Living in America

So what's it like to come back to America after being gone for most of a year? Part of it remains to be seen. I have not left the Fort Dix/McGuire Air Force Base complex yet, so I still have more to see and get used to. I suppose it is better to return slowly.

My first funny shock was the Taco Bell commercials, recommending the new Drive-Thru diet. Taco Bell has very funny commercials. What could be more American than the idea of a diet that you can do just sitting on your butt in your car!! And what could be more sneeringly American than to put the idea on TV for an audience that is drowning in flippancy.

This evening I saw a commercial for a healthy lifestyle diet plan. I don't remember which one it was, but all around the day room where the TV was playing mostly unwatched were men in their late 20s to mid 30s surrounded by pizza boxes and other delivery food containers. They were playing a video war game on line with each other. It was a beautiful day today, almost 50 degrees. These plus-size guys had been playing for hours, eating pizza.

I have been to the PX a half-dozen times already. It's fun just to walk around and look at all the stuff you can buy here in America. I can get any kind of shampoo I want.

I haven't yet had to ride in traffic, drive a car, commute or any of the dangerous stuff I have been spared for the last year. I ordered a new internet serive for our house that had me on the phone for almost an hour. I have to make two more calls for that one.

And sadly, I am no longer immune from the news. I read about Pat Robertson saying that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgement on the Haitian people and read Rush Limbaugh's predictably callous comments about the plight of the Haitians. Thousands dead and suffering is, for him, nothing more than a chance to take a shot at Liberals for being willing to help. Sometimes I hate the idea that all of us who served went over there in part to defend free speech for people like Robertson and Limbaugh, but in America they have as much right to speak as anyone else. But whether they have a right or not, they are no less pathetic cowards for doing so.

Who Fights This War? Operations Officer

Most people don’t know what they want to do with their lives till they are past their school years and into a career they don’t like. Some people know what they want to do all their lives. When Maj. Lee Hayes was just a kid growing up in Tyrone, Pa., he watched Chinook helicopters roar through the sky over his little town. He knew he wanted to be a soldier and he knew he wanted to fly.

Now 40 years old and completing his second deployment in which he served as Task Force Diablo’s operations officer, Hayes is a soldier, a pilot, and has his eye on his next assignment. Hayes commanded an attack helicopter company from 1998 to 2000 and is looking forward to his next command. If all goes well, he will command an aviation battalion. “Commander is the best job in the Army,” said Hayes. “This is my second deployment as a staff officer. I want my next deployment to be as a commander.”
Hayes joined the Pa. Guard at age 17 serving first as an infantryman while he attended The Pennsylvania State University. He went to OCS (Officer Candidate School) just before graduation and served as an infantry platoon leader until he attended flight school in 1994.

After flight school he served as a scout platoon leader, flying AH-1 Cobra helicopters. He then became as an attack platoon leader in the 1-104th Aviation Battalion, also flying AH-1 Cobra helicopters. He remained in the 1-104th and became an attack company commander. In 2000 he switched to the Reconnaissance and Interdiction Detachment (RAID), an assignment that lead to one of the most fast-paced weeks in his aviation career. “On September 11, his unit was sent to New York City for reconnaissance and whatever else the security teams needed,” Hayes said.
“They arrived in New York the evening of September 11.”

“We flew wherever they needed us,” Hayes said. During the week they transported many VIPs and moved key people wherever they needed to go.

Hayes has worked full time for the Pa. Army National Guard since 2000. He deployed to Kosovo as assistant operations officer with 2-104th in 2002, part of the first National Guard deployment to that country. When he returns from this deployment he will continue serve in an AGR role at Fort Indiantown Gap. He plans to serve at least nine more years before he retires from the job he knew he always wanted.

Uncle Jack's Airplanes

F-4 Phantom II





KC-135 Tanker






My son and oldest daughter, Nigel and Lauren came to visit for a couple of hours last night. It was dark so we could not see the big transport planes on McGuire Air Force Base very well. But on the way over at traffic circle there is a static display of two planes Uncle Jack flew in the skies over Viet Nam: the F4 Phantom fighter plane and one of the original KC-135 refueling planes. I could tell Nigel how his Uncle Jack flew in both of these planes. Nigel judged the KC-135 as "really big" which it is when you are a 10-year-old walking underneath it and the F4 as "Awesome."

Both planes struck me as being very small. The KC-135 is based on the Boeing 707 airliner, which is long replaced by newer planes in most of the world. The F4 just sitting on a slab was also very small and very odd looking with its droopy tail and nose and angled surfaces.

It's still at least a week till I get home. I am in the Air Force library four miles from my barracks using the only reliable internet that I have access to right now.

Who Fights This War? -- Apache Longbow Pilot

Just When I Thought I Was Out... They Pull Me Back In

For the senior staff in Task Force Diablo, dinner at the Coalition DFAC was an event. It was often a big event with more than a dozen officers and NCOs sharing food and a lot of jokes and laughter. One oft-repeated themes was about Maj. Frank Tedeschi’s connection to ‘The Mob.’ Some of the staff members refers to him as The Tulip: the hitman (played by Bruce Willis) from the movie ‘The Whole Nine Yards.’

The Italian-American officer who flies an aircraft that is a gun with rotary wings, the AH-64 Apache Longbow, takes these jokes with good humor and hands many back himself. Part of the fun revolves around Tedeschi’s encyclopedic knowledge of Gangster movies. One of the lines he quotes often is from Godfather III (1990) when Michael Corleone says, “Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.”
The jokes are even funnier for those who know that Tedeschi earned an bachelor of science degree in criminal justice at St. Joseph’s University before attending Officer Candidate School and being commissioned a 2nd Lt. in 1992. He joined the Army in 1989 serving first as helicopter mechanic in the 1-104th Cavalry.

After receiving his commission and serving in operations, Tedeschi went to flight school in 1994 qualified in several aircraft but with a particular focus on the Apache Longbow. He earned ratings successively as an instructor pilot, pilot-in-command, and Master Aviator Wings.

From 1995 until 2007 Tedeschi served as a platoon leader, troop commander and assistant operations officer (S-3) with the 1-104th, eighteen years with a single battalion including deployment to Kosovo as the assistant S-3.

Then in 2007 Tedeschi accepted an AGR position in the 2-104th as S4. For the current deployment he also served as the assistant operations officer. In October he was promoted to major. He served as the assistant ops officer on both deployments, Tedeschi said. “Next deployment I am getting a different job.”
This month, after almost three years with 2-104th Tedeschi will be moving his family to Johnstown. He will return to the 1-104th. Of that move he said, “Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.”

Must Be Typewritten!!!!

Today I rode to the gate to fill out the paper required for each visitor. Two of my kids are coming to visit on Friday and a friend from work is coming here on Saturday. I rode the two miles to the visitor's center, walked inside and asked for the form. The officer behind the desk handed me a different form than the last time I was there. I asked for a pen. She said, "The form has to be typewritten." I made an exaggerated gesture for looking for a typewriter. "You need to put this information on a form and return it here typewritten or printed. No more handwritten forms. They are hard to read."

In case this sounds like a reasonable request, it is only a hardship to soldiers in transient barracks--the soldiers just going to or returning from Iraq. Soldiers assigned here can drive to the gate. Transient soldiers who walk two miles to the gate and find out the policy changed have to walk back, use the one printer per 100+ soldiers and walk or scrounge a ride back.

But it does keep the clerks who handle this particular form from dealing with the hardship of hard-to-read forms handed in by soldiers returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan. What could be more important than that?

Who Fights This War? Military Intelligence Sergeant

During late summer this year, Staff Sgt. Timothy Opinaldo was part of a joint operation of intelligence analysts from Task Force Diablo and 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division to train and integrate Iraqi analysts. Together, they provided intelligence support for a joint operation pursuing and detaining insurgents.

For Opinaldo and the other members of Task Force Diablo, this joint operation trained their Iraqi counterparts in the American method of intelligence work, which is very different from the Iraqi model. The analysts and their counterpart unit, the 10th Iraqi Infantry Division, are trained for nine weeks. American analysts are trained for 18 weeks.

“Their army is officer-centric. An individual Iraqi analyst works on just one piece of a large intelligence project,” Opinaldo said. “The officer in charge controls the flow of information. He creates the picture from the pieces the individual analysts provide. In the American model, analysts keep the larger picture in view when working on any individual piece.”

Opinaldo worked with Sgt. Bradley Dickey, Maj. Brett Feddersen, and 1st Lt. Carolina Kelley on the project in addition to analysts from 4-1 AD. While the Americans trained the Iraqis in their model of intelligence work, the Iraqis gave their counterparts some valuable lessons in Iraqi culture.

“The Iraqis gave us information that allowed us to better evaluate situations,” Opinaldo said. “They told us there are few weddings in the summer heat and none during Ramadan. Weddings are low-key and humble with minimal 20th Century influence. Iraqis don’t fire machine guns at weddings.”

“We also learned that every large group is not necessarily bad guys,” he said. “Three days of large feasts mark the end of Ramadan.”

Opinaldo had to re-adjust to eastern physical closeness during his month with his Iraqi counterparts. He previously deployed to Afghanistan and remembered how different eastern and western men are about touching, but he still had to adjust. “When you shake hands, you are not letting go for five minutes,” he said. “One guy held my hand during an entire meeting.”

Opinaldo also made clear that fussy eaters can’t do intelligence field work. “They share everything,” he said. “If they offer food, you have to eat it.” Opinaldo said tea is a past time with Iraqis and they drink both tea and coffee very strong. Despite all that caffeine, the Iraqis are much more concerned about relationships than time efficiency. “The first 60 minutes of every meeting includes about five minutes of work,” Opinaldo said.

By then end of the month, Opinaldo and other members of the team were making jokes, an important indicator of how close their relationship had grown. Many of the men they worked with were fathers and referred to each other as ‘Abu’ with their child’s name. Opinaldo was “Abu Alana” because his daughter’s name is Alana. In one of the jokes they shared, the Iraqis called Opinaldo “Abu Dickey” because he was Sgt. Dickey’s immediate supervisor. Dickey is also most of a foot taller than his “father.”

With a month of working face-to-face with his Iraqi counterparts, Opinaldo got a chance to really learn the culture. “It was the best month of the deployment,” he said. “No question

Real Frugality

Now that I am home from a year neck deep in socialism and spending way less money than is my usual habit, I have a better idea how much money I spend on life, the universe and everything. And I am already feeling guilty about how much I want to spend--not that it will slow me down much.

In Iraq I bought exactly two meals during the entire tour: two pizzas at Ciano's. The only money I spent was for phone cards, maybe $20 a month, Internet $88 per month, and one or two lattes each day at Green Beans, $150 per month, and books, maybe $15/month.

The standard by which I compare my profligate self is my frugal wife Annalisa who spends nearly nothing--except the occasional huge amount of money to be more energy efficient, like buying a Prius or renovating our house to insulate and air seal it, plus completely change how it looks. The house is beautiful and more energy efficient now.

During the year I was gone, our lovely new home had no TV in it. My son was already excited to see me then his sister pointed out Dad would be watching TV again and Nigel was ready to declare my arrival a national holiday. "Awesome, TV," was his response to the news.

But TV is not just TV. I want to watch the Tour de France and the Formula 1 World Championship. I had a TV when I left, but it is 27 years old and has sat in a corner for a year. Most like I need a TV. Even a modest one: $400. Dish Network is on sale for one year for $24.95/ month. I am sure there are taxes and fees that bring it over $30 and a DVR system will be another $5 per month. And Dish has French-language programming for another $7 per month.

Back at home, my favorite thing to eat is bread from a bakery. I eat a loaf almost every day. I miss Starbucks at Stonemill Plaza. In fact, I miss all that stuff. I had a moment when I thought I might try to be frugal, but that falls into the category of people who think about getting in shape and then don't ride, run or go to the gym when anything else conflicts.

I am already starting to suffer from the tyranny of choice. I want choice, but every choice has a moral dimension. Should I watch car racing? Should I drink lattes? should I eat fresh bread? This three weeks of confinement to the base makes the flavor of real life all the more sharp and desirable. I may feel worse about spending money later, for right now, I can't wait. I have spent the last eight months six thousand miles from home and can't wait to eat bakery bread, watch car racing and drink designer coffee any time I want to.