Adapting to New Environments

Nigel (left) and Jacari


I rode 31 miles yesterday. After being off the bike for a week because of the snow, I rode 12 miles Saturday and had a long ride yesterday with five other Lancaster racers who braved the wet roads.

I did not ride with them long. In fact, I got dropped on a hill no more than 300 feet long on the 3-mile ride to the meeting point at the official beginning of the ride. After the meeting point, I lasted another two miles, then turned off at the top of the first long hill. I did not want the rest of the group slowing down and waiting for me on every hill and that's what would have happened if I stayed. So I rode south to a 2.5 mile hill in the Village of Buck, rode to the top and rode home in a headwind.

After the ride, my wife said that the thing that might take me the longest in getting back to life in Lancaster is being able to keep up with my bike buddies. I think she is right. It will take months before I will be able to do the training rides. But I am still finding myself staring at landscapes that I would not have noticed before. I am still unpacking books and sorting papers from the year I was gone. I packed everything up because of all the construction in our house while I was gone. It's not big things, but I was clearly immersed in Iraq and after three weeks as a civilian, it still seems strange to have all the choices America offers.

Which lead me to think about Jacari. He will start spending weekends at our home by the end of the month and in the summer, we will begin the process of adopting him. Jacari is 11. He has been in foster care for almost four years with a really great family. He wants to be adopted, but even so, he will have so many things to adapt to with his new life.

I once took a stress test in a magazine. I was surprised to find that both good and bad events raise the stress level. The birth of a child and death of a parent had an equal score. Losing your home had a higher score than buying a home, but not a lot higher. So even if Jacari is completely happy with his new family, his new school, his new room, house, etc. he will be under some stress.

With yet another snow storm on the way, I miss Iraqi weather--at least Iraqi winter weather.

Medal Inflation, Part 2

If you want to be entertained for hours and understand one reason why I met many soldiers who were upset about awarding Bronze Star Medals to people who were not in direct combat, then watch the 2001 HBO Miniseries "Band of Brothers." This eight-hour show chronicles Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, from training through D-Day through the end of World War 2.

If you look at the decorations received by this storied group of American soldiers, you will see the Bronze Star Medal was given for gallantry under fire. Every soldier I met who had watched the series remembered in particular when Easy Company, with less than 30 men, attacked a German anti-aircraft battery. The battery was dug in and protected by machine guns. Using fire and maneuver, the remnants of Easy Company that had just parachuted into Normandy attacked and destroyed the emplacement. The attack, led by then 1st Lt. Dick Winters of Lancaster, is still taught at the US Military Academy at West Point. Winters received the Distinguished Service Cross for leading the attack. Sgt. Donald Malarkey was Winter's NCOIC and fire team leader. Malarkey was awarded the Bronze Star. Malarkey got two additional Bronze Stars over the next year. Easy Company as a group fought in more battles than any member of the Normandy invasion force and Malarkey had the most time in the front lines of any soldier in Easy Company.

Many soldiers, as I wrote yesterday, are angry when they see someone who was essentially an administrator receive the same medal that Sgt. Malarkey received for his part in one of the single greatest small-unit actions in American military history.

The Bronze Star was the most resented award I heard about in Iraq, partly because of some of the people who received it never saw anything close to combat, and partly because it was often awarded to senior soldiers near the end of their careers--as in the case of the chaplain in the last post.

But there were also problems with lesser awards. I was firmly on both sides of Medal inflation in regard to the Army Commendation Medal. More on that in a future post.

Medal Inflation, Part 1

Sgt. Melissa White was furious when I visited her office on Tallil Ali Air Base last September. She had just returned from covering an award ceremony for the Sustainment Brigade that was leaving in two weeks. Sustainment Brigades are, by definition, not forward combat units, although in Iraq anybody could get hit with an IED on the roads. What had the tall, tough sergeant fuming was an award of the Bronze Star Medal made at that ceremony.

The brigade chaplain had received the Bronze Star for service during his deployment to Iraq. That service was almost entirely on our big, well-protected Air Base. The chaplain, according to the angry sergeant, almost never went outside the wire (off base) had never been shot at and got the fourth highest combat award for bravery because he spent year in Iraq.

"And he isn't much of a Christian either," she went on fuming about how he spent most of his time with fellow officers and chaplains and about the contrast between him and Chaplain Valentine, the Catholic Chaplain who went on convoys and out to forward bases and outposts every week visiting troops all over southern Iraq.

Her anger was partly specific to this award of the Bronze Star, and partly because she was a reserve soldier who had decided to go on active duty. She cared about tradition and was sure a Bronze Star should only be awarded to someone who was brave in combat--not for 10 months of sustained breathing in a combat zone. In her case it was not envy. She did not want the medal herself. She was sure she did not deserve it any more than he did, although she had ridden in convoys and gone on humanitarian missions in the countryside that can sometimes turn deadly. "If you get the Bronze Star you should be brave under fire," she fumed.

My wife is a professor and deals with grade inflation every semester. It is a perennial conflict between wanting to maintain standards and wanting your students to succeed. In the Army, medals have promotion points. A leader who decides to maintain historic standards in the awarding of medals puts his soldiers behind other soldiers of the same rank and ability who get awards.

The Bronze Star Medal was the focus of anger about the diminishing value of medals. Among people I talked to, the HBO series "Band of Brothers" based on the book by Stephen Ambrose, may be part of the reason. More on that tomorrow.

Mental Compartments

One of the blessings of being in Iraq with no cell phone and slow internet service was single tasking. You may know that as concentrating on one thing at a time. Reading a book without interruption, writing without bobbing through 20 windows checking Twitter, three email services, and a dozen Web sites. Now that I am back, I am trying to keep myself from returning to multi-tasking, to the false efficiency of doing five things badly rather than one thing well.

When I was multi-tasking myself, I did not see as vividly how the act of multi-tasking seeps back into our minds and dissolves our mental integrity. One of the hallmarks of modern life is stuffing our many lives in compartments that do not touch each other. That can lead having multiple beliefs and assumptions that really do affect each other, but we keep them in separate places in our minds, as if our memory were a series of Tupperware containers keeping work, family, hobbies, beliefs in their own little worlds in our heads. That is how people can look at religion as a buffet--taking a little Bhuddism here; a little Christianity there; maybe believe in angels, but not devils; or believe in Heaven but not Hell; as if these complex systems of belief were nothing more than raw material for whatever makes someone feel good.

At this point you could be IMing a friend, watching American Idol, thinking 'Whatever, Dude.' But if you are still reading, I can tell you that being in the land that discourages multi-tasking let me see more clearly what it does inside people's heads.

When we were getting ready to go home, we got a briefing about medical benefits. The sergeant who was giving the briefing made it clear to us that he believes our country does not need health care reform. His politics are in one compartment. Five minutes later he tells us why Pennsylvania wants to be sure we all know about the benefits we have. When the Brigade that preceded us mobilized in 2007, 42% of the soldiers did not have medical benefits when they mobilized. Out of 4000 soldiers, 2320 had medical benefits, 1680 did not. These were not street people. They were not illiterate. But 42% were uninsured. The two thoughts that 'The Health Care System is OK as it is' and '1680 out of 4000 soldiers in this brigade getting deployed to Iraq have no health care' stayed in their own compartments in his mind.

It would be no good pointing out this contradiction. He would have an answer if challenged on this contradiction. He sees what his beliefs allow him to see and will bend what does not fit until it aligns with is belief. So if his political views tell him 'my side is right, the other is wrong' then no actual fact--not even 1680 uninsured facts--sitting in front of him will change his mind.

Commander Back at Work

Brad Powers got a new job. I am back at my former job, but with a new boss. Lt. Col. Perry was in the Patriot News (Harrisburg, Pa.) when he returned to work.



Rep. Scott Perry

Rep. Scott Perry of York County welcomed back to the floor of the Pennsylvania House
By JAN MURPHY, The Patriot-News

Following a year's absence while he was deployed to Iraq, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Dillsburg, was given a hero's welcome upon his return to the floor of the state House.

Perry, who was commander of the 2-104th General Support Aviation Battalion, seemed almost embarrassed by the standing ovation from his House colleagues, motioning several times for them to sit down.

House Speaker Keith McCall welcomed Perry and thanked him for "willingly ... putting yourself in harm's way. ... We're grateful for your safe return and very, very proud of your service to this great nation." But, he added, "It may take some time getting used to as you return here, Lt. Col. Perry, that people aren't going to be saluting you and calling you sir."

House Republican Leader Sam Smith, R-Jefferson, echoed the gratitude about Perry's service. He also commented on how difficult it must have been for Perry, who had a child born during his deployment.

Smith noted that last year's protracted budget impasse was a grind for those at the Capitol, but then said he'd think about Perry and another House member, Rep. Nick Miccarelli, R-Delaware County, who also was on a deployment in Iraq last year. He said that reminded him, "it's not so bad here."

Assigned Moral Lectures

Only officers gave the moral lectures I referred to in the last post. This made sense, because they are the ones who will punish us for infractions of the Army moral code. And in the same way every officer must be ready to lead soldiers at a moment's notice if they happen to be the highest ranking officer in any given place, any officer might be called to give us a lecture on morality.

My favorite instance of this--and I did keep a straight face through this mercifully brief lecture--happened shortly after we arrived in Iraq. A lieutenant in his mid-20s got assigned on short notice to give us one of these lectures. He is a very affable guy. In fact, just the night before this young man who was a hard-partying fraternity brother just two years before was telling a group of sergeants in the mess hall about a time when he and his girl friend were having sex in a room with several other couples. "This was not group sex," he said. "We were just one of several couples having sex in the same room."

The next morning he was telling a large group of enlisted men don't drink, don't have sex with anyone you are not married to, etc. He was serious. He had to be. At the end he did lighten up a little and said "Don't be stupid. Don't get caught."

Army Morality

In other posts I have said how strange, sad, and funny by turns our "morality" lectures were, especially during training for deployment.

No one was ever talking about a real moral code of any recognizable religion. The Army is the government and since our government separates Church and State, it would be wrong to impose any single religious view on the Army. So the Army makes it up.

Like every bad youth organization, whether religious or secular, the Army tries to use the sins of the spirit to keep us from the sins of the flesh. It uses cold-blooded sins to keep us from warm-blooded sins. In case you have not reviewed the Seven Deadly Sins lately, they are (from least to worst):
Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Anger
Envy
Pride

Some lists switch lust and gluttony as the least, but all ancient lists are clear that the disreputable sins are the least and the arrogant sins are the worst. Sloth sits in the middle because it can be both physical laziness and spiritual laziness. So the sins of the flesh: lust, gluttony, greed and laziness are different from despair (spiritual laziness), anger, envy, and pride.

The sins of the flesh are those committed by those pictured on the pages of People magazine--too much sex, food, and money. The sins of the spirit are those committed by the readers of People magazine: hating, envying, and finally looking down on those who are pictured in People magazine.

Anyway, the Army tells us not to drink, have sex, and take drugs. First we are threatened in various ways, but then the poor guy who is giving the lecture appeals to our self-respect and says we are (or should be) better people than that.

But the Army does it with a lighter touch than a bad youth leader. Because nearly all of our morality lectures ended with something like a plea not to get caught. If you have sex, drink or whatever don't get caught.

Any real morality comes from the inside and shows its results on the outside. The only thing the Army can do is impose moral standards from the outside and hope for some appearance of obedience.

This is very funny on the subject of pornography. The Army bans pornography and makes a big deal of telling us how we can get busted, fined, lose rank, go to jail, etc. for possessing porn, especially on deployment. But the lectures on not having sex often end by saying something like, "Keep your porn to yourself, don't get caught, and wait till you get home for the real thing. In the meantime give yourself a hand."