Change of Responsibility: When Top Sergeants Change Jobs

When a new first sergeant or command sergeants major becomes the top non-commissioned officer in a company, battalion, brigade, division, or of the entire Army, the ceremony is called a change of responsibility.  A sword is passed from the sergeant in charge of the formation to the out-going NCO.  He passes the sword to the unit commander, who passes it to the new top NCO who then passes it back to the sergeant at the front of the formation.

I took pictures of the Change of Responsibility Ceremony this past when when CSM Jeff Huttle became the Command Sergeant's Major of 1-104th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion in Johnstown, Pa.

Here are the photos as the sword is passed by 1SG Peacock to CSM Sean Livolsi to MAJ Jack Wallace to Huttle then back to Peacock.

Old Home Week: Meeting My Roommate from Wiesbaden in Baltimore

Tomorrow I am driving to Baltimore to meet my roommate at Lindsay Air Station, Wiesbaden, West Germany in 1978.  Then he was Sr. Airman Cliff Almes.  He left the military in 1979 and become a brother at a Franciscan Monastery in Darmstadt, Land of Kanaan.

We have not seen each other since 2000, though we have talked every month or two since we were roommates in late 1978.  On that Army and Air Force Base, Air Force had to slum with Army depending on availability of rooms.

I wrote about Cliff, now Bruder Timotheus, three years ago, with pictures.

All of my kids have heard the story about me eating with the novices and taking a big piece of meat, finding out too late it was LIVER!!  No one wastes food in a monastery, so I was the entertainment for Cliff and the other novices at that meal as they watched me cover the liver with vegetables and eat it.

YUCK!

Looking forward to a great reunion.

Marking the 14th Anniversary of 9-11

The 9-11 Memorial today on the campus of Franklin and Marshall College: 2,936 flags in the center of the campus to honor the victims.

Today at 8:45 a.m. I was walking into Russian class, just at the moment 14 years ago when America was attacked by terrorists.  When I left the class I looked north and saw the quad filled with flags:  2,936 flags, one for each victim of the attack.  

As memorials go, I far prefer these to the endless pictures and videos of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center.  The flags honor the victims.  The burning towers glorify in a perverse way the attack and cowards who kill innocent victims.  

Another way of marking the day is to tell the stories of those who stepped up to defend America after the attack.  My favorite story is part of this New York Times article.  It is about my former commander Joel Allmandinger and what he did in the wake of the attack on America.  They are all good stories.  

Writing About the Army, and Writing on Paper with a Pen

My first real writing job was in the Army.  I started writing on yellow pads with blue felt-tip pens.  But working for an Army newspaper meant I had to graduate from pen and paper to the typewriter.  The first typewriter I used for writing was gray, to match the gray Army furniture in the office.  That furniture blended well with the beige walls in the stone headquarters building of 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Wiesbaden Air Base, West Germany.  

Now I am taking a Creative Writing course at Franklin and Marshall College.  Part of the course is writing in class.  I have white paper and a ballpoint pen and am back to writing with my left hand on paper.  Weird.  I have not written on paper, except to take notes, since the 80s.  Writing is something you do on a computer--as I am doing right now.  

But I like the feeling of writing on paper.  We have to turn in our work in Microsoft Word, so it also means that anything I write on paper will have to be re-typed on a computer.  I began my writing life with multiple drafts.  Now I will be back to multiple drafts.  

Of course, for this blog, I will continue to write what I am thinking as I think it, hit publish and move on.

The Better Life is, the More We Bitch

In June 1975, 40 years ago, I enlisted in the Army.  I had been a civilian about ten months after a 2-and-a-half years in the Air Force.  In that post-energy-crisis era I had a boring job and decided to re-enlist.

I thought about re-enlisting in the Air Force, but they offered me pay grade E3 and no bonus.  Signing up for tanks in the Army meant E4 and a $2,500 bonus.  From the moment I got to Fort Knox for Armor School, I knew I made the right choice.  I had always wanted to be a soldier and being an airman was not the same thing.

Over time, I started to notice that soldiers bitched less than airman.  At first I thought it might be that a different kind of people enlisted in the Army than the Air Force.  While my fellow post-draft soldiers were further down the economic ladder and more southern than the airmen I served with during the draft and the Viet Nam War, they weren't that different.

Then one of the great truths of life showed its face on the horizon of my life:  The better life is, the more we bitch.  Everywhere, always.

On Hill Air Force Base, my duty station after Air Force technical school in 1972, I lived in a two-man room as an airman E2.  When I got promoted to sergeant E4 I was eligible for a private room.  Our chow hall served four meals a day: the usual three plus midnight chow.  We reported for work at 0730.  We were usually done by five.  We worked weekends maybe once every two months.  There were parties in the barracks and on the lawn outside.

And we bitched about everything:  the chow, the barracks, the one weekend we worked every two months.  When that weekend duty happened, we were whining.  We bitched about living in Ogden, Utah!!  Boring, we said.  The girls were Mormon and didn't party, we said.  Midnight chow always had pizza and omelets made to order, but did not always have hot dogs and hamburgers, we whined.  
[While I joined in the bitching as part of the group, I LOVED the chow.  My mother burned most food she cooked and I truly love military food.]

Three years later I was assigned to 70th Armor in Fort Carson, Colorado.  As a Specialist E4 I had an eight-man room.  Promotion to sergeant E5 got me a bunk in four-man room.  Chow was three meals a day with a much more limited menu.  We were armor.  We worked many nights.  We went to the field for up to two months at a time.  We trained in soldier skills after a day of maintenance in the motor pool.  Nobody partied in the barracks.

I heard so much less bitching.  Worse food, less space, less free time, and much less bitching.

For the rest of my life, I have seen the same theme repeated again and again.  The people who have it the best bitch the most.

The kids who grew up in The Depression fought World War 2.  They volunteered in millions, 15 million men and many thousands of women served in the military during the Second World War.  More than 400,000 died, more than a million wounded.  And people from every part of society served.  Rich kids, poor kids, everyone in between.

But the kids who grew up with me in 40s and 50s, the biggest boom in prosperity in world history EVER, were we the best generation ever?  We well-fed children of the winners of World War 2 made Sex, Drugs, and Rock the goal.  And along the way, we let the poor kids of our generation sacrifice their lives in Viet Nam.  The privileged of our generation said Viet Nam was the "Wrong War" and dodged the draft in millions.

There is a correlation between hardship and happiness.  America did not have a major genetic change between World War 2 and Viet Nam.  We were not different people.  We were the children of people who lived through hardship.  We had it easy, we became whiny bitches.

And now we live in country that makes millionaires every day and billionaires every week and whiners every minute.  We have the best medical care in history of the world, the most food ever and we may be as a group the least thankful people who have ever lived.

When people talk about America being in decline, I wait to hear what sacrifice they want to make to make the country better.  But what I inevitably hear is what stuff they need to be happier--and what everyone else should sacrifice to make them happy.

What's wrong with America?  Bitches!

New Writing By Recent Veterans

Just got this in my email.  Free book available by PDF download.  Writing by recent veterans of America's wars.  Check it out here.

Enjoy!!

Today Marks My IRONMAN Annivarsary

One Year Ago, One Tired Dude

One year ago today I was in the middle of the most tiring day of my life, the 2014 Kentucky Ironman.  As I write this it is 9 a.m.  By this time I was swimming down river after struggling up stream for an hour.  It would be almost 10 a.m. before I climbed out of the water.  That moment leaving the water at about 9:45 a.m. was the best moment of the whole event.  I had finished the 2.4-mile swim--by far my worst event--and I had not been pulled from the course.  At that point, I knew I would finish.  

Yesterday I was finishing my ride and ran into a friend I did a Tough Mudder with in 2013.  Both events left me exhausted, but the Ironman was definitely the bigger physical challenge.  My wife wrote very well today about how finishing an Ironman changed us.  Now some friends are thinking about doing an Ironman, so we might do it with them.  

If we decide to do another Ironman, my pre-race training will be focused on swim interval training.  I need to be faster in the water.  I am planning to swim and ride today.  Maybe I'll run.  But I am sure I will feel much better at 11:54 p.m. than I did one year ago today.