Movie Review: "Prisoner of the Mountains" "Кавказский пленник"

Last night I watched the 1996 movie "Prisoner of the Mountains" loosely based on a short story by Leo Tolstoy called "Prisoner of the Caucuses." We read an abridged version of the story in Russian for the Russian class I am taking and watched the movie for the class.  

The movie is set during the bloody Chechen War of the mid 1990s shortly after the Soviet Union had collapsed. This is not an action movie in the American mold: no special effects, no big explosions.  But the relationship between the main characters is as good as I have seen in a war movie.  The captured career sergeant and draftee private are the center of the film.  Sasha, the sergeant, maintains his authority throughout their capture.  Even when they are chained together and facing death, Sasha lies to the young recruit Vanya in a way that made me laugh out loud.    

The movie also gets right the experience of an Army made up of draftee soldiers led by career soldiers.  The tension between those who love the Army and those who hate the Army never goes away, but both soldiers can be equally brave facing death.  Near the end of the movie, Sasha and Vanya escape.  Sasha kills a shepherd to get his gun.  Shortly after they are recaptured because of a mistake by Vanya.  Sasha admits killing the shepherd and walks to his death, allowing Vanya to live. Later Vanya has a chance to escape again, but refuses when it would risk the life of a Chechen girl.

The relationship between Sasha and Vanya makes this movie well worth watching.

This is My Shit: Why Army Language Makes Sense

While I was in Iraq, I wrote about the word Shit as a pronoun. The post is here. Earlier today I was reading a book called The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov about life in Russian prison camps. Dovlatov wrote about a prisoner correcting a new camp guard about the guard's improper use of the word fuck.

When I wrote in 2009, it was about the difference in how soldiers use shit and bitch as a pronoun.  In that post, I noted that anything that will fit on a bunk is shit.  Anything larger is a bitch.

But I neglected the reason for the use of these pronouns.  From the moment a young soldier begins the process of enlisting, he is showered with acronyms and awash in the Latin-derived words of government bureaucracy.  Normal human beings cannot hear and retain hundreds of opaque new words and terms, so each soldier remembers a few new terms and for the rest says, "The sergeant told me some shit I was supposed to remember."

Then the soldier actually goes to basic training.  On the first day, soldiers file through supply and receive uniforms, boots, underwear, belts, packs, duffel bags, insignia, name tags, a helmet, and hundreds more bits of gear, large and small. These items could be identified by the nouns in the last sentence, but they are not.  The camouflage uniform is ACU: Army Combat Uniform.  The helmet is ACH: Advanced Combat Helmet. The belt and pouches for ammo and other equipment is our LBE: Load Bearing Equipment.  Our dress uniform is the ASU: Army Service Uniform.

When we were training for Iraq, our first sergeant would yell, "Line up outside in five minutes! ACH, LBE and weapon! Move!" My sleep-fogged brain would rebel and I would think as I pulled on my ACU pants, 'Why not call it a fucking helmet!'

The 18-year-old I was when I first enlisted and the 56-year-old I was when I deployed to Iraq was hit with a blizzard of opaque terms. My response to this brain storm was to identify ownership first.  So I pointed to a pile of gear and said, "This is my shit." or  "That's your shit."

Later when the soldier is assigned a vehicle, a large-caliber weapon, or other piece of equipment that won't fit on a bunk or in a duffel bag, he will say, "That bitch is mine."

I said that of my first Jeep in the Cold War Army.  A Jeep in the army could not be just a Jeep. It was a Truck, 1/4th Ton, Cargo, M151A1, a number and nomenclature I can still recite from memory.  Four decades later the Jeep's replacement was a Humvee or High Mobility, Multipurpose, Wheeled Vehicle,  M998.

Either way, when I had a vehicle I could say, "That bitch is mine, I'm throwing my shit in it.

Obama Will Take Our Guns

The 28th Combat Aviation Brigade mobilized for Iraq in January of 2009.  My battalion flew to Fort Sill for training at the end of the month, just a week after the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.  From the time we mobilized in Oklahoma to our demobilization in 2010 in Fort Dix, New Jersey, I heard earnest soldiers who were sure that "Obama will take our guns while we are deployed."

These devotees of Glenn Beck, Alex Jones and other batshit purveyors of lies on the right had emails from the NRA proving confiscation was imminent.

And now just 2,850 days later, President Obama has just 70 days left to send thousands of United Nations black helicopters swooping down from Canada to the homes of gun owners across America and begin the tyranny he planned all along.  Because as a Kenyan socialist, Barack Obama's plan all along was to turn America into a socialist state.

It is sadly funny in retrospect.  Among Obama's failures are his years of thinking he could work with Republicans and believing he could bring together a nation simmering with with race hatred.  And now one of the chief racists of the right has an office in the White House.  Steve Bannon of Brietbart.com brought the views of the Alt-Right into the mainstream and now he has an office next to the Oval Office. It's not like Bannon's views conflict with the President Elect.  Trump brought the Birther movement into prominence in 2011 and rode that cancerous horse to the White House.  Every Birther is a racist.  Denying the legitimacy of the Presidency based on made-up bullshit can have no basis but racism.

The Republicans fought President Obama from Day One of his presidency and the conservative media spread endless lies about him, like the one that is the subject of this post.  I am going to mark Sunday, November 13, 2016, as the first day of the end of American democracy.  Steve Bannon has an office in the White House and an agenda of hate, and I plan to fight it in every way I can.

Riding in 2017--A Story

“Shane, Shane is right as rain,” Shane sang to himself as he drove north on Pennsylvania Route 74 from York.  He saw dark clouds to the north. He was driving Grandpap’s ’74 Chevy C10 Stepside pickup truck listening to President Trump talk about how he was going to get all the Mexicans out of the country.  The old truck only had an AM radio. That was fine with Shane.  Trump was on WHP-AM.  Really, he was on every station now.

“Shane is right as rain,” he sang to the open windows on this April afternoon.  All those Lib’ral bitches that made fun of him weren’t laughing now.  Trump was Making America Great Again and Shane was part of it.  He was on his way to a Klan rally in Grantham.  Christians can’t be Lib’rals and they were going to march across the Messiah College campus and let them know what’s what. Shane dropped out of York Area High School.  Shane knew Trump would put all those college bitches in their place.

“Here’s a Trigger Warning bitches!” he said as he patted the AR15 in the rack behind his head.  He kept on singing. Shane called his AR15 an M4 because Shane should have been a soldier.  He tried to enlist but they turned him down.  The Jews made up the intelligence test he flunked and the bitches at the recruiting station said he needed to lose about 100 pounds.  What did they know?  He could shoot.  He could fight. 

The old six-cylinder engine clattered with knock from cheap gas and old age as Shane started up the first hill north of York.  Ahead riding on the shoulder was a guy on a bicycle.  “Faggots wear bike shorts,” Shane said to himself.  As he got near the bicyclist he moved gently right hitting the rider on the shoulder with his mirror.  Shane then laid on the air horn he installed himself and yelled “Faggot!” laughing as he drove away.

The bicyclist stayed upright and kept pedaling. 

Just past the crest of the next long hill, Shane pulled off the road and parked well off the shoulder.  He grabbed his rifle, slid his overall-clad form from the driver’s seat and walked to a pine tree just past the crest of a hill.  He dropped to the ground and wiggled his plus-size body under the tree.  He settled down in the pine needles, his massive midsection puddling out on either side of his body.  He could see well down the hill to the south.  Shane turned the switch on the battlesight.  The red dot inside the sight glowed faintly.  He watched as the lone bicyclist pedaled smoothly up the long hill.  When the bike was 200 meters away Shane listened for traffic.  Hearing none, he set the magazine on the patch of dirt he cleared in the pine-needle covered ground.  Shane put his right cheek on the collapsible stock, put the red dot in the middle of rider’s chest, flipped the safety to Fire and squeezed the trigger. 

The rider collapsed on the handlebars.  His legs wobbled.  His right foot twisted out of the cleated pedal, but the left foot stayed locked in.  The bike swerved left and fell.  He was dead before he hit the ground.  Shane rolled out from under the pine tree flipped the lever on his weapon to Safe and walked as quickly as he could back to Grandpap’s C10. 

“Shane is right as rain,” the unemployed Trump supporter said softly and smiled as he returned the rifle to the rack in the rear window.  “One round, one dead faggot,” he said louder as he started the old truck.  Shane looked left, signaled and rolled down the hill toward the Klan rally. 

Five minutes later an ambulance sped past to the south.  “Don’t need no ambulance,” said Shane as he watched the red lights blaze.  “Bicycles don’t belong on the damn road in Trump America,” he said to his open window. 

As he pulled off the road near the Messiah College campus, Shane saw dozens of Klansmen with their hoods off looking at their phones.  Shane grabbed his sheet and locked the door to the truck.  He walked over to a group of men and heard one of them say, “Shot dead.  A fucking General in the Army National Guard.  The real fucking deal.”  Shane started to ask, then decided to just listen.  Shane had no money for smartphone so he had no idea what they were talking about.  After a few minutes it became clear that the “faggot” he shot was General Pete Stevens, one of the most Conservative Congressmen in America.  Trump loved the guy.  Pete was an Apache pilot. He fought in Iraq. 

“Shit,” Shane said to himself as he slipped away from the group and walked back toward his truck.  “Ain’t right a General should ride a bike. Ain’t my fault.” He climbed in his truck and stared at sheet-clad men staring at their phones on the field in front of him.  He put the key in the ignition, then took it out again.  ‘Cops won’t come here,’ he thought to himself.  ‘Best I just do what I came to do.’

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Shane swung his legs left and slid from the seat.  He pulled his sheet on and the hood and walked back to the group. “Shane is right as rain,” he said to himself as he joined the hooded horde.

Feeling More Jewish as the World Moves to the Right

  

In mid-August, while I was returning from a family vacation in Santa Fe and enjoying life, the world got darker.  A candidate for President of the United States appointed the leading promoter of White Supremacists to head his campaign.  Donald Trump appointed Steve Bannon, head of Breitbart News, as CEO of his campaign.  If Trump wins, the Ku Klux Klan will have an office in the White House. 

When conservatives get power, they try to limit gay rights, minority voting rights, and abortion rights.  But Bannon in the West Wing will mean women’s rights and even civil rights are in peril.  Every genocide begins with the group in power taking human rights away from minorities.  Next the party in power takes away minority citizenship, next those in the minority become refugees or die. It is a large and terrible sign that Trump began his campaign by saying illegal immigrants are not people like us.  Trump’s use of “They” and “Them” is straight out of every dictator’s playbook. And Trump loves Vladimir Putin. 

Speaking of Russian dictators, my paternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust by escaping from what is now Odessa, Ukraine, (They called it Russia.) when killing tens of thousands of Jews was Russian government policy.  Millions of Jews who escaped death in Ukraine and went to America survived.  Those who stayed in Ukraine were very likely to have died in the Holocaust.  My family never talked about the Holocaust and it was not much discussed in my school that I can remember. Since only my father was Jewish, I am not actually a Jew, even though I had a Bar Mitzvah. But I am culturally Jewish, and to a Nazi, I have more than enough Jewish blood to be condemned.

Five years after my Bar Mitzvah, I was in the Air Force.  I had “Jewish” on my dogtags. If I was part of a small minority in Stoneham, Jews were simply non-existent in the military.  I was the first Jew my basic training bunkmate had ever seen “up close.” Leonard “’Bama” Norwood was fond of saying he was “from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53.”  Not a lot of Jews in Alabama.

 

Recovering from a missile explosion the following year, I began to believe in God, then become a Christian.  So when I re-enlisted in the Army in 1975, I had “Christian”on my dogtags.  Because I was an American soldier, I was free to identify myself by my religious preference.  There was no genetic test, no blood test, no religious requirement to my military service.  So I could identify as a Jewish missile technician in the Air Force, then as a Christian tank commander in the Army.  A decade later I was out of the Army and in college full time. In my classes I first read the poetry of Dante Aligheri and Chretien de Troyes and fell in love with the Medieval World in Western Europe.  

I did not think much about being Jewish until 1994.  That was the year of the genocide in Rwanda.  Kids hacked to death in Churches or left mutilated in agony by their former neighbors was so wrenching I could not look away.

At the same time as the Rwandan Genocide, I helped a family of survivors of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia to settle in America.  Vladislav and his daughter Branka escaped first, then Branka's mother Borka followed them two years later. The story is here.

At this time my view of mass murder started to shift from millions of people murdered to millions of murders.  Vladislav, Branka and Borka Semeunovic were refugees.  They escaped slaughter because America took them in, just as America had taken in my grandparents 94 years earlier. The Holocaust had seemed remote before, but now refugees and mass murder victims had faces and families.

Every Jew killed by the Nazis had a life and a family. Every Rwandan hacked to death by a neighbor had a life before that neighbor took a machete and cut her to pieces.  Every Serb, Croat and Bosnian Muslim in the former Yugoslavia could have been killed in the chaos of the 1990s.  More than 200,000 were killed.  

Then in 2001 nearly 3,000 Americans were the victims of murder.  It was a mass murder but each individual died in their own agony within just a couple of hours.

And now a candidate for President of the United States has named a Neo-Nazi as head of his campaign.  I have Jewish daughters and African-American sons.  Before Bannon, I thought random gun violence was the greatest danger they faced.  With Bannon in the West Wing, the U.S. Government itself could become a threat. 

Most of my life has been devoted overcoming obstacles and full of very American optimism that I could do anything I worked hard at. I am not a fatalist by belief or temperament.  But a Trump victory will reduce everyone to their tribes.  Jews have long been victims of the whims of dominant cultures, as have all people of color.  German Jews who were combat veterans of World War One became victims of Holocaust.

We Jews, by the many ways Jewishness can be defined, and all people of color will find America a very different place if Trump wins. And even if Trump loses, his campaign has made real evil mainstream. Refugees look like danger and evil to Trump.  To me refugees look like my grandparents, like the Semeunovic family, like people who need help.  America is already great.

Injections in Both Arms--So Army!

This week I went to my family doctor to get two injections.  One was a tetanus booster so the woman giving me the shot asked me to stand up and let my arm hang loose.  Usually at civilian doctors, I get shots or blood drawn sitting down.  Standing with my arm loose is just what they told me to do in basic training in 1972 when they used the air injectors like the one in the picture above.

As the line moved slowly between the medics with the injector guns, the drill sergeant told us to be sure and stand still because if we flinched the air gun would rip our arm open.  I never saw that happen, but we all believed it.  The real story of terror was the Square Needle in The Left Nut on the 10th Training Day.  That was scary.  I wrote about that shortly after re-enlisting.

Forty-four years later, the needles are thinner, the technicians are older and I had no ill effects in either arm, just the memory of waiting for the air gun.

Surprising Follow Up with a MEDEVAC Pilot

I do not have a photo of MEDEVAC Pilot Suzy Danielson

But this poster covers her attitude towards life

Yesterday I posted a story on the DUSTOFF Facebook page I wrote about a MEDEVAC pilot I served with in Iraq.  The story is here.  She was a pilot in the Gulf War in 1991, left the Army in 1993 and forgot she was still a reserve officer.  In 2009, the Army reminded her with a FEDEX package telling her to report for duty.  She was 44 when she returned to active service and deployed to Iraq.  

After I posted the story, I sent Suzy an email, not knowing if she was still using that address.  At midnight, I got an email back from Suzy.  She is in Afghanistan!  Apparently she liked returning to the Blackhawk helicopter cockpit.  I asked her to follow up with me when she returns.