Eight Minutes and Gone

From the time the Medevac call comes in, the first pair of Blackhawks in the rotation have fifteen minutes to be airborne. Actually, the standard for our Medevac unit is eight minutes, the Army standard is 15. When I heard the call at the Medevac hangar I went straight out to where the birds sit in low blast walls waiting to take off. The crew chiefs of both birds were already getting the aircraft ready for flight. The medic ran to the Evac bird, the door gunner ran to the chase bird.

Within three minutes the twin turbojet engines were screaming and the huge rotor blades were starting to turn. I walked along the revetment walls to the from of the aircraft so I could watch the takeoff from directly under their flight path. The main rotor turned faster and faster. I moved to a dead air spot where I was not being buffeted by the wind from the main rotors. The tail roters were spinning crazy fast looking like they might pick the whole aircraft up from the back.

Suddenly the medic bird took off. At first slowly upward, then twisting to the right it banked up into the air, straighten out and shot into the distance.

The chase bird was seconds behind following the same counterclockwise curve into the sky. These pictures are some of two dozen I took in about 20 seconds until the Blackhawks sped out of view.

Always Moving

I got back from dinner tonight and two other sergeants in our company were in the room. When I walked in I said hello and said I was just picking up the books for tonight's book group. My roommate said, "Our door is the net and Gussman is a tennis ball. He bounces in, he bounces out." I do. But I need to have different things with me for each activity, especially especially on book group days. Today we got done in the motor pool at about 230pm. I went from there to the Charlie Med hangar for a meeting then back to the room to change from the uniform to PTs. I did some writing, rested for a while (we get up at 0445), called a couple of coworkers back in the states about a meeting, then went to the coffee shop to read for tonight's book group and a few pages of French (Le trois mousquetaires).

Then I came back to the CHU dropped the books and rode the perimeter of the post. After that I made two more phone calls about work and then off to dinner. I need to have my weapon to go to dinner, but not a backpack, since they are not allowed in the DFAC. After dinner is when I bounced through the door on the way to book group. Now I am going to the gym then maybe make a phone call back to the states.

There is always some point in the night when my head starts to hurt and I know it's time to sleep. Not yet though.

Med-Evac

Today I went to a meeting at the Med-Evac building. The meeting was very routine, just a discussion of how to get soldiers' photos from across the battalion on a single computer. Just after the meeting I was talking to one of the pilots on duty. There are two aircraft that are on standby for immediate take-off and another pair of Blackhawks as a backup for the first. The lead bird in each pair is the medic bird. The trail bird is in air assault configuration with guns in the doors.

When they get a call, team one goes and team two goes on alert. Yesterday there were two calls almost simultaneously. I got to watch the preparation and take-off. The first pair were gone inside of eight minutes--jumping from the pad where they rest into the air one right after the other.

But there were only three Blackhawks on the ready line, not four. It turns out the fourth was on an instrument check flight--guns mounted and ready to go. I watched as the crew chief and pilots made final checks and started up the lone medic bird on the ground. Just as the rotor blades started spinning quickly, the chase bird came into view in the southern sky. It wheeled above the airstrip and landed after a rapid descent, but never stopped moving. As soon is it touched down 300 meters away from the medic bird, it slowly taxied, making the angry noises helicopters make when they are on the ground with the engines pushing those big rotors.

In a few seconds the Medic bird took off. The chase Blackhawk jumped from the concrete taxi five seconds later. It was beautiful to watch. And good for the soldiers at the other end of the trip. Because the calls were clearly very serious.

Shadow Blog

Several of you, especially Daria and Meredith, have insisted I keep a "Shadow Blog" the one in which I talk about all the bad stuff I can't really publish while I am living and working so close to the soldiers I am writing about. They are right of course. Someday soon I will need to look at my sphere of life from above, from every side, and from below. At Meredith's advice, I took down a post about a guy who failed at everything but maintained a thoroughly condescending attitude to everyone around him. I serve with people who rise to the worst occasions and really perform and some who have been relieved of duty for incompetence, and more who should have been.

When I went back in the Army I remembered the friendships I made during the time I spent in Germany. In particular Abel Lopez and Cliff Almes, true brothers and friends for life--in fact since all three of us are believers, friends for eternity. But the messy recriminations and power struggles at every level here are starting to remind me of what I had forgotten: there are people who I served with back then who I found revolting, and because we spent time together in cold tents and colder tank turrets, I know very well their failings and they know mine.

We are now getting to that point in the current deployment when the infighting becomes more visible. The adrenaline of training and the good feeling of going on an adventure is wearing off. I will keep the shadow blog, but I will write when I can about the people and things that are falling apart.

Who Fights This War? An Ex Marine

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.

September 11 Ceremony Went Great

It was really great today to be doing something I like to do and am good at. The event came off perfectly--we started at 310pm had four songs, two speeches, two prayers, the reading of the names of the dead here at COB Adder/Tallil Ali. It is wonderful to be the emcee of an event with all military participants--they do what they are told!

Anyway, so the songs, prayers and speeches were spot on length and when I announced the moment of silence, the base loudspeakers announced the moment of silence for the whole base 10 seconds later. My perfectionist event manager friends Kristine Chin, Nancy Vonada and Karen Coker, amazing as they are, would be jealous of hitting those marks!

The event ended seven hours ago and I am still buzzing. I was the first speaker. The other speaker was an Air Force colonel who talked about being in the underground control center in Colorado for the US and Canadian Air Forces when the 9/11 attacks happened. He is a passionate speaker. He talked about how the military responded to the attacks and what it was like to be at the nerve center of air defense.

I spoke as a civilian on 9/11 who came back to serve. We complemented each other very well. Here's the text of my speech--5 minutes, no more, no less.

Good afternoon. I am Sergeant Neil Gussman of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 104th Aviation. On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 Americans died. I am going to tell you about one of my friends who lived through the 9/11 attacks and something about why I am here in Iraq today.

Eight years ago I was a civilian, about as civilian as I could be, and now I am serving with you. So how much of a civilian was I? On that fateful Tuesday morning I was 48 years old. I first enlisted in January 1972 and had served till July of 1984. My wife and I had just adopted our fourth child and the oldest of our four children was 12.

I was the communications manager of one of those dot-com internet businesses that burned money faster than Pentagon procurement and sometimes had the lifespan of a firefly.
We had the best computers in our Philadelphia offices and we all watched in horror on those expensive screens as the World Trade Center Towers fell into heaps. I have never felt so helpless. For years before the attack, I had gone to New York almost every month on business and had worked with many editors with offices near the World Trade Center. I tried to call some of my friends in New York, but no one could get through.

One of the editors I tried to call was Helga Tilton—a thin, tough woman in her late 50s who was the editor-in-chief a trade magazine located on Rector Street, just two blocks south of Ground Zero. Helga was born in Frankfurt Germany in 1943. Frankfurt was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Nazi Germany. She grew up in ruins, deprivation and poverty. But she worked hard in school, studied English and wanted to live in America. By the early 70s she finished a PhD at New York University and was fluent enough to get a job as a writer in America.

When the twin towers fell, Helga got out of the building knowing from her grim childhood that when one building falls it can take down others. Helga had married a very nervous American who was an NYC native. She decided it was her duty to make sure he was all right. So she put on her walking shoes, grabbed her purse and walked past Ground Zero almost six miles north to Central Park West.

I talked to Helga the next day. She was fine. Her husband was a wreck. At that time I thought about enlisting, but I was too old then. Even with 11 years prior service and a waiver, I was too old.

That was then.

In 2006, the rules changed. The enlistment age went up to 42. I could re-enlist, but doubt held me back for another year.

But over the winter, I decided I really could serve again. I never thought it would be easy to come back at 54. In late April 2007 I passed my enlistment physical and ASVAB test. The only thing I was waiting for was an age waiver that thankfully took until July. But the biggest hurdle I would face was just two weeks away. Since the early 90s I have been an avid bicycle racer. On May 9, 2007, I was in a downhill race just about to pass for the win and touched wheels with another rider at 51 mph. Within a half hour I was Med-Evaced from the scene. I had broken four ribs, my right shoulder blade and collarbone and my nose. I cracked the first two vertebra in my neck and smashed the 7th. The next day I had emergency surgery to replace the smashed C-7 with a bone from a cadaver.

The injuries made me even more sure I wanted to serve. If I was going to risk my life, I wanted it to be for something more than a trophy. I got the waiver on July 13th. I told the recruiter I could enlist in August because the neurosurgeon said I would be out of the neck and chest brace I was in on August 2nd. I enlisted on August 16, 2007, at age 54 after a 23-year break in service.

But at the same time I was recovering and trying to enlist, Helga got sick. She was something of a health nut, but got pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive forms. She survived so much it was sad to think that the end of her life, like the beginning, was marked by death and ruins.

I talked to Helga and her husband a few times during her last months. She was calm and courageous facing a hopeless diagnosis while I was working to recover my health to join the Army during a war. An irony not lost on Helga. She died on November 14, 2007. For me, Helga will always be the face I see when I think of September 11. America inspires people to do great things, to survive the worst circumstances.

I am glad I could serve once more in honor of Helga, my own immigrant grandparents, and everyone who loves this country. I am very happy to be here today, a citizen soldier, serving with other soldiers who love America and are willing to make the huge sacrifices necessary to defend it.

Thank you.

Who Fights This War? Math Teacher and Drill Sergeant

"I'd rather be digging a damn ditch than sitting on my ass in an air-conditioned office pushing FRAGOs (Fragmentary Orders)." That was one of the first things Staff Sergeant Pamela Allen Bleuel said to me when I met her walking across on open area in a sandstorm. She is a cheerful, imposing, funny woman of 43 who joined the Army Reserves on a whim just before 9/11 and now has an intense love-hate relationship with life in camouflage.

Until last month SSG Bleuel was the sergeant in charge of the convoy training school here on Camp Adder. She taught troops how to drive and fight in convoys and how to best use the ungainly MRAP fighting vehicles that are now the standard troop carrier across Iraq. She loved convoy training and did not mind when her tour was extended. When she did the unit she went to decided her training as a military police officer would be best used processing FRAGOs--the daily changes to orders that bubble through the military system day and night.

Bleuel loves being outside, moving troops, and has no desire to sit in air conditioning, but she will do the job as well as she can until the end of her extended tour.

She joined the reserves in 2000 at age 35 with no prior military experience at all, because she saw two soldiers hanging up a sign in the small town in Kentucky where she lives. The sign said the Army would repay student loans for reserve soldiers. She had three daughters between 8 and 13 years old at the time, taught math at the local high school and had $30,000 in student loans. She signed up. She went off to basic at the end of the school year, trying to fit basic and advanced training into the summer break. Training did not quite fit her school schedule and she was just about done with training when the 9-11 attacks hit.

At that point she just wanted to serve and was jealous of the regular Army soldiers who were whisked away to airborne schools and other assignments. She served as an MP until 2004 when she trained to be a drill sergeant. Every summer after that she would "push troops" through Fort Knox, Kentucky, during the 11-week summer break at her school district. Her experience as a drill sergeant and an MP lead her to convoy training here in Iraq.

Now she is ready to go back to being a drill sergeant part time and a full time teacher. "Each year it gets easier to go back to pushing troops and harder to teach school," she said. "It's not the kids. It's the damn parents." She then gave her version of the teacher's lament that parents call her, email her, come to school to say their little child is special. "In the Army you don't deal with that. Mom doesn't call basic training," she said.

She also likes the structure and clarity of Army life, at least in training. "We have a goal; get the trainees ready to be soldiers." She also likes the deference of soldiers when compared to civilians. "When I get back from Knox and I am in a crowd at Wal-Mart, I wish I could yell 'Make a hole' and have everybody get out of my way."

Bleuel's wall is covered with pictures of her three children. She is very proud of them--even the one who, "Is a liberal and wants to save the whole damn world. She voted for Obama. We don't talk about politics." Bleuel is somewhere to the right of Oliver North politically and hates everything about France, which is a double layer of irony given her name.

At age 43 she has eight years of service and will have to decide soon whether she will make the Army a career or not. I'm guessing she will. The look she has in her eyes when she talks about basic training and convoy ops is not there when she talks about Algebra 2.