My Job and Envy

CS Lewis wrote in many places that the trouble with writing about the Devil, in his book the Screwtape Letters, was that thinking too much about the Devil hurt his own spiritual life. So I have been writing about envy a lot lately concerning the on-line article about our brigade and have been seeing how much envy is in my own life.

First, let me make clear that all the fuss I made about my job here had no real outcome. I thought one of the good things about a year on active duty would be I would lead some kind of Simple Life. I would have a job. I would do that job and leave it when I was done. As it turns out, I have a primary job as a squad leader and as Sergeant Tool Bitch in the motor pool, but when they are done, I am also the battalion public affairs sergeant, the PA sergeant for our company, I put together the newsletter, and have a couple of other additional duties. Beginning recently, I do the newsletter and some of my other work during motor pool hours. No Simple Life for me.

Which brings me to Envy. Our brigade is primarily two battalions. The guy who does the PA work for the other battalion does not have another job. He just writes and takes pictures. And every time I have seen him lately he is driving an SUV. So he only goes to the motor pool when his air-conditioned vehicle needs service. I am seriously envious of him.

And I am also the subject of envy. Since I became militant about doing my PA work at least partially during duty hours, I have been in air conditioning working on the newsletter or battalion PA work when my fellow motor pool soldiers are out in the sun. And this week has been particularly hot because the wind has died down. So they think I am doing nothing because I am working partially inside.

Life, Bladders and Scheduling

As the father of three girls, all of you who have kids, or have been a kid, or known a kid, know I had one kid who had the bladder capacity of a squirrel. That child was my youngest daughter. When she was potty trained, I was sad--at least at the prospect of driving places more than three miles away. Because she would inevitably need a pit stop. Trips to see grandmothers in Massachusetts and upstate New York meant at least three bathroom stops. Actually, I didn't mind because I like to drink coffee when I drive a long distance, and so I had an excuse to stop.

Now that I am in my mid-50s I have to go to bed late and wake up early to avoid stumbling across 200 yards of gravel in the middle of the night to the latrine. Lately, I have been staying up till almost midnight and getting up at 0445, so even at my age I can sleep through the night. Even so, when I wake up, I do a fast stretch for the bone spur in my heel then limp quickly across the gravel to the latrine.

My roommate, on the other hand, is the opposite of my youngest daughter and I. He can wake up, get dressed, brush his teeth outside our CHU, walk to the bus stop 1/3 of a mile away, ride two miles to the motor pool, step off the bus and then use the latrine at the motor pool. Amazing. By that time, I would be in tears or in a puddle, or both.

Newsletter, One More Comment on the Patriot-News Article

For the last few days I have been working in earnest on the company newsletter. This will be the third issue of five, maybe six, we will send to the soldiers and (hopefully) the families of soldiers in this unit. If you want a copy of either of the previous newsletters or the one I am working on now, email me at ngussman@gmail.com. This issue is mostly about the half of Echo Company that does refueling--the company I am in is about half refuelers for helicopters, half vehicle maintenance, plus a few cooks, supply and administrative soldiers.

The comments have stopped on the Pennlive article, but I was emailing a friend and it reminded of on big difference between training for the Cold War in the 1970s and our current situation in Iraq: We are six months into this deployment and have not lost ONE soldier. Back in the 70s we had a joint NATO exercise called REFORGER. About 150,000 NATO troops would manouver on the East-West German border. My recollection is 30-50 soldiers died during each REFORGER. A lot of it was jeep rollovers. No seatbelts back then in tactical vehicle. Two infantrymen attached to our unit in 77 crawled under an M-88 tank recovery vehicle to sleep and keep warm. They were crushed in their sleeping bags when the 57-ton vehicle moved on an alert order.

We'll most likely all go home alive and those guys are worried about who has longer work hours or better chow. Dante puts Envy deep in Hell.
That's why.

Response to Army Morality

B52 BOMBER TAKING OFF

I received this email from a Viet Nam vet writing the moral dimension of his war. I thought you would like it as much as I did:

We deployed as a unit in the Summer of 1968: A B-52 Bomb Squadron, a KC-135 Air Refueling Squadron and various maintenance and support units and personnel. The B-52's were based in Guam with a detachment in Thailand. The KC-135's were based in Okinawa with detachments in Thailand and Taiwan. Both Guam and Okinawa had large populations of resident US citizens (round eyes), AKA "American League," and open access via commercial airlines for more. Thailand and Taiwan were vibrant economic cultures with lots of ways and places to spend money and meet members of the indigenous opposite sex, AKA "National League." The atmosphere in all these places was Fly and Party. You were doing either one or the other. A phenomenon developed in which guys were writing home, saying in effect, "I'm being good, but guess what Joe did!" It's no surprise that Joe's wife soon got a full briefing.

As it turned out, the same sort of thing was happening back home. The wives left behind were partying too, encouraged by flocks of party animals flying in on weekend cross-country "training" flights to bases where the cats were away and the mice were ready to play. I personally began receiving anonymous letters keeping me up to date on my wife's activities and upon whose couch my 4 year-old daughter had spent the night.

When we returned home after six months the divorces began. In all, among just the flight crews and the flight line maintenance troops there were 40 divorces. For some of these guys it was a second divorce, the first having occurred at a different base after a similar deployment. My marriage began to disintegrate during the interim before the next deployment.

In the Summer of 1969, we did it again. This time before we departed the Chaplain included in his "God be with You" briefing,remarks to the effect that we were not our brothers' keepers; it was not up to us to write home and chronicle the misbehaviors of our friends. When we returned from this second deployment the unit was taken out of the line for upgrade to a new aircraft, the FB-111, AKA MacNamara's Folly. The effect of the second deployment on crew force matrimony was diffused by hundreds of personnel reassignments.

There is one funny story worth relating. In 1968, a major typhoon (hurricane) blasted through the western Pacific. The island of Guam, home for dozens or even hundreds of B-52's was threatened. A sanctuary had to be found for them all. International negotiations were conducted at the State Department level to assure governments, such as China and North Korea, that this was strictly a matter of safety, not aggression. So, in due time a flock of B-52's arrived at our KC-135 base in Taiwan and the crews were billeted at the largest hotel in the nearby city of Taichung. Whoever made the arrangements was unaware that the hotel was a notorious brothel. I'll leave the rest of the story to your imagination. Such is the fog of war.

Winter is Almost Here!!!

Last Wednesday I woke up at 0530 and checked the temp on the bike. It was 79 degrees. The first time I had seen a temp below 80 since I have been in this country. By 0700 it was already 91 degrees, but at least it was below 80 for a few minutes.

This morning it was 79 degrees at 0630. I didn't check at 0530, it could have been 77!! And the high temps are lower also. Today, I rode to the south side of the base at 0930 and it was only 112--I was carrying a 20-pound pack and my weapon and wearing my uniform with long sleeves so you needn't worry. I stayed warm. In the afternoon around 2pm I rode back. It was 122. Two weeks ago it would have been 129. By 5pm is was down to 117 and by 6pm it was 112. Right now it is below 100. I have heard it gets cold here in January. I'll wait and see.

In other drama, a friend of mine wrote last night to say that there were two openings for door gunners and I should apply immediately before the openings were public. In the morning I talked to another well-informed member of that company and heard the slots were actually filled but the names weren't public. Oh well. It would be a lot of fun to fly, but it really is too late now. So I will continue to work in the motor pool and my various additional duties. This week I will be working to write the company newsletter by Monday. The commander wants it to be distributed by the end of the month and my stateside production editor says I have to send it early next week to get it done by the end of the month.

For this week we are reporting to work at 0600 instead of 0700 so I should get to sleep soon.

Comments on the Comments

My last several meals in the DFAC, the topic of conversation has been
the article on Pennlive.com about our brigade and all the negative
comments on it. I got an email from a friend who has never been in
the military that sums up the feelings of many people here:

"Those people are bitter and have absolutely no shame about
airing dirty laundry. Those are some seriously detailed comments and a
lot of insubordination. I think the whiners are the "kids" in their
20s who have grown up with Facebook and Twitter, where you just post
before you think. I couldn't get past reading five posts, because all
of it basically said the same thing. It's like the snowball effect for
complaining. Once someone starts, it becomes an avalanche of 'I have
it worse than you do'."

A friend from Europe said, "Apparently they are Americans first and soldiers second. Individual freedom is some kind of demi-god in America and an excuse for a lot of bad behavior."

On the good side, the comments are starting to swing back toward, "Shut up."

And life goes on here. I was in a maintenance hangar a few nights ago after a very proud platoon sergeant left a note saying her soldiers would be removing and servicing the drive train of a Blackhawk helicopter and also removing and inspecting the engines from a Chinook helicopter. She was right. Soldiers were over, under and around those helicopter power trains. I got some good pictures despite the weird lighting in the maintenance hangar.

Despite the impression those comments give, there are a lot of soldiers working their butts off here in Tallil and at the other sites where our brigade is stationed. And even the people who have it relatively good are still here wearing long sleeves and carrying a weapon when the temp climbs near or over 130 F at Noon.

Artist's Revenge

All the years I worked at Godfrey Advertising in Lancaster I saw how frustrated artists would get when their clear, coherent designs came back from clients. Sometimes modified, sometimes all but ruined, almost always worse. Because it takes good taste to evaluate art, but clients usually just had money.

We must wear either ACU fatigues or PT uniforms. The one caveat is that we are allowed to wear a unit PT shirt. So one of the three members of our unit with artistic ability volunteered to design the t-shirt. He clearly drew the short straw. A woman in my squad designed the coin that our commander and first sergeant present for people who go beyond the norm. She was designing just for the command staff. The t-shirt will be worn by everyone. So when the design was complete, not just a pencil concept, the artist began to get lots of advice from people who outranked him.

The t-shirt falls under my control to some extent because I am the Morale, Welfare and Recreation NCO. So for $800 I got to do something I never could do at an ad agency. I told the specialist who was getting buried with advice that I would front the money for the first order and to go ahead with the design as is. We are only getting enough t-shirts for half the company with the initial order, so I am sure I will get my money back--hopefully in time to pay the credit card bill. But if not, I still got to move the process along and leave the artwork the way it was designed rather than let a committee change it. In three weeks or so we will be stylish at PT.