Beyond the Fort Dix Gate

I am writing this post in mid-afternoon in Philadelphia train station. I just got off the train from Trenton and am on the way to Lancaster. During the 90-minute wait between trains I am sitting in Cosi using free wireless internet that actually works--for several minutes on end. After 30 minutes I had to reboot my computer for internet access. I think my computer has difficulty believing the internet can work for that long.

After the internet, I got on the train to Lancaster and came home. My wife met me at the station and took me on a tour of our renovated house. It really looks different.

We picked up Nigel at school. I helped him with his homework. After he takes a bath we will be going to out to dinner.

It is GREAT to be home!!!!

A Last Long Day

I was up b efore 7 this morning to finish copying files and putting together the last Task Froce Diablo Newsletter. I finished it at 9 tonight and got it approved by the commander and PAO and proofed by the commander's assistant. It was like being in Iraq again. Especially the length of the day. I got most of the photos copied. That's what I will be doing tomorrow, in addition to packing and cleaning my room.
It's getting very close to civilian life now. Att 11 am tomorrow my friend Meredith Gould will pick me up and take me to the Trenton train station. She will be keeping my New Jersey bike for me also. Amtrak doesn't want bikes on the train.
More tomorrow.

"There's a Good Reason Why You are In This Line for 4 Hours"

Today I went through another stage of out-processing. The particular task involved calculating the leave due me. This can be tricky for the soldiers who are full-time in the Guard or Reserve, but not so much for people me. I and almost everyone else used exactly 15 days of leave for the trip home and we get a total of 32.5 days for the time we served. So I continue on active duty for 17 days with benefits and they pay me for the half day. The process would have taken ten minutes, but my leave form was blurry, so it took 30.

But I waited 4 hours to get to the station where this ten-minute calculation was performed. I was sitting in the finance office waiting for several sergeants and civilians to discuss my faded leave form. I said to one of the finance clerks that I had not waited for anything in line for four hours during the 23 years I was a civilian. She started to explain why we were waiting--only four finance clerks, 170people in line, etc. I said it was not the reason that mattered, but as a civilian if someone wanted me to wait four hours, the reward would have to be phenomenal. She spent 20 years in the Army then went to work for the federal government. For her, waiting in line makes sense. She lives by the government system.

And for her, the reasons did make sense. But if a civilian company would not be in business very long if it made customers wait in line four hours to do a predictable 10-minute bit of paperwork. And onloy a government organization would even try to do something so simple on paper. A money-making business would automate the calculation.

After that four-hour wait was over, I was in two more lines. One for 90 minutes, one for 2.5 hours. The last one I was only in line 90 minutes of the 2.5 hours. I left and ate dinner and came back. Soldiers hold each other's place in line.

We are All Back in America

We are all here in New Jersey now. No more flights we can't talk about, we are in America. So whatever is left do we will do it here in America and then go home to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Montana and wherever else people call home. The last plane arrived tonight at McGuire Air Force Base at 9pm. I was at the bottom of the ramp and got pictures of about 100 of the 170+ soldiers on the flight. It was much easier to shoot tonight for a variety of reasons.

1. Just about everyone on the plane was in our unit and from Pennsylvania so the VIPs shaking hands at the bottom of the ramp were all from PA. Last time there were VIPs from both PA and NJ. They formed parallel lines and the soldiers walked down the middle, so I could not shoot without someone's back to me.

2. I had only the flash on the camera which was not enough to shoot on the ramp--I know this now. I did not know it the first night.

3. A professional photographer from PA Headquarters shot video and reset my camera for higher light sensitivity. He also told me how he would be moving so I could use some of his light.

4. On the day of the arrival of the first flight, there was a colonel traveling with the VIPs who is also an amateur photographer. He was telling me how to shoot. He was also telling me that my job was to shoot the VIPs even though my assignment was to shoot the returning soldiers. At one point he pulled me by the shoulders to where he thought I should be. He proves the Army proverb I just made up that a high-ranking jerk is much worse than an ordinary jerk. In a couple of weeks when I am fully a civilian again, I will have more to say about what happens when a bully has rank. Thankfully, this guy did not show up with today's group.

Living in America

So what's it like to come back to America after being gone for most of a year? Part of it remains to be seen. I have not left the Fort Dix/McGuire Air Force Base complex yet, so I still have more to see and get used to. I suppose it is better to return slowly.

My first funny shock was the Taco Bell commercials, recommending the new Drive-Thru diet. Taco Bell has very funny commercials. What could be more American than the idea of a diet that you can do just sitting on your butt in your car!! And what could be more sneeringly American than to put the idea on TV for an audience that is drowning in flippancy.

This evening I saw a commercial for a healthy lifestyle diet plan. I don't remember which one it was, but all around the day room where the TV was playing mostly unwatched were men in their late 20s to mid 30s surrounded by pizza boxes and other delivery food containers. They were playing a video war game on line with each other. It was a beautiful day today, almost 50 degrees. These plus-size guys had been playing for hours, eating pizza.

I have been to the PX a half-dozen times already. It's fun just to walk around and look at all the stuff you can buy here in America. I can get any kind of shampoo I want.

I haven't yet had to ride in traffic, drive a car, commute or any of the dangerous stuff I have been spared for the last year. I ordered a new internet serive for our house that had me on the phone for almost an hour. I have to make two more calls for that one.

And sadly, I am no longer immune from the news. I read about Pat Robertson saying that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgement on the Haitian people and read Rush Limbaugh's predictably callous comments about the plight of the Haitians. Thousands dead and suffering is, for him, nothing more than a chance to take a shot at Liberals for being willing to help. Sometimes I hate the idea that all of us who served went over there in part to defend free speech for people like Robertson and Limbaugh, but in America they have as much right to speak as anyone else. But whether they have a right or not, they are no less pathetic cowards for doing so.

Who Fights This War? Operations Officer

Most people don’t know what they want to do with their lives till they are past their school years and into a career they don’t like. Some people know what they want to do all their lives. When Maj. Lee Hayes was just a kid growing up in Tyrone, Pa., he watched Chinook helicopters roar through the sky over his little town. He knew he wanted to be a soldier and he knew he wanted to fly.

Now 40 years old and completing his second deployment in which he served as Task Force Diablo’s operations officer, Hayes is a soldier, a pilot, and has his eye on his next assignment. Hayes commanded an attack helicopter company from 1998 to 2000 and is looking forward to his next command. If all goes well, he will command an aviation battalion. “Commander is the best job in the Army,” said Hayes. “This is my second deployment as a staff officer. I want my next deployment to be as a commander.”
Hayes joined the Pa. Guard at age 17 serving first as an infantryman while he attended The Pennsylvania State University. He went to OCS (Officer Candidate School) just before graduation and served as an infantry platoon leader until he attended flight school in 1994.

After flight school he served as a scout platoon leader, flying AH-1 Cobra helicopters. He then became as an attack platoon leader in the 1-104th Aviation Battalion, also flying AH-1 Cobra helicopters. He remained in the 1-104th and became an attack company commander. In 2000 he switched to the Reconnaissance and Interdiction Detachment (RAID), an assignment that lead to one of the most fast-paced weeks in his aviation career. “On September 11, his unit was sent to New York City for reconnaissance and whatever else the security teams needed,” Hayes said.
“They arrived in New York the evening of September 11.”

“We flew wherever they needed us,” Hayes said. During the week they transported many VIPs and moved key people wherever they needed to go.

Hayes has worked full time for the Pa. Army National Guard since 2000. He deployed to Kosovo as assistant operations officer with 2-104th in 2002, part of the first National Guard deployment to that country. When he returns from this deployment he will continue serve in an AGR role at Fort Indiantown Gap. He plans to serve at least nine more years before he retires from the job he knew he always wanted.

Uncle Jack's Airplanes

F-4 Phantom II





KC-135 Tanker






My son and oldest daughter, Nigel and Lauren came to visit for a couple of hours last night. It was dark so we could not see the big transport planes on McGuire Air Force Base very well. But on the way over at traffic circle there is a static display of two planes Uncle Jack flew in the skies over Viet Nam: the F4 Phantom fighter plane and one of the original KC-135 refueling planes. I could tell Nigel how his Uncle Jack flew in both of these planes. Nigel judged the KC-135 as "really big" which it is when you are a 10-year-old walking underneath it and the F4 as "Awesome."

Both planes struck me as being very small. The KC-135 is based on the Boeing 707 airliner, which is long replaced by newer planes in most of the world. The F4 just sitting on a slab was also very small and very odd looking with its droopy tail and nose and angled surfaces.

It's still at least a week till I get home. I am in the Air Force library four miles from my barracks using the only reliable internet that I have access to right now.