gathered.  The false Church was right there in the same place because there were always going to be people in the Church for reasons having nothing to do with loving God and enjoying Him forever.

That was so liberating.  So the Church on the human level was just like every other organization including the Army.  In the Army we all knew who was a real soldier, who was a real tanker, and we very much knew who was not.  Every sports team is the same.  The real players and the posers are obvious to everyone.  

At this time I got a cassette player and headphones.  I started listening to sermons.  In particular, I listened to dozens of sermons by the evangelist James Robison and teaching tapes by Robert Mumford.  These two guys disagreed on a lot, but both gave me a lot of insight into the Church.  Robison was a stirring preacher, filling stadiums.  Listening to him, I got the fundamentalist culture in an entertaining way.  Mumford focused on the Holy Spirit in history and gave me a sweeping view of how the Church could begin in unity on Pentecost and become the crazy quilt of beliefs it is today.

At the end of 1977, my future career became clear.  

Faith in the Military: In Heidelberg Faith Goes to My Head

In 1977 I climbed into an Army tour bus for a free trip to Heidelberg, West Germany, to see the annual fireworks.

But I missed half of the event.  From the time we arrived, I sat on the bus reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.  The base chaplain gave me a copy just saying he thought I would like it.  I was entranced.  I started reading the book on the bus and couldn't stop.  I stayed on the bus and kept reading while the other soldiers wandered around Heidelberg waiting for nightfall.

Reading this book I came to understand that learning and Christianity were not mutually exclusive.  I entered Christianity through the anti-intellectual door of the Baptist Church and started to wonder if being stupid was the best path to faith.  Taking the Bible literally makes many people suspicious of all learning:  science, philosophy, economics, literature, history.  And here was Lewis bringing every branch of learning together in service of the faith.

By the end of the Heidelberg trip, I was thinking of leaving the Army to go to college full time.