My First Writing Mentor: Clint Swift

The Army made me a  writer.  In several blog posts, especially this one, I have written about how the combination of inspiration and free time of soldiers in the field gave the chance to learn how to write.
A movie of my life would have me start writing, a twinkle would show in my eye as I looked to the future, and within a minute I would be transformed from Grunt to Gogol!

As you can tell from my current writing, I am still a grunt who wishes he was Nikolai Gogol, but when the Army gave me my first journalism job in 1978, the guy who helped me the most was a civilian reporter for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, named Clint Swift.  I met Clint when I visited the Stars and Stripes office in Darmstadt, (West) Germany.  I told him what I was doing and he took an interest in me and my unit.

He also gave me a copy of The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White.  I read and reread the book several times over the next year.  Clint told me how news stories worked, explained the difference between news and feature stories, and helped me to learn the craft of journalism.  I am currently re-reading The Elements of Style.  I could not even guess how many times I have re-read it.
I looked on line to see if I could find Clint.  No luck so far.  I hope he is proud that I made writing my career.  I am sure he would be amused I am back in the Army.

Paula Poundstone Embarassed Me in Iraq!

Six years ago this month, Paula Poundstone made me collapse laughing.  She went on a rant about Pop Tarts on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me."  It was so funny I literally fell on my face.  You can listen to her stand-up pop tart rant here.

It wasn't a long fall.  I wasn't hurt.  Except my dignity.  I was working out in the House of Pain Gym on Camp Adder in Iraq.  I was 56 years old.  I was surrounded by weight lifters in their 20s and 30s bench pressing 300+ pounds and listening to speed metal music.  I was listening to the "Wait Wait" podcast on my iPod.  It took 40 minutes to download on the anemic Camp Adder internet.

I had done just 10 of the 60 pushups I usually do when the host disparaged Pop Tarts as junk food.  Paula was outraged!!!  She went into a 2-minute rant on how Pop Tarts were in fact the secret of her good health and the greatest food ever.  On pushup 21 I collapsed laughing.

With the rant still on full tilt, I looked up and saw a couple of beefy metal heads looking at me.  More specifically they were looking at the old guy on the floor who collapsed doing pushups and was shaking.  They didn't know I was laughing.  For a second, I imagined myself trying to explain that I was listening to NPR and not Metal Music, then my senses returned.

I paused the rant, got up, and pretended I was done.  We could not wear headphones outside, so I grabbed my gear and walked over to my CHU (home) so I could finish listening to the podcast without looking like an old guy having a heart attack.

Clearly, Paula Poundstone made that rant on purpose just to embarrass me in the "House of Pain."

My First Day in Iraq, May 2, 2009

On my 56^th birthday, the ramp dropped in the back of the C-17 cargo plane at 1130 hours.  We had taxied to the edge of the airstrip.  More than 100 soldiers in battle gear struggled out of the five-across seats and walked down the ramp with short, unsteady steps. The same ramp in the picture above.

Heat shimmered on the concrete airstrip.  The air temperature was almost 120 degrees already.  The surface temperature of the airstrip was closer to 140 degrees. 

“Happy fucking birthday, Gussman,” said Sgt. Jeremy Houck when I reached the bottom of the ramp.  The baggage pallets were still on the plane.  We would have to wait for the bags, then hope for a ride to our new homes behind 20-foot blast walls here on Camp Adder.  

The base we were on was Camp Adder to the Army, Talil Ali Air Base to the US Air Force.  It would be home for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, me included, until January of 2010.  

On that day, the outside of me was hot, tired, confused and miserable.  I was wearing 45 pounds of body armor, carrying 50 more pounds of weapon and gear, and I was melting.

But underneath the sweat, I was soooooooo happy.  My dream was not comfortable or fun, but it was my dream.  I wanted to be in Iraq.  I enlisted during Viet Nam, but missed the war.  Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to be in the Army in a war.  Now 50 years later, I arrived.  

Trump Leads Chickenhawk Nation

Recently soldiers I serve with have become public fans of The Donald for Commander in Chief.  At first I thought they must not know how much Chickenhawks like him despised soldiers in the 1960s.  Then I realized they don't care.  They were born after Viet Nam ended and have no idea what it was like to live through that war.

During the Viet Nam War, our nation had a military draft.  If it worked, which it did not, anyone between 18 and 26 years old could be called to serve his country for two years.

Unlike World War 2 when many young men clamored to join the ranks, during Viet Nam most middle-class and rich kids from the northeast and the west coast avoided the draft through deferments.  The Donald had five such deferments.  Mitt Romney, Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and many other Conservative leaders decided not to serve.

And because the war was unpopular, they were barely making excuses.  Cheney had better things to do.  For others it was the "wrong war."  Really?  There are American soldiers fighting.  Are you an American?

The draft is a zero-sum game so for every draft dodger who did not go, a poor kid who could not afford deferments went in his place.  More than 50,000 soldiers died in Viet Nam.  Hundreds of thousands more were wounded or afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Whoever took The Donald's place is as likely as not dead, wounded or suffering from PTSD.

When I bring this up, one reaction is Bill Clinton dodged the draft.  He did.  But he did not go on to urge more war.  Many people I grew up with sang "give peace a chance" in the 60s and are still to the left of Bernie Sanders today.  But the "peace people" who became Conservatives once their draft eligibility ended are simply cowards.  They let someone else serve in their place and became Hawks once they were safe from actual service. I did not vote for Bill Clinton. I believed, as Conservatives used to say they believed, that character matters. Character is all that matters in a leader. I believe Bill Clinton damaged the Presidency badly enough that America could elect Trump. 

I can understand why people who define their world by who they hate would love Trump.  But how can people who have made the military their career vote for a guy who despises service.  Trump thought people who served in Viet Nam were chumps when he got his five deferments.  The glib way he dismissed John McCain says Trump thinks no better of soldiers now.