Photos from My Father's 1st Command, Black Company World War 2

During the early months of World War 2, my father went to Officer Candidate School.  Since he was very old in Army year, 36, his first command was in Pennsylvania, a Black Company at Camp Shenango near Erie, Pa.

My son Jacari scanned one of the albums today.  Here are some of the photos from my Dad's scrapbook:

Tanker's Final Exam, Part 4, Moving Tank

We are now at Part 4 of Table VIII of 1976 tank gunnery at Fort Carson, Colorado.
The previous post described Engagements 3, 4 and 5 which occur at the same firing point. Now I will describe Engagement 6, the moving tank.

We practiced for this shot more than any other.  In fact, I am sure we practiced more than any crew in the battalion.  Several times in the weeks leading up to gunnery, I took my crew out in early evening after everyone else left the motorpool and practiced sighting on moving targets.

Today, I am sure I would be busted to Private for the way we practiced.  We rolled out of the motorpool up on a ridge that looked down on Interstate 25—the North-South highway that passes the east side of Fort Carson. 

From that ridge, the highway was about two miles away, much farther that the distance to the range target.  But since the cars were going 60-70 mph, their speed relative to us was good for practice tracking a moving target. 

To get a good shot at a moving target, my gunner, Merc Morris, had to practice steadily tracking the target.  This took real skill and control.  While my gunner tracked the target, I would look through the range finder.  After a while he could keep the crosshair perfectly steady center of mass on a Chevy Impala or a Ford Pinto. 

Back to Table VIII.  As we moved along the trail on the tank gunnery range, I saw plywood panel target moving right to left.  I called, “Driver Stop!”  Then “Gunner, SABOT, Moving Tank.”  Pierce (Eugene Pierce, my Loader) yelled “Up!” confirming the gun was loaded. He was so fast, I barely finished the Fire Command before he had loaded the main gun.  The range was about 1000 meters so it was point and shoot with the solid-shot SABOT round.  I handed the binoculars to Pierce so he could track the shot from the top of the turret while I watched the round go down range through the range finder.  I was looking for the flash of the tracer disappearing through a hole in the target. 

If I had any doubt Merc would get a first-round hit, I would have been watching through the binoculars from the commander’s hatch, but I knew Merc would get a first-round hit.  When Merc yelled “On the Way” I pushed my helmet against the range finder and opened my eyes as wide as I could.  I didn’t see anything.  Too much dust.  Pierce yelled “Hit!” dropped into the turret, slammed another SABOT round into the breach of the main gun and yelled “Up!”  Merc fired again.  I said, “Driver Move Out” quite sure there were two new holes in the moving-tank target. 

Next engagement was the M85 .50 cal. machine gun at 1200 meters. 

 
This series started with seeing the movie "Fury" and wanting to be back in a tank turret.  Then the first main-gun shot of Table VIII.

The Cold War Versus the Iraq War: The Mission Shapes Reality

From 1972 to 1984 on active duty and in the Army Reserve, I was a Cold War soldier. My Mission, with a capital M, was to “Defend America against the Soviet Union and her Warsaw Pact allies.”

In the military and in every organization, there is a “Big M” Mission that the whole organization works toward and a “small m” mission for individuals and units.  During the Cold War my Big M mission was clear.  It began with a verb: Defend.  The enemy was defined: Soviet forces and their allies. 

Because the Big M was so well defined, the “Small m” mission was equally clear:  I trained my tank crew to fight the invading forces of the Soviet Union.  When I was stationed in Germany, we trained to fight at Fulda, our alert area.  When I was in a reserve unit in the U.S., we had pre-positioned tanks in Baumholder, Germany.

During all the time I served in the Cold War, I knew the mission of the entire U.S. military and the mission of my tank.  While on active duty, that tank was Bravo 13, Company B, 1^st Battalion, 70^th Armor.  Also, the rules of engagement were clear if and when the war started—Kill Soviets until we win. 

In 1984, I left the clearly defined world of the Cold War Army and became a civilian.  Twenty-three years later, in 2007, I re-enlisted.  I jumped into the murky water of our wars in the Middle East.  I could not tell you now, nor could I tell you in 2009 when I deployed to Iraq what the Big M mission of the U.S. Army was in that ill-fated war, or it is now in the War in Afghanistan. 

We defeated Saddam Hussein’s Army three weeks after the war started in 2003.  What were we doing after that?  “Winning hearts and minds” is the phrase I remember most clearly.  Judging by the looks I got from the Iraqis I met in the local market or working on our base, we did not win a lot of hearts and minds.

Even when the Big M mission is murky, the Small m mission can be clear.  I worked hard every day I was in Iraq, whether it was in the motor pool or on the flight line or in an office or flying across southern Iraq in a Blackhawk helicopter.  But I never had the clarity of purpose that I had as a Cold War tank commander.

And in retrospect, I see my Cold War service as being more clear, more real than my service during the IraqWar.  

When I finally leave the Army either in May of this year or next year, I will look back on my service in the Cold War as having an edge of reality that my service in Iraq never will.  It is also easy to make the case that we won the Cold War.  By making the Soviets spend hard currency on huge military, the regime went bankrupt.  We won the Cold War without actually firing a shot.  In Iraq, we fired a lot of shots, and a lot of people died, and everybody lost.

Sunset on Muir Field After the Big Snowstorm

I took pictures from several angles of the sun setting on Muir Field, Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa., after the big snowstorm.  The angles and blades of a Blackhawk helicopter do wonderful things to the light.  I hope I captured a little of that.

One Soldier's Trash is a Teenager's Treasure!

Yesterday I was walking through the Flight Facility--the big hangar for helicopters--at Fort Indiantown Gap and saw a box lunch sitting on the corner of a recycling bin.  Inside were the various packaged treasures below.

In our household, we do not buy snack food.  Really.  My wife blogs about frugality.  This post for instance. No bags of chips, no cookies, nothing processed and printed with pretty faces.  So while many soldiers simply toss these packaged meals, for my sons they are blessed manna from the Army Gods.

So I brought the box home.  My sons ate it almost instantly.

The Army gives soldiers many benefits--and gives a few to my teenage, snack-limited sons.

MK03:Lunch/Dinner

Smuckers Peanut Butter &Jelly Potato Skins – Sour Cream & Cheddar Chocolate Chip Cookies Peach Cup Bottled Water Cutlery Kit Moist Towelette

Armor in the Snow: A Cold Day for Cold War Armor

A year ago, I took pictures of the static display Armor at Fort Indiantown Gap after a snowstorm.  Today I took pictures of the same tanks and howitzers after the big storm.

M203 8-inch howitzer

M42 Duster 40 mm Anti-Aircraft

M60A1 and M46 Patton tanks and M3 Sherman 76mm

M60A1 Patton

M3 Sherman 76mm

M60A1 Patton

M1A1 Abrams

M203 8-inch howitzer

Cold War Reheated: Resurgent Russia and Vladimir Putin

At the end of the Cold War, Russia fell into poverty and almost fell apart.  Whether you date the end of the Cold War as the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the crumbling of the Soviet Union in 1991, post-Soviet Russia was in a dismal state in the 1990s.  The collapse of government at nearly all levels made Russia a third-world economy with an enormous nuclear arsenal, as well as thousands and thousands of tons of nerve gas in rotting containers in rotting storage facilities.

I just finished reading Steven Lee Myers book "New Czar: Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin." This excellent book brings together many of the details of the life of the most powerful autocrat on the planet today--and is especially good on how a mid-level KGB agent went from the shadows to the heights of power and to enduring popularity with the Russian people.

Before I say any more about the book itself, reading the book gave me a huge feeling of a lost opportunity.  The circumstances of Putin's rise made me think, "It did not have to turn out this way."

In 1945, Germany was ruin and squalor with every level of government operating on totalitarian principles.  Yet America rode to the rescue with the Marshall Plan and set Germany, at least West Germany, on the road to democracy.  After we spent billions and billions trying to defeat the Soviet totalitarian state, why did we leave it to be run by a drunk selling off the assets of the state to his cronies?

The grinding poverty of the vast majority of Russians coupled with Yeltsin's cronies becoming billionaires put Putin in the presidency and kept him there.  Putin was unknown in 1999 when Yeltsin put him in power.  Ironically one of the reasons for Putin's rise to power was his honesty.  He worked very hard in government and did not take bribes like so many others in government.  Yeltsin put him in the presidency because no one had bought him off.

Myers makes very clear that Putin has been in charge since 2000 and could well continue in power till 2024, or even beyond.  Putin is, as Myers makes clear, on the way to being a new Tsar.  And he is popular.  Even with sanctions and the current crash of oil prices, the average Russian is far better off under Putin than in the 1990s.

Which brings me to another irony I felt reading this book.  The US did not rush in to prop up and bring order to Russia in collapse as we did with post-war Germany and Japan.  Yet in 2003, we went into Iraq saying we could do "nation building" in a state seething with sectarian hatred.

We may have won the Cold War, but the current state of Russia and other former Soviet states says that we lost the peace.  In the depths of its 1990s collapse, Russia was fending off Islamic extremism inside Russia and along its borders.  In the same way Germany became an anchor in the NATO defense of Europe, we could have worked with Russia as a front-line state in the fight against Islamic terror.

Putin was born just seven months before I was.  I grew up in a suburban house near Boston: safe, warm, happy and well-fed.  Putin grew up in the wreckage of Leningrad, arguably the most ravaged city in World War 2, under Nazi siege for almost three years.  Putin grew up hearing stories of the Great Patriotic War and the sacrifices his family, city and nation made to defeat the Nazis.  Putin is a patriot.  Restoring Russia's place as a world leader is and has always been part of his program as president.

A strong Russia could have been, should have been, our ally in the War on Terror.  Myers book is a great read, but it ends on a somber note of repression, deception and the tragedy of an airliner shot down either by Russian soldiers or separatists armed by Russians with advanced missiles.  If Myers writes a sequel in another decade, I hope it is about a Democratic Russia and not a 21st Century Tsarist Russia.  But the trend lines all point to a New Tsar.