Veteran of four wars, four enlistments, four branches: Air Force, Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard. I am both an AF (Air Force) veteran and as Veteran AF (As Fuck)
I finally took the PT Test this morning. Joe and Gretchen told me to do the minimum push-ups. Just pass and don't hurt my shoulder. I told the grader I should just do 20 and pass. At 36 she reminded me I was supposed to do 20. At 48 she said, "One more." But that was it. I got 48. Max is 56 so I scored 91 out of a possible 100 points on the sit-ups. I maxed the situps (76) and was four seconds from max on the run. My total score was 290 out of 300. And since I scored at least 90 in each event, I get the Army PT Badge and a few more promotion points. Since coming back in I scored 252, 271 and 290 on the three PT tests I have taken. I know I never did that well when I was in my 20s. Of course, I smoked then.
When I don't have enough time to ride around the artillery range (28 miles) I ride to the lake recreation area and back, a 16-mile trip. I still; have not gotten used to the sights I see on these rides. At the end of the first mile I am riding past Medicine Bluff, legendary cliffs where Geronimo is supposed to have jumped with his horse 300 feet down into the river below and survived.
On the 2nd mile of today's ride I rode past a towed artillery battery with four guns under camouflage nets getting ready to fire. At mile 6 a rider blew past me without waving. I was riding with flat pedals in uniform with combat boots. The other rider had racing spandex on, but he had leg hair and looked a little too thick in the middle to be a racer. The steepest hill on was less than a mile ahead so I bent down and started riding after him. I also moved instinctively to the edge of the road to be fast as possible. A moment before the competitive brain turned on I was thinking this is the stretch of road where I saw the wild pigs and the rattlesnake. I rounded an uphill right turn and almost ran over an armadillo. It was dead at the edge of the road, but very big. So I moved back out to the middle of the road and kept pedaling. I caught the other rider just below the crest of the hill. He waved this time. I don't have to wonder if I still feel competitive.
On the way back, I heard the boom of a howitzer. The battery had just started to fire. As I rounded the corner to the clearing where the battery was set up, a towed 155mm howitzer fired a round. About 15 seconds later a gray cloud plumed on the hillside seven miles away--the same hillside where the rounds land in the "Fire Mission" (Click Click Boom) video. And about ten seconds after that the dull thud of impact echos back to where I am riding. I rode slowly and watched a couple more rounds go, then finished the ride and went to chow.
I am going to miss the sights of Oklahoma rides, but not the Oklahoma wind.
Just after 10 pm I went to the dayroom to see if it would be possible for me to watch the Grand Prix of Australia on the big-screen TV. There were a half-dozen watching a movie, but it did not look like any of them would be hanging around until 1 am when the race started.
NOTE: I am a devoted fan of the Formula 1 World Championship car racing and have been for many years. How much of a fan you ask? My favorite driver is 1992 champion Nigel Mansell. And my son's name is. . . Nigel.
NIGEL MANSELL 1992 FORMULA 1 CHAMPION
LEWIS HAMILTON--FORMULA 1 CHAMPION 2008 One of the people watching the movie was sergeant who let me know the movie the assembled group was watching was (I think) "28 Days." He said it is the best Zombie movie ever made. I left.
Later on, near midnight I was walking down the hallway toward the dayroom to watch the race. I ran into the sergeant who told repeated his high esteem of the Zombie movie. I told him I was glad to know there are ratings of every sort of human endeavor, but even the best Zombie movie was not something I could see myself watching. It was clear the fan of Zombie movies feels the same way about watching a car race.
The race broadcast live from Eastern Australia at 5pm local time, 1 am Oklahoma time. I watched the first hour, but could not hang in for the end. My son Nigel's favorite driver is Lewis Hamilton, a British driver of African descent who is the reigning world champion. Hamilton started 18th and finished fourth. Since the TV is gone at my house, I will be able to tell Nigel how his favorite driver did when we talk later today.
Every soldier here had to take a three-hour class on suicide prevention. Sad subject, but as the class progressed I could not help thinking this is the best Army video I have ever seen. For those who have not seen military instructional videos, imagine your least favorite safety video and then imagine the script and final production is reviewed by an 18-layer bureaucracy.
But this video was different. The subject clearly is so serious that whoever had responsibility for it, decided to go with Best Practices on making a video rather than taking a vague, edited message in four-syllable, Latin-derived words and trying to shoot a video around it.
This video was interactive. We saw a scenario, we talked about what the soldier should do next then watched where that course of action lead. One scenario could lead to a bad end, another to saving the soldier's life. We could see both the good and the bad play out.
But the real reason this video work is that everyone knew somewhere in the back of their mind the plot of this video. Whoever wrote the script was a soldier or knows our culture cold because the plot line of the script was following what happens to a soldier who is the victim of Jody.
Who is Jody? From the 1st day of basic training soldiers, airmen and marines sing about a mythical guy named Jody who was your best friend back home. As we march, we sing about how Jody is:
--sleeping with our girlfriend/spouse
--driving our car
--emptying our bank account
--living in our house
You get the idea.
In the video we see a good soldier who is going on combat patrols in Iraq turn progressively worse as he gets a dear John letter, finds out his girlfriend is pregnant with Jody's child, hears from home Jody is driving his car and living in his house, and Jody has emptied his bank account.
In the video we see the soldier deal with these things alone and how it could lead to suicide. Then we see what happens when he gets help. Then just when the Jody's victim is straightening his life out, his best buddy is killed on patrol. The soldier has to get control of his life without the guy who pulled him through the last crisis.
It has a happy ending, assuming you choose the right path.
If you want to know more about Jody, you can look him up on Wikipedia, or better yet, watch the movie Jarhead. As you read this, some formation of soldiers somewhere is marching down a road singing:
"Ain't no use in goin' home, Jody's got your girl and gone . . ."
I could not find a song about Jody on You Tube, but here's a marching song so you get the idea of the sound. Jarhead is still the best source for seeing how Jody fits in soldier's lives.
Here's excerpts from Full Metal Jacket--an awesome movie about Basic Training:
Earlier this week we got a briefing on the two or three weeks we will spend in Kuwait before going to Iraq. During the briefing we found out we were likely to be living in 200-man tents, huge open spaces that will give us 199 roommates. That news barely raised a murmur. They told us it could be blazing hot, but that did raise much of a reaction. In fact, the average temps during our stay, according to Google weather is mid-90s for highs, 70s for lows. Arctic conditions compared to what everyone has been telling us.
So what got everyone buzzing? They told us we would get one phone call per week and have to stand in line three hours to get that call, and there would be little or no internet service for us. That got everyone upset. No internet!!! Only the few soldiers willing to pay $1+ per minute or more for AT&T service will have cell phones. It will be interesting to see just what everyone does without internet. . .and without text messages. Almost all the squad leaders text formation and other information. I just got one telling me to verify my weapon was cleaned and turned in.
Before we go to Iraq, we will have a three-week fast from internet, cell phones, text messaging and very limited phone access. I can't even guess what people will do instead.
Sometimes I feel good about my ability to keep up with the 20- and 30-year-olds. Then reality shows itself on the smiling face of a 20-year-old who is in shape. On the first day of convoy training, we did not do anything particularly strenuous. Mostly, we stood outside wearing more than 40 pounds of Kevlar vest and helmet, gas mask, weapon, and a Camel Back and walked about a mile. But it was a hot day, we were out in the sun and a 25mph wind in the afternoon. After the first day of convoy training ended, two soldiers went running. Me and the guy who used me to wipe up some of the dirt in the field where we did Combatives (hand-to-hand combat) last May.
I was so sore and tired I ran three minutes slower than Saturday for the fast two miles of a three-mile run. The 22-year-old's time was also off. He was 30 seconds slower than his last run, but he thought it might be the course. He ran two miles in just over 12 minutes. He could have run three miles and beat my two-mile time.
Now it's Wednesday. We just ended the longest day of convoy training. We actually did pretty well up until the last exercise today when the convoy commander got taken out of the exercise and the assistant commander (me) took his place. I'll try explain on Saturday when the training ends.
This morning at 3 am our roommate went home. He was a 22-year-old mechanic who joined us just three weeks ago, one of the later arrivals. He came here over the maximum weight, but his home unit sent him anyway. He was a great guy and we hoped he could lose weight fast enough to be able to deploy with us. But late last week the medical staff decided he could not lose weight fast enough to be ready to go and be healthy, so they sent him home.
So how overweight was our roommate? I don't know exactly because there is a complex formula called taping that takes into account the general size of a soldier's body to determine maximum weight. Specialist Big Dude weighed 335 pounds the day he arrived. He is a weightlifter. He has a size 19 neck and has trouble finding clothes in general and gloves in particular. Even Army XXLs are tight on him.
I only worked with him a few times in the motorpool, but it was clear he is a good mechanic. We were a team on the SAW (machine gun) range. I qualified. He was a sharpshooter and was one target away from expert (the best). He is also a sharpshooter with a rifle. But at his size, he can't run two miles at anything close to the maximum time. So he is back home now. I really will miss him when he is awake, but not when he is sleeping. He was in the bunk above me (Yes, we have very strong beds.) and snored so loud he made the bed shake. Some nights I would wait for the moment when he quit snoring and will myself to sleep before he started again.
Our first roommate lasted about a week before they sent him home. He had a previous back injury that was too severe for deployment. In a couple of days we get another roommate. I hope our room is not medical bad luck for him.
Today we dressed up in all of our field gear and spent the day learning about how to avoid getting killed by Improvised Explosive Devices, better know as IEDs. This first day was all classes. The rest of the week we will be rolling in convoy and learning what to do to find and stop IED attacks. I'll write more later in the week when we are moving long distances and getting "attacked" on the road.
Today I rode north toward the lake 8 miles from our barracks. At about the five-mile mark, I heard rustling then running in the reeds next to the road. This low point of the ride looks like it can be swampy when there is rain, but it has been dry during the past six weeks. In a second I saw two brown pigs moving faster than dobermans away from me, up the hillside into the woods. They were high-speed pigs and lucky for me, they did not want to chase bikes.
Earlier in the week, I was riding this same stretch of road with the base chaplain and saw a long stick in the road. We were riding fast. When we got close, the chaplain yelled, "That's a rattlesnake!" I turned around to get a picture (from a safe distance) but the snake had slithered away. The chaplain said the rattlers are just waking up for spring. They are hungry, shedding their skin and grumpy. He said I should not bother them. He did not have to repeat himself.
The hallway next to the one I live in is where the women live. We pass through their hallway on the way to the laundry room or the B Stairwell dayroom. Today when I can back from chow I saw this ten-foot line of shoes outside a room where six women live. If my roommates and I lined our shoes up in the hall, it would look different--except for the boots.
This morning I got a note asking if it is just guys who watch Zombie movies for breakfast or do women watch horror flicks also. I didn't know. An hour later I left my room and walked to the dayroom while my roommates watched another Zombie movie. When I walked in the dayroom the only soldiers inside were two young women watching Sponge Bob and eating cereal. One said, "Good morning sergeant. How are you?" I answered that I was good and I was going to sit in the back of the dayroom because my roommates were watching a Zombie. One of the women turned from Sponge Bob and said, "Which one?"
So young soldiers are fans of Zombie movies without regard to gender.
Today was the battalion party. Six hundred of us went to a recreation area on post just after lunch. Each soldier was allowed two beers. The lines were long long enough that it took an hour between beers so no one could drink two beers in the same hour. And then the keg ran out before many soldiers could get a second beer. They bought more, but that spaced the two beers out even further. For many, they got an idea just how fast they can get a buzz on after six weeks without alcohol.
I promised not to drink and rode my bike to the picnic--8 miles out, 21 miles the long way back. So I had a great time. Some of us hiked up the bike trail near the picnic area. We were at Lake Elmer Thomas Recreation Area where the bike race was held. We saw the bikes go up the hill, but did not see the trail down the other side. The trail is steep and covered with loose rocks leading down into a dry stream bed--and that was just the first mile.
It's Friday morning. I am back in the room behind the stairwell. My roommates are watching a Zombie movie this morning. Lawton, Oklahoma, is on the western edge of the Central Time Zone, so when we went on daylight savings time, sunrise moved to 0745. This morning sunrise was just past 0730. We got up at 0450 to run. One roommate early training so he did not have to do the run. He went back to the room and got changed for training. When the rest of us got back from the run he was watching an anime Zombie movie based on a video game. I was laughing about Zombies for breakfast and another of my roommates said, "It's dark outside, that's when you watch horror movies." Makes sense. I got showered and went to the hidden room without TV or video games.
I am soooo 20th century. Actually so early 20th century. I did no notice how culturally backward I was when I first rejoined the Army. Without knowing it, I surrounded myself with backwards people just like me who use books as cultural references. Not here. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, uses movies as the shared culture of their lives.
For the first month people tried to include me. They would say, "Sergeant G, do you remember in Wedding Crashers when. . ." Or "That's just like in that Jim Carey movie when they watched his whole life. Yo G, remember. . ." And I don't. No it's just a joke. Someone will start to say, "Do you remember. . ." then look at me and say "Right. Never mind."
I don't watch sitcoms, I don't watch comedy movies, I watch one or two movies per year. These guys go from room to room sharing gigabytes of DVDs on thumb drives and plug-in hard drives. One of my roommates has a terabyte drive full of movies and music. He is still mourning the loss of a second terabyte hard drive that crashed a few days after we arrived.
At home, my friends, co-workers and family all read books. Two nights ago I got an email from a friend, a college prof who had never been in the military. He was commenting on a post I wrote that the military is a meritocracy where everyone knows who is the best at everything, and the most competent people tend to take over whatever their rank.
My friend Ray said the military is a hierarchy and he couldn't believe what I wrote. So I called him and could remind him to read CS Lewis' essay "The Inner Ring" which begins quoting Tolstoy's "War and Peace" on the real rank structure of the military and the actual way things get done. With Ray, I can use books and essays to illustrate a point. I read to my own kids till they graduated high school and knew many of the books they read for classes, so even though I could not share movie culture with them, we had a lot of literature in common.
I brought some movies with me because everyone said I should. I haven't watched one yet. Maybe when we get to Iraq I will. In the meantime, it's seems OK for me to remain a cultural illiterate. I am old enough to get a pass. Right now I am in the back of the C Stairwell dayroom and a small room people forget about. I can sort of hear the drone of a TV movie through the walls, but I don't have to look at it.
Yesterday I returned to the FARP (Forward Area Refueling Point) to see both Blackhawks and Chinooks refueling and rearming. Today when the Blackhawks took off they flew to a nearby machine gun range and circled at steep angles firing their door guns. Yesterday I watched the fueling from the other side of the range road because I did not bring battle gear.
We had no scheduled training in the afternoon so I rode to the FARP on my borrowed bike. Since I wanted to get close to the birds and talk to the fuelers, I wore my bulletproof vest and carried the Kevlar helmet in a backpack. When I left it was 87 degrees and sunny. So I got a small preview of my future by riding in my full uniform and bulletproof vest with a pack. I wore a bicycle helmet on the road because Army helmets aren't approved for road use. I got some strange looks even on an Army range road. The ride was longer than in bike clothes--I climb a lot slower with 30 pounds of battle gear and pedaling in combat boots.
I got to the FARP just in time to see two Chinooks take off and within a minute two Blackhawks zoomed in from the south. When the Chinooks came back I called my son Nigel and held the phone up while the big helicopters refueled and rearmed. When Nigel and Annalisa got home, they looked up Chinook on the web. Then Nigel got his geography lesson for the day about where Daddy and Chinooks are and where they are going.
Today I rode out to the Forward Area Refueling Point (FARP) on the edge of the gunnery range area of Fort Sill and saw two Blackhawks get refueled and rearmed. It was beautiful to watch.
Like NASCAR teammates dropping from the high banks of Daytona for a green-flag pit stop, two Blackhawks flew hard out of the south then wheeled 180 degrees and seemed to stop as they settled into the Echo Company "pits."
The Echo Company "pit area" can be any field with enough room for rotary-wing aircraft to safely land, re-fuel, re-arm and continue the mission. In this Fort Sill training area, two HEMMT 2500-gallon fueling vehicles wait at opposite edges of an open field. The crews, like their NASCAR counterparts, waited in the sun, suited up with protective clothing and helmets. They check their equipment, watch the sky and wait for the sound of approaching helicopters.
The first birds this afternoon fly straight past the FARP (Forward Area Refueling Point). Then just at 1500 (3pm) the Blackhawks circle in. While both NASCAR and Army Aviation pit crews fuel their high-performance vehicles, the cars get new tires, the Blackhawks get guns and ammo.
In nine minutes the two Blackhawks faced into the south wind and flew up and off to the east, re-armed and re-fueled. The Echo Company FARP got ready for the next pair of Blackhawks already visible on the horizon.
--------------- All military leadership schools have an honor grad--the overall best soldier in the group. Honor grad is based on a point-scoring system and ties go to the soldier with the best overall leadership skills and attitude. Among the more than 20 soldiers in my remedial PT (Physical Training) group, one is clearly looking like the honor grad. He is a big guy in his 30s who needed to pick up the speed of his run to pass the PT test. In the past six weeks he has shown up for all the scheduled PT: Monday, Wednesday, Friday company PT at 0530; Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday at 7pm with my group, plus he and his roommate have been running and going to the gym other times when they can. Two days ago my honor grad and his roommate ran, jogged and walked an 11-mile circuit. Because we are on Fort Sill, the circuit began with a 4.5-mile run to Geronimo's Grave, then back to Medicine Bluff where Geronimo is reported to have jumped off a 300-foot cliff one horseback. Geronimo survived, the horse was not so lucky. They also stopped at the Confidence (Obstacle) Course on the way back. My honor grad should have no trouble passing the 2-mile run now. ---------------
At a recent class, five of us who are scheduled to go to Balad Air Base were in a class with more than 30 regular army sergeants. All of them had been to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once and when they found out where we were going they all said, "You [guys] are going to Camp Cupcake." They had all heard of Camp Cupcake. And every one of them hoped their next tour would be there.
On Friday I heard we might be released early on Saturday, so I asked to schedule remedial PT for mid afternoon instead of Saturday evening. When we formed up at 0830 we had about 15 minutes of peperwork then were released for the day. I was up late on Friday so I went back to my room and took a nap. I woke up to my roommates watching an animated Manga (Japanese with dubbed English) vampire movie called Hellsing. I still am having trouble getting used to the horror-for-breakfast thing, so I went to the PX, got a latte and talked to everyone in my immediate family except my stepdaughter--and we will talk Sunday evening.
My son Nigel won his basketball game Friday night in his 9-10-year-old league. My oldest daughter Lauren was home all week for spring break and was happy for the break from studying. Lisa is still waiting see which college she is going to. Both she and my wife are on Spring Break the coming week.
In the afternoon I had time to ride 28 miles around the artillery and machine gun ranges before Remedial PT. As I rode uphill beside the impact area I heard the high-pitched whistle of a ricochet round spinning through the air above me.
When I got back to the room, my roommates had switched to a Wolverine/Vampire movie, this one had actors, not animation. I changed and went to Remedial PT. Because of the day off, I had a half dozen more soldiers than usual. The gym had more than 100 people on machines and weights and at least 1/4th of them were from Echo Company.
I am taking a PT test on Tuesday along with several of the E-4s in the platoon who need to pass the test to qualify for promotion. Since the time for me to max the run (14:42 for two miles) is only one minute 12 seconds faster than the minimum time for a 20-year-old to pass (15:54), I am going to take the test and try to max the run, which should give the guys who want a passing pace someone to run with.
This afternoon we took three 180-degree rides in a Humvee Roll-Over Simulator.
As you can see in the photo, the simulator is an Armored Humvee passenger compartment mounted on a large axle. The training begins with a briefing explaining all that will happen to us. We enter the vehicle in groups of four--one for each seat. We wear our helmets, body armor and elbow and knee pads. The pads are REALLY helpful in an upside-down vehicle. We carry foam replicas of M16 rifles. In addition, there are foam replicas of water bottles, radios and other things that should be tied down in a combat vehicle, but are not. The worst is the fire extinguisher. It is also foam, but weighs eight pounds. One soldier crawled out rubbing his nose after getting hit in the face with the equivalent of a gallon bottle of milk.
When we got inside, the sergeant operating the machine first turned the Humvee to 25 degrees to show the maximum lean angle for an armored Humvee. Then he tipped us 30 degrees in the other direction to show us the max lean angle for a standard Humvee. Next he turned us 180 degrees just to show us what it feels like to be upside down, then turned us back upright.
With the preliminaries over, the operators made one final safety check, then we took the six second trip to upside down and stopped. We had to hang upside down for ten seconds or so and wait while the operators made a safety check, then we heard "Egress" on the sound system in the vehicle. This was a two-way sound system. The operators and the soldiers waiting can all hear the sounds coming from inside. We release the seat belts then flip over and crawl out. The operators disable one or more doors from the outside so we if our door doesn't open (mine didn't) we have to crawl along the ceiling and follow the first soldier out who yells, "Door. Door. Door." When we get out the next task is to set up security and make sure all four of us are out. With that complete we get back in and simulate a water roll over.
In water, we wait inside till everyone is out of the seat belts then go out one door. We have 30 seconds to get out. Our crew made it in 27 seconds. The rollover was a lot of fun on a Friday afternoon. When we were on the ready line, one of the young soldiers who was not looking forward to being upside down asked me why I was smiling. I said, "I am 55 years old and this my last carnival, so I am going to enjoy all the rides."
