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)
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Soviet Armor vs. American Armor, Israel 1973
In July and August 1975, I went to the U.S. Army Armor School in Fort Knox, Kentucky, after three years in missile weapons testing.
We learned the basics of armor and about our tank, the M60A1. We also learned about a serious flaw in our tanks that was fixed at great cost by the Israeli Army. The Israelis fought and defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan using the M60A1 among other tanks. It turns out the hydraulic fluid in our tanks was prone to catch fire. After the Israelis lost crewmen to these fires, the hydraulic fluid was changed.
We also learned how important mechanical reliability is to combat tank crews. The Arab countries used Soviet tanks, primarily the T-55 and T-62 main battle tanks. We learned the difference between "live" and "dead" track. Soviet tanks used dead track, like bulldozers that does not use rubber bushings. In hard use, especially at high speeds, dead track is more prone to break. According to one report, the Syrian Army lost one-fourth of its tanks before they reached the battle in the Golan Heights due to automotive failure.
After the 1973 War, the Israelis installed American-made drive lines in captured Soviet tanks to make the Soviet armor more reliable.
To people who have never trained and lived in a tank, they can seem like the indestructible behemoths of movies. But real life in a tank is a life of wrenches and rags. As a tank commander of one of the most reliable tanks of its time, my crew and I spent five hours or more maintaining our 54-ton tank for every hour of operation. Each of the 80 track blocks on each track were held together with a center guide and two end connectors. Each of the 160 center guides and 320 end connectors could work loose and had to be checked, often. The center guides ran between six pairs of road wheels, three pairs of return rollers, the drive sprocket and front idler wheel for adjusting track tension. Each of the wheels had inner steel plates bolted to the aluminum wheels. The road wheels were attached to torsion bars.
We tightened bolts all the time. Our tanks would received major service at 6,000 miles of operation, usually including a refurbished V12 diesel power plant and transmission.
And our tanks were so much more reliable than the Soviet counterparts that the Israelis ditched their drivelines and installed American-made drivelines to make the Soviet tanks more reliable.
War shows strengths and weaknesses. Reliable, effective armor is definitely an American strength.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Laurus, Book 19 of 2016: A Tale of Old Russia that Stretches to Florence and Jerusalem
Eleven of the books I have read so far this year are by
Russian authors writing about life in Russia from the present back through the
last two centuries. This book goes several centuries further back into Russian history.
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin showed me a Russia that I have
seen only in fleeting glimpses. We follow the title character, Laurus, from
when he loses his parents as a child until the end of his long life as a healer
and a holy man between the mid 1400s to the 1520s.
This is a medieval book by setting and by the parade of
wretched, reverent, hopeful, fearful and foul characters that people the pages
of this wonderful book. After Laurus
(Arseny in his early life) loses his parents he moves in with his grandfather,
a healer named Christopher. Arseny
follows his grandfather and becomes a healer, but as his life progresses,
Arseny relies less on the herbs and lore of Christopher and more on the healing
gift he has from God.
Arseny becomes adept at healing plague victims. He heals a young woman from far away named
Ustina. They fall in love and live
together. Ustina gets pregnant then she
and their son die in childbirth.
At that point, Arseny becomes an itinerant “Holy Fool” in
the city of Pskov. (Pskov is the northwest corner of modern Russia.) He shares Pskov with
two other Holy Fools. One is Holy Fool
Foma, who is very territorial. Foma is
one of the many brilliant bits of comic relief we get on the long life of
suffering of our very Russian hero Arseny/Laurus (also at various times Ustin
and Ambrosius).
In the middle of the book, we meet Ambrogio, an Italian from
Florence with a gift of Prophecy as strong as Arseny’s gift of healing. Ambrogio is convinced the world is ending
soon and the only place he can get exact knowledge of the coming Apocalypse is
in Pskov. In 15th Century
Florence, Ambrogio finds a trader willing to teach him Russian. Ambrogio learns Russian with an accent
perfect for Pskov in short order and sets out for Pskov.
In Pskov, Ambrogio meets the mayor. The mayor introduces the Italian to Arseny
and bankrolls their trip to Jerusalem.
All the horrors of the road befall them.
Ambrogio is killed near Jerusalem; a sword but lives and return to Pskov
slash Arseny.
Late in life Arseny goes to a monastery and finally lives in
a cave. He takes the blame for a sin he
did not commit and dies rejected by thousands who he healed. But when he finally dies, more than 100,000
people mourn his passing.
Laurus shows from beginning to end that the life of true
faith, the life truly given to others, means poverty, rejection and
suffering. Arseny, like the Bishop in
Les Miserable rejects this world out of habit and choice. Arseny, like the Bishop, illustrates the
passage called the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. I am adding that passage at the end of this
review.
Laurus is the Book of Acts set in Russia with the
unrelenting suffering of the Apostle Paul set in a colder climate. Any televangelist who read and understood
Laurus would burn his mansion, his private jet and his TV studio to the
ground.
This book shows what the Christian life looks like and it is a good story well told.
Matthew
Chapter 5
The Beatitudes
10 f“Blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness' sake, forutheirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
11 g“Blessed are you when others revile you and
persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely hon my account. 12 iRejoice and be glad, for
your reward is great in heaven, for jso they persecuted the prophets who were before
you.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
"Wrong War" Conservatives: “Patriots” Who Dodged the Draft
Just 99 years ago, this was America's view of draft dodgers.
Many strange things make America unique in the history of the world. One of the strangest to me is that Draft Dodgers can let another man serve and maybe die in his place, and yet they can be “Patriots” later in life. And more ironic than that, they can be patriots in the conservative party.
I know a guy who is a life-long conservative, is three years older than I am, and never served in the military. He said the Vietnam War was the “Wrong War.” (Really? Who decides what is the "Right War?" You?) In his mind, those who have the means to avoid the war are free to do that. So he went to college and got four deferments that got him through the effective end of the draft in 1973. He considers himself a true conservative and a patriot and has no lingering guilt about avoiding the Vietnam War.
More importantly, he believes if it was the "Right War" he would have served. Usually with this kind of assertion, there is no way to test if it is true. But in America, we have so many wars we can validate the experiment. America was attacked on September 11, 2001. America invaded Afghanistan within a month and was making plans to invade Iraq within a year. In the USA where upwards of 100 million people claim to be conservative, the government had trouble maintaining a force of just two million. By 2007, the Army National Guard let me re-enlist at 54 years old. The Army, in a failed three-year experiment, raised the enlistment age to 42. I got in with 11 years of prior service and a waiver. Where were all those conservatives? Was Iraq another "Wrong War?"
In most any country in the world through most of history, dodging the draft was treated as treason. The draft dodger went through life known as a coward.
In most any country in the world through most of history, dodging the draft was treated as treason. The draft dodger went through life known as a coward.
Yet in modern America, the party that wants to “Make America Great Again” does not want any part of the real path to greatness, which involves suffering and sacrifice.
With the glaring exception of John McCain, every nominee of the Republican Party in this century has avoided combat service while blaming the Democrats for the ills of the nation. A nation that is looking back to the what they consider the best days of America, would not nominate, let alone elect, a draft dodger to be commander in chief. There is a moral dimension to greatness. The sort of man who will let another serve in his place as a young man will not suddenly become a brave leader as an old man.
When Donald Trump addresses the Republic Convention tonight he will stand in front of the largest gathering of rich draft dodgers in America: the coward in chief telling thousands of other cowards how he is going to “Make America Great Again.”
I wish I was making this up.
I wish I was making this up.
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