Meeting Eastern Border Podcast Host on the Eastern Border of the EU and NATO

Kristaps Andrejsons, host of the The Eastern Border podcast.

On the third weekend of my trip, I drove from Vilnius, Lithuania, to Ludza, Latvia, to visit Kristaps Andrejsons, the host of The Eastern Border podcast. 

Ludza is Kristaps’ hometown and the easternmost city in Latvia, hence the name of the podcast.  The first thing we did was a small tour of the two big churches in the town—the Orthodox Church in the center of Ludza, and the Catholic Church on the hill above the big lake to the east of town. The Catholic Church shares the hilltop with a ruined medieval castle.  We took in the view of the lake, then went back to the car and drove southeast to Zilupe. 

The Catholic Church on the hill and the Orthodox Church in the center of Ludza.

Kristaps said Zilupe is the easternmost village in the European Union.  When I repeated this on Facebook, a well-traveled friend, Jim Trumm pointed out that Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is part of the EU, and the place where the first Euro was officially used as legal tender. But if we stay in Europe and the Northern Hemisphere Kristaps is correct.

After a brief look at the dark border area of Terehova east of Zilupe, we went back to Ludza and said goodbye. Then I drove to Valga, Estonia, for dinner, completing my three meals in three countries plan for the day. 

Kristaps started the The Eastern Border with the same motivation I have heard from other creative, motivated people: he was pissed off. He heard a “so-called expert on Russia and Eastern Europe on CNN, who didn’t know shit (pardon my French) about Russia or Eastern Europe. …. It turns out she had been in Russia just a year, mostly in Moscow and St. Petersburg.”

Four years ago, Kristaps recorded the first episode in July of 2015. He discussed the economy of the Soviet Union. Three weeks later was Soviet Culture, the Brezhnev, then the War in Afghanistan. Chernobyl was the following March.  Most episodes are on Soviet or on games. Then in 2017 he added news from his side of the border.  Over time, he has added more news, Latvia 101, and still covers all things Soviet. 

Kristaps is animated and engaging and has a dry wit, so the podcasts are funny as well as informative.  He travels to the US occasionally. Last month he was in Boston and NYC.  He has also been to Fort Worth, Santa Monica and Seattle.  The five states he has been to represent at least a third of the population of America, both coasts, and the gap between Fort Worth and Santa Monica covers most of the range of American politics. 

As with the Jewish Story, whose host I also visited on this trip, I am listening alternately to current and early episodes. I found out about both podcasts after more than 50 episodes were recorded, so I have a lot of catching up to do. 

If you have an interest in Soviet Culture and if you want to hear how democracy is dying under Putin in the Russian Federation, The Eastern Border podcast is well worth listening to. 

At the Armored Corps Museum, Latrun, Israel, a Patton Tank Sliced Lengthwise in Half

At the Armored Corps Museum in Latrun, Israel, one of the many tanks on display is an American-built Patton tank cut fully in half, lengthwise showing the inside of the tank from the driver's compartment in the front to the V-12 twin-turbo diesel powerpack in the rear.

Looking into the driver's compartment in the front of the hull of the tank.

The V12 Powerpack in the rear of the hull.

Looking into the gunner's seat on the right side of the main gun in the turret and ammo racks in the hull.

The main gun in the center of the turret.

Another view of the gunner's seat and the ammo racks in the front of the hull on either side of the driver.

Armor from Entire Cold War and Beyond in Israel's Armored Corps Museum

M60A3 Tank Modified for Israel Service 

The Armored Corps Museum in Latrun, Israel, has a huge collection of armor from 1945 to the present day. The Israel Defense Force has used NATO armor from World War II vintage through the entire Cold War up to the present day.

The IDF has also captured tanks, guns and other armored vehicles from Soviet-supplied Arab armies and has those armored vehicles on display also. In addition to seeing tanks from the outside, there is a display of an M60 sliced in half lengthwise showing the inside of the tank from front to back. The right side has the commander and loader positions and the powerpack, the left side has the loader, driver and the fuel cell.

Here's some of the armor on display:

I'll post the sliced-in-half tank next.

Meeting an Israeli Tank Commander, a Dallas Couple and a Parisian in an Israeli Laundromat

Tonight after a long bike ride, I walked to a laundromat on Jaffa Road, a mile and a half from my hotel. The laundromat had three washers, two dryers and, lucky for me, one other customer who could explain what I needed to do to operate the machines.  

That customer, Joshua, told me that I needed four 5-shekel coins for the washer and at least one 5-shekel coin plus 1-shekel coins for the dryer.  I went to a store around the corner and got Gatorade and the required coins and started my laundry.  

A few minutes later, a couple from Dallas, Tony and Patty, who were on a Church trip had showed up. I told them what they needed for the washer, the dryer and the soap dispenser. 

Joshua came back 20 minutes later and started folding his clothes from the dryer. I thanked him again for telling me how the laundry worked and told him about Tony and Patty. We talked about travel. I told him my first travel was with the Army to Germany as a tank commander.  Joshua was a tank commander in the Israeli Defense Forces IDF! He was on a Megach 6 tank. He served in the 90s, after the Patton tank I served on was retired from the active-duty IDF.

Israeli Megach 6

He told me he was famous in the IDF, not for being a tank commander but for falling from a helicopter.  In 1994 he volunteered to be a MEDEVAC dummy, loaded onto a Huey helicopter on a stretcher and flown to a field hospital on a training exercise. He was loaded on the middle stretcher on the left side of the aircraft, but not strapped in securely.  The helicopter took off, banked left 20 meters above the ground and Joshua fell--and bounced. He remembered the fall and bouncing on landing.

The helicopter landed. The other fake patients were unloaded and the doctor ran to what was now his real patient. Joshua had broken ribs and a collarbone and leg fractures, but no head injury. He could remember the whole incident in slow motion--including seeing hundreds of soldiers watching him fall and saying the Israeli version of "Oh Fuck!"  

The doctor treated the worst of his injuries on the ground and in Russian-accented Hebrew said, "I am sorry to tell you we must put you back on the helicopter."  Joshua made a full recovery.  

While we exchanged injury stories, a young woman named Nguyen (sounds like Wen) came in. We told her about the coins she needed.  She spoke French so I could tell her in French when she seemed confused about the English explanation.  

After Joshua left, I found out Nguyen lives in Paris. She came to Paris from Vietnam as a school girl and went to a school for girls set up by Napoleon in Saint Germain-en-Laye, a beautiful town west of Paris.  We talked about how beautiful the towns are west of Paris: Chatou and Rueil-Malmaison along with Saint Germain-en-Laye.  

Patty and Tony came back and told me about how they were traveling around Israel visiting kids in hospitals and seeing the sights. Nguyen helped a Chinese couple to get the right coins. I put my bike clothes in a bag and left for dinner.   

I can hardly wait to find a laundromat in Latvia! 

Meeting up with The Jewish Story Podcaster in Jerusalem

Rav Mike Feuer, host of The Jewish Story 

on The Land of Israel Network

This morning I walked to the Power Coffeeworks on Agripas St. in Jerusalem to meet Rav Mike Feuer, host of The Jewish Story a podcast on The Land of Israel Network.  I have been listening to the podcast since 2017, alternately listening the current episodes, now in the 1950s, and the episodes from the beginnings of the Jewish people.

In person, Mike looks just like his photo, upbeat and energetic and bubbling with what he is doing and learning and thinking.  Mike was born and raised in Cleveland. He moved to Israel 18 years ago after graduate studies. He teaches at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. He is also an organization consultant and makes dinner for his family every day--it's in his schedule. He and his wife have five kids between five and fifteen years old.

We talked about bad knees and running and family and the state of Israel and America.  We also talked about learning in the Jewish community, the limits of reason, and the how stories really define who we are. The Jewish Story  helped me to see the panorama of Jewish life over more than three millennia.

At my Reform Synagogue in Lancaster, I study Torah with Rabbi Paskoff. He is very committed to the Diaspora Jewish experience.  From Mike I hear the story from a man who left America for Israel and is raising a big family (by American standards) in a land that is a terrorist target.  Though White Nationalism in America is making Anti-Semitism worse every day.

We also talked about the political divide in Israel. At one point the owner of the coffee shop interrupted, pulling a book of a shelf near us then running upstairs to get two more.  He proudly said he had books from Rabbis with widely different opinions in his coffee shop.  He came to Israel from South Africa. When I first arrived and ordered coffee I could hear his outpost-of-the-former-empire accent, but could not tell whether it was South Africa or Australia.

Mike told me about a new book series he is writing on with co-author Dave Mason. They just published the second book in the Age of Prophecy  series. I got the first already on Kindle unlimited. It's called Lamp of Darkness. It is a series to bring the world of the Biblical Prophets to life for modern readers.  Mike grew up on science fiction and, in a way, ancient history is a galaxy far, far away.

After two hours we were still talking excitedly about life, the universe and everything, but I had to get to the bike shop and pick up my ride. What a wonderful morning.

28 Hours, 739 Miles, A Full Circle of Israel

Israel, from Eilat to Golan

On Friday morning, November 1, I got up at 4:30 am in Paris and began a long day of travel that ended on the beach in Eilat, Israel.  The usually fast train ride direct from Luxembourg station to the airport was twice as long because of track work, two trains, then a bus. 

But after a long walk and the extra security checks that come with flying to Israel, I boarded a full 737 for the 4-hour flight to Tel Aviv. I knew before I left America with a swollen knee, I would not be able to ride the 300-plus mile distance from Eilat to Golan, so I decided to see the whole country in a 739-mile circle that started as soon as I cleared customs and picked up my Hyundai rental car. 

By 4pm I was driving the first of 200-plus miles to the southernmost city in Israel: Eilat. I got a hotel two blocks from the beach that was the cheapest hotel in the city. All the signage in the hotel was in Russian and Hebrew. I might have been the only guest who was not from Russia.  The city was alive with party music till well past 4am, but I fell asleep early after the long travel day.

At 7 this morning I got up and walked to the beach. There was a roped off area with several swimmers doing "laps" swimming back and forth between the ropes marking the swimming area. As soon as I started swimming and tasted salt water, I realized this was the first time I swam in the ocean. I had played on the beach when I was a kid and with my kids, but I never actually swam.  It felt great. And the water was so clear I could watch the fish swimming underneath me. 

After the swim, I showered and drove north, all the way north to the Mount Bental observation post, part of one of the greatest tank battles in Israeli military history.  Just 160 Israeli tanks stopped 1,500 invading Syrian tanks. After the battle just seven Israeli tanks were still in operation and most of the crew members were killed or wounded.  The Syrians lost 900 tanks and suffered thousands of casualties. 

From that scene of violent battle, I drove back to the south to Tiberias on the Sea of Gallilee.  On the way to Tiberias on the northwest shore of the sea is the Mount of Beatitudes monastery, the site, according to tradition, of the Sermon on the Mount: a memorial to peace just an hour away from a memorial of armored warfare. 

On the drive north I traveled along the eastern border of Israel including the entire length of the Dead Sea. So going back to Jerusalem, I drove near the Mediterranean coast.  For the rest of the week I will take shorter rides near Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and places in between.   

The Beach in Eilat, Israel

Paris Training Race and West Along the Seine

Today I am back in Paris and riding longer distances getting ready for Israel. I rode 42 miles from the south side of Paris to the daily training race at l'hippodrome in the southwest of corner of Paris.

After an 8-mile warmup ride, I joined the with a small group going about 18mph. A half-lap later a faster group went by so I sped up and joined.  At the end of that lap, six guys went by going even faster, so I sprinted onto the end of that group that was averaging 22mph.

I stayed with them for three laps.  I was using Strava so riding with this fast group meant I set a half dozen personal records, and I moved up to 9,500th of 19,500 riders who set times on the two-mile oval.  I also moved up to 43rd among the 140 riders who set times in the 65-69 age group.

After five laps I turned off and made a tour of my favorite towns west of Paris. I rode up and over Mont Valerian through the town of Suresne. I used to stay there when I was in Paris on business 20 years ago because I could wake up early, roll down the hill and ride the daily training race.

After Suresne, I rolled down the long hill into Rueil-Malmaison. The company I worked for had an office there. It's a lovely town on a bend in the Seine.  After that I rode west along the Seine to Saint Germain-en-Laye. This town has an amazing park and Hotel d'Ville and is the setting for the novel Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin--my favorite book by one of my favorite authors.

I rode back through Chatou and stopped for lunch a Maison Fournaise. I'll write a separate post about that.  Paris is a lovely pace to ride.

Visiting the Bastogne War Museum and the City

A Sherman tank hit on the right side. Inside the tank there are holes and gouges in every surface and part.  The crew was cut to pieces when their own armor became projectiles that ricocheted around the turret and hull.

The Bastogne War Museum honors the soldiers who fought the last Nazi offensive to a standstill in the cold woods of Belgium and refused to surrender when surrounded.  On this 75th Anniversary year dozens of celebrations will mark significant moments in the battle, beginning in November and continuing into 2020. 

A complete list of all the events and photos are on the museum website here.

For me the tank in the photo above reminded me of the fate of so many tank soldiers. When armor piercing shells blow a hole in armor plate, the armor itself becomes the shrapnel that ricochets inside the tank, killing and maiming the crew. 

M45 Quadmount antiaircraft gun used by the American Army with variants like this one used in a ground installation or mounted on half tracks.

 The museum has a large display on the history of The Holocaust.

This Sherman tank with its bright US Star on the side led me to wonder if the German gunner who hit the tank above used the star as an aiming point.

The commander of the surrounded soldiers of Bastogne was asked to surrender by the attacking Germans.  His reply was "Nuts!" He became famous for that reply and holding out against the attackers.  On his Wikipedia page that commander is identified as General Anthony Clement "Nuts" McAuliffe. 

Tanks Painted in Protest? As long as it's not My Tank!

 A Sherman tank in front of the Bastogne War Museum 

painted by a street artist to honor victims of violence.

In front of the museum in Bastogne is a temporary display of art from the fall of the Berlin Wall--30 pieces of wall painted to commemorate freedom. An M4 Sherman tank in front of the museum was also repainted to remember the victims of war and violence around the world.  The other tanks on display in the museum are, of course, painted as they were during their wartime service.  

Seeing a Sherman repainted by a street artist in front of a war museum was jarring.  Should a war machine be repainted as an anti-war protest?

  

Soviet tanks repainted in rainbow and pink as 

anti-war protests.

I realized I did not mind seeing former Soviet tanks painted pink or with love symbols. The Soviet Army was my Cold War enemy. They lost. So defacing their tanks was okay.

But seeing the Sherman tank painted in protest made me uncomfortable. That was an American tank. 

Then I remembered the mixed feelings I had just a week ago when I saw American-built M60 tanks, the tanks I served on in the Cold War, rolling into Syria.  More than 2,000 of the 3,000 tanks fielded by the Turkish Army are M60s.  The tank I served on was part of the attack against the allies Trump abandoned.  I did not like seeing what could have been my old tank rolling across the desert in service to a dictator. 

And then I thought of why tanks are painted in protest and as monuments and memorials.  Tanks are used as targets or monuments or left to rust because they can't be recycled. Armor plate costs more to metal than the recovered metal is worth. So tanks can't be melted down to make Mack trucks or Mercedes road cars. 

Tanks are war machines.  It would be best if unneeded war machines could be reused peacefully, but since they can't they will be monuments or palettes for protest for centuries to come. Armor plate a foot or more thick won't rust away anytime soon. 

Belleau Wood: Soldiers and Marines Stop a Huge German Attack in 1918

I visited Belleau Wood in northeastern France, site of a battle unlike most of the terrible trench warfare of World War I. In Belleau Wood, newly arrived American Soldiers and Marines reinforced the allied armies against a new German attack. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were transferred to the west as Russia left the war to fall into revolution.  

At Belleau Wood the Americans first stopped the German assault then counterattacked, never stopping to dig trenches or retreat from the attacking army.   At one point, a French commander told the Americans to fall back and dig trenches.  A Marine captain said, "Retreat? Hell no. We just got here."  

The story of the battle is available form many sources.  I visited to see how the world heals itself from the horror of war.  Belleau Wood is beautiful.  The rolling wheat fields that surround it where so many Marines died in a direct assault in June of 1918 were fallow, long past harvest at the end of October a century  later.  The wood itself, splintered by millions of bullets and tens of thousands of rounds of artillery, are peaceful, carpeted with leaves and showing no signs of rage and death.  

The cannons that ring the monument to the Marines in a clearing in the wood are black, somber and as peaceful as the woods around them. On this trip I will visit battle sites and Holocaust sites to see how life goes on after slaughter.  Belleau Wood and the rolling farm country around it could hardly be more different than the temporary terror of 1918.  Moments of heroism and long years of peace are both part of the human condition: both very real and a very real paradox that both exist in the same place--though not at the same time.  

Bicycling in Paris: the Daily Training Race

One of the groups circling L'Hippodrome in Paris

On my first full day in Europe, and the only day in Paris before leaving for battlefields in eastern France and Belgium, I rode the daily training race in Paris.  Each day, year round, the two-mile perimeter road around l'Hippodrome, the horse racing track in southwest Paris, is closed to traffic from 10am till dark. 

Every day groups of cyclists ride the circle, most in groups, some by themselves.  The speeds vary from two guys in their 80s I saw on my second lap going about 10mph to the first group I rode in which was averaging 22 mph.  I stayed with that group for a couple of laps and joined a group we passed which was traveling about 2mph slower. 

The road around the horse racing track rises slightly on the east side and goes down through the turn to the west.  The road is fifty feet wide on sides of the oval, but narrows to fifteen feet on the turn at the south end and is just a six-foot wide path at the north end. 

When the pack is silent, it is clearly no different than any pack I have ridden in anywhere in the world. The following distances, the way people pass each other, and even the young kid who attacks the group racing ahead, only to get caught on the uphill stretch where there was a headwind, is the same in Philadelphia, Paris or Prague.  Between the wind and my inadequate skill in listening to spoken French, I did not catch much of the conversation, but no one speaks deeply in a fast-moving group of 20 riders. 

If the weather is good and my knee is still good, I hope to ride again in Paris near the end of the trip.

The grandstands of l'Hippodrome seen from the east side.

"You and Your Doctor are Crazy" says the Physical Therapist in the Next Seat

With 90 minutes to go in the overnight flight to Europe, I spoke to the passenger in the window seat as we ate breakfast before landing.  We had an empty seat between us and she had slept through most of the flight. I was jealous.

I asked about her trip. She said she leaves the country anytime she has enough time off to get away.  She has lived in Paris, speaks four languages--English, Spanish, French and Russian--and loves to be in Paris in every season.  This trip will also take her to Rome and Vienna. She grew up in Puerto Rico where she learned Spanish and English. She learned French and Russian in Paris.

We introduced ourselves. Her name was Ady. She asked where I was traveling. I told her about riding in Europe and Israel. That switched the conversation from travel and language to her day job as a physical therapist.  

"Wait," she said. "You just got a knee replacement and you're riding across Israel?" I protested that I got the knee replacement more than six months ago, to which she answered, "Right. Just got a knee replacement. The first year is the recovery period." I told her my physical therapists said most knee replacements go wrong from lack of exercise. She agreed that happens, but said the knee is the most delicate joint in the body, with no supporting socket joint. "It just hangs out there, waiting to be--overused." 

Ady said, "Not like you would take my advice anyway, but you might want to think about limiting your time on the bike."  I told her that the doctor at the Orthopedic Urgent Care last night, and the surgeon, and PTs all told me to "Listen to my body." So I planned to do that.

She burst into laughter and said, "You and your doctors are crazy. You don't tell someone like you to listen to their body. By the time you hear you body saying 'slow down' you are already way into injury." I could see that. 

She was right about me not listening to her. I rode the day after I arrived in the daily training ride around l'hippodrome in the southwest corner of Paris. I'll write about that soon. 

Knee Works Well Enough to Walk: Boarding in an Hour

Last night, I thought the sudden, painful swelling of my titanium knee could be the end of my trip.  I am still not sure how much I will be able to ride, but I can walk well enough to navigate train stations and Newark Airport.  In an hour I should be on the way to Paris to begin the trip.

I also wondered if carrying a backpack would be a problem, but so far, no problem at all.  While riding on the trains today, I have been making alternate plans of what I can see and if my bicycle riding is severely limited. Since I have only seen Jerusalem and nearby towns in all of Israel, there will be plenty to see.

The same is true in the Baltic States later in the trip.

This trip, like the one in 2017, is both a bike ride and a chance to visit Holocaust sites and memorials. In the Baltic countries, like Ukraine and Poland, the Jews were almost completely wiped out both by the Nazis and by their neighbors who killed Jews and took their property.  As with Rwanda and Bosnia, the genocide was personal and horrible.

I know I will be surprised by things I see and discover.  On the last trip, one of the saddest places I visited was the German Military Cemetery at Normandy. While there, I swung back and forth between sadness and anger, because this cemetery is how America should have treated the Civil War. The Germans started a racist war and lost. They memorialize the dead soldiers, but not the leaders or the cause.  America should have done that.

Almost 75 years after the end of World War II, Germany is a civilized country.  More than 150 years after the Civil War, we elected a guy who says Nazis are fine people.

Israel Trip, Day Zero: Orthopedic Urgent Care!

My trip to Europe and Israel officially begins today, October 22, with a flight to Paris at 6:40p.m.  But at that same hour yesterday, I was icing a very swollen knee and on the phone with the Lancaster Orthopedic Urgent care.

I went on my usual Monday ride with Scott Haverstick and Delaine and Chris Peris.  I turned off the ride for the shorter way home at 15 miles.  I stopped at the bottom of a hill and put my foot down. My knee hurt, a lot. It was swollen. It had been fine before the ride.  I managed to ride home, but slowly. I could not stand up and pedal.  I remembered there was an orthopedic urgent care office, so I called and went there.

After the usual twists and pokes the doctor said I had a sprained MCL--the ligament on the inside of my knee. He told me to wear a brace and "listen to my body" as to how much I can do.  Since this is the knee I got replaced six months ago, the doctor was not sure if the swelling was normal for me. I told him it was a lot less this morning.

I had planned to ride the Paris Training Races on Thursday and ride south and west of Paris before going to visit World War II battlefields on the weekend.  It looks like my plans just changed. The doctor thinks if I might be able to ride in Israel if the swelling goes down in a week.  If not, Israel road trip! 

I planned to post about the trip. I thought I would be posting about riding, but maybe not so much.

Conferences and the Delight of Meeting New Friends

I went to the 12th Annual Conference on Racism and Antisemitism at The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. I was only able to attend the second day of the two-day conference, but I heard some great talks and even watched a controversy play out on stage. 

But the best part was lunch. 

I knew no one at the conference. The weather was cool and clear.  Outside the hall where the conference was taking place, the organizers set up a tent and picnic tables.  I sat at one end of an empty table. A small group was at the other end of the table. I introduced myself, but they were talking in hushed tones about the woman who left the stage in protest. 

So I ate my sandwich as the tables filled up.  Then a group of five formed around me. I introduced myself as a Hannah Arendt Fan Boy--not an academic like most of the conference attendees.  To my right was a quiet man who is a professor of history.  To my left was Anna, a history teacher at a Bard-affiliated high school, a lawyer, an activist, and executive director of the The Conversationalist. Opposite me were two women about my age, Ellen and Kate.  Eventually Kate left and her seat was taken by Amy who was the moderator of the panel with the controversy.

Through most of the lunch we did not talk about the conference, but about our different experiences of being Jewish in America. We had an especially lively discussion of when Jews became white. Kate was the only one who was not Jewish, but she grew up Irish-Italian Catholic post World War II. Her parents and family on both sides experienced discrimination both for religion and background when Irish and Italian Catholics were not quite white.

Ellen and I were the same age and grew up near big cities so could talk about being part of the big exodus of Jews to the suburbs after World War II.  A half-million Jews served in uniform in World War II. The GI Bill made it possible for many Jews to buy suburban houses and get a college education.  A million African-American soldiers served in uniform in World War II. They had very little access to GI Bill benefits, especially housing and education.

Anna's parents came to America from Russia in the 1970s. We talked about how different the experience of immigration was for blue-collar Jews like my grandparents in the early 20th Century and for her parents in the 1970s.  Her parents speak Russian and identify as Russian. My grandparents and uncles spoke Yiddish and in no way identified with the Tsarist Russia they escaped. 

Amy filled us in on the controversy on stage which has no explanation I can make simple. 

I enjoyed the presentations, especially the deep dive into "The Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. The four panelists traced the origins of this particular Anti-semitic conspiracy to post-World-War-II France.  It has been thoroughly debunked for anyone outside the lunatic world of the Alt-Right, Fox News, and the Trump White House, but inside those asylums it is a current threat to white nationalism.

When the torch-carrying Nazis at Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us" they were quoting The Great Replacement conspiracy.  The murderer of Jews in Pittsburgh believed the same. 

As good as the presentations were, lunch was the most fun.  Laughing and sharing stories and insights with bright people in lovely place is in its own way as good as life gets. 

Continuing my 2017 Trip Across Israel and Europe

This map is posted on the former East-West German border 

where I served as a tank commander 40 years ago.

If all goes well, I will ride the length of Israel.

On October 22, I am going to resume my 2017 trip across Eastern Europe and Israel.  My last trip began in Eastern Europe followed by the World War II battlefields of Normandy. Then I went to Israel and finally a side trip to the oldest Formula 1 race track, the street circuit in Monaco.

This trip I will begin with World War II battlefields and a Formula 1 racetrack, then go to Israel and finish the trip in Eastern Europe, places I did not get to on the last trip.

A long time ago in 2013 when Donald Trump was just a Birther and a failing reality TV personality, I started learning Russian and planned a bicycle trip across Russia to retrace the route my grandfather used to escape the Tsar's Army in 1914. Grandpa walked from Odessa on the south coast of Russia to Helsinki on the Baltic Sea between August 1914 and the spring of 1915.  I was going to ride north across Russia, about 1,300 miles sometime after I retired.

Then Trump got elected. Steve Bannon had an office in the White House and America was looking bleak.  I changed the trip to ride across Eastern Europe visiting the worst of the Holocaust sites and then visit Israel. I had never been there.

I managed to visit 20 countries on that trip, but I could not ride as much as I hoped (I was on the way to knee replacement which happened six months ago) and did not make it to the Baltic States or Russia.  On that trip I had not planned to visit World War II battlefields, but took a day to do that in the middle of the trip.

So this time I will visit more battlefields, spend more time in Israel, and visit the countries I missed on the first trip, particularly the Baltic Sea states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and end the trip in St. Petersburg, Russia.

I want to see the countries where the Holocaust was the worst and learn more about them. I want to know their path of recovery from such horror.  And I want to see more of Israel. A vibrant Jewish state is so important in the global fight against anti-Semitism. 

Railroad cars on a siding between Auschwitz and Buchenwald

Concentration Camps where Jews were delivered from 

across Europe. As they left the cars they were sorted into

groups of those who were slave labor and those who were killed.

Bernard-Henri Levi said if it were not for The Holocaust, there would be 50 million Jews living in the world now instead of 15 million. Two years ago, Nazis marched openly in Charlottesville and the President refused to condemn them. Anti-Semitism is a plague that is not going away and, for me, learning about how The Holocaust happened is part of making sure it never happens again.

Kill a Commie for Mommy: Hating the Enemy During the Cold War and Before

On the rifle range in Basic Training in 1972 our drill sergeant 

yelled, "Kill a Commie for Mommy." 

Wars we lose have a lot in common.  One thing that America's lost or losing wars have in common is very restrictive Rules of Engagement: ROE.  In World War II there were no rules of engagement: see the enemy, kill the enemy.

But in the late stages of the Vietnam War, and throughout the Iraq War, Afghanistan War, and other conflicts in the War on Terror, there are rules about who, what, when and where American soldiers can fire at the enemy.

My job in the Air Force was live-fire testing of missiles from the Sidewinder all the way to the Minuteman.  We made sure those missiles were ready to shoot down a MiG or obliterate a city.

In the Army, I trained my tank crew to make one-shot kills of Soviet tanks at up to a mile distance.  There was no ROE. If the Soviets crossed the border we were to kill them. They were the enemy, the identifiable, uniformed enemy who was going to kill us if we did not kill them.

When we had an enemy, we had a goal: Defeat the enemy.

I wrote on the New York Times "At War" blog about how having an enemy, or not, affects marching songs.  In the 1970s when we marched, we sang about killing Commies. They were the enemy.  The current marching songs have no enemy.  Current marching songs also have no sex. For those of us who marched in the 70s and before, the idea of marching songs scrubbed of sex is as strange as those without enemies.

All through my professional life, in or out of the military, my best work was when I had a goal--and a leader with a clear idea of what winning looked like.

The wars we won--World War II and the Cold War--had an enemy and a goal: Victory.

The current wars are a mess because the goal is murky.  When the American military goes to war, we should be fighting to win.

In War and in Life, Love and Loss are Never Far Apart

I wrote about this soldier ten years ago, September 2009, when I was deployed to Iraq for year with 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  I re-read this post and decided it says something I never want to forget.  

The deepest love must face the possibility of loss. The alternative is to avoid love, which is the greatest loss of all:

One of the administrative sergeants I run into once in a while was a Marine for 10 years before joining the Army National Guard. He is aloof and old enough that no one bothers him very much. He mostly keeps to himself, but will occasionally burst into a lecture about safety, security, the political situation in Iraq or how this war should be fought. His outbursts, like the lid sliding off a boiling pot, show that the heat has been building for a long time and finally he explodes. An early commentator on the Iliad wrote about Achilles saying, "An angry man never thinks he has spoken enough" and this sergeant proves it.

Today I was waiting for some other soldiers and had some time to sit and listen to this sergeant talk about his last deployment. It turns out the reason he keeps his distance and thinks about security issues goes back to his deployment three years ago. He was also on a large base then, but worked with people who went on convoys. For the most part he did not eat dinner, but one of the guys on convoy was a particular friend, another ex-Marine, so he would always change his schedule and eat dinner when his buddy was on base.

One day the aloof sergeant got the word that his dinner buddy got killed in a mortar attack. As he described it they were great friends, "And I decided I was not going to let that happen again. I'll talk to people but I don't want to care that much have them taken away. I still think about all the plans he had for his family, to travel--all gone."

The alternative to love is self-protection, keeping others at a distance so they won't hurt you by leaving. It's a choice we all make to some degree, to risk love or draw back.

Chinook Landing on a Roof in Afghanistan Honored in Original Art

On 10 November 2003 the crew of Chinook helicopter 

Yankee 2-6 made this landing on a cliff in Afghanistan.

Artist Larry Selman immortalized the event in a limited-edition print.

When I deployed to Iraq in 2009 with an Army helicopter brigade, nearly all the soldiers in our unit and every other unit were younger than me—a generation younger than me. But not the pilots.  Some were young, but many more were in their 40s and 50s.  Larry Murphy, a Chinook helicopter pilot, was one of the very few soldiers older than I was.  I was 56. He was 58. 

On Wednesday, 5 September 2019, Larry was honored with the unveiling of a painting commemorating an amazing bit of flying he and his crew did in Afghanistan in 2003.  Larry was deployed with a company of Chinooks and supporting equipment to Afghanistan. The tour was supposed to be a year and was extended to 16 months. The Chinook company was made up of soldiers from the Pennsylvania and Connecticut Army National Guard did not leave Afghanistan till 2004. They were in support of several companies of soldiers from the 10^th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, New York.

On 10 November 2003, Larry and the crew of Chinook helicopter Yankee 2-6 received an additional mission to pickup prisoners while they were on a resupply mission. These missions are a routine part of combat operations in Afghanistan.  But this mission was different. The prisoners had to be picked up from the side of a steep mountain at an elevation of 8,500 feet above sea level.  There was no place to land an aircraft with a 52-foot-long fuselage that is almost 100 feet long from tip to tip of its massive twin rotors. 

The pickup point was a shack on the side of a cliff.  Larry and the crew landed rear-wheels-only on the roof of the shack with the tail ramp lowered.  With the back of the helicopter on the shack roof, Larry and the other pilot, Paul Barnes, could not see the shack or any other close-in visual markers. From the cockpit, the pilots could see down the cliff to the valley 2,500-feet below.  The flight engineer James Duggan, crew chief Brian Kilburn and door gunner Margaret Haydock guided the pilots from the side and rear of the aircraft.  

Although technically a landing in the sense that the rear wheels were on the ground, the pilots were carefully keeping the full weight of the 25,000-pound (empty) helicopter from resting on shack, and keeping the front of the helicopter stable and level while the prisoners were brought aboard.

As soon as the prisoners were on board, the big helicopter returned to base. 

Five years ago, I was in a Chinook helicopter on Fort Indiantown Gap that landed rear-wheels-only on a cliff.  Twenty soldiers in full battle gear ran off the ramp and set up a security perimeter.  As the soldiers left the aircraft with their gear and heavy weapons, the weight of the aircraft dropped by 6,000 pounds, but the pilots held the helicopter level and steady.  I was looking out the door gunner’s window near the front of the aircraft. I saw nothing but sky above and rock-strewn valley hundreds of feet below.  I had heard about the roof landing since I joined the unit in 2007. It is amazing to see. It is more amazing to feel.

Larry Murphy signing prints at the Aviation Armory on 

Fort Indiantown, Pennsylvania  

The print by artist Larry Selman is available on his website.

In the years since the landing, the photo (above) has become an iconic image for Army Aviation, so much so that people question if the landing really happened.

Snopes.com answered the question: True. From their site:

I’m sure all of you have seen many choppers make some daring moves, but this one is spectacular. Hope you enjoy it. This attached shot was taken by a trooper in Afghanistan. Pilot is Larry Murphy, PA National Guard. Larry is a Keystone Helicopter Corp. EMS Pilot employee called to active duty. I must state that this is a “unique” landing operation. I understand that this particular military operation was to round up suspects.

We have some super reservists and National Guard folks out there in addition to our volunteer troops. God bless them all.