Chemical Weapons: Feeble in War, Powerful Against Civilians

Nearly a hundred civilians died in agony this week and hundreds more will be crippled by a Sarin gas attack in Syria.  Murdering unprotected civilians is the most effective way to use chemical weapons.  Since they were introduced 102 years ago, they have been a failure on the battlefield, but a terrible success against civilians.

German Captain Fritz Haber gave the command to release chlorine gas from hundreds of cylinders at Ypres in April of 1915. At that moment, chemical warfare became part of the horrors of trench warfare for the remainder of World War I.

Chemical weapons were not used in World War II, or subsequent wars, except the Iran-Iraq War in the late 80s. Military leaders soon found that chemical warfare is less effective than kinetic (bombs and bullets) warfare.  With the additional problem that the winners often cannot occupy the territory they take.  An area contaminated with Sarin or other nerve agents will take weeks to decontaminate.

While they are not very effective against trained, protected soldiers, chemical weapons work very well against civilians, particularly in cities.  Closed, crowded spaces are perfect for chemical weapons. Subways, meeting halls, sports arenas are all perfect places to use chemical weapons.

In 1977, one of my additional duties as a tank commander in West Germany was CBR NCO. I was the Chemical, Biological, Radiation Weapons Sergeant for our unit.  Each month I gave and hour-long class in a different weapon of mass murder and how to survive.  Although we tank soldiers had a better chance of surviving than ground troops, everyone knew that in a war with gas and nukes and weaponized bugs, we were going to die.

At the end of each class I would yell, "On your feet!"  The room stood up and I presented the doomsday scenario of the month.  What should we do if our position is hit with a nuclear weapon? Or what should do if we are attacked with artillery shells full of nerve gas, the kind that will kill you even if you get a drop on your skin?

The soldiers answered in unison, "Sergeant Gussman, we will put our heads firmly between our legs and kiss our ass goodbye!"

We walked out laughing, but no one thought these weapons were anything but terrifying. They still are.

Ten Years Ago: Re-enlistment Paperwork

At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 2009 running the Army Physical Fitness Test

in a gas mask. My official job was Chemical Weapons Decontamination Specialist.

In the last blog post, I finally made the call to begin the re-enlistment process. After calling the recruiter, I pulled together all the documents I could find to confirm my prior service, scanned them and sent them. 

Two days after the call, I was the dog that caught the car.  I thought, “What now?!!”  What was I going to do if I actually got back in the Army. I thought about volunteering for some sort of chemical weapons job.  Most everyone dislikes chemical weapons in principle and in practice.  Wearing a gas mask and chemical protection gear is somewhere from uncomfortable to horrible.

But the fact that most people don’t like the chemical weapons branch made it attractive. It fit with the idea that I was replacing my failure at community service with Army service.  

Part of my thinking in re-enlisting was that I would join a Type A group of people in community service.  I had tried volunteering with local charitable groups. I failed. The people who run food pantries and women’s shelters and adoption support groups are really nice people. 

They drove me nuts.

When I volunteered, I just wanted to do something useful: Stack boxes, sort cans, something. But volunteering with nice people means a lot of hand-wringing. Also in the first years of the new century the economy was good. It was artificially good as it turns out, but in 2007, the economy seemed good, the terrorists had not attacked again.

I wanted the organization I volunteered for to have a goal and fight for it.  The Army was in two wars and needed soldiers.  The change in recruiting age that would allow me to get back in was proof the Army really needed soldiers.  By simply showing up I could definitely do one thing that I had done in 1972: Show up.  If I was in the Army, the Army needed to recruit one less soldier. 

So if things worked out and I got back in, I would volunteer for chemical weapons protection of some kind.  But first I had to get in.

Ten Years Ago Today: Cold War Soldier Starts Re-enlistment Process

The Night Before Basic, Killing Brain and Lung Cells

On January 31, 1972, I flew to Texas to begin basic training. On April 2, 2007, ten years ago today, I called Sgt. 1st Class Kevin Askew, recruiting sergeant for the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade, and began the process of re-enlisting after 23+ years as a civilian.  I was 53 years old at the time, about to turn 54.

In the Spring of 2007, The Surge in Iraq was in full swing and recruitment for the Army was down a lot. The economy was good, Congress would not even consider re-starting the Draft, so in late 2006 Congress raised the maximum first-enlistment age for the Army from 35 to 42 years old.

The program was a failure and was rescinded three years later. But that failed program allowed me to re-enlist.  The maximum enlistment age for soldiers with prior service is the enlistment age plus the years of prior service plus a one-year waiver.  I needed all of that.

I called three recruiters before I called Kevin. He was the first one to pick up the phone. I told him about my education and prior service before I told him how old I was. He did not hesitate. He asked for all the papers I had that would confirm my prior service dates. He thought there was a good chance I could get back in, but only as an enlisted man. I told him that was fine. At my age, there were very few programs I could be retrained in, and despite my education, nothing as an officer. I was way past the maximum age for officer and warrant officer programs.

Because the other recruiters did not answer the phone, I decided to go with the Aviation unit, which led to the one regret I had for the rest of my time on this enlistment. I should have gone back to an armor unit.  I really did miss tanks themselves, few things are more fun than speeding across open country in 55 tons of armor, or firing the tank's main gun.

Few places in the Army have the same camaraderie as a tank.  Except for crews with a platoon leader or commander, everyone in the tank is an enlisted man. I flew a lot of missions on Blackhawks and Chinooks. There was banter among the crew chiefs, door gunners and flight engineers and there was banter int he cockpit, but the divide between the officers and enlisted men was clear.  The tank crews I was part of were a team of more or less equals. We were all enlisted, even if only one of us was in charge.

April 2, 2007, was Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter.  The irony of signing up to go to war on the night before Good Friday was not lost on me.

At the time I was keeping my plans to myself. I did not want to worry my family, friends, co-workers or anyone else in my life with a crazy plan that had, as I saw it at the time, a low chance of success.

As it turns out, my enlistment plans would hit a Himalayan speed bump on May 9, 2007, but that is for a later post.

Bullets, Bikes and Rotor Blades: Random Motion, Perfectly Predictable

Bullets rip from the barrel of modern rifles at more than 3000 feet per second.  Tanks fire armor-piercing shells that travel nearly twice that speed, just over a mile a second.  Rotor blades on helicopters sweep the air at a constant speed, but a small  change in the pitch (tilt) of the blades causes the ‘copter to rise, drop, hover or hurtle through the air at more than 100 knots.

Each of these complex motions is almost perfectly predictable moving through an utterly random medium: air.  The atmosphere, from sea level to stratosphere, is nothing but randomly moving molecules.  The molecules of air are vanishingly small,  so each cubic foot of air has about 30 sextillion molecules (3 with 22 zeroes) of air in it at any moment.

Since air is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, most air molecules are just under a millionth of a millimeter long. These tiny particles move in random directions: up, down, left, right and everything in between at speeds around 1000 miles per hour at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. 

And yet.

The collective motion of hundreds of trillions of individual molecules is so predictable that a 95-pound artillery shell fired from a 155mm cannon can hit within meters of a target ten miles away.  A 105mm tank cannon firing a practice SABOT round can make  will punch a perfect 40mm hole within inches of the middle of a one-meter circle a full kilometer away. In 1976, my gunner made a smiley-face triangle with three rounds while we were zeroing our main gun. 

If random motion meant changes in wind resistance, gunners would never be able to fire with inch-perfect accuracy.

Every week I coast down a ¾-mile-long hill. At the top of the hill are two big wind-power generators.  A mile away from the hill I check the direction the blades are facing and their speed. I know before I get to the hill what my speed will be at the bottom within less than 5mph. The difference comes from how much draft I get from other cyclists.  In the distance down that hill, my bicycle and I pass through 15 cubic feet of air for every foot we move down the hill.  So from top to bottom the bike and I pass through 50,000 cubic feet of randomly move molecules of air, billions of sextillions of molecules of air.

And yet.

The motion is perfectly predictable.  Any single molecule of air might be racing ahead of my bicycle at 1000mph or it might get passed by a bullet or a cannon shell. But the collective motion of all those molecules is wind resistance. And wind resistance is as predictable as electrical resistance in a wire fluid resistance in a pool of water. 

The world is full of randomness at every level from atoms to stars and yet the universe is so stable that the greatest theories of science are based on permanency across millennia of time and light years of space. 

This is beauty we are immersed in every day. 

If we could see air molecules move, it would look like the tracers from a hundred monkeys firing a hundred machine guns while swinging through trees. 

Nature is often this way. A surprise. Not at all what we expect and somewhere beyond amazing. 

Obsessed With Ribbons: Civilian and Military

For Illustration Only! This is what four ribbons looks like on a conference badge.

I actually merit no ribbons!

The selection of possible ribbons.

Today I worked in the registration area at an engineering conference.  I helped people find the ribbons they were supposed to wear as conference participants.  Most of the participants knew which ribbons if any they were supposed to wear.  Most people wore none.  The most common ribbon was "Speaker" followed by "Fellow."  

But about one in twenty were entitled to multiple ribbons. Most had been doing this for years and knew which ones they should wear, but at one point a group of four men and women showed up who were very excited about their multiple ribbons and upset that the ribbon "Chair" was not available.  Each of these avid ribbon wearers were the Chair of something and were upset that ribbon was not on the ribbon table. 

Since I had no useful information about where they could get their Chair ribbons, they looked for the manager of registration to see if there was a not a special stash of Chair ribbons in a secret place.  Then they discussed the order of their ribbons and how many each person was entitled to. I did not laugh out loud, but I am sure the smirk I wore was visible.  

In the Army there are a few soldiers obsessed their awards who make sure they receive every award they are entitled to.  Most soldiers are indifferent and take awards very lightly.  But a few want to be sure they receive every award of the Pennsylvania Recruiting and Retention Medal if they have met the requirements for that particular medal.  

In the Army every soldier is required to display all medals they have earned and for which they have orders, so some soldiers become expert in their ribbons because it is part of proper wear of the uniform.  

At an engineering conference, no one is required to wear ribbons, so the men and women who were hoping to add four or five ribbons to their badge can't say they have any reason except badge vanity. Of course, vanity can show up anywhere: in the Army, at an engineering conference, or on the runway at the Academy Awards.  I just thought it was funny to see ribbons for "Speaker" and "Fellow" and "Chair" treated like a Bronze Star Medal, and Air Medal, or a Croix de Guerre."

Yes, I am Judging You

When I tell a civilian that I and every sergeant is a judgmental bastard, they think I am being funny.  I am not.  When I was a sergeant in the Army it was my job to glance at a soldier and infer from his wear of the uniform how much I could trust him and how much he really understood his duties.  And when I recognized a fault it was my job to tell that soldier to correct the fault and check that he did.

One sergeant I served with said, "I tell them how they are fucked up and how to un-fuck themselves."

In any area of life in which experts are in close contact with amateurs, the experts will be judging the amateurs. Expertise is tough to come by. It takes hard work.  If Malcolm Gladwell is right, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to truly master a skill.

Because written communication has become so much more common and so much more public on social media, I read people saying that their grammar doesn't matter.  It is their brilliant thoughts we should pay attention to.  Soldiers believe this rubbish too and say so on social media.  Although they will judge another soldier when one insignia 1/16th-inch out of place, they somehow think their idiotic self-expression gets a pass. It doesn't.

I cannot look at a badly worn uniform without judging the wearer. I cannot look at an ill-constructed sentence without thinking it is the careless expression of muddled thoughts.

My Summer Vacation will be on This Blog!

On June 7 I fly to Europe. By the 9th I will begin a bicycle trip from Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia that will cover more than a dozen countries and end in St. Petersburg, Russia. Along the way I will be visiting Holocaust Memorial sites and the sites of some of the fiercest battles in world history as the Nazi Army was pushed from defeat in Stalingrad all the way back to Berlin.

I was going to make a separate bicycle trip blog, but every place I go on this trip was overrun by the Nazi Army then liberated by an Allied Army. In addition to the World War II connection, is my own service in the Cold War.  If all goes as planned my last stop in Europe will be at Land of Kanaan in Darmstadt, Germany, where my friend Bruder Timotheus is a Franciscan Brother. Before he was Bruder Timotheus, Senior Airman Cliff Almes was my roommate for several months in 1978 when we were both stationed in Wiesbaden, West Germany.

After Darmstadt, I fly to Israel then  return home.  I have the bike. I have the plane tickets. Now I start working on the route.

Another thing I will be working on is getting visas from countries that did not require them until January 20. Now they do. Five countries on my route in easter Europe require Americans to get visas this year, because America is denying visa reciprocity to them.