A Cowboy Movie Set in St. Petersburg, Russia

Last week I watched the movie "Brother" of "Брат" in Russian.  The movie was filmed for just $10,000 in mid-1990s Russia, the worst economic times for Russia since the Mongol invasion in the mid-1200s. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union left Russia alone with a failed economy.  Along with putting tens of millions in poverty, Russia fell apart in many other ways.  Russia invaded Chechnya, but the Russian Army was all but abandoned by its failed government. Russian lost the war and veterans came home broke, broken and disillusioned. One of those veterans becomes a Cowboy, a friend and avenger for the poor. 

The movie is fun to watch for an old soldier that grew up on cowboy movies. It also has a lot to say about how terrible life in Russia was in the 1990s.  Part of the popularity of President Putin and his ability to hold onto power is that the economy got better under Putin--a lot better. 

The movie is available in eight parts on Youtube or for $4 from Amazon with subtitles.  Enjoy!

Six Days of War: Three Wars Lost in Six Days

Israeli Sherman Tanks in the Sinai, Attacking Egypt

Ignorance Can be the greatest ally or the greatest enemy of an army at war.  In the book Six Days of War, Michael B. Oren explains in considerable detail how Arab ignorance and mistrust was the real key to the vastly outnumbered Israelis defeating three Arab armies in just six days. 

Oren shows how the Israelis called up all of their reserves and prepared for weeks to attack Egypt before Egypt attacked them, or to defend if Egypt attacked first. And yet the Israeli attack on June 5, 1967, came as a complete surprise to the commander of the Egyptian Army.

The reasons are complicated, but Oren makes a strong case that Field Marshall Abdel Hakim Amer, supreme commander of Egyptian forces, filled the upper ranks of the Egyptian military with cronies, shoving aside talented leaders preparing for a coup against his childhood friend President Gamel Abdel Nasser.

The Israelis put Moshe Dayan in charge of the military just months before the war, another signal to anyone paying attention that the war plans were for an attack.  Also, just months before the war, the Egyptians blockaded the Israeli port in Elat and all shipping. Time pressure pushed the Israelis to act, and yet, the Egyptians blustered and waited and did not prepare for an attack, let alone prepare for their own.  

On June 5, nearly the entire Israeli Air Force attacked air bases all across Egypt.  By the afternoon, more than 80% of the Egyptian Air Force was burning wreckage, most of it on the ground.  Cratering charges made the airfields useless.  At the same time, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) rolled into Sinai in a multi-pronged attack that succeeded so fast and so well that the most optimistic Israeli leaders could not believe it.  

With so much of the IDF fighting on the ground and in the air in Sinai driving toward Egypt, if the Jordanian and Syrian armies had attacked, Israel would have to stop the attack and defend itself, at minimum pulling all air support away from Egypt.  

Both the Syrians and the Jordanians had sworn mutual aid in case of attack.   

But nothing happened.  Iraq also was to attack in support of Egypt.  It's forces sat in Jordan and Syria.  

On June 7, fighting started near Jerusalem. The Israelis had no plans to recapture Jerusalem, but the Jordanians fired on the IDF from the Mount Scopus and other heights in Jerusalem. the IDF attacked to take out the guns and by the night of June 9-10, retook Jerusalem and had the Jordanian army, including the vaunted Arab Legion in full retrat all across the West Bank of the Jordan River.

During this period, the Syrians shelled Israeli settlements.  The settlers on the frontier howled for help.  On June 10, the IDF attacked in the North toward Syria.  If the Syrians had attacked, the Israelis would have been obliged to stop their offensives in Jordan and Egypt. But the Syrians shelled civilians and stayed still.  Their army, like the other two Arab armies was in headlong retreat on June 11.  

In war, the mistakes of the enemy are often as important as the plans of the winners.  In this case, arrogance and mistrust among the Egyptian leaders was followed by a betrayal by their allies.  The end was Israel more than doubling in territory and smashing three Arab armies.  

Oren explains battles in great detail, especially retaking Jerusalem and the air attack that won the war on the first day. He also gives the reader a lot of detail about propaganda.  Egypt used its media to deny their losses and tell the world they were winning the war. Part of the hesitation of the Jordanians and Syrians to come to the aid of Egypt was the glowing reports Egypt was sending of their great victories.  

The other overwhelming impression the book gave me is of how ignorant the Egyptians were of what the Israelis were doing despite the evidence in front of them. The rest of the world was also largely ignorant of how bad the situation was on the ground and how fast everything changed.  It reminded me of how the world blundered into war in 1914.  

This book tells a complicated story very well. 

Visiting the Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise

German Infantry Weapons on display in the Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise

In June of this year I visited the Airborne Museum at Sainte-Mere-Eglise on the western edge of the Normandy invasion. Thousands of paratroopers, jumped, floated in on gliders, and many gave their lives on the night of June 5-6, 1944.  

The museum gathered weapons, equipment, uniforms and aircraft used by the paratroopers and the Germans on the ground.

American infantry uniforms

C-47 Transport Aircraft

American infantry weapons

This photo and the two below recreate one of the iconic episodes of the paratroop landing on D-Day. Here is the story from Wikipedia:

On the night before D-Day (June 5–6, 1944), American soldiers of the 82nd Airborne parachuted into the area west of Sainte-Mère-Église in successive waves. The town had been the target of an aerial attack and a stray incendiary bomb had set fire to a house east of the town square. The church bell was rung to alert the town of the emergency and townspeople turned out in large numbers to form a bucket brigade supervised by members of the German garrison. By 0100 hours, the town square was well lit and filled with German soldiers and villagers when two sticks (planeloads of paratroopers) from the 1st and 2nd battalions were dropped in error directly over the village.

The paratroopers were easy targets, and Steele was one of only a few non-casualties. His parachute was caught in one of the pinnacles of the church tower, causing the suspension lines of his parachute to stretch to their full length, leaving him hanging on the side of the church. The wounded paratrooper hung there limply for two hours, pretending to be dead, before the Germans took him prisoner. He later escaped from the Germans and rejoined his division when US troops of the 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment attacked the village capturing thirty Germans and killing another eleven. He was awarded the Bronze Star for valor and the Purple Heart for being wounded in combat.

 

Just across the road from the Airborne Museum is a Tour de France themed barn

Visiting the Base Where I was a Tank Commander from 1976-79 in Wiesbaden, Germany

When I visited Wiesbaden Air Base this summer, the tank in the photo above was the only tank on the base.  When I arrived the first time in October 1976, the 54 tanks of 1st Battalion, 70th Armor were combat loaded with 63 rounds of cannon ammo. We were on the East-West border within 48 hours after we landed at Rhein-Main Air Base.  

The building above was post headquarters for 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division as soon as we took over the base.  It still serves as headquarters, now for the reserve forces in Europe, commanded by Major General John Gronski, my division commander in Pennsylvania before he took over this new command in Europe.  

This building was my barracks in 1976-77, before I moved off post.  It is offices now. Bravo Company was mostly on the second floor.  The barracks were carpeted and had relatively luxurious living spaces.  I shared a room with three other sergeants.  Enlisted men were eight to a room.  Sergeant Daniel Rosera was the first one to buy 300 Watts of stereo to play Peter Frampton Comes Alive out his barracks window.  Her also bought a mic so he could belch at 300 Watts.  He could belch short sentences.  A man of considerable talents.

Across this fences is a few dozen trucks and a dozen more Blackhawk helicopters.  The tanks are gone and aircraft sit where M109 howitzers and their support vehicles were parked 40 years ago.

I rode up to Wiesbaden Air Base from Darmstadt and visited John and Berti Gronski. They live in the housing area. Gronski and his wife still ride. I didn't find out until this visit that they were really serious riders.  When Gronski left active duty as a lieutenant in 1981, he and Berti rode home from Washington state to Mossic, Pa. on bicycles! John towed a trailer carrying their 15-month-old son.  

The unit motto of the 28th Division, Pa. National Guard, is "Roll On!"  Gronski would say that at formations and public ceremonies. I had no idea in 2012 - 14 when he was division commander that he took "Roll On" so literally. He and Berti rolled on for 3,000 miles across the country.  

The Flag of Israel, A White Falcon, Beeping Horns and Real Pride

On Sunday, June 11, 1967, in mid-afternoon, a small parade of cars drove north on Oak Street in Stoneham, Massachusetts, past my house.  I happened to be in the yard. I went to the street to see what was going on. The first car of the six or seven in line was a white 1962 Ford Falcon convertible with a tattered Israeli flag tied to its antenna.  It seemed like a dozen men and women in their 20s or so were sitting on the doors and the trunk and standing on the seats, waving and yelling.

"Israel won! Israel beat the Arabs! Israel!" They also yelled in Hebrew.  Most of them were wearing something blue or white or both.  The lead car was the only convertible. The rest of the cars were sedans with people sitting on the doors or hanging out the windows also waving and yelling.

Israel won!

Stoneham is a suburb nine miles north of Boston. When I was 14 years old in 1967, the population was 12,000 and growing.  But the Jewish population was in the hundreds. Most of the town was divided between old families that went back to the Revolution or further. Stoneham was incorporated in 1636. The other half was Irish and Italian Catholic families.  It seemed like the entire Jewish population of Stoneham was in those cars, at least those between 18 and 25 years old.  I am technically not Jewish, my father is Jewish, not my mother so I am not Jewish by Israel's official definition.

But on this day, for the first time I can remember, I was really proud to be Jewish.  Israel beat Egypt, Jordan and Syria in just six days.  The victory was crushing. Israel was outnumbered 100 to 1 and sent all three armies fleeing. Until that day, when I thought about being Jewish, I thought about being a victim. I did not know much about my heritage or the Holocaust, but I know that millions were killed by the Nazis.

The Six-Day War changed that for me. Israel could fight and win against impossible odds.  Israelis were not victims, they were warriors.  I just finished reading Six Days of War by Michael Oren. This book brought together all of the details of a war I knew from news reports at the time. Oren makes clear the cascade of errors and arrogance by the Arab leaders that led to such a quick and crushing defeat.  He also details how many of the victories were last-minute decisions in the moment that could have gone another way. Taking Jerusalem, for example, was not a plan. There was an opportunity. Israel took it.

Reading this book was also a counterbalance for me to my visits to Holocaust sites and memorials this summer.  I spent the summer being reminded of how dangerous Nazi and white supremacist ideology really is.  Oren's book reminded me that Israel is ready to fight any enemy of the Jewish people.

Eight Years Ago Matt Jones Was My Mentor, and the Same Age as My Kids

From Left: Me, Matt Jones, Dale Shade and Andy Mehler

Ten years ago this month I moved from Echo Company to Task Force Diablo HQ. My new mission was to write about as many soldiers as I could and take hundreds of pictures.  

The last time I took photos professionally was in the 70s. Cameras had film. I needed help.  At Brigade Headquarters there were two Public Affairs sergeants, but only one had been to the Defense Information School. The sergeant who handed me a digital camera and showed me how to use it was Matt Jones.  Of course he was less than half my age, everybody was. But this young, quiet sergeant who was about the same age as my oldest daughter was also my mentor. He showed me how to use the new camera, how to frame shots, how to care for the camera in sandstorms and prop wash from helicopters, and how the Army does public relations.  

I had more than 20 years experience in public relations, but the Army is a much more controlled environment than the civilian world. Matt guided me through the virtual land mines of Army approvals. He is also an excellent line editor and made several of my stories better and more focused. 

Although we occasionally worked in the same office and we were both in the same Brigade, Matt's work environment was sadly different than mine. The people I worked for in Task Force headquarters gave me everything I needed within their power to help me do my job. Matt worked for a headquarters with a troubled commander and the infighting that always happens in that kind of situation. While I got praise and encouragement, Matt got criticism and disdain.  

Matt is now just another old guy, over 30!, with kids and a career. Ten years ago, he helped me to succeed while he handled his own set of difficulties.  

Thanks again Matt. 

The Army is Progressive When the Country is Divided

When I enlisted in 1972, racial integration was a fact in the American Army, but was an on-going mess outside the gates of every base. At that time, the very few women in the military were very separate and no one could be openly Gay, but the Army was ahead of the civilian world in racial integration.

Part of the success of integration in the Army was shared suffering.  Everyone in Basic Training of whatever background had a common enemy in the Drill Sergeant. After Basic, soldiers of every color had a real enemy in Vietnam. Rifle squads live by trusting each other.

During my first enlistment between 1972 and 1984, I lived in an Army that changed from a draft to a volunteer Army.  By 1977, one of the Volunteer Army infantry battalions in the armored brigade I served in was majority minority--Blacks and Hispanics were almost 70 percent of the soldiers in the unit.

By the way, in the 70s the ranks of Black Drill Sergeants grew rapidly. It was still difficult for minority soldiers to achieve officer ranks, but Drill Sergeant was open to every career sergeant who mastered all the essential soldier skills. And that meant soldiers of every background were taking orders from a Black man from the first day of their service.

When the Army became "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the 90s, it was far ahead of a culture in which old people (voters) were against Gay Rights and young people (non-voters) were mostly in favor of Gay Rights.

The Iraq War saw the integration of women in the Army in a way they never had been before and later Gay soldiers were allowed to serve openly.  Last year Transgender soldiers joined the ranks. The President is issuing orders to ban Transgender soldiers, but he is fighting a trend that toward inclusion that is more than a half century old and will continue.

The military squeezes people into tanks, destroyers, Humvees, submarines, aircraft and holes in the ground. In those confined spaces, they learn to survive and thrive.

I wish there was a civilian equivalent of a bunker or a Stryker vehicle. We would have better world.