Every Time I Put My Helmet on. . .

Every time I put my helmet on, whether an Army Kevlar or bicycle helmet, I know I could actually need it.  I keep a crushed, bloody helmet that held together in last big bicycle accident.  It is hanging on the wall in the room where I keep my bikes.  I can take a look at it on the way out the door if I am ever stupid enough to ride without a helmet. 

On May 1, I rode to a race in Millersville PA.  The start line was just eight miles from my house.  When I got within two miles of the race, I started to see bicycles on both sides of route 999.  The riders were warming up for the race.  When I got a little closer a long double line of motorcycles went past me heading east on 999 toward Lancaster.

I would guess 60 or 70 motorcycles thundered past in three or four minutes.  Most of the bikes were Harleys without mufflers.  Most of the riders and passengers were not wearing helmets. 

I have had a few motorcycle accidents, one that left me in the hospital for two weeks.  In the "big crash" I tore both of my knees open and had a lot of other injuries.  The bike flipped in a turn and I flew though the air, landing face fist on my full coverage helmet.  Until I quit riding motorcycles, I kept that helmet to remind me that even if helmets were not required I should wear one.  The visor and the chin bar of the helmet had deep grooves from sliding on rough pavement at 75 mph.  Without a helmet I would have been dead.

At the time of the crash I was young and just out of the Army so I was in pretty good shape for the long recovery.  I also wore a heavy leather jacked and boots that spared me some injuries.

The riders going past me at 55 mph were wearing t-shirts and jeans along with a bandana instead of a helmet.  Many of the riders stretched the fabric of an XXL t-shirt tighter than bicycle racers spandex.  Some statistics put the death rate on motorcycles at 30 times higher per mile than cars and trucks. 

I was riding at an average speed of 30 feet per second wearing a helmet.  The chugging cruisers were traveling 90 feet per second without helmets.

Makes no sense to me.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

A group of Military Bloggers has published a statement in support of repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the military.  Like Admiral Mullen, the bloggers take the repeal of DADT as inevitable and say that the military can handle it and should get ready to comply.  David Marron at Thunder Run posted the statement and I am sure will cover the on-going controversy if you are interested.

I admit to being of two opinions on the issue.  I served with gay soldiers back in the 70s and now.  There will always be gays in the military, but in the tight confines of Army life, no one currently has to deal with gay behavior.

So on the one hand, DADT is like the porn policy.  All through the tour last year, pretty much everyone admitted or bragged about watching porn.  But, no one was subjected to other people's porn because the rule was Zero Tolerance for porn.  So when I walked in a room, the person who was watching porn was careful to turn the screen toward himself and have earphones in.  The soldier watching "Saw V" had no worries about me or any other sergeant seeing his horror movie.  DADT keeps gay behavior out of view.  If the end of DADT means having to deal with openly gay behavior, it will be difficult.

On the other hand, after seeing the difficulties women have in the intensely male environment of the Army, it may be easier for gays to integrate than women.  I first enlisted in the 70s and found the military more integrated than my hometown of Boston.  Louise Day Hicks led her last busing riot in 1977 in Charlestown, Mass. just across the Charles River from Boston.  During the 70s young soldiers of every race found out that they all had two things in common:  they wanted to get high and they wanted to get laid.  This lowest common denominator meant that the kid from Newark, the kid from Watts and the kid from Sawyerville, Alabama, had a common interest.  Especially on the subject of smoking dope.  The drug tests did not begin until 1971 and were not effective for years after.  The dope smokers of all races helped each other cheat the test.

When I was in Iraq last year, men ate with men who did the same job, followed the same sports, or wished they were home fishing.  The older the were, the less likely they were to gather by race.  Women, on the other hand, sat with women.  Since women are just 10% of the force, a table of women stands out in a DFAC that seats 400. 

It seems to me it will always be difficult for women because their off duty interests are so different.  But I certainly don't know for sure.  Since it seems inevitable that DADT will end, I hope I am right about the gays integrating quickly.

One odd side note is the difference between acceptance of gay men and women.  I never heard a male soldier say they wanted all the Lesbians out of the military.  The only soldiers I ever heard say they wanted gay women out of the military were women. 

Medals and Changes of Command

This weekend there will be changes of command ceremonies at several companies and formations for medals and awards.  For me the weekend will be about logistics. 

Will all of the change of command ceremonies be at the same time?  If so, I'll have to figure out how to shoot as many as possible.  They should all be at the armory, but if someone gets creative and uses an alternate location, I hope they use an alternate time.

Same with the medals.  There could be hundreds of individuals receiving medals.  If four companies hand out medals at the same time, I won't be able to get many pictures.  And since the Army is socialist and all about getting fair treatment, which ceremony do I go to if they are simultaneous?

Then the real big logistic issue comes later.  If I would by creative scheduling get pictures of each change of command and every ribbon and medal, how do I get those pictures to the soldiers in the photo?  For security reasons, Army computers do not allow any USB devices to be used with them.  If I have 400 high-res pictures, I will need to get them onto an Army computer where individual soldiers have access to them.  The photos will have to be mailed or burned onto a disk, but who is going to do that? 
And if we can resolve that, I have 5000 more photos from Iraq that soldiers may want and currently can't get to because they are on my USB external hard drive.

And you thought the Army was about guns and war.

Cell Phones on the Train and in Oklahoma

What do a pleading mother on a train and a young soldier trying not to get dumped by his girlfriend have in common?  They both seem to be willing to let anyone within the sound of their voice know their lives are a mess--at least while they are talking on the phone.

This morning there was not a free seat on the inbound train to Philadelphia.  In the middle of the car a woman spent 15 minutes on the phone telling her son that he could make breakfast himself and he had to go to school even if he didn't want to  and much more.  She made at least half of the other 50 people in the crowded car listen to half of her unpleasant conversation with her disobedient child.  It is strange how holding a cell phone gives the caller permission to speak about things she would not say directly to a room full of strangers.

When we were in Oklahoma for training, some of the soldiers were already seeing their romantic relationships fall apart.  When I was in Germany in the 70s and there was no email or cell phones, the relationships ended abruptly.  A soldier would get a "Dear John" letter or, worse, spend the $1 a minute (when he was making $500/month) to call home and hear that his wife/girlfriend/fiance was dumping him.

But in the modern Army with cell phones, I could walk into the dayroom or down the hallway and hear the arguments that precede the breakup or the last efforts at persuasion.  The otherwise proud young man would let everyone within his hearing know that he was dumped or getting dumped soon.

Article on MREs

Last week I posted a video that went with an article on the science of feed soldiers in the field. Here is the article.

Looks like the article requires membership.

Here's the text:

Chemistry Improves Battlefield Food

When Neil Gussman joined the Army in 1972, meals for the battlefield were served in little green cans. Open those tins, recalls the Chemical Heritage Foundation's communications manager and Army sergeant, and you were likely to find culinary delights like "gelatinous, fat-coated Spam slices" and "big wads of grease."
Known as C rations, "the 12 main courses were ham and eggs, beans and franks, spaghetti, ham slices, and permutations of Spam," Gussman says.
He reenlisted in 2007 and, to his pleasant surprise, found that the green cans had been replaced with sleek tan packages stamped "MRE," for Meal, Ready-To-Eat.
"When I got my first MRE, I was in gastronomic love," Gussman says. Inside were crunchy crackers, brand-name candy, and a heating bag that gave off no smoke or light signature. Tactical eating no longer meant meals of congealed fat, he says.
But moving from cans of "green eggs and ham" to pouches of moist lemon poppyseed cake and hot beef ravioli requires a lot of scientific innovation. "Everything in the MRE involves chemistry in some way," says Jeremy Whitsitt, the Department of Defense's combat feeding outreach coordinator. From the packaging designed to withstand downpours and airdrops to the chemical heater that warms meals and beverages, the Combat Feeding Directorate at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center (NSRDEC), in Natick, Mass., has spent years developing the modern MRE.
The unpredictable nature of military life means that battlefield meals must meet a set of strict criteria. MREs need to maintain their freshness for three years when stored below 80 °F, or six months when stored below 100 °F. "They must also be able to withstand rough handling conditions and airdrops from altitudes of 100 feet by helicopter, without a parachute, or 1,200 feet by plane, with a parachute," Whitsitt says.
An MRE's packaging presents the first line of defense in keeping it from getting beaten up during transport and in preventing oxygen, water vapor, and insects from infiltrating and spoiling the food. "It's a critical part of the overall MRE," says Danielle Froio, an NSRDEC materials engineer.
It's also the first thing you notice about an MRE as you pull apart the seal of its tough, tan meal bag made of low-density polyethylene. The food inside this bag is stored in two types of pouches, Froio explains. There's the retort pouch, which holds food that's been sterilized, and the nonretort pouch, which houses food that doesn't need sterilization.
Both pouches have a polyester outer layer that's easy to print on, so nutritional information is included with each of the MRE's components. Beneath the polyester is a layer of foil, which, Froio says, is the ultimate barrier to oxygen, water vapor, and light. A polyolefin layer also makes it possible to seal the package. And retort pouches have a fourth layer of nylon to make them durable enough to withstand the rigors of the sterilization process.
Researchers at NSRDEC are currently working to find a replacement for the foil layer in both types of pouch. "In low-temperature situations it can develop pinhole cracks that reduce the shelf life of the package," Froio explains. Although the group has examined many different polymers as possible replacements, all are permeable to oxygen or water vapor, she notes.
The researchers are now looking toward nanocomposite materials, Froio says, because their nanostructure "creates a tortuous path for the water and oxygen" to travel. They've had some success with montmorillonite- and kaolin-based nanocomposites, and a low-density polyethylene nanocomposite has been used as a meal bag in field tests.
Of course, the guidelines that govern MREs aren't limited to their durability. MREs are, after all, meals, and they have to provide enough nutrition to sustain a soldier engaged in intense physical activity. By regulation, Whitsitt says, each MRE must provide approximately 1,300 calories.
And then there's taste. Responding to the complaints about the old C rations—the ones Gussman describes as variations on Spam—NSRDEC has made an effort to create meals soldiers actually enjoy.
So how do you make cooked pasta and cake that can sit on the shelf for three years? "We build hurdles into these different food matrices to make it hard for 'bugs' to grow in them," Whitsitt says. Using acidic tomato-based sauces keeps the pH low, for example, thereby preventing bacterial growth. As for the baked goods, by tinkering with dough conditioners and adding iron-based oxygen-scavenging packets, the researchers are able to control pH and water levels to keep the breads and cakes tasting fresh.
All items packaged in a retort pouch are also sterilized by boiling. But certain foods simply don't hold up under the extremes of temperature and time—120 °C for 30 minutes—the military uses for this process. For example, says C. Patrick Dunne, the senior adviser in advanced processing and nutritional biochemistry for the Combat Feeding Directorate, "We have yet to get a really good mac and cheese out of the retort pouch."
To expand meal options and improve food quality, NSRDEC has been working on advanced processing techniques for sterilization that use microwave radiation and high pressure. "The challenge we have is to conquer the chemistry that happens during and after the sterilization process that will lead to degradation of quality," Dunne says. "You're not going to get fresh salads all the time, but we would like to give our guys something that goes beyond basic vitamins."
The novel microwave sterilization process that NSRDEC has developed in collaboration with researchers at Washington State University uses a microwave that operates at 915 MHz. This is a lower frequency than the average home microwave uses and penetrates the food to a greater extent. To keep the pouches from exploding, Dunne says, they are placed under pressure in a water bath. All told, the sterilization takes less than 10 minutes.
The one drawback to using this microwave sterilization process is that it doesn't work with the standard retort pouch. Its foil layer can't be placed in a microwave oven. Dunne says NSRDEC is looking into alternative packaging.
The military is currently testing MREs with chicken and dumplings sterilized via the microwave method. There are "benefits in taste, color, and texture" that come from microwave sterilization, Dunne points out. "You can make a salmon filet that tastes like the poached salmon you'd get in a restaurant. It does not taste like cat food."
NSRDEC is also working on high-pressure sterilization. The process places a food pouch under 100,000 psi for about three minutes. Heating is also used if the food being sterilized hasn't been pasteurized.
The result, Dunne explains, is greater variety of food that doesn't have the "tinny" flavor that comes from the current processing method. Mashed potatoes sterilized with this process have already passed the military's shelf-life and field tests.
Perhaps the most tangible chemical contribution to the MREs is the small chemical heater that makes it possible for soldiers in the field to enjoy the comfort of a hot meal and a hot cup of coffee. The heating technology, which gives off no light or smoke, makes use of the exothermic reaction of magnesium metal and water. The heater is composed of a postcard-sized polymeric "tea bag" filled with 9 g of Mg, which sits in a plastic sleeve. A solider adds just 1 oz of water to the sleeve, slips in the MRE entrée, and waits about 10 minutes.
The temperature gets up to about 60 °C, according to NSRDEC chemical engineer Peter Lavigne. "The reaction product, magnesium hydroxide, is essentially milk of magnesia, so it's disposed of without environmental concerns," he says.
The Mg powder pack also contains a little bit of salt and iron. These penetrate the magnesium oxide coating that tends to build up on the metal and prevents it from reacting. Chloride ions react with the Mg(OH)2 product to form MgOHCl, which dissolves the MgO coating. The role of iron is less clear, but it's thought to cause bimetallic corrosion that promotes the reaction between water and Mg.
Although the heater works extremely well, Lavigne says that there is concern about the hydrogen gas generated in the reaction. "We've always had an interest in eliminating hydrogen from a user-safety point of view," he says. NSRDEC is currently exploring heaters based on calcium oxide and phosphorus pentoxide exothermic hydration reactions, as well as Mg oxidation coupled with manganese dioxide to quench hydrogen generation.
"The challenge is to get at the heating profile that's safe to handle yet capable of heating a food product in a short time and is suitable for use with food," Lavigne notes.
As far as soldiers like Sgt. Gussman are concerned, any further improvements to the MRE are a bonus. "The soldiers who only know MREs sometimes bitch about them," he says. "Old soldiers who remember the canned rations know better."

Back to Racing--First Time Trial

This morning I rode the first time trial race since before deployment.  The French call this race contre la montre, against the watch.  It is my least favorite kind of racing--alone, curled up into the smallest space possible and suffering at the highest speed you can maintain. 

This time trial was short, just 11 miles.  It was very windy.  The course was South-North out and back along a road that parallels the beach on the Chesapeake Bay near Delaware City.  The wind was above 20mph with gusts out of the west.  It was a side wind in both directions sometimes turning into a brief head or tail wind when the road twisted.

It was very cold and I got up late so I did not warm up very much--about 10 minutes.  I should warm up for a half hour and some of my best results came with an hour warm up.  I don't know where I finished, but I feel bad enough at 9pm tonight that I know I tried very hard.  

No racing next weekend, I have to play Army.  It will be a whole weekend of change of command ceremonies and awards, so I will be taking pictures for the entire weekend.

Emergency Leave

One of the stories I did not have time to write was a process story about how our unit handled emergency leaves. From the week we mobilized till the last weeks in Fort Dix, New Jersey, soldiers in Task Force Diablo got a visit from their commander and first sergeant to deliver a Red Cross message. In fact, for soldiers who knew the procedure, seeing a company commander and first sergeant together, walking to someone's door, both looking stone faced, almost certainly meant bad news for someone in that room.

The soldier at the center of emergency leaves was Sergeant First Class Lori Burns, the NCOIC of the battalion S-1--the people who handle the paperwork. When the brigade received a Red Cross message, they passed it to our Operations (S-3) section who notified the battalion commander and command sergeant major and Lori. She started the paperwork and the very delicate process of determining whether this emergency was actually an Emergency Leave or not. An official military emergency leave is for immediate family--parents, siblings, children, and spouse. But some soldiers are raised by their grandparents.

As some of you may remember, I was one of the soldiers who received a Red Cross message that did not qualify as an actual emergency.  My mother-in-law died on Mother's Day last year, just a week after I arrived in Iraq.  Because there was space in the leave schedule at the time, I could have gone on emergency leave, but my wife thought it would be better to keep my leave as it was scheduled because we already had plans made.

But other guys who fell into the "not emergency" category that I was in really wanted to go home.  And most got to go home by giving up their scheduled leave.  The company and battalion commanders as well as the first sergeants and command sergeant major all would get the soldier home if they possibly could.  And unless they were off base on a mission, LTC Perry and CSM Christine were woken up and briefed on every Red Cross message.  The company commander and first sergeant delivered the message.

We had more than 50 Red Cross messages during the year of deployment and most of them got home one way or another.  Two soldiers lost newborn children during the tour.  One sergeant who lost his father went home twice.  The first time his father rallied and recovered, the next time was for the funeral.

Life seems on hold during the year of deployment, but life goes on back home.  The people who handle the emergency leaves have to deal with the reality of tragedy back home through the entire tour.