Back in America--But not Home for 3 Weeks

Yesterday afternoon we landed in America. But I am not home yet. I and everybody else who is out processing from Iraq and Afghanistan cannot leave post until all the paperwork is done. I am in the advance group so we will be on Fort Dix for another three weeks.

But at least we are in America. It is nice to be in my home country even if I can't go home. The Army is a great place to learn patience--or to find out you can't.

This morning in the welcome before 7 1/2 hours of briefings, a colonel told us he thought he was ready to go back to civilian life after his first deployment in 2004. He returned to his job as a marketing manager for a large pharmaceutical company. In a meeting that was dragging on because everyone was waiting for someone else to do something, he stood up and said, "Enough, it's time to make a God-damned decision." He decided to be full time in the Army after that.

I can imagine that in the nasty days of 2004 the transition from life under fire to life in meetings was abrupt. For me, the last few months have almost been life a planned transition back to "the world." I have been working in an office, more importantly a quiet office, with very polite people around me. The Army would blow in and out of the doors when there was an emergency, but then calm resumed.

And now I have three weeks of paperwork in America instead of the usual rush. I can't wait to be a civilian again. I'll just be serving one weekend a month from now until they throw me out for being to old (age 60).

Who Fights This War?--Task Force Commander

As his digital watch silently records the time passing midnight Lt. Col. Scott Perry sits at his desk hand writing letters in response to cards, letters and gifts he receives from folks back home. Some of them he never met. “They took the time to write and thank me for my service,” he said. “The least I can do is answer in kind.” He usually gives in to sleep and goes back to his CHU between midnight and 0100 hours. Time! Best use of time. Lack of time. Perry is always aware of time.
In the morning he is up early and back in the office. “This is an awesome responsibility commanding a combat Task Force,” he said. “I need to be on top of things. I wouldn’t sleep at all if I could dispense with it.”
Each day begins with a calendar review with his assistant Spc. Andrea Magee. She keeps the calendar for Perry and for Maj. Joel Allmandinger, the Task Force Diablo Executive Officer. Allmandinger and Magee also begin their days with coffee: the first one in makes the first pot. Perry does not drink coffee. “I am not going to let something like that own me,” he says of caffeine.
Even though he refuses caffeine, Perry is a bundle of energy. He explodes into a room, moving faster than anyone else around him and asking questions as he strides through doorways. “Magee! I am going to the TOC. Tell me where I am supposed to be at 11,” he says as he walks through his office door around Magee’s work area and out the front door of the building 739, the Task Force command post. Magee has had six months of practice and can spin 180 degrees from the NIPR (non-secure) computer on her desk to the SIPR (secure) computer on the table behind her and answer Perry as he passes by her desk and before he hits the door.
Magee’s meticulous schedules only last until the second crisis. At the first crisis—a downed aircraft in need of recovery, a Red Cross message—Magee switches Allmandinger into the critical meetings Perry will miss and pushes the routine appointments back. It’s the second crisis that brings down the whole schedule.
When Perry is handling the first emergency and Allmandinger is already in a meeting with the brigade commander, when the next crisis hits the whole schedule is gone.
Sometimes it is a mission. Perry and Allmandinger are both Blackhawk pilots on rotation in the Adder missions. Sometimes they are on call for the Adder reserve mission. When reserve goes active, the pilots on call go on flying status.
“When I am flying I am totally focused on the mission,” he said. “It gives me a chance to clear my mind, focus on flying and get myself ready for the next crisis.”
In addition to the round of meetings and appointments that fill his day, Building 739 has a steady stream of visitors wanting to see the commander on a matter of considerable importance to them. When someone without an appointment enters the building they have to pass by Magee before they reach the commander’s office. She asks politely what they need to see the colonel about and usually offers to make an appointment if the subject is not urgent.
Others go to Allmandinger’s office first to get a preliminary reading on whether the request merits a meeting with the commander and if so, when. Both Allmandinger and Magee act as gatekeeper’s for Perry. Sometimes gently, sometimes firmly.
Perry admits to being a chronic workaholic. In civilian life he is the Pennsylvania State Representative for the 92nd congressional district and owner operator of a mechanical contracting business. His usual work pattern was to work at both jobs from early morning until well into the night, go home, then start over again.
The deployment changed the work environment from Central Pa. to Southern Iraq, but the schedule is the same.
One usual habit of a workaholic that Perry does not share is eating at his desk. Despite the obvious time saving of eating from a to-go plate while working, Perry and his staff stop work at midday and in the evening and eat lunch and dinner together. The people at the table vary, but as few as six or as many as sixteen will eat and make jokes together—usually Warriors Dining Facility (DFAC)for lunch and Coalition DFAC for dinner. Few other units have this kind of cohesion in the staff. Eating together often with friends is one of the great benefits of deployment that do not carry over into civilian life.
When he returns from this deployment life is going to be very different. Before deployment his family was just he and his new wife—quite an adjustment after 45 years of being single. Now when he returns to America his eight-month-old daughter will be waiting and sixteen-hour work days will not be an option. He will be back in the legislature with critical state and national elections on the horizon, back in business, a husband, a father for the first time, and they are hoping to move to a larger home.
Perry loves high performance cars, used to race, and talks about what car he should drive next: his Corvette will look a little awkward with a baby seat. He also loves clocks. He wears a digital G Force watch here because he breaks regular watches in the cockpit. But at home in a suit he wears simple, well-made analog watches. He has three fine timepieces in his home, clocks with precise German-made movements that announce each second with a firm “tick.”
With the little time left in the deployment, Perry will finish paperwork, get in final flights, plan for life after deployment, and get ready to make sure the 700-plus members of Task Force Diablo get home to their families. And there will never quite be enough time.

Who Fights This War?--Task Force Commander's Assistant

In 2009 her life has gone through more changes than a chameleon walking on a rainbow. Spc. Andrea Magee, 27, of Pleasanton, California, began the deployment as Andrea Whitacre working in flight operations for Task Force Diablo. Also, when the deployment began she was engaged for a year to Staff Sgt. Jeremy Magee, a former Marine Sniper who is an Air Traffic Controller attached to 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.
In March, things began to change. On March 18, they changed more. That was the day Andrea and Jeremy got married. They were going to wait, but waiting meant living in separate CHUs for the entire deployment, marriage meant the same CHU. So they were married in their ACU uniforms in Commanche Courthouse. During the next month they made plans to share a CHU at Joint Base Balad.
Then in mid-April, the commander of 28th Combat Aviation Brigade decided we would not be going to JBB, but to Tallil Ali Air Base. So after a couple of weeks in tents in Kuwait, they got their CHU at Tallil in May. Then in June another change. Andrea became the assistant to Lt. Col. Scott Perry and Maj. Joel Allmandinger, the commander and the executive officer of Task Force Diablo. Andrea went from shift work in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) to maintaining the schedules for Perry and Allmandinger, as well as removing some of their paperwork burden.
Her first instruction in her new job was that
nothing she hears in the command building gets repeated outside. She also found out that one of her important duties was controlling the traffic into the commander’s office. “Not everyone who wants to see the commander right away actually needs to,” she said. Another important task was rebuilding the schedules of the commander and executive officer when a crisis throws the whole schedule off for hours or a whole day.
“If one of them is on Reserve and gets called to fly, the other has to cover the most important meetings and everything else has to get pushed to the next available date,” Magee said. “And the call always comes a day when both of their schedules are packed.”
Magee currently has more than 60 credit hours in college and plans to finish a bachelor’s degree and attend Officer Candidate School within the next two years.

Who Fights This War? Executive Officer and Racer

On September 11, 2001, Maj. Joel Allmandinger was visiting his parents in Tehachapi, California, with his wife and two children. He was on terminal leave after eight years on active duty as an Army Aviation Officer and a Blackhawk pilot. The 1993 graduate of West Point was ready to be a civilian. He is a strong advocate of free enterprise and was ready to go to work for a Fortune 500 Company and start on the road to the top of corporate management.
Then he heard the horrible news from New York, from the Nation’s Capital, from a field in western Pennsylvania. The nation he swore to defend was under attack just as he finished eight years of peacetime service. It was nearly a week before regular airline service was restored. On September 16, Allmandinger and his family flew home to Macungie, Pa. As soon as he arrived, he drove to Fort Indiantown Gap and signed up to serve in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
Allmandinger began his civilian career and is on the path he sought. When he left for this deployment, he was a Key Account Executive for the Kellogg Company, one of the largest food producers in the world. He is responsible for a significant part of Kellogg’s business with Giant Food Stores in Pennsylvania, an account worth tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue for Kellogg. He plans to return to that job when Task Force Diablo’s deployment ends in January.
During his tour in Iraq, Allmandinger served as Executive Officer for Task Force Diablo. He flew Adder missions weekly, attended the many short and long meetings that go into running an aviation battalion, and worked every day until crew rest requirements forced a day off. As executive officer, Allmandinger was in command whenever the commander was flying and when Perry was on R&R leave.
The major’s day begins before 0600 hours with a long morning run or bike ride followed by weight training in the gym. Allmandinger was on the bicycle racing team at West Point and has won running races here and in Iraq, including the 15k Boilermaker run in July. He also was the first finisher to both ride and run in the Task Force Diablo Biathlon in November. After his workout he faces a full day of meetings, crises, last-minute changes, and problems resolved. Every day is packed with activity through early evening and sometimes well into the night. This is Allmandinger’s second deployment. He served in Kosovo in 2005-6. He also must find time to fly in addition to his other National Guard commitments and balance all of this with a demanding job, family life, working out and training for bicycle racing.
Deployments are not the best plan for career advancement, but he decided more than nine years ago that he would do his best to keep his life in level flight whichever way the wind blows.

New Year's Eve--2009 by the Numbers

What an odd year for a 56-year-old guy who works at a museum. This year I have lived in two US states and two middle eastern countries--Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Iraq and Kuwait. Lance Armstrong wrote a book titled "It's Not About the Bike." If I wrote that I would be lying. so the first numbers are about the bike.
Miles: 7100 total
PA--500
OK--1300
Kuwait--100
Iraq--5200
I competed in four races. Three in PA while I was on leave, one in Iraq.
I rode four bikes outside PA. Two I bought for the trip and broke them both. The single speed 29er and track bike are in Conex containers on the way to America. The post chaplain at Fort Sill OK loaned me his bike while I was there (May the Lord bless him!) I bought a $100 bike for the two weeks I was in Kuwait in the spring, broke it and traded it for a latte at Starbucks. I bought a bike for $250 in Iraq in December after I broke the 29er. I sold it the day before I left for $250 and threw in a pump.

I read only 15 books this year--lowest total since I started keeping track. And almost all of them were re-reads: six by CS Lewis, Inferno & Purgatorio, Aeneid, and The Three Musketeers (an old edited French version). New to my reading list were George Orwell's Essays, another of John Polkinghorne's books on theology and physics, and The Audacity of Hope by President Obama.

The unabridged Democracy in America is my first book for 2009. I am halfway through The Oak and the Calf by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a second (very different) abridged French version of the Three Musketeers and should finish them during the long hours in Kuwait.

By a rough calculation I have written more than 75,000 words on my blog and am just short of 50,000 visitors too my blog since I started keeping track in June of 2008.

Since August I have written more articles than I ever have in my life. The 16th weekly issue of the newsletter goes out Monday. I also wrote four newsletters for Echo Company and had stories picked up by many Web sites and newspapers--none cooler, of course, then the New York Times "At War" blog on Thanksgiving!

Although many are different angles of the same shot, I have taken more than 5000 pictures. It will be very strange to have no camera when I leave active duty.

Counting each take off and landing as a flight, I have been on two dozen helicopter rides, mostly on Blackhawks, but also on the big Chinooks. It was the Chinooks that turned out to be the best single photo subject. It was wonderful watching them hover, six feet above a container with a flight engineer on top of it who hooked the 5,000-pound load, jumped to the ground and ran through the hurricane-force winds as the big helicopter flew away with 2.5 tons dangling 20 feet underneath.

I bought just two meals the whole time I was in Iraq--pizzas at Ciano's. But I bought a few hundred lattes at Green Bean's. The last one was free. I am sitting in Green Bean's in Kuwait writing this post.

I fired a lot fewer rounds this year than I did as a Cold War tank commander in the 1970s. But then we were training for a real war that seemed immanent. Now we are in a real war that is ending.

Oh right. And I made 387 blog posts in 2009. I will continue posting every day until we are released from active duty. Then I am going to take a break during the 17 days I am still on terminal leave. And when I am finally and officially a civilian again, I might write about some of the stuff I can't write now.

Happy New Year.

One Step Closer

Today we flew to Kuwait by way of Basra stopping at three bases before finally arriving at the transient base. We will be here for several days and, just as when I was stuck here for seven days in July, I won't know when I will leave here until I am on an airplane. Several times on the last trip, my name got called, I was on a manifest, I dragged my bags up to the meeting area, I was ready to board the bus then. . ."Sorry. Come back at 0500 hours."

But it's OK with me. We are on the way back to America. I am out of Iraq. I have lots of work to do, assuming I can do it using personal computer on a wireless hookup. Sometime in late January this year will end and I can go back to being a civilian again. I liked some of this year. I hated some of this year. The parts I hated probably helped me grow.

One thing it confirmed for me is how very difficult and very worthwhile it is to build community. It is very clear very fast that even people who think of politeness as optional, a sort of window dressing in life, rapidly find that politeness of some kind is necessary to live in close quarters. And they believe more strongly every day that if politeness is not natural it had better be enforced by someone.

An hour ago we moved eight of us moved into a 16-man tent, filling the all the available bunks. The lights are supposed to stay on 24/7, but if everyone agrees, the lights can go out until someone needs them. We may or may not have lights out, but if we do, it will be because 16 men agreed to shut off the lights at a given hour and turn them on again when needed.

It's very likely (though not certain) I will spend New Year's Eve and Day in a transient tent without any of the usual celebration. Certainly no alcohol. But it won't dampen my spirits. In a month or so, I'll be home.

Who Fights This War? Public Affairs Officer, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division

Today I have a guest post from Maj. Myles Caggins of the 4th BCT, 1st Armored Division. We have had a chance to work together on a few projects and even to talk politics.
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Twelve months ago I was in Washington, D.C. having just finished my graduate degree requirements from Georgetown. D.C., the most powerful city in the world, is an easy draw for the media and the military. In contrast, Contingency Operating Base Adder just south of Nasiriyah, Iraq is relatively unknown and military operations here seldom gain wide-spread press attention.

At least not until December 18.

This day Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our nation’s highest ranking military officer visited my brigade at COB Adder. Mullen was traveling with seven members of the Pentagon Press Pool among the 20+ other staffers and security personnel in his entourage.


Serving as an Army Brigade Public Affairs Officer my job is to tell the story of the 4,000 Soldiers assigned to the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division. I want audiences to know who they are and most importantly what they do in Iraq in 2009.
Gone are the days of U.S. Soldiers kicking down doors and rounding up IED makers, terrorist mortarmen, and other outlaws. In today’s stability operations environment, we are simply here to advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces.

Most readers of this blog believe that. However, if I stood in downtown Nasiriyah and tried to explain “stability operations” doctrine the local citizens would be skeptical of the message and the messenger—and of course 30% of what I say would probably be lost in translation.

Imagine if some dude from a foreign Army pulled up in your driveway in a 10’ tall armored truck; stood in your front lawn with body armor, an assault rifle, and a team of security then stated “I’m your friend, I come in peace.”

Needless to say, I might come off to be a Kevlar-clad Joe Isuzu to the average Iraqi. Remember him here and here.

So on my next post, I’ll explain the solution to gaining and maintaining a positive perception for American forces in southern Iraq…and how I changed the price of oil 2% with one quote on December 18.