Trading a Guitar for a Gun--Who Fights Our Wars

With more American troops headed for the Middle East and with many of my friends in NATO countries that surround Ukraine and border Russia, I thought I would repost some of my favorite stories about the men and women who risked their lives in Iraq and may be going back.

By the way, this photo is used at the Army Sergeant's Major Academy as an example of BAD SAFETY PRACTICES!

The story is here: Trading a Guitar for a Gun. 

Or here:

Seven years ago, then 18-year-old Nicholas Raia of Altoona, Pa., brought his trumpet to an audition for the Pennsylvania Army National Guard band. He aced the audition and until last summer was member of several performance groups within the band. Over those seven years he performed more and more with the band and ensembles playing the guitar for recruiting events and celebrations. For more formal military ceremonies he now plays the baritone—a small tuba.

After seven years in the band, Raia, now a sergeant, decided to take a year away from performing and volunteer for a combat tour. Since mobilization in January, Raia has served as a door gunner on a CH-47 Chinook helicopter with Company B, 2nd Battalion, 104th Aviation Regiment.

“I felt that after 7 years in the Guard, it was my turn to do my part overseas,” said Raia.

To get ready for the transition from full-time student and weekend band member, Raia volunteered for additional training in weapons. In June 2008, Raia attended the Small Arms Master Gunner course at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. To prepare for hand-to-hand combat he completed the week-long Level One Combatives Course in July. At the end of September, he was one of 10 Soldiers in the first class trained in the new Live-Fire Shoot House also at Fort Indiantown Gap.

His transition from band member and college student to door gunner had difficulties training could not help.

“It was a decision that I struggled with for a while,” Raia said. “It’s one thing to tell your loved ones you are being ordered to leave and a totally different animal entirely when you are trying to explain to them that you are voluntarily leaving.”

Over the years he was in the band, Raia came to believe he should deploy with a combat unit.

“Our job (in the band) is unique in that we are in the public eye often, and we often get thanked for our service by people in our audiences,” Raia said. “I would find myself conflicted, because while it is true that we, as a unit, were serving our country in the way in which we were meant to serve, I also felt as if I should be doing more.”

Raia had several friends in the Guard who deployed overseas at least once in their careers. He said he felt those were the Soldiers who truly deserved to be thanked.

“I felt that after seven years in the guard, it was my turn to do my part overseas,” he said.

His final decision to deploy was met with mixed emotions.

“My unit could not have been more supportive of my decision,” Raia recalled. “They helped me get everything on the military side of the house in order prior to my deployment and have made it a point to ensure it would not affect me negatively upon my return.”

His friends, on the other hand, were confused by Raia’s decision.

“Many of my friends are not in the military and I think that makes a big difference,” he said. “People in the military think a little differently than those who are not and most of the Soldiers in the military today could probably easily understand the feeling of responsibility that compelled me to deploy.”

“My family worried about me and they were not real thrilled that I would volunteer to leave them for a year to go to a combat zone. Raia continued. “My family has been super supportive of my decision. Any previous uncertainty or worries has given way to pride in what I am doing.”

Before deployment, Raia completed all the requirements for a bachelor’s degree at Penn State with a double major in Criminal Justice and Psychology. He plans to bring together all of his training, experience and education by becoming a police officer after deployment—except on National Guard weekends when he will be back on stage or in formation at ceremonies in the 28th Infantry Division Band

Valentines Day and Retirement

On Valentine's Day my fellow veterans, you might think America loves Veterans and that could never change.  But don't bet your future on it.  I enlisted during the Viet Nam War when soldiers were scum to much of the nation.  Many soldiers I know cheer for the politicians who are taking cutting retirement money for police, for firefights, for teachers and other government workers.  You may have noticed recent news reports that talk about the how military retirement costs almost as much as paying the current force.  Only 20% of soldiers who enlist stay in till retirement.

I am not writing to protect my own retirement.  I can't stay in the Army long enough to retire.  I won't get any retirement.  But I know a lot of soldiers who are staying in just to get their 20 years and retire.

Since the 80s big business has figured out many ways to drop retirees from fixed-benefit pensions.
In the past decade, local and state governments have figured out how to take retirement benefits away.
Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, including all retirees are barely one percent of the population of America.  The men and women who deployed to our recent wars three, four, five, ten times or more should be ready for another fight to keep their retirements.

Soldier/NCO of the Year Selection Board

This past drill weekend, 28th Combat Aviation Brigade picked its Soldier of the Year and NCO of the Year.  The NCO of the Year is SGT Jordan Bannister, who is in my company--HHC 28th CAB.  She is also an admin. NCO and is the one who is doing all of the administrative work on my request to stay in the Army for another two years.

Congratulations and Thanks to SGT Bannister!!!

And if you wondered what a Soldier of the Year Board looks like, here is a view of the six first sergeants and command sergeant's majors who made up this year's board.

I sat in front of this panel last year.  They take up to a half hour per candidate asking questions about everything from Aviation Zip Lines.  They are tough.  They are picking the soldier and NCO who will represent the brigade at the state and national competitions later in the year.

Photos from Drill Weekend

No big events this weekend, but some good shots of soldiers training:

Putting safety wire on an air sensor on the main rotor blade of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter.

Soldiers from Bravo Company, 628th ASB prepare an AH-64 Apache helicopter for installation of main rotor blades.

Popular On Line Can Be Strange

This week my YouTube video explaining the difference between Army MRE and C-Ration meals passed 50,000 views.

A photo I took this weekend has had more than 4,000 views.

And here is the most popular post on this blog by far with more than 2,600 views.

http://armynow.blogspot.com/2009/05/home-sweet-trailer-home.html

Is there a lesson?  I guess writing about where soldiers live, talking about what we eat and taking pictures of helicopters reaches a lot of people.

Not like kitty videos or anything, but a lot for me.

More Snow on the Way? Armor Still Looks Good

This weekend began with snow all over Fort Indiantown Gap, including the Armor displayed at the main intersection.  Armor looks good in the snow, as you can see below, but it is not made for snow driving.  The the 53-ton M60A1 tank I drove and commanded would slide easily in two or more inches of snow.  Wide tracks mean low ground pressure--the same ground pressure as a Corvette.

So if someone offers you a ride in a fully-tracked vehicle in the snow, say "No Tanks!" unless you want to slide.

1984: Big Brother Never Showed Up

I am re-reading "1984" for the Cold War class I am taking.  George Orwell's tale is so completely Evil Empire and so completely wrong.  In a bleak, battered London, Winston Smith toils rewriting history at his day job and trying to remember and write down the truth at night.

As a storyteller Orwell is brilliant and chilling.

As a prophet, he is a failure.  The world he imagined is nothing like what actually happened.  Orwell imagined a future with central control of information and nearly all history wiped out.  In this gray, impoverished world everyone is starving.

Closer to the future is Ray Bradbury's 1953 book "Fahrenheit 451."  You and I and everyone who read that book 30 years ago remember it as the book about burning books.  In this terrifying world in which Firemen start fires instead of putting them out.

But when I re-read the book several years ago, the thing that stood out was the video walls and the ear bugs.  The main character's wife had a room with three walls of video and wanted her husband to get promoted in the fire department so they could afford four walls of video.  With four walls, the video became interactive and she could be on game shows.  And everyone got music through bugs they fitted in their ears.  Bigger TVs, TVs that cover walls, music direct to your ears--that sounds like the near present and near future.

The guy who got the future right is Aldous Huxley in his 1931 book "Brave, New World."  Huxley imagines the future in which no one has to burn books because no one reads them.  In the Brave New World people are so glutted with entertainment and information that they are easy to manipulate.

Any prospect of the horrors of 1984 becoming reality died with the Soviet Union.  Communist China is becoming capitalist in a way that will eventually end the communist domination of the government.

But people who no longer read, who are obsessed with music and video, who are lazy and stupid--that world is here.  Prophetic Gold Medal to Huxley, Silver to Bradbury, no medal for Orwell.

Soviet Era Propaganda Reminds Me of East-West Border, And Advertising

Yesterday was the first day of a class I am taking about the Cold War Era in books, film, and images, like the one above.  Today we saw Soviet propaganda films from 1924 to the 1960s and discussed several propaganda posters.  Before class we read a 30-page article about Soviet cartoons and cartoonists.  

Among the cartoonists, Boris Efimov story was chilling.  He lived from the beginning of the 20th century, either 1899 or 1900 until 2008.  He drew cartoons for the entire Soviet era.  

In interviews he said he drew what he was told to draw, Soviets as heroes, westerners as fat and greedy.  In his tale, I remembered both seeing Soviet posters when I was stationed in Germany in the 1970s and at home in newspapers and on TV.  

I worked at an ad agency for 13 years and have worked in marketing communications of various kinds for the past 30 years.  What stands out in the Soviet images is how well they controlled their "brand."  From the 1920s to the end of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the image of the Soviet citizen/worker/soldier was a strong, tall, clean, happy man or woman.  The capitalist enemy was fat, greedy, foolish and deceptive.

If you are going to create and impression through media, this control is very important.  And as the world changes, the brand has to stay consistent.  So with Ford, the brand image is quality, reliability, and performance though the actual product has changed from a Model T to a Ford GT.

The brand image is the coolest car on the road whether it's 1908 or 2015.  And the Soviet's controlled their image just that well--and exploited every weakness in their enemies.

Their propaganda was effective enough to keep me and 250,000 other American soldiers permanently stationed in Germany to defend Western Europe from an attack we thought could come at any time.  Our tanks were fully loaded with cannon ammunition and ready to fight when World War 3 started.  When we went to the border, we saw this on the other side of the fence.

They convinced us!

Aviation Photo Contest Photos

I entered three photos in the Army Aviation Association of America photo contest.  Last time I entered, all of the photos were of aircraft over Afghanistan and Iraq.  It's hard to compete with combat photos.  So this time I decided I would enter three photos (the maximum allowed) with no photos of aircraft in the air.  In fact all three are very much on the ground and only one has aircraft.

The first one was a photo of grounded aircraft in heavy fog in January of 2014.  All the photos have to be in calendar year 2014.  The second is of mechanics from 628th Aviation Support Battalion pulling a broken truck out of three feet of water.  The third is from Dunker training.

Politics and Freedom in "Fury"

This morning I was reading Hannah Arendt's "The Promise of Politics" on freedom and leadership.  Politics, Arendt says, should bring freedom into the world.  She wrote this shortly after World War 2.  In a big way, the movie "Fury" could be seen as a movie about men who gave up their freedom to set others free.

But reading Arendt, I thought about one of the early scenes when the column of tanks passes hundreds of German refugees.  Among this group of pathetic people carrying their meager belongs on the muddy road is a woman wearing her wedding dress.  Her head is oddly tipped.  The dress is dragging in the mud.

In any coffee shop, locker room, or restaurant, we hear people saying "Politics doesn't matter--they are all the same."  Or "I don't care about politics."

In America we have the freedom to say those things, because in America we have the Rule of Law and who is in charge does not matter in the same way as in a real dictatorship.  The scene with the refugees portrayed real roads full of German refugees at the end of World War 2.

Those men and women stumbling through the mud, hoping to get food, hoping to stay alive another day, dragging what few belongings they still had would never say politics doesn't matter.  Just 12 years before, many of those refugees voted for Hitler the only time he actually stood for election.  Because of that vote, American tanks were driving down the muddy road to kill more Germans in their country.  And the men in those tanks were making jokes about how many chocolate bars or cigarettes they would need to have sex with any of the women on that road.

We can say politics doesn't matter.  In Sudan, in Egypt, in Palestine, in Iran, North Korea, and Congo, no sane person says politics doesn't matter.


Other posts on Fury:

Fourth time watching Fury

Review

Faith in Fury

Memories

Dunker Videos

Here are several of the underwater videos I shot at Dunker training in December.

Enjoy!!!

When I'm 64, I Might Still Be a Soldier

Last week I signed two documents that begin my request to stay in the Army another two years.  And since the enlistment will end 29 days after my 64th birthday, if I get the extension, the answer to the Beatles question, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" will be, "Yes!"  At least for a few more weeks.

Right now, my last drill will be in May of this year.  If I do get to stay in the Army, our summer camp will be sleeping in two-man tents on the ground in northern Michigan with my M16 rifle sharing my sleeping bag.  So if the Army says yes, I will have a real Army experience right away.

When I enlisted in 2007, the waiver I needed to get in was signed by the commander of the PA National Guard, Major General Jessica Wright.  In 2013 when I got the two-year extension to stay till age 62, the waiver was signed by the current Adjutant General Wesley Craig.  This waiver goes to the Pentagon.  Waivers like this are often turned down.  Rationally, I know that at the end of May this year, I will be a civilian again, but the optimism that got me to re-enlist at 54 won't allow me to think anything except that this time next year I will still be in the Army.

In case you were wondering, even with this two-year extension, I will only have 18 retirement years, and I will not be able to retire.  If I do get this extension, I will probably be the oldest sergeant in the US Military sometime in 2016.

French Soldier in Afghanistan Writes About His Admiration for American Soldiers

The article below was sent to me by my friend Julian Richter.  It's a real tribute to American soldiers.  Here is the link, but I am pasting the whole thing so dead links won't be a problem.

Here is the original in French.  If you read French the last two paragraphs are beautiful.

I trained with French soldiers in Germany in the 1970s.  Those soldiers were the grandsons of the French Army that lost a million dead and five million wounded in World War One.  This young man would be the great grandson of those men who defended France in the horrors of the trenches.

What follows is an account from a French ISAF soldier that was stationed with American Warfighters in Afghanistan sometime in the past 4 years.  This was copied and translated from an editorial French newspaper.

A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS

"We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing "ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events". Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company. 

They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever State they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other. Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine- they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.

And they are impressive warriors! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.Here we discover America as it is often depicted: their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley.

And combat? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks: they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that: the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location: books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions: the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.

(This is the main area where I'd like to comment. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: 'If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white/remember it's ruin to run from a fight./ So take open order, lie down, sit tight/ And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. 'In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.' Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other 'incident', the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.

This is one of the great strengths of the American force in combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly surprising. No wonder is surprises the hell out of our enemies.)

We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.

To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America's army's deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers".

PERSONAL THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ARTICLE:

For much of this article, the various veterans reading will go 'Well, duh. Of course we do our 'camp chores' and stand our posts in good order. There's a reason for them and if we didn't we'd get our heads handed to us eventually. And, yeah, we're in shape. Makes battle easier. The more you sweat, the less you bleed.'

What is hard for most people to comprehend is that that attitude represented only the most elite units of the past. Current everyday conventional boring 'leg infantry' units exceed the PT levels and training levels of most Special Forces during the Vietnam War. They exceed both of those as well as IQ and educational levels of: Waffen SS, WWII Rangers, WWII Airborne and British 'Commando' units during WWII. Their per-unit combat-functionality is essentially unmeasurable because it has to be compared to something and there's nothing comparable in industrial period combat history.

This group is so much better than 'The Greatest Generation' at war that WWII vets who really get a close look at how good these kids are stand in absolute awe.

Everyone complains about the quality of 'the new guys.' Don't. The screw-ups of this modern generation are head and shoulders above the 'high-medium' of any past group. Including mine.So much of 'The scum of the earth, enlisted for drink.'

This is 'The Greatest Generation' of soldiers.

They may never be equalled.

"Fury" Again with My Son--Nicknames

On Monday night, my youngest son and I went back to see "Fury" again.  Third time for him, sixth time for me.

By this time we were quoting the best lines to each other just before the characters said them.  On the way home the first thing we talked about was the point at which "Machine" got his nickname.  We left before the end right after the final battle started.  At that point the movie goes all John Wayne.  But the moments before that, when Norman becomes Machine, are some of the best in the movie.  It is in those moments that Wardaddy, Bible, Coon-Ass, Gordo and Machine each face certain death and each say, "Best job I ever had."

In that final battle, the other crewmen call Norman only Machine. Nicknames really stick.  My first gunner's nickname was Merc.  I don't remember his first name.

On the way home after the movie (at almost midnight) we had a long discussion of nicknames and what they mean.  We also talked about thickness of armor and how the outnumbered Germans beat France and Britain early in the war with fewer tanks.  The Germans invaded with 2000 tanks to 3000 for the British and French.  The short version is Guderian's tanks were on a 20-mile front led by Rommel.  The French and British spread their tanks like too little butter on too much bread from Switzerland to the Normandy Coast.

Happy New Year!

Other posts on Fury:

Fourth time watching Fury

Review

Faith in Fury

Memories

What Place and Period in History Do You Want to Live in? HERE and NOW!

On a recent bicycle ride, a Trekkie on the ride told me about a Star Trek episode he liked in which the crew traveled back in time and visited great moments and times in history.  He talked about times and places he would want to visit.

I would like to visit Florence when Dante was alive, Rome when Julius Caesar ruled, and be in the room when the Constitution was debated.  But if I could live any time, anywhere, I would stay right here in America in the 21st Century.  No question.

It's not like America is perfect.  We have to be the biggest gathering of whining, privileged bitches in the history of the entire Universe.

But by living with whiners who have not missed a meal in their entire lives, I get to live in a time and place in which every injury I manage to inflict on my aging body can be fixed.  I live in a place where I can choose to fast, but otherwise I can eat every meal, every day and if I want to eat snacks till my ass fills two seats on a Greyhound bus.

This month on my Army drill weekend, I swam underwater with a GOPRO Camera making video tape of pilots, crew chiefs and flight medics going through water survival training.

Wow!!

I am 61 years old and because of 19 different surgeries to repair more than two dozen broken bones,  remove shrapnel from my eyes and repair torn ligaments, I can still serve in the Army.  And I can run, shoot and swim underwater, not just fill out paperwork.

With all the whining about our military, our enemies never do anything more than push us then run.  No nation is declaring war on us, invading our territory, or seriously threatening us in any way.

The protests in New York and Missouri and elsewhere say clearly that racial problems still afflict America in the 21st Century, but in my lifetime Black men in the South were lynched.  Jim Crow laws were enforced in "The Land of the Free."  In the 1950s America in which I was born, I could not have adopted two Black sons.  Not in Boston, Birmingham or Boise.

On Fox News, there is a war on Christmas, faith is under fire, and Jesus wants you to Open Carry.  But the freedom of worship in America is truly amazing.  World history reeks with religious murder. In most Arab countries they will kill their own citizens if they convert from Islam.  Our tolerance has led almost infinite stupidity in the name of faith.  Just try to imagine Joel Osteen walking the roads of Sanai and Asia Minor with the Apostle Paul and facing persecution and death with Joy!

Next month I will have surgery for the 20th time in my long, healthy life.  A life that keeps getting healthier!  I am writing this post in a warm comfortable home while my strong, healthy sons clean the kitchen and their rooms.  My wife is beautiful, brilliant and an Ironman, and she is the chair of the math department because women who have the drive and talent in America can do that stuff.  Two of my daughters already own houses.  One is having a baby next year.  One is on her way to an academic career.  Another works with very troubled Veterans.

In American in the 21st Century is where all this can happen.  God Bless America!!  He certainly has blessed me.