It's Not Just Me: Rejected by the Allentown Morning Call

Today one of my public affairs colleagues complained that he has sent stories for years to the Allentown Morning Call and they never pick up any of them.  Other media in central Pennsylvania run stories about local National Guard soldiers, but not the Morning Call.

I just searched Army on the Morning Call web site and got no results about current soldiers.  I did get a World War 2 veteran.

Two people in the same profession, finding the same difficulty can make each other feel better by sharing difficulties.  I could do that very thing today.  I told my colleague that one of the best stories I ever had about a National Guard soldier got rejected by the Morning Call, but later was picked up by the New York Times.  It was one of the soldier stories the New York Times used in a feature about the tenth anniversary of 9-11.  The whole story of Lt. Col. Joel Allmandinger leaving the Army just before the 9-11 attacks and then re-enlisting is here.  Or you can scroll down to The Officer.  I also copied that section of the New York Times story at then end of this post.

You can also read my story about him from 2010 here.

When I can back from Iraq, local newspapers picked up my stories about several other soldiers from sergeants to colonels.  I thought the one about then-Major Allmandinger was the best of the bunch, but he is from the Allentown area and the Morning Call did not pick up the story.

 My colleague was relieved to hear I also got rejected by the Allentown newspaper and may use my story about the New York Times picking up the story the Morning Call rejected to say "It's not just me" to his commander.

Getting rejected is part of this job, but getting this story rejected really surprised me.  But if I had to choose between the New York Times and the Morning Call, it turned out for the better.

The Officer

He had graduated from West Point, served eight years as a Black Hawk pilot and wanted to try his hand in business. It was June 2001, and Joel Allmandinger was leaving the Army.

He was in California for a wedding when the attacks occurred. The groom, a firefighter, held a vigil at his wedding and introduced Mr. Allmandinger as a soldier, though he no longer was one. And that troubled him. 

“I didn’t feel part of that brotherhood of the uniform anymore,” he recalled. “These guys could immediately identify with what happened in 9/11.”

So back home in eastern Pennsylvania, he signed up for the National Guard. On his first day of duty, he wore his uniform into a store and someone thanked him for his service.

“It was odd and uncomfortable,” he recalled. “But when I got into the car and started driving to the armory, I thought, ‘That was neat.’ ”

His unit deployed twice: first in Kosovo in 2004, to fill in for an active-duty unit being sent to Iraq; and then in Iraq in 2009, where he flew dozens of missions.

A one-year commitment turned into a decade. Today he is a lieutenant colonel and battalion commander. He is also the director of sales for a national food company and a father of two.

“I think I have a much, much better appreciation for the civilian soldier,” he said. “In some ways, I see it is an even bigger commitment, the sacrifices people have. There is a duality to it that is tough.”

Riding to Do My Army Job

Part of my Army job is taking pictures of Army training, Army living and sometimes Army relaxing.  To get to these various places I ride my bike when I can.  Today I was shooting photos at the extreme ends of the ten-mile long Fort Indiantown Gap training area.  In the course of riding to and from both events I put 31 miles on my single-speed mountain bike.  Since the terrain here is hilly, it was a good ride on rolling hills.

In the middle of the day I took pictures and videos of teams of soldiers on the Leadership Reaction Course.  This is a team obstacle course.  Later I rode to the other end of the base to take pictures of a field kitchen.

I don't have those pictures downloaded yet, but I have a few from Land Navigation the day before:

In Back of an LMTV (Army Truck)

Today I went to a land navigation course in the back of an LMTV--a big Army truck.  Very much like the one below.

Here is the view from inside:

The ride was short and pretty smooth for the back of a truck.  When former soldiers and retired soldiers talk about why they would never want to be back in the Army at my age, riding in the back of trucks and sleeping in open-bay barracks are among the things they never want to do again.

Ever!!!

Not to mention my recent meals.  Like these hot meals served in the field:

Or for that matter, the MRE I had for lunch:

Even if people of my age mostly don't like this kind of living, I am having a lot of fun.

At least for one more year.

Getting Around. . . With a Little Help from My Friends

Since early May I have been driving a 1996 Mazda Miata!  I did not buy a new car.  We are officially a one-car household.  We have one old car, a 2001 Toyota Prius, and ten bicycles as described here by my wife Miser Mom.  It looks like one below.

But for Annual Training this year I am driving a Miata loaned to me by Kristine Chin and Rick Chu.  I loaned them my tandem in 2009 when I went to Iraq, so they loaned me their two-seat vehicle this year.  Having the Miata allowed me to have a car at Annual training, which will allow me to go home once or twice during the two weeks.

Like sooooooo many other parts of my life, I am different than my Army surroundings.  The Prius is not the average soldier's car.  The Miata less so.  As you can see above, the Miata is MUCH smaller than the typical vehicle in the Army Parking lot.

It has been fun to drive a car so small I sort of fall back into it.  My sons were delighted.  They just like the idea that their family has a really cool car, even if it's temporary.  The kids at their (Lancaster) school brag about their family's vehicle--and especially when the family vehicle is a big, red crew cab Dodge Ram or Chevy Silverado pickup truck.

But the Miata is a two-seat convertible so it has real cache.  Unlike when I was a kid, the five-speed stick shift is irrelevant.  Few modern kids are serious motorheads.  A car is just designer jeans with wheels.

It is convenient to have a car, and fun to have such an interesting car.  Thanks Rick and Kristine!!!

Taxi, Take Off and Hover Videos of Chinook Helicopters

Every time I take photos and videos of Chinook helicopters, I am too close and getting buffeted by the amazing wind from their blades.  A reasonable distance from an Apache or Blackhawk helicopter is just too close to the big double-main-rotor Chinook.

Four Chinooks just after starting their engines on the flight line.

The moment of take off.  I am behind a metal emergency equipment container so I don't get blown over.

Another takeoff.  You can see the flattened grass from the wind.

Army vs. Civilian View of Human Nature

During the last week my co-workers, former co-workers and I said good bye to my supervisor Mary Ellen.  She is great at her job, going to a better job, and a really great person to work with.  Because most of those lauding her are also smart, funny and ironic, the praise was effusive but never maudlin.
My co-workers are librarians, archivists, writers, editors and historians.  Just the kind of people you would expect to think the best of others.  And Mary Ellen showed confirms their belief in the inherent goodness of people.  Most of them are much too ironic for a Patron Saint, but if they have a chosen philosopher it is Rosseau--people are good, only circumstances make us evil.

In a coincidence known only to me, Mary Ellen's last day of work was my first day of Army Annual Training.  So while I occasionally glanced at warm and sincere messages about Mary Ellen on my phone, I moved into the world green and camouflage world where everyone is a shit-bag unless proven otherwise.  Machiavelli is the Patron Saint here.

I had a brief hallway conversation with a guy I served with Iraq.  We were discussing some soldiers I had to supervise the following week and what I should do on the two days I would be going Michigan.

Without changing his tone at all he said, "There should be at least one of them who is not a total drooling idiot.  Leave that one in charge."

I admired the non-sexist way in which he left possibility that the one who could meet his very low standard could be a man or a woman.  I really do love both worlds, but the transitions are always strange.

Photos from Boalsburg 2015 Memorial Ceremony

Here are some of my favorite photos from the annual 28th Division Memorial Ceremony on the site of the Pennsylvania Military History Museum in Boalsburg PA.

Leaving My Day Job at the End of June

The Othmer Library at Chemical Heritage Foundation

Last July 1 I began working two days per week to spend more time at home.  I tried to do my job in two days per week, but the growing museum and library I work for decided they need a full-time person in my job.  Since that's not me any more, I will be leaving at the end of June.  I have worked here since March 2002--tied with the longest I worked anywhere.  I worked at Godfrey Advertising in Lancaster PA from 1985 to 1998.

Here's the message to the staff from my boss:

Dear colleagues,

Last July Neil Gussman shifted from working full time to working two days per week in order to spend more time with his family. But as CHF continues to grow and evolve, so do our communications needs. It’s become clear that we need a full-time, on-site public relations manager, and Neil has decided to move on. His last day at CHF will be June 30.

Neil began working for CHF as a consultant in 2002 and was hired as a staff member in 2005. He has persuaded editors and reporters far and wide to feature CHF’s work, from a 2006 CHF conference on alchemy that was covered by the New York Times and Marketplace, to the recent review of Books of Secrets in Nature, to repeated coverage in chemical-industry trades such as Chemical & Engineering News and Chemistry International.

As Neil plans his next adventures, please join me in wishing him the very best. CHF will feel a profound lack of puns when he leaves, and holiday parties will never be the same.

The Army Made Me a Writer, Then a Professional Writer

The Army made me a writer.  Last year I wrote here about how six versions of letters home taught me to write and rewrite and helped to make me writer.

By the end of 1977 with 14 months in Germany, I had become a writer, but not a professional writer.  Then the Army gave me that too.  Specifically, Command Sergeant Major Cubbins gave me the chance to become a professional writer.

Cubbins was one of those Top Sergeants for whom his part of the United States Army was HIS Army.  The 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division went to Wiesbaden, West Germany, en masse in October 1976 as Brigade '76.  Cubbins took over as Brigade Sgt. Major in the fall of 1977.

Cubbins was a tall, rail thin, leathery-skinned, wrinkled veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.  He was over 50 years old which we 20-year-olds thought just amazing.  He had 33 years of enlisted service when he came to our unit--11 service stripes on the left sleeve of his dress uniform and a half-dozen combat stripes on the right.

At the time Cubbins joined the Brigade, we were doing regular 4-mile runs on the airstrip at Wiesbaden.  These were brigade runs with dozens of company formations running in a long procession.  As soon as he took over the brigade, Cubbins started leading those runs.  We were amazed.  In the 70s, men in their 50s did not exercise.  But here was this old guy running in front, calling cadence too.  The world was very different then.

It was Cubbins' Army.  So just before Christmas he gathered all of the sergeants in the Brigade for an NCO meeting in the Weisbaden Air Base Theater.  I don't remember most of the meeting, but I do remember one subject he covered.  Cubbins said 4th Brigade was being ignored by The Stars and Stripes, but Armed Forces Radio, even by the Wiesbaden Post.  He wanted a combat arms sergeant to volunteer to work to get 4th Brigade in the local and regional news.

He wanted a "real soldier" who could write about training.  He did not want a "goddamned sissy journalist who could not tell a muzzle brake from a parking brake."

I noticed that Cubbins wrote with a blue pen on a yellow pad.  As soon as that meeting ended, I went to the PX and got a new blue pen.  I already had a yellow pad.  And I walked out onto the airstrip to look for something to write about.

There on the edge of the airstrip were a dozen German soldiers and as many American soldiers planning to have a partnership event that weekend.  I had my story.  Before lunch was over, the story was on the sergeant major's desk along with a biography noting that I loved to write and that I fired Distinguished as a tank commander my first time out the previous year.

I found out later Cubbins liked that I had something written the same day.  The other entries came in a few days later.  I got the job.  I was a paid journalist from then until I left the Army nearly two years later.

Big Day for Russia--Bad Date for Me

The biggest holiday on the calendar in Russia and many other former Soviet States is May 9.  These countries celebrate the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany on the day the Nazis surrendered to the Russians, May 9, 1945.

The soldiers in the photo above are fighting at the Battle of Kursk in 1943.  This was and is the largest armored battle ever fought and the Soviet Army won, turning the the tide against Germany.

While this day is great for the Soviet Union, Russia and the free world, it is a bad date for me.  Eight years ago today, I had the most and worst injuries I have had on one day in my life.  If you don't know the story it is here and here.

Because there are only 365 days in a year, many days will have multiple meanings.  So the coincidence that my worst wreck and the greatest Russian victory are on the same day is just a coincidence.

So in the spirit of this day, I will practice my recently learned Russian language skills and race my bicycle at Smoketown Airport this morning.  What else would someone do on a sunny Spring Saturday morning?

Silly Punk Mother F**ker: 1st Sgt. Robert V. Baker

When Bravo Company, 1-70th Armor went to Germany in 1976, our First Sergeant was Robert V. Baker.  Top Baker was a veteran of both Vietnam and the Korean War.  He was not old enough to serve during World War 2, but none of us believed it.  Top Baker to us was REALLY old.  Nearly 50 according to the unit clerk who peeked at his records and told everyone just how old Top Baker was.

Top Baker was a very sharp guy and a very good tanker.  But this tall, thin, graying soldier had a wandering indirect way of speaking that drove us crazy on several occasions.  Once in the Spring of 1977 we were in formation on a cold morning in short sleeves because the Army said it was summer.  Top Baker told us one of the washing machines in the barracks was broken and could not be repaired any time soon.  With great gestures, but without actually looking at us, Top went on for almost 20 minutes talking about washing clothes in Viet Nam which led him to remember that the maintenance people responsible for that field laundry facility were a bunch of "Silly Punk Mother F**kers."  Once he wound himself up to using SPMF we knew he would be talking for another ten minutes at least.

I personally got the SPMF treatment once when during major maintenance of my tank.  We turned in all 63 rounds of main gun ammo.  It was during this part of my life that I started signing documents with an "N" followed by a wiggly line.  The Army required 63 signatures of the tank commander for ammo turn in and 63 signatures to reload the tank.

The trouble this particular time was one of the rounds was missing.  I was signed for that SABOT service round.  I was an SPMF and Top Baker was going to make sure that I was busted right down to SPMF Private!!!

It was a clerical error so I did not get "busted right down to Private."  I noticed to my great relief that during the period in which my sergeant stripes and my future in the Army were in jeopardy, Top Baker never referred to me as a "Non-Tanker."  Anyone could make a mistake and be an SPMF until the mistake was corrected, but a Non-Tanker was a fundamental flaw.

Whew!!!

I heard at the 70th Armor reunion that Top Baker passed away not long after he returned to America in the early 80s.

Even when I was shivering in the cold, waiting for Top Baker to wrap a 20-minute digression on washing machines in the Army, Top Baker was one of my favorite first sergeants.

Who Fights Our Wars? Southern Men

I don't know the soldiers in this photo, but I do know that if we could find the home address of every one of them, two out of three would be from the eleven states of the Old South or from the West--between the Rockies and the Sierras.

At the reunion dinner of the 1-70th Armor last Saturday night, those who attended were mostly officers plus a few senior enlisted men.  We served together from 1975 to 1979, the first years of the all-volunteer Army following the end of the draft.

Military service has always been more honored in the South than in the rest of our country, but until the Vietnam War, the draft meant that soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines came from all over the country.  I enlisted in 1972, during the last year of the draft.  Already, anti-war sentiment was so strong in the Northeast where I am from, that I seldom heard a Boston accent on a military base.

By the time the draft was over and I was a tank commander in the 1-70th Armor, the military had become a very Southern organization.  More so among the officers than among the enlisted men.

In 1980, 1407 students graduated from Harvard University.  Two of them joined the military.  Five of them took blue collar jobs.  One of them was an apprentice to a some who hand-built chairs.

But in the same year, more than 40% of the male graduates of Baylor were in ROTC and joining a branch of the military.  I served with guys from Alabama and Georgia who said almost half the boys in their graduating class joined the military.

A total of 371 students graduated with me from Stoneham High School near Boston in 1971.  A total of 12 of us ever served in the military.  Two of us enlisted during the Vietnam War.

As I met and reconnected with people at the 1-70th Armor reunion on Saturday night, everyone I spoke to was from the South or the West.  Many of them served in Vietnam.  All of them began their training to become military officers during the Vietnam War even if the war ended by the time they were commissioned.

On Sunday morning when the reunion ended, I rode northeast from Gettysburg back home to Lancaster.  As far as I know, I was the only one who would be North of the Mason-Dixon Line by the next day.  Many of the men at that reunion survived jungle warfare in Vietnam, then we all waited together for the Soviet tanks just over the East-West German border to fire the first shots of World War 3 right at us.  Some of them went on to serve in the Gulf War.  A few of us even went to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But as much as I am Yankee and would live in New York or Paris if I could live anywhere, I have spent more than 40 years admiring the way the American South has supplied our nation with soldiers and leaders, especially since the end of the draft.

I have even developed a taste for grits and gravy--but I am NOT going to go as far as eating chitterlings, trotters or listeners.  To me, pigs are ham and bacon--that's it!

One Year at a Time--Now I'm in till 2016

My friend Barry Free joined me for what turned out to be a 100-mile re-enlistment ride.  Barry enlisted in the Army Reserve in 1968 and served till 1975.  He decided to accompany a younger guy on the trip to stay in the Army one more year.

We rode together from Mt. Gretna on some back roads onto Fort Indiantown Gap, then to the Aviation Armory where I signed the re-enlistment paperwork.  Sgt. 1st Class Dale Shade, who got the paperwork ready, was in charge of Public Affairs for 28th CAB when I was in Iraq.  He said he will help me to submit the paperwork for yet another extension next year.

As we rode west on Range Road, we passed several rifle and pistol ranges.  We were talking about how the rifle ranges and the weapons we use are the same as when he was in during the Viet Nam War.  Back then, Barry and I fired the M16 or M16A2.  Now my weapon is the M16A4.  Not a big difference.

We then rode to the Public Affairs Office on Fort Indiantown Gap where I introduced Barry to the folks who do the same work I do.  He met SSG Matt Jones, who I worked with for most of the time I was in Iraq, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Ted Nichols, and Majors Ed Shank and Angela King-Sweigart.

It was a great way to celebrate signing up for another year.

Army Bike Week! Riding to Re-Enistment!

This week will be Army bicycle week.  Last week, I thought I might be riding to the Pentagon tomorrow to ask them to reconsider turning down my re-enlistment.

No need for that trip.  Re-enlistment got approved.  And I need to re-enlist quickly so I can volunteer for a second annual training this summer.

So tomorrow I am going to ride to Fort Indiantown Gap and reenlist. Riding to Fort Indiantown Gap is 40 miles each way. I am going to leave it at nine in the morning and reenlist at noon. That should get me back to Lancaster in time to ride home from school with my son Nigel.

This weekend the 1st Battalion 70th Armor is having a reunion in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles away. On Saturday I will ride to Gettysburg, go to the reunion dinner, then ride home the next morning. With the other writing I will be doing this week I will ride more than 300 miles. I don't often get to ride that much and I don't usually have an army reason to ride so it will be fun to ride to stay in the army longer and then to see the guys I served with 40 years ago. I served with 70th armor in Colorado and in Germany between 1975 and 1979.

I'll try to get some reenlistment pictures tomorrow and reunion pictures on Saturday.

 

One More Year! In the Army Till I'm 63!

Today at 2pm I got a voice mail from SSG Steinmetz in the Admin section of 28th CAB to call her.  When I called she read me a line from a message from National Guard Bureau in the Pentagon saying that "SGT Gussman's request for extension for one year has been approved."  

With that I am staying one more year.  The journey that began January 31, 1972, with the guy in the picture below getting drunk in a bar in Kenmore Square, Boston. . . 

Saw the same guy straighten up, make sergeant and become an Army tank commander.  In the photo below I am on a field training exercise in Germany in 1977.

The guy in the photo above left the Army and went to college in 1980, then re-enlisted in 2007 and in 2009 deployed to Iraq--with a bicycle.

 And ended that tour with the guys below and "The best job I ever had."

One more year.  Thirteen more weekend drills.  I am hoping to do Annual Training twice this summer.