Bike Update

As of yesterday, September 30, I passed the 3000-mile mark here in Iraq. I also cut 2 minutes from my 5k run time the previous week. It is much easier to improve when one is slow. Last week I ran it in 30 minutes and 20 seconds. This week I was down to 28:22. The civilian who runs the race gave me a medal for finishing 3rd in 50-plus (out of three guys who signed up). It was really a close race between the first two guys--they finished in 23:14 and 23:20. I was most of a half mile back in third.

The bike mileage means I have also made more than 200 laps of Tallil Ali's Perimeter Road. Katharine Sanderson, a friend from the UK, wrote recently. I replied to her something about the war. She said, "Somehow I forget that you're fighting a war at all. Weird. It must be your witty blog posts about books and PR!"

Along the same lines, my wife said, "I'm enjoying the other-personal glimpses on your blog.  Since I've been wrestling so intently with my students over verbs, I think your "fights" (as in "Who fights this war?") catches my eye . . . especially because there's not really any traditional fighting going on in your stories.  I know that "Who prosecutes this war?" doesn't have the same cachet, so I'm not suggesting you change this at all."

But they are right. Who would know from most of my blog posts or my current bike mileage that I am serving in a war?

I have more "Who Fights This War?" stories and will post another one tomorrow. Whether fight is the right word or not, we are here, there is a war and so I'll keep the word fight.

Envy is Relative

I have a new office. A really nice office. An occasion for envy for everyone in the unit I left and for many people who come to visit the other people that work in my office. The people in my office are the battalion commander, the executive officer, and their assistant--and me. I have an office with a real wooden desk, a book case, a table, a comfortable chair and a door.

I was working in a dusty corner of the motor pool on a folding table. This is a big step up in the world. But then, as my wife pointed out when I told her about my new digs, nobody I work with back home would be jealous. My new office is in a trailer. It is an Italian-made, double-wide, really nice trailer, but it is still a trailer and I still have to walk 75 meters to use the latrine trailer.

But it does have a coffee maker.

And the boss is a member of the Pennsylvania legislature so he gets an incredible amount of free stuff from home. So the office has great snacks.

I should get to stay in this office for three of the four months until we are finally back home. Late January to early February is becoming a more and more concrete time for us to get home.

I can't wait.

Who Fights This War? -- Flight Medic

Army Staff Sergeant Cynthia Dalton, 

Camp Adder, Iraq, 2009-10

“I am never nervous on the flight out,” said Staff Sgt. Cynthia Dalton, describing her experience as a flight medic in Iraq. “I go over every possible scenario in my mind. But when we touch down, I just go.”

Dalton, who is assigned as a flight medic to the 2nd Battalion, 104th Aviation Brigade, part of Task Force Keystone, said her first rescue mission in Iraq was the hardest. It was a vehicle rollover in bad weather. One Soldier was dead at the scene, two more were badly injured. She and the other medics at the scene treated the Soldiers as much as they could and then loaded them on their Black Hawk helicopters for transport to the nearest emergency medical facility.

“Both Soldiers made it,” she said. “But after a mission like that I am really hard on myself. I can see why people burn out. I go over everything I could possibly have done differently. We did our jobs, but it always seems like there is something I could have done different or better.”

Dalton, a daughter of military parents who hails from Orwigsburg, Pa., said she knew from an early age she wanted to help Soldiers, but tried various jobs before finding a career path that was right for her.

“I joined the Army at 17 when I was a junior in high school,” she said. “I went to basic training between my junior and senior years and started training to be a medic right after high school.”

While serving in the Army Reserve, she got additional medical training as a civilian and worked for a nursing agency.

She was serving as a reservist in Germany on September 11, 2001. She was activated in Germany in a medical support unit and helped Soldiers prepare for deployment to the Middle East.

“I did literally hundreds of immunizations every day,” Dalton said.

When she returned to the states, she switched to the Pennsylvania Army National Guard to take advantage of the education benefits.

After getting Soldiers ready for deployment at the very beginning of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, Dalton spent the three years prior to her current deployment helping Soldiers return to civilian life after deployment.

“I love helping Soldiers,” she said. “Soldiers come back from deployment needing many kinds of help to reintegrate into civilian life. The Guard has the help available. I make sure they can get access to the right resources.”

In preparation for deployment to Iraq, Dalton trained as a flight medic. She has worked with two medical evacuation companies during the deployment, including an Oregon-based unit during training in Oklahoma and Kuwait. She is currently serving with an Alaska-based active Army MEDEVAC unit. Dalton works a 48-hour cycle, sleeping and eating at the hangar waiting for MEDEVAC calls.

When she returns to the United States, she plans to take a full-time job as the medical sergeant for the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 55th Brigade in Scranton. “That will be the end of flying for a while,” she said. “I am sure I will miss it.”

Who Fights This War? -- MEDEVAC Pilot

This story went on line yesterday on Armed Forces News service so if you want to see the pilot's picture, just Google my name under the "News" tab and this story will come up with photos.


CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE ADDER, Iraq – Maj. Matt Stevenson sits alone in the ready room next to the medical evacuation hangar at 11 p.m. He is hunched over his personal computer, editing a document for a meeting the next day.

“I’ve got to get some sleep in case we get a 2 a.m. call,” he says, mostly to the air. The rest of his crew is asleep or resting, waiting for the call.

Stevenson is a senior staff officer with 2nd Battalion 104th Aviation Brigade, but two to four days every week he is a MEDEVAC pilot on a 48-hour rotation with Alaska-based Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment. His shift will be over at 9 a.m. the following morning, but he had a long flight in the afternoon and a long day of meetings on either side of the flight.

“I have to stay balanced, I have to stay rested, but I have to complete the mission,” he said.

It’s a challenge he faces both in civilian life and on deployment. Senior Trooper Stevenson has served with the Pennsylvania State Police since 1995, most recently flying Aviation Patrol Unit One in the southeastern area of the Commonwealth. Adding MEDEVAC pilot to his staff duties makes life hectic, but Stevenson lives to fly.

He arranges his life to complete the staff tasks to the best of his ability, making the time necessary to fly MEDEVAC Black Hawks every week. He is serious and professional when discussing staff duties, but is all smiles and broad hand and arm gestures describing a favorite MEDEVAC mission. Even while crawling on top of the Black Hawk underneath the rotors for pre-flight checks before starting the engines, he is clearly enjoying himself whether under, on top or at the controls of a Black Hawk helicopter.

Stevenson said flying MEDEVAC in Iraq has many similarities with flying for his civilian job.

“Flying for the state police is always on an emergency basis,” he said. “The mission can be a lost child, lost hikers or hunters, or a bad guy pursuit. We get the call. We go.”
MEDEVAC is the same. On the first 24 hours of his 48-hour shift, Stevenson and his crew are “second up,” the backup team that goes if a call comes in and “first up” is already on a mission. During the first day, the crew must be ready to take off within a half-hour and can travel a short distance from the ready hangar. On the second day the crew moves to “first up.” The Army standard says they must be prepared to fly within 15 minutes of receiving a MEDEVAC call. In Charlie Company, the standard is eight minutes.

Whether at Ali Air Base or in Pennsylvania’s Twin Valley, the emergency response mission gives Stevenson a sense of accomplishment.

“We make a difference here,” he said. “When a Soldier is down, we do everything we can to get them care and get them home. At home when we find the lost child or get the bad guy, it’s a great feeling.”

“One big difference here is we have to be more vigilant when landing at a point of injury,” Stevenson said. Scanning for mines, Improvised Explosive Devices and the enemy are part of every mission in Iraq.

Bicycles in Thailand at the End of the Viet Nam War

From my uncle who served in Viet Nam several times and other parts of South East Asia for almost a decade:

This is another Thailand story but a very ordinary one. At Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base in 1974 bird colonels had staff cars, the rest of us whatever we could find. The Thais, seeing an opportunity, opened for business on the base selling (very) used Honda mopeds, provided repair services and sold gasoline by the pint, actually probably a half liter. A moped will run for a long time on a half liter of gas. Guys would buy a moped, ride it daily everywhere and sell it back when they rotated away.

The counter culture was bicycles. The BX did a bustling business in Japanese bikes. Most guys, me for instance, bought a bike, dutifully had the Air Police mark various parts of it stamped with an ID number--bike rustling was a big issue-- and rode it everywhere as if it was a car. After a while guys referred to their bike as their "horse." Korat was as as flat a table, being in the central highlands of interior Thailand, so a bike was ideal. The difference from mopeds was that most guys took their bike home when they rotated away, fully intending to ride it. I did. When it arrived I discovered that the seat stem had been replaced with one that was too large and driven in with a hammer. I had to use a wheel puller to extract it. Didn't matter. I never rode that bike once I got home. Eventually, I gave it to some charity when I was cleaning out the garage.

Lapsed Evangelicals

In other posts, I have written about the choirs and the services at Church and how different it is from civilian life. Of course, one of the big differences in the Chapel versus home is the number of women. More women than men attend Church for the very good reason that women are more likely to be poor and disadvantaged than men, and the Church ministers to those with needs--material and spiritual. And for the same reason, the Church has more old people than young people.

So Chapel services are about 90 percent male regardless of denomination, which more or less reflects the population. But considering that 80 percent of the military is under 25, the soldiers attending Church are, by Army standards, somewhere between old and ancient.

So where are the kids? Avoiding Chapel just like their college-bound counterparts avoid Church. In fact, I've talked to young men who were active in youth group, went to Church every week and chucked all of it right after basic training. You want to go to Church during basic because those who don't clean the barracks.

I asked one young man I have known for a while about why he never goes to Chapel after being in Church every week. He said that everybody went to youth group because they hung out there, but they were all getting drunk on Friday and Saturday. He said that a lot of things they were taught turned out not to be true. And he was sick of feeling phony.

It was hardly the first time I had heard that. The Lapsed Evangelicals are actually fairly easy to spot. They are among the leaders in getting in trouble, but they are genuinely polite when I get one of them for a work detail. The bad kids whine and complain by reflex. The LEs break the rules, but generally accept the punishment and are good soldiers.

They still have the culture game to play when they go home. More than one of the LEs avoided that problem by going to Europe, Hawaii, or some other place rather than home for leave. A lot of studies say they will come back to the Church when they have kids. I'm not sure. The guy I talked to today and other LEs are rejecting what they see as a fraudulent subculture for what they see as real life.

And an aggravation of that perception is some of the people they see in the Army who attend Church. There is choir member known for having fits in the workplace, a guy who got relieved for incompetence as a squad leader and believes (and talks about) many conspiracy theories, arch conservatives who talk about Liberal conspiracies, and a whole collection of strange people. There are, of course, some of the best people in the unit--soldiers who work uncomplaining in the worst conditions this deployment has.

One of the things I most looked forward to on this deployment was meeting more of the kind of believers I served with in Germany. But my last overseas assignment was before the Evangelical Church was swallowed by the politics of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and the Christian Right. The Army reflects the nation it recruits from and even the LEs vote straight Republican. They may be doubting God and rebelling against their family, the Church and (particularly) their youth group, but the don't go so far as to become "Librals." The LEs that go to college do that.

Riding in the Dark

I've got another riding buddy who gets stuck in meetings till a few minutes before dark but really wants to ride so I go with him. He has got a five watt (dim) headlamp. I have a blinking LED headlamp that is bright enough for on-coming cars to see us, but even though I am getting close to 200 laps of this place, I miss a gouge or a hole once in a while.

It is a lower intensity workout because we can't sprint in the dark--not actual dark, we've got a quarter moon and lots of security and airfield lights.

Although the rifle halves in the pack seemed like a good idea, my back hurt from riding strictly on the seat. I will have to solve the rifle barrel whacking my helmet problem before I can carry the rifle in backpack.

For those who read the Nick and Nora Nordstrom story, Lenore Skenazy, formerly of the New York Post, now of freerangekids.com is interested in their story so they may become minor celebrities.

I did stories about medics that should be able to go up soon as "Who fights this war?" stories. From the email and comments I get, those are the mst popular entries on the blog.

I did have one guy say I should write less about bicycling. Sorry, this is my blog, my life, and that life includes bicycling!!! BTW--2,850 miles on Tallil Ali Air Base so far! I should be at 3,000 by October!