F in the Middle Acronyms: Military and Civilian

In 2007 I re-enlisted after almost a quarter-century as a civilian.  I quickly started learning and re-learning acronyms for everything.  My kevlar helmet was an ACH not simply a helmet.

ACH, or helmet

In the 70s and 80s as a tank commander I was always looking for BFRs to keep my driver from hitting them and knocking the track off the tank.  BFR?  Big Fucking Rock. I actually said "Driver Left, BFR."

BFR, hazard to tank tracks

If I was asked to do something beyond my capabilities I said NFW: No Fucking Way.

A few months after I joined my high-school sophomore daughter Lisa said in a casual way that Claire was be BFF.  I had not heard the civilian version of that acronym, so thinking Army, I assumed she was saying, "Best Fucking Friend."  I was kind of surprised that she would use that acronym to describe her friend and said hesitantly, "BFF?"

Lisa said, "Right. BFF. Best Friends Forever." She looked at me, seeing me smile as she spelled out the acronym. "What did you think it meant?"  I told her. We laughed.

The year before she went to see the movie "Jarhead" with some of her soccer teammates. When she came home she said, "Dad! You didn't tell me the right words to the Yellow Bird song." I admitted I changed the words.

My 66th Birthday--Life is Very Different from Past Decades

Ten years ago today, I boarded an Air Force C-17 Cargo plane in Kuwait for a half-hour flight to Camp Adder, Ali Air Base, Iraq.
My 56th birthday present from the Army was a lovely new home in something like a shipping container on Camp Adder. I would share that two-man room in a Containerized Housing Unit (CHU) with Sgt. Nick Black Smith until January of 2010.
When we walked down the ramp of the C-17 the 120-degree heat and blazing sun gave us a preview of life for at least the next six months. Even Iraq cools off in November.
On my 46th birthday I was a Communications Manager for Millennium Chemicals at a conference in Paris and on the way to a conference in Perth.
On my 36th birthday I was an Account Executive at Godfrey Advertising in Lancaster and had ridden in the second bicycle race of my life.
On my 26th Birthday I was a Sergeant and a Tank Commander in 1-70th Armor. I drove my friend Sgt. Cliff Almes, my roommate in the Wiesbaden Military Community barracks, to his new home and life as a Franciscan Monk in Darmstadt.
On my 16th birthday I got my learner's permit!
I can't remember my sixth birthday, but I was in the 1st Grade at Robin Hood Elementary School in Stoneham, Ma.
I started this day at Physical Therapy, took a nap and then swam a quarter mile at the YMCA. This is my first birthday with a titanium knee.

The Sergeant's Major in Film and Video

Last night I finished re-watching the HBO series "Generation Kill," about a Marine Recon Battalion during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The series captures moments of incredible bravery by the Marines followed by long hours of boredom and a string of bad decisions by high command.

One of several comic characters in the drama is the battalion Sergeant's Major John Sixta.  A short, broad-shouldered man with a raspy, nasal voice, he is obsessed with the "grooming standard." He combines the worst of every senior enlisted man in every branch of every military.  This little son-of-a-bitch would make soldiers laugh who were veterans of either side of the fight at Gettysburg, at Leningrad or Stalingrad, at Austerlitz, at Waterloo, probably even at Vosges on either the Roman or German side.  The cartoon Sergeant's Major is perfectly expressed in John Sixta.

On the other extreme of the senior sergeant in film is Colour Sergeant (Platoon Sergeant) Frank Bourne in the 1964 film "Zulu." Bourne trains his men, makes sure they are ready to fight, quietly encourages his best soldiers, pushes the slackers, and stands with stiff-upper-lip resolve in the face of an assault by a force outnumbering  his unit by 100 to 1.

The best sergeant's major I have known personally is Christopher Kepner, the current Command Sergeant's Major of the National Guard.

The role of the Top Enlisted Soldier in the military has civilian parallels. A warehouse manager or shop manager keeps the workers motivated makes sure work procedures are followed to the letter, and is responsible for worker safety.  But a manager has no input in corporate strategy.  The Top Sergeant has responsibility, but not authority: they get the soldiers ready to fight, but do not decide where or when to fight. That's what officers do.

For me, the best civilian parallel is in the book (NOT the movie) "Remains of the Day" by the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro.  The butler in that lovely book is the picture of the sergeant's major. He is in charge of maintaining the appearance, the morale, and the performance performance of the large staff of servants in a pre-World-War-II English ancestral mansion.  He can terrorize the staff and yet, behind his well-groomed back, be the subject of ridicule. In one of a hundred big and small ironies in the story, the butler is completely devoted to the Lord of the house. But that venerated figure turns out to be the center of clandestine Nazi sympathy in England.

I heard Ishiguro speak in Phialdelphia in 2015, two decades after the book was published.  When asked about the movie Ishiguro said he was just beginning his career as a novelist. He was flattered to have a movie made of his book. But the choice of the studio to play the butler was Anthony Hopkins.  Ishiguro said Hopkins is brilliant, but he is not a comic figure, so the movie lost that dimension of the butler.

If you have a favorite portrayal of a Sergeant's Major or other top sergeant in film, let me know at ngussman@yahoo.com .

Wisdom Tooth Out With A Hammer and Chisel, Hill AFB, 1973

Dental Hammer and Chisel

Hill Air Force Base, Ogden, Utah, was my first duty station after tech school at Lowry AFB.  In the Spring of 1973, around the time I turned 20 years old, I had a lot of pain in my lower jaw. The dentist I saw on base said I had an impacted molar on the lower right. And while he was removing that, he would remove the one on the lower left. I had the uppers removed several years before.

When I came back the next day, they put me in a chair, gave me the big, old-fashioned Novacaine shots and left me alone, lying back in the chair. I looked to the right at the tray of instruments. There was a really shiny chrome hammer and a few chisels.

Several minutes later, the dentist started working. He took out the left tooth first. Then he broke the right tooth with the chisel and hammer and pulled out the pieces with pliers.

I can still see those tools. I felt pressure when the dentist broke the tooth, but it did not hurt a lot at the time.  In the two weeks after it was clear that the right was worse than the left, my jaw was swollen much more on the right than the left.

Today I was talking to the physical therapist who is helping me recover from knee replacement surgery four weeks ago. He said the pain I am experiencing is to be expected. I said, "Yes, cut my bones with a saw and hammer in titanium rods, and I know there will be pain for a while."  I then told him that the knee replacement was not the first time for me getting my bones hammered.  He smiled at the story of the dental hammer and said, "That's an interesting way to look at it. But you probably don't want to tell everybody about getting your teeth and bones hammered."

He's right. But I could definitely tell other veterans.

Sleep Deprived: The Suffering Built Into Every Military

Today is one month since I got knee-replacement surgery. Inside my stiff, swollen, sore left leg is something like the titanium and plastic parts above, replacing my worn-out bones with modern technology.

Every other day I go to physical therapy where Luke, an ex-Marine, gives me 45 minutes of exercises followed by intense stretching. Then Mike pushes my knee to get more range of motion. They were the subject of my last post.

At this point, the pain from the bone saw, hammer and other tools used to rebuild my knee has subsided.  But the sleep deprivation dogs me every moment in the day that I struggle to think clearly, and every moment at night I stare at the ceiling hoping to drift into sleep.

A few years ago I reviewed the book "Grunt" about the technology behind keeping soldiers fit for duty and keeping them alive after the horrible injuries. In the book, there is a whole chapter on sleep deprivation among submariners. As with so many things in the military, everything can turn into a competition and sailors pride themselves on how long they can go without sleep.

Careful study of submarine sleep habits showed that this built-in sleep deprivation leads to mistakes, injuries, accidents and could lead to something worse.  Changing submarine culture to build in more sleep led to better performance, especially under alert conditions.

All through my military career and parts of my civilian career, sleep deprivation led me to struggle with simple tasks and ache for a nap. Border patrol, tank gunnery, guard duty, long road marches, and a hundred other military duties took sleep from me and never gave it back.

Sleep deprivation is also a form of torture. It could be months before I get a full night's sleep again according to some people I know who have had this surgery.  When I finally do sleep four or more hours without waking to pain in my leg, I know it will be a wonderful feeling.

My Physical Therapist is a Marine

Marine Corps Basic Training

I started outpatient physical therapy yesterday. I have two therapists. One leads me in various exercises for about 30 minutes to work on flexibility and get my legs warmed up.  The second bends my leg as far as he can and a little farther to get more range of motion.  I need to restore range of motion to resume activities like bicycling.

The guy who does the warmup exercises is a former Marine who served in the Marine Reserve from 2012 until three knee surgeries ended his Marine career after two years.

The first thing I did in my therapy session was walk as straight and tall as I could with a cane, the length of the workout area and back.  Then I did side stepping and other exercises that led Luke and I to talk about marching songs.

Then we talked about Jody and I got jealous of being a Marine. Luke said that all through his 18-week Basic Training in 2012 they sang marching songs about Jody.

I told him I went to my last active duty school in 2013 at Fort Meade. I was not allowed to sing Jody songs when I marched the company or any songs that were sexist or talked about killing an enemy.

Jody is the guy back home who is sleeping with your wife/girlfriend, emptying your bank account, driving your car, and in every way taking over the life you left behind.  Back in 1972 when I was in Basic Training, Jody was a draft dodger. He had a rich dad and an infected hangnail that meant he did not have to go to 'Nam and we did. 

So Luke and I were laughing and quoting Jody verses as I exercised:

"Ain't no use in goin' home, Jody's got your girl and gone.
Ain't no use in feelin' blue, Jody's got your sister too."

"Ain't no use in lookin' back, Jody's got your Cadillac."

Then we talked about songs that were unique to our branch and sang bits of those:

"They say that in the Army the coffee's mighty fine, it tastes like muddy water and smells like turpentine,
Gee Mom I wanna go, but they won't let me go....."

After that Fort Meade school I wrote a post on the New York Times "At War" blog bitching about the marching songs in the 21st Century Army.

After a half hour of us laughing about marching songs as I exercised, Luke turned me over to Mike.  His job is get me increased range of motion by pushing my leg as far as it will go, then a little more. I was quiet for a lot of that session. It hurts.  Mike told that previous patients of his who he helped with recovery gave him a t-shirt emblazoned with "Mikey de Sade." I could see that.

I will be seeing Luke and Mike three times a week for the next month in the long process of recovery.  And once in a while singing about Jody or

"A yellow bird, with a yellow bill,
Just landed on, my window sill,
I lured him in with crumbs of bread, and then I crushed his.....

The end of the verse in the Marines and the 1970s Army is .....f@#king head.

At Fort Meade in 2013, it was .......little head.

Luke and I laughed about that too.

Screwed Out of Retirement at 19 Years

Yesterday, I got a call from a soldier I served with in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. Her father is 59 years old, a Sergeant First Class, in Texas, training for a deployment later this year. 

If he goes, it will be his fourth deployment.  He first enlisted forty years ago, then had a long break in service to raise his kids.  I knew when I re-enlisted I could not get a retirement--I was too old and had too few years of service. 

But this soldier is right on the edge. With a one-year extension he would be able to complete his deployment and retire. 

It looks like what will actually happen is that he will deploy and return early and leave the Army without a pension.

I told my friend to get in touch with her Congressman right away. Her approach should be "My Dad........"  She is a veteran combat pilot in her own right.

There is not much chance he will get the retirement. Like me he will be asked to turn in his gear and all of his connection to the military will end. Fading away, as General McArthur said 70 years ago.

"Smoking's Not Going to Kill Us, They Are:" Tobacco on the Cold War Border

I started watching "Band of Brothers" again, the HBO series about American paratroopers in World War II.

At the beginning of episode 2, the paratroopers are on a C-47 transport plane flying toward Normandy in the middle of the night of June 5-6. In moments they will be the first invading troops, crowded on slow-moving airplanes flying into intense anti-aircraft fire then jumping from the planes.

By morning a third of them will be killed, wounded or missing. The men in the plane rub Rosary beads, drum their fingers, tap their feet, and stare vacantly. Some pray. A few others light up cigarettes.

My well-trained, health-focused 21st Century mind immediately thought "that's unhealthy" and I smiled. Then I thought of a joke about second-hand smoke in a plane with its jump door removed, open to the night sky.

I smoked when I was a tank commander on the East-West border in the late 1970s. I looked across that border and thought the Soviet Army would invade and my tank would be part of a vastly outnumbered defense of the free world. And that I would have the survival potential of a rabbit at a wolf reunion.

"Smoking's not gonna kill us, they are!" I could say with some confidence looking East.

The Soviets did not invade. I quit smoking before the Soviet Union collapsed, so I am still alive to write this blog post.

By then end of World War II, less than a year later, the majority of the men in those planes on D-Day were dead or wounded. Smoking didn't kill them. The Nazis did.

Talking Racing and Cheating with a Richmond Cab Driver

Cale Yarborough, NASCAR Champion

I took a train to Richmond to visit my daughter and son-in-law. I took a cab to their house from the station. The driver was a local guy in his early 70s with six-year-old Chrysler 200 cab. He had the gravely voice of an ex-smoker and was very friendly.  In a couple of minutes it was clear we were both veterans. He was drafted and served in the late 60s, getting out just before I enlisted. 

The other thing we had in common was being NASCAR fans from the 60s through the early 2000s when we both drifted away from being fans.  In between the directions announced by GPS, we talked about being fans in the 60s. Ed drove slowly so we had a lot of time to talk on the 9-mile trip. 

Ed had followed the many drivers who drove for JuniorJohnson, one of the NASCAR originals. Ed met Cale Yarborough when Cale drove for Junior. We also talked about Darrell Waltrip a three-time champion who is now an announcer. 

Then I mentioned seeing a couple of races at the Richmond track and wishing I could have ridden my bike at the annual bicycle race on the Richmond NASCAR track.  This led us to talking about in NASCAR and bicycle racing. So we talked about Lance Armstrong and Waltrip and how different cheating is in motorsports and endurance sports. 

He knew Armstrong cheated, but he didn’t know how. I explained blood doping. I told Ed after Armstrong and Floyd Landis I never watched the Tour de France again.  We talked about how in motorsports the cheating is done in the car, not in the driver’s body, so when the cheater gets caught, the offending part is removed and the driver can race the following week. 

We also talked about the death of Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001. Both of us stopped being fans soon after because NASCAR made all the cars identical and both of us had become fans when it was actually modified street cars that raced on short tracks and the high banks at Daytona and Talledega.

Always interesting to meet up with a Cold War veteran.

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Two Guys Comment on the Book I am Reading: How Fascism Works

Reading Hannah Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism" led me to start reading Jason Stanley's "How Fascism Works." I happened to be reading the fascism book on a bench in 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. There was a guy napping on the bench opposite me. He woke up, looked at the cover of the book, came over and sat next to me.

He said, "Tell me how that works. Just a quick summary." So I said, "Attack the press, discredit opponents and all history, attack a scapegoat minority and you are on the way." He thanked me.

Then he said, "My girlfriend told me the FBI said I can't ever call her or see her again in my entire life. I think they have to take me to court or arrest me or something. They wouldn't just tell her. Right?"

I said I don't know much about law, but that sounded right. He kept talking. I went to my train.

On the train, a conductor I see once in a while, a veteran, saw me reading the book and making notes in it. He said, "You are always reading some crazy shit." He laughed and kept checking tickets. When I got off the train, I passed him in the doorway.

"You take care Sarge," he said and started laughing again.

We both served in Cold War mechanized units. We talked about the Cold War a couple of times and how crazy it was that it ended. Once in a while when we were on the same train he would see me studying Ancient Greek or Russian and say, "You are one weird dude."

The Heel Thing: My Bone Spur and Deployment

Ten years ago, I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, training to deploy to Iraq. With just a week to go before the long flight to the Middle East, I developed a bone spur. It ached every day. When I first stood up in the morning, it felt like I had a big rock in my right boot.

I said nothing, because I could have been left in the US and missed the deployment. Once I was in Iraq, I got a cortisone shot from the medics because they would not send me home over just a bone spur once I was in country. Cortisone and a month of stretching several times a day fixed it.

In this week in which Cadet Bone Spurs is attacking John McCain, a real American hero, I can't stop thinking about the soldiers I have known over the past 40+ years who covered up medical problems or got them fixed in order to serve.

I really cannot understand any veteran supporting Coward-in-Chief. During the Vietnam War, rich draft dodgers like Trump not only avoided service, they sneered at people who served. And he can't even remember which heel had the bone spur.

Cold War Barracks Roommate Visits for 37 Hours

At Philadelphia Airport at 6am 

During the first months of 1979, my roommate in the barracks of the Wiesbaden Military Community was Air Force Sergeant Cliff Almes. On May 2, of that year, Cliff was discharged from the USAF in West Germany. I drove him 20 miles to the place that has been home for him ever since, a monastery in Darmstadt.  

Cliff got a new uniform he is still wearing. He is now Bruder Timotheus of the Land of Kanaan. We have talked on the phone ever since I left Germany in 1979 to go to college.  I visited Cliff in Germany a few times in the last 40 years. In 2017 I spent a week with Cliff at Kanaan that included a visit to Point Alpha on the former East-West border in Fulda. 

Cliff is here in the U.S. for a family wedding in Houston this coming weekend. He flew to Virginia, visited his brother, then visited me, then flew to Mexico to visit his sister before flying to Houston. Next week he'll be back in Darmstadt. 

On this visit, Cliff met my wife and several of my friends here in Lancaster. On the long visit to Kanaan in 2017, I met some of the Brothers in Cliff's community and other people who visit the monastery. Dmitri, for example, visited Point Alpha with Cliff and I. And I visited German historic sites with Cliff and a Coptic Christian couple from Cairo.

Cliff is a military brat. His connections to the US Military go back to the Revolutionary War. Some of that story is here. Cliff's schedule did not allow for a historic site visit, but we did drive past all of the sites on Independence Mall in Philadelphia along the way to the airport.  Maybe we can go inside on some future visit. 

I met some of my best friends during my military service during the Cold War.  They live as far away as Germany and San Diego now so it's nice when we can visit.  My former tank unit, 1-70th Armor, has reunions every other year. I've made it to a couple of those. There's one this fall I'm going to miss because of conflicting plans, but I'm hoping for 2021.

In the meantime, there is a possibility Cliff and I will be able to spend a few days seeing Jerusalem in the fall. He has been there several times and I am looking forward to seeing it through his eyes.