We Are National Guard on an Active Army Post

The classes I and the other 30+ students are in are for National Guard and Reserve soldiers. This was evident Sunday morning. We were told it was very important to begin class at 0800 Sunday because that was the only time we could have a soldering class during our two weeks. Every other day was booked. So at 0815 after waiting 15 minutes outside a locked building, our instructors went to Plan B and took us to another building for the afternoon's lesson. The school staff person assigned to let us in did not show up. Our instructors tried to arrange for a class in the same place in the afternoon, but for reasons they were polite enough not to share with the students, that option was out also. They did say that we must remain flexible throughout the two weeks because the active Army soldiers would have priority.

Army Meet and Greet

If it was not evident in the last post, an Army meet and greet is different than the civilian version. At 4pm Saturday, our 1st Sergeant said we would a 1900 hours formation that evening for a meet and greet. Between 1900 and 2000 hours we 30 or so students sat in a conference room and met and were greeted by the senior NCOs who gave the briefings I described yesterday. In summary: be safe, don't speed on post, don't go near the active Army students, don't get drunk and if you do stay in the hotel, formation at 0715 hours every day. Have fun!

Reporting for Duty

Chemical & Quartermaster Equipment Repair School (MOS 63J10) started with in processing this afternoon. Report time was No Later Than 1600. I arrived at 1500 hours. The training school headquarters is located off post. After filling out some forms, I had to change into my PT uniform and get weighed and measured. I am 71 1/2 inches tall so I can weigh up to 197 pounds. With winter PT uniform I weighed 193, so they let me continue processing.

By 1600 the first inprocessing was completed and I drove to our quarters--just two men to a room for the entire two weeks.

After formation, I tried to get on the internet in the room, then in the lobby using wireless. No wireless in the room, slow in the lobby. My roommate, a sergeant from Kansas also here for 63J training, told me how to use the ethernet connection in the room, now I am on line.

Formation tomorrow and every day is 0715. Tomorrow we have a mandatory safety briefing after dinner. The training schedule every day runs from 0715 to 2000, so I wont have a lot of free time. It should be an interesting two weeks.

My Blog Featured in Medill News Service Article

Medill News Service posted an article about military blogs and I am one of the bloggers quoted.

Letter on Science Education and Medicine

This week's issue of Chemical and Engineering News (Washington DC, weekly, 140,000 subscribers) published a letter I wrote in support of science education based on the technology that put me back together after several bad accidents. It's a subscription Web site, so I am copying the letter rather than posting a link.

Broken neck, evolutionary biology

One of the few moments I remember from the hours following the bike accident that splintered my seventh vertebra and broke nine other bones is the neurosurgeon saying: "You have two choices. Get the surgery or we can put you in a halo cast for a year and see what happens." I said, "surgery." And I have walked three to 10 miles per day since I left the hospital eight days later. Since the cervical collar came off on Aug. 2, 2007, I have been back on my bike.

But 10 or more years ago I would have had no option but the halo cast. My seventh vertebra was in pieces. Cadaver bone replacement was not a routine option in 1997. I would still be screwed into a cage or maybe in traction or recovering from surgery to "harvest" bone from my hips. In 1967, I would have been quadriplegic or dead.

C&EN writes well and regularly about modern science and why evolution is so important to our intellectual life. Understanding how the body works at the molecular level is key to accepting donor body parts. So for me the insights of Darwin and Mendel, which led to the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick, then to huge advances in medicine and all biosciences in the past 50 years, allowed me, a 54-year-old bicycle racer, to walk out of the hospital eight days after a 50-mph crash that would have left me caged for a year, quadriplegic, or dead if it happened earlier in my life.

I am also a believer. So in addition to thinking rejection of modern science is crazy, I also think it is very bad manners. I would respect those who believe in science-rejecting young-earth creationism more if, consistent with their beliefs, they lived in caves and refused all of the technology that comes directly from science in the past century. But who in America does not benefit from modern medicine or high technology?

In my adult life I have been blinded by shrapnel, seen the bones and ligaments inside my knees after a motorcycle crash, and in 2007 was saved from paralysis by the latest trauma medicine. I certainly support modern science on an intellectual level, but for me I am also a fan of modern medicine, as passionate as my fellow Penn State alums are about football.

Obviously, I am writing with no specific expertise, just an ACS member who thinks support of modern science and rejection of pseudoscience is not just right—it's a matter of life and death.

Neil Gussman
Philadelphia

My Father and Fort Indiantown Gap

My father, George Gussman, served in Pennsylvania for most of World War II. His first enlistment was in 1939 at 33 years old. When the US declared war on Japan in 1941, Dad was close to discharge. Of course, no one got discharged after December 7, 1941. My father was the fourth of six sons of immigrants who came to America just before the turn of the 20th century to escape the pogroms in Russia. My father went to school only through the 8th grade then went to work. He liked to say he was a Teamster when there were really teams of horses. His first job was stable boy, working the wrong end of those horses.

When the war broke out my father was twice the age of the other recruits and had real experience in warehousing, what the Army calls the quartermaster corps. Despite his lack of education, he went to Officer Candidate School. As a brand-new 36-year-old 2nd lieutenant, my Dad was soon put in command of a Black maintenance company at Camp Reynolds in the northeastern part of Pa. He was very proud of that command. I still have scrapbooks of clippings and photos of the men he commanded. He kept in touch with some of his sergeant's long after the war was over.

Then he got assigned to Fort Indiantown Gap. More on that later.

Passed Phase 1

I just passed the last module for Phase 1 of the 63J course. A week from tomorrow I report for Phase 2 school at Aberdeen MD. I'll be blogging daily from the school--everything from wake up calls to lights out if I can.