Aviation Ball Photos: Some of my friends from 28th Aviation.

Yesterday I got the memory chip back for my camera.  So now I have photos from the Aviation Ball.  I posted a lot of them on Facebook already.  Here's a few more.

Kate and CW4 Darren Dreher

 Every time I see Dreher he says, "There's my favorite Liberal."

Sgt. 1st Class Melanie McCracken and her friends.

She said our deployment to Iraq was, "All drama and no action."

1Lt. Andrea Magee and Staff Sgt. Mike Machinist.

Andrea and I worked in battalion headquarters in Iraq.  Mike was a Chinook flight engineer in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sgt. Jordan Bannister, HHC

Led the Color Guard at the Aviation Ball, was PA NCO in Kuwait.

1st Sgt Eddie Beadle and Capt. Jason Lehr, commander and first sergeant on the most recent Chinook deployment.  Also served together in Iraq.

Capt. Hugh Denny, my current company commander, and his wife, and Capt. Israel Miller, my current boss, the brigade public affairs officer.

My Wife Says This Story is Creepy

WARNING:  My wife read this story and said it was too creepy for a family blog.  It is a story I wrote about what I thought might happen if our base was attacked.  It is fiction.
One way I will be making the transition out of the Army is to begin writing stories set in the places I served.  In this story, Camp Adder, Iraq, gets attacked, which never happened during the time I was there.
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I died happy.  The bullet tore through my neck, sliced my aorta, and severed my spine. I grabbed my neck and tried to scream, but the scream in my head was just gurgling in my throat.  The men around me just saw me slump to the ground.  No sound from me.  Just the single shot that ripped the air and the hollow thunk as the round tore through my throat and spiraled through my chest.

I stopped breathing right away with all the blood in my throat.  I was dead as soon as my body hit the ground and brain dead as I bled out on the Iraqi tarmac.  The AK-47 round broke the titanium plate that held my neck together.  The neurosurgeon that had put in the plate said if I got hit by a Humvee that plate would hold the last three vertebra in my neck together.  He didn’t say anything about an AK round.

My last tour ended when the Blackhawk crashed and I broke my neck.  I left that tour on a MEDEVAC to Germany.  This time I would go home in a body bag.  No agony this time.  If I have to die, I am glad it was fast.

My soul was on its way to Purgatory.  Would I be there in a second, a minute, hours, who knows?  Time was smearing. I am not supposed to believe in Purgatory; I am a Presbyterian. But belief makes no difference here.  We think we know who God is when he is far away, like a star light years away is just a shining circle in the sky.  Here you know there is someone in charge.  Someone powerful and real.  Someone close, but mysterious too. The corpse bleeding out at the Camp Adder west gate is starting to seem like someone I used to know.

I can’t say any more now.  The OPSEC rules are tight in eternity.  But I can see the place I died.  The gunner on our MRAP armored truck is swinging the turret looking for something, someone to light up.  The rest of the squad is down at the gate or behind the berm looking for the Hadji motherfucker who killed me. 

I can’t tell anybody, but the little bastard is 200 meters out buried in the dune.  He knew this would be a suicide mission.  His Momma in Nasariyah is getting $2000 for this. Now he is out there with his gun under belly, stone still having seventy-second thoughts about getting his virgins. 

The Apaches are up.  If the little fuck can stay still he might last till morning.  Sergeant Blewell is on the radio.  Major Tedesco is in the lead Apache.  Blewell is cold furious about me being dead.  Not like I am a teacher’s pet or anything but she trained us and she was waiting for us at the gate. Now this little fuck dropped one of her boys and there ain’t no way she will sit still for that.

The gunner on the MRAP sees something on the dune 200 meters southwest of the gate.  Tracers slam into the sand.  The Apaches swoop down from their scan toward the impact zone. 

Nothing.  Minutes pass.

Then fifty meters right of the MRAP gunners aiming point, Hadji loses his nerve and bolts.  Tedesco and the .50 cal gunner both see the kid jump.  Three steps later he is vaporized by 100 machine gun rounds, as many 30mm cannon shells from the lead Apache and the rounds from a half-dozen M4s. 

Sergeant Blewell emptied the magazine from her M4.  As soon as the Apaches pulled up Blewell started running toward the body—or the smear.  “There better not be a piece left of him bigger than an ant’s asshole,” she said as the nearest fire team looked at each other then ran after her. 

The three men grabbed her by the arms and the vest.  “You know you can’t go out there Sergeant Blewell,”  the team leader said.  “They’ll bust your ass to E-fuckin’-nothin’.”  She struggled, but she knew they were right.  And she was NOT going to get dragged back.  She turned and walked back to the gate in the last light of the dirty sunset.

I was gone.  I was being pulled up so high or far or something that I could not tell what was happening. 

Then I was on my face in the dirt.  I picked up my head and saw a brown face in front of me.  He was lying on his belly too.  By the look on his face he had no more idea where he was than I did.  I could swear I knew this guy, but he looked like an Arab GQ model.  How would I know a dude from an airbrushed magazine cover? 

Then I knew who he was.  He was the vaporized little fuck that killed me. 

And I knew at that moment that we whatever we were going through we were going to be partners.

Shit!!!

Going to heaven is supposed some kind of family reunion with rainbows and unicorns and shit. 

Fuck.  It means I have to love the little shitbag who shot me. I knew this eternity shit would have a catch.

He smiled weakly and reached toward me with a dark, open hand. 

We grabbed each other’s hands.  They were real hands.  We had bodies. 

A mountain loomed in front of us. I knew we had to go.  I think he did too. 

Review of The Intelligencer, a novel by Leslie Silbert

Christopher Marlowe, the playwright and spy for Her Majesty, was betrayed and murdered on May 30, 1597.  The story of Marlowe’s last month is told in parallel with a present-day tale of theft of Marlowe’s spy reports that leads to murder, betrayal, theft and deception in the delightful book The Intelligencer. 

This fast-moving thriller is the first novel by a woman whose background includes Renaissance scholar, private investigator and Harvard graduate.  I enjoyed the novel from the first page.  Silbert weaves the two stories together well, both in the way she moves from the present to the past and back and in bring the two tales together in the conclusion. 

While I enjoyed the whole book, the most memorable and vivid parts of the novel for me were the parts in Elizabethan England.  Silbert made me see and feel the vivid emotions of a world where death is always close at hand, and stench overwhelmed the senses. 

The modern scenes were intriguing, but less vivid.  One exception was the robbery gone wrong that is a bright thread that leads from the beginning to the end of the book.  While the robbery is set in the modern day, the robber is a baron gone bad with sensibilities that at least go back to Victoria if not all the way to Elizabeth. 

When I met the author on a train from Washington last month, she had three mystery novels she had just bought in Union Station.  She said she was doing competitive research.  I hope she writes another novel set partially or completely in Renaissance Europe.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a thriller, but particularly to readers who want a tale well told from a world lit by fire.

Preparing for Life After Army

I looked like this the night before my military career started.

I hope I make the transition out more smoothly!

Since August of 2007, this blog has been my external memory about life as a very old soldier.  Next year, that phase of my life will come to an end.  To that end, I decided to start writing about all of my life, not just the Army part of it. 

When I started this blog, rejoining the Army was a wide-eyed adventure for me.  It was a strange journey I could share with friends and family.  It turns out that many more people started reading my posts to get an idea of Army life.  Especially when I was in Iraq, I could provide a view of life for soldiers families that the soldiers themselves would not.

Beginning in July, I will start unraveling my identity.  This journey is in some ways more scary than becoming a soldier at 54.  Beginning in July of this year, I will no longer be employed full time.  If the arrangement I proposed is accepted, I will become a consultant, working just two days a week at what is currently my full-time job. 

I have worked full time since my senior year of high school.  From age twelve to seventeen, I worked full-time in the warehouse where my father worked during the summers.  Since 1970, I have collected unemployment twice for two weeks each time.  Full-time worker, either blue-collar or professional, is how I see myself.

Will I survive part-time work?  It seems like a great thing:  more time to read, write, ride, run and swim. 

I will be the primary parent for the boys.  Will that be my identity? 

Unless by some miracle I am extended again, I will leave the Army National Guard in May 2015 with 18 years an no retirement.  Even if I stay for 20, the arcane retirement rules may leave outside of the retirement system. 

Right now I shave every morning and cut my hair “high and tight” and do not have to think about growing a beard.  Not allowed.  What happens when I am a civilian and all things are possible.  Will I be a weird old guy with an Army haircut?  Grow my hair, a beard?

Will I return to being a bicycle racer?  I have a license.  I still ride.  Will I have enough time to ride 10,000 miles per year and become (somewhat) competitive again?  When I rode that much, I was not in the Army, I didn’t run, or swim or do much of anything (for exercise) except ride. 

When I work part time, I will be writing, but only those two days a week.  I could write more.  I will be a civilian.  I could write about anything.  Would writer be my identity?  I am a writer now because I get paid to do it.  I would like to write with no commercial purpose.  Right now I am on a plane listening to a crew member read a script about why I should sign up for a SkyMiles credit card.  I could have written that.  I don’t want to.

After today, I will write about all the rest of my life on what is an Army blog, because many things I do for the next year will be part of the transition out of camouflage and into spandex and denim.

So you will hear more about my wife and kids and friends.  I will still write about the Army stuff. This year in particular, I plan to write about more soldiers during summer camp.

Aviation Ball--Sorry, No Pictures

I went to the Aviation Ball, the annual full-dress dining out for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.  Last night's event was bigger than last year with more than 300 soldiers and guests representing Pennsylvania Army Aviation.

Since I knew I was leaving for a meeting in New Orleans early the next morning, I gave Capt. Miller the memory card from my camera before I left.  So I have no pictures.  Eventually I will get the chip back.

It was a lot of fun.  The Hershey Lodge is big enough to hold an event for a group this size but without all the parking and traffic hassles of a city location.

In June all of my Army last-year countdowns start.  June 6-22 will be my last Army summer camp.  Every month thereafter I will do something else for the last time in our annual round of training.  Then in May 2015, I will go back to being a civilian.

More on that later.

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman Triathlon

Three weeks ago, I climbed out of the Lancaster YMCA pool and sat in the hot tub:  In 2 hours and 8 minutes I swam 4,250 yards.  In ten minutes in the hot tub, I just sat.  The I grabbed some food, changed and rode 30 miles.

Since that Saturday, I have ridden almost 400 miles, run 30 miles and swam eight more miles training for an Ironman this August.

Training is the biggest difference between the Tough Mudder and the Ironman Triathlon.

My training for the Tough Mudder was running and keeping in shape for half marathons and the gyms workouts I was already doing for the Army Fitness Test.  If you can pass the Army Fitness test and run a slow half marathon, you have the fitness necessary to do the Tough Mudder.

The real challenge of the Tough Mudder are its signature obstacles.  You do not have to be in terrific shape to run and crawl through 10,000-volt wires, nor do you need endurance to swim 30 feet including passing under a wall in an ice-filled dumpster.

The Tough Mudder, true to its name, requires more toughness than fitness.  I got shocked badly enough last summer that I will not do the Tough Mudder again.

On the other hand, the Ironman is all training and little danger, relative to the Tough Mudder.

But the training swallows all the free time in the triathletes life.  Someone asked my kids what they do in the evenings.  "Go to the gym," was my sons' answer in unison.  In the gym I run and swim while they play basketball.

Now that the weather is better I will be on the bike training for my best event, the 112-mile bike.  The bike alone will take longer than a Tough Mudder and I will have a 2.4-mile swim behind me and a marathon ahead.

Which is tougher?  If ice, shocks and high platforms are your cup of tea, the Ironman is much, much tougher and requires much more training.  But if facing real pain and danger are not part of your plan, the Tough Mudder obstacles may be worse than the training required for an Ironman.

If I successfully complete the Kentucky Ironman this year, it will be my first and last Ironman.  In fact if I make the swim and the bike but drop out or pass out on the run, I will be happy.  I want to go back to bicycle racing in my old age.


Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 3

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman, Part 2

Tough Mudder vs. Ironman is Here

Second Tough Mudder Report

First Tough Mudder Finish

First Tough Mudder Photos

First Tough Mudder Entry

Ironman Plans

Ironman Training

Ironman Bucket List

Ironman Idea

Ironman Danger

Ironman Friendship

Gas Chamber Training This Weekend

On Saturday morning, I went to the supply room to get a gas mask.  My company was scheduled for annual gas mask training.

We look lovely:

Last drill we got our masks properly fitted.  This weekend the training NCO filled a concrete blockhouse with something like tear gas.  We filed into the room, lifted our masks for a leak check and reseal drill, then pulled of the masks and ran out.

Ran out crying, coughing and choking.

And people ask me, "What are you doing in the Army at your age?"  I would have to travel to Kiev to have this much fun!!