German Boys Visit the American Tanks in the Woods Near Their Village

On a beautiful afternoon in late October less than a month after 4th Brigade arrived in Germany, the five tanks of First Platoon, Bravo Company, moved into a defensive position on a hill outside a small village near Fulda.  The village was visible in the valley below more than a mile away.

All of the tanks were below the crest of the ridge.  We had an observer team on the ridge.  The rest of the platoon was working on the tanks or scouting out places to sleep near the tanks.  Five minutes after the the last tank was in position, three boys rode up the dirt road that connected the village with our position.  The oldest was ten years old.  

I used to play Army in an apple orchard near my home in Stoneham, Massachusetts, when I was their age.  I was thinking that if I saw a platoon of tanks in woods I would have been on my bike and getting as close as those soldiers would let me.  I also thought how different life in Stoneham would have been if a foreign Army could just park a platoon of tanks in the orchard.

I jumped down from the turret and waved for the boys to come to my tank.  No one else seemed particularly interested in having kids near their vehicle.  My driver and I lifted the kids up on the fender of the tank and let them sit in the driver's seat and gunner's seat.  They put on our helmets and talked to each other on the intercom system.  We gave the kids the waxy, canned chocolate that came in our C-rations.

They oldest spoke excellent English.  I asked if he would to go to the village and bring us back some food from the local baker and butcher shops.  He said he would right away.  I gave him ten Marks.  As he rode away, the driver of Bravo 13, who was from New Jersey, said, "Sergeant Gussman you are never going to see those kids again."  Some others joined in.  I was happy to see the platoon sergeant and the commander of Bravo 15, the only other soldier who had been to Germany before, did not say anything.  

The boys seemed like good kids to me.  Almost an hour later, the older boy came back alone.  He said the younger boys had to go home.  He had a backpack.  Inside was sausage, butter, two loaves of bread, and some small candies.  He spent 9 Marks, 98 Pfennigs, and gave me the two Pfennigs change.  My crew and I got our camp stove out right away while it was still daylight and started cooking that sausage.  I gave the boy some more C-ration chocolate and said to come back tomorrow, we were probably going to be there for the night.  He thanked me again and rode away.

My crew and I made a big show of cooking that sausage and talking very loudly about how you can't trust those German kids.  We also inquired about what the crews on either side of us were having for dinner.

The next time we stopped near a village and kids showed up, it was a competition to see who could get the kids to make a grocery run.  

That little boy is 44 years old today.  The other two are 40 and 42 if I guessed their ages correctly.  I wonder what they think now.  There has been peace in their country for their entire lives, but many foreign armies have lived in their country and trained for a war that, thankfully, never came.  I hope they have good memories of the soldiers who parked a platoon of tanks in their woods.  In fact, I hope they have nothing but good memories of American soldiers.

The Army Made Me a Writer, T-Mobile Made Me Lazy

Did I want to be a writer or a storyteller?  After talking to a friend this morning, I realized the key fact in my last post was the price of calling home from Germany in 1977.  I wanted to tell stories.  I could not afford to call.  So I wrote.

Fast Forward two decades.  In April 1998, I got a job with a global company.  I traveled overseas every month for the next three years--33 trips to be exact.  I flew to every continent except Africa and visited more than 20 countries on five continents.  I had not been outside America since I flew home from Germany in 1979.  By the time I left my job with Millennium Chemicals in 2000 my passport was full of visa stamps and I had paid to have 20 pages added to it.  

As part of the job, I had a global T-Mobile phone and no limits on usage.  All calls were free from anywhere to anywhere.  So when I told my wife, my kids, my friends how breathtakingly beautiful the Hong Kong skyline is at night, I used my phone.  If I had written my impressions, I would not even have to recopy them as I did in my tank turret in the 1970s.  Email would allow me to copy and paste to anyone.

But I did not write about traveling.  It was way too easy to call and talk.  So I wrote for my job and talked about the new life I was leading, traveling the globe.

The next time I was writing without getting paid for it was this blog.  When I first went back in the Army in August of 2007, I got a lot of questions about what I was doing.  So I promised myself to write every day I was on duty with the Army.  At first, this was one weekend per month.  Then we started training to deploy to Iraq.  So we were on duty for three weeks here, two weeks there, another week plus the weekends.

Then we were in Iraq.  Just like Germany in 1977, calling home was difficult.  And time was limited.  So I wrote every day about what I was doing--within the limits of mission security.  I could not write about upcoming flights, about attacks on the base, or about security.  But I could write about food, toilets, the trailers we slept in, laundry, bitching, and dust.

So I wrote every day about them.

Then I came home and went back to work getting paid to write.  The blog was back to one weekend a month.

In the past few months, I have been writing more.  A former co-worker at my day job is the editor of a literary magazine.  I submitted a story.  WITF FM had a writing contest.  I wrote another story.  The stories were about death in Iraq.  I don't know that I intended to write about death, but death is what the stories were about.  If they don't get accepted for publication, I will publish them on the blog.

The Army Made Me a Writer

A friend asked me when I decided to become a writer.  It was in Germany in the Spring of 1977. I was a tank commander, tank Bravo 12, based in Wiesbaden, West Germany.  It was the first time I had travelled outside America.  The first time I lived outside America.  Everything was new and wonderful in Germany.

In 1976 in Germany, calling America cost nearly one dollar per minute.  At the time I made less than $100 a week as an Army Sergeant.  Calling home and telling my family and friends about how beautiful, how interesting, how surprising I found Germany would have emptied my wallet.

So I wrote letters home.  I wrote on legal pads.  I am not sure why, but blue pen and yellow legal pads were my way to write.  I quickly started practicing to be a writer without knowing I what I was doing.  

Writers rewrite.  This blog is a terrible example of real writing.  With this blog, you get what I am thinking.  No revision.  I correct mistakes when readers tell me I made them.  The best writers rewrite several times.  

My version of this was the order of the letters I wrote.  First I wrote to my mother.  She did not really care what I wrote.  She wanted me to write.  So the first time our tank platoon set up a fire position on a wooded hill outside a German village near the East-West border, I had a wonderful story to tell.  As a matter of fact, that will be a future blog post.  

I told that story to my mother.  Next I wrote to my friend Frank.  He was studying to be an engineer and not a particularly critical reader.  Then I wrote to other family members or friends depending on the story.

The final version went either to my sister Jean or my Uncle Jack.  Jean wrote very funny letters to me in basic training.  She is a good writer and knew a good story.  Uncle Jack was near the end of his 20 years of service in the Air Force.  I always addressed his letters to Uncle Major and signed them Sergeant Nephew.  The letter that went to Jean or Jack was the version I would later turn in to an editor.  

In High School I had no ambition to be a writer; I did not want to go to college.  I wanted to be a soldier or a truck driver.  At the time I started writing those letters, I mapped my future in the Army.  I would finish the tour in Germany, go to college, become and officer and command a tank company.  

By then end of the summer of 1977, college had moved to the top of my ambitions and becoming an officer was receding.  I wrote about looking across the border at Fulda where World War 3 was supposed to start.  I wrote about the damage a tank company can do when a new lieutenant leads it though a tree farm.  I wrote about a collision between a drunk German in a tiny Renault and an M60A1 tank.  The Renault did not survive, but surprising the drunk German did. 

As I wrote and fewer letters came back than I sent, I learned that most people did not like to write.  But I liked writing.  And by Christmas of that year, I found a way to write full time.  

That is another story.   

Never Older Than When I Was 23

In May of 1976 I was a tank commander in the 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division.  We were just about to begin two months of training before 4,000 soldiers with 54 tanks, dozens of howitzers and hundreds of tracked and wheeled vehicles would transfer as a unit to Wiesbaden, Germany.

I have never felt older than I did that year.  It was not because I was going to Germany.  I read an article in the Army Times that month that said the 80th percentile age in the Army was 23 years old.

Wow!!  That meant I was older than 80% of the Army.  I could see it all around me.  My own crew:  Mercury Morris (He was Merc, I don't remember his real first name), Eugene Pierce and Richard Burhans were all younger than I was.  And that was the oldest active duty crew I ever had.  They were all in there 20s.  Before we left for Germany, each of them was promoted or discharged and I got a new crew.  All of those graying 20-year-olds replaced by 17-to-19-year-olds.

Losing my first crew and realizing I was in the oldest 20% of the Army really made me feel old at the time. I told my daughter Lisa that story last week when she celebrated her 23rd birthday.  I may have told Lauren the same story, but I can't remember.

Now that I am actually old, starting my seventh decade, I still don't feel quite as old as that sergeant at Fort Carson did in 1976.  I know when I was that age I was sure I would never live this long.  And if I had thought about it, I would have hoped to be a higher rank if I was still in the Army.

That didn't work out!!

"What did you do this weekend Dad?" Weekend of Media Training

I picked up my son Jacari after drill this weekend.  He asked, "What did you do Dad?" smiling and hoping to hear about Blackhawk helicopters or machine guns.

I told him my butt hurt from sitting all weekend in a Media Training session.  We changed the subject.  He did not really want to hear about the moment when I corrected the instructor who said we should hyphenate a compound noun.  I said if it was a compound modifier it should be hyphenated, but compound nouns should not.

It was just like knocking down the 300-meter target on M4/M16 qualification range (sort of).

Hapless hyphenation aside, it was an important weekend for the 15 months or so I have left before they will throw me out for old age.

The division commander, BG John Gronski, has made communication one of his top four priorities for the 28th Division.  So this seminar included assigned public affairs people like and the newly appointed unit public affairs people at each of the battalions in our brigade.  Instead of Captain Miller and I covering everything that goes on in the brigade (as well as we can), each battalion will have someone who can take pictures and write stories and Facebook posts.

The division commander and CSM spoke to our class for more than 30 minutes on Saturday.  Gronski has a Facebook page.  Both he and CSM Kepner have twitter handles.  But the class itself says just how serious the new commander is about communication.  Five soldiers from the aviation brigade were in the class and learning how to use social media to support the mission.

For me, it means I have a back up for promotions, awards, and other events scheduled at different places at the same time.   It also means that when there Chinooks are doing sling loads, Blackhawks are supporting air assault and the MEDEVAC is doing hoist training on the same day, we can get all three events.

Next drill we can get all the communications people together and talk about how to cover events and manage the Facebook page.  I can't wait!!

Nicknames

One of the saddest, angriest soldiers I met in Iraq was a staff sergeant with the nickname "Squishy Head."  He got the nickname at the aviation hangar at Muir Field on Fort Indiantown Gap.  As I heard the story, squishy was working near the massive doors for the aircraft when the doors were closing.  He dropped a wrench, reached between the closing doors to retrieve it and got his head caught.

He survived, but was forever after called Squishy Head, mostly behind his back.

The poor guy makes one mistake, some smart ass calls him a name and he is Squishy Head from then on.  But that is how real nicknames go.

I don't have a nickname, at least not one that I know.  Except at home.  Among all my kids I am "Dude."  For the past decade all of my kids have called me Dude.  It came from my daughter Lisa.  From age 12 to 14 she was a junior bicycle racer.  She rode up to 100 miles a week between March and September to train for racing.  Some of those miles were with me on the tandem we owned back then.  Once or twice a week Lisa would ride 35 miles with me between 4 and 6 pm on the daily training race.  Six to a dozen rider, mostly men, would be on this fast ride.  Many of them called each other Dude.  Some called me Dude.  Since I was 50 years old, from the East Coast, never surfed, and did not otherwise see myself as a "Dude," I smiled at this generic name.

One night, while we ate dinner with the rest of the family after the ride, Lisa was describing the way we passed some riders down Turkey Hill (tandems are fast down hill) and addressing me said, "Dude, did you see how we passed. . ."

Everyone looked and Lauren, the oldest child, said, "Did you just call Dad Dude?"

She did.  And kept talking.  Slowly over the next week, the other kids started calling me Dude.  And I have been Dude ever since.  I still get some odd looks in public places when one of my kids, particularly my adopted kids, turn to me and say something that begins "Dude,  . . ."

But it seems to be the rule of nicknames that they are more funny than fitting.

My daughter Lauren and Lisa, like me, were called Goose by coaches on the teams the played on.  Goose never really stuck with either of them.  Lauren, who is 5'10" and was the thug/enforcer on her high school basketball and soccer teams, still has the nickname "Sissy."  Which is like calling a fat guy "Tiny."  The whole family calls her Sissy.

Some nicknames make sense.  My bunkmate in basic was Leonard Norwood from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53.  He was, no surprise, "Bama."  In the next bunk was our mutual friend "Jersey."

An odd occurrence of nicknames was happened about the time my older daughters went off to college.  Nigel and Lisa were the only two kids in the house.  They started calling each other "Pumpkin" and "Muffin."  But the names were not for one person.  If Lisa left for school and said, "Goodbye Pumpkin" Nigel would say, "Bye Muffin."  The next time Lisa might be Pumpkin and Nigel Muffin.  They still do it occasionally now, seven years later.

Do you have an odd nickname?  Let me know what it is?

Fog on Muir Field Today

The hangar at Muir Field, Fort Indiantown Gap held four change of command ceremonies today.

Here's what the airstrip looked like.