Book 18 of 2016, "SIN" by Zakhar Prelepin

Among the many praises of Leo Tolstoy is that he was a real combat soldier who maintained the sensitivity to write about both war and peace.  Which he did most grandly in a famous novel with that very title:  War and Peace.  Tolstoy fought in the bloody Crimean War in the 1850s.

One hundred and fifty years later Zakhar Prelepin fought in the War in Chechnya in a Russian Special Forces unit.  In 2007, barely three years after returning from the war, Prelepin published the Novel in short stories, "Sin."

Amazon has a excellent summary:

In the episodes of Zakharka’s life, presented here in non-chronological order, we see him as a little boy, a lovelorn teenager, a hard-drinking grave-digger, a nightclub bouncer, a father, and a soldier in Chechnya. Sin offers a fascinating glimpse into the recent Russian past, as well as its present, with its unemployment, poverty, violence, and local wars – social problems that may be found in many corners of the world. Zakhar Prilepin presents these realities through the eyes of Zakharka, taking us along on the life-affirming journey of his unforgettable protagonist.

At the end of the series of stories that make up most of the book are several poems and one final story about several soldiers in a lonely outpost.  Although the entire book was vivid to the point I could almost smell some of the scenes, this final story puts the reader right in the middle of a group of soldiers who are cut off from their unit, have no orders and no information.  They don't know whether to stay in the outpost or return to the base that is clearly under attack.  Their relief unit is hours overdue.  The sound of fighting gets more intense.

Do they have a unit to return to?  They are running out of food, running out of options.  The sergeant in charge of the detachments leads his men back to the base.  They confront and kill a group of Chechens on their way back.  They now have a truck.  They return to the base and the story ends with a twist that I did not expect, but after I read it seemed like the perfect ending to a Russian war story.

The poetry that preceded the final story also gave me a sense of Prelepin's control of language.  I am sure the final story was even better with the images from the poems in my head.

So I recommend this book highly, especially to soldiers, especially those who have had trouble returning to civilian life after war service.  I also recommend reading the poetry and the last story first.  The view of war we get at the end makes the stories of peace more intense, and more sad.

"Obama's Going to Take Our Guns" In the Army Paranoia is Normal

At the end of January 2009, my unit mobilized for deployment to Iraq.  We trained for two months at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, before flying to Kuwait then Iraq.

From the day we landed in Oklahoma, I heard "Obama is going to take our guns."  I heard it in the barracks, I heard in the mess hall, I heard it in the motor pool and especially in the lines we stood in to draw equipment and gear.

The majority of the soldiers I deployed with either fully believed or had some inclination to believe that President Barack Obama was going to begin confiscating guns while we were deployed to Iraq.

At first I thought they had to be kidding, but it quickly became clear that between what they heard from the NRA, Fox News, and Conservative Radio, many of my fellow soldiers sincerely believed Obama was coming for their guns.

Now more than 2,700 days later, I just heard a Conservative saying that Obama will be "coming after our guns" before he leaves office.  In the Army paranoia is normal, and that makes sense.  Security requires that as few people as possible know sensitive information.

To put it another way:  Ignorance saves lives.

But ignorance is the breeding ground of rumors and rumors are the fetid soil that grows paranoia.  So it made some terrible sense that so many people would believe something as crazy as "Obama is coming for your guns."  But they did.  And now that Obama has been in office 2,700+ days, some of those soldiers still believe Obama is coming for their guns.

Soldiers Hate the Media, Even When They Work in Public Affairs

Almost every soldier I have ever worked with, even soldiers in Military Public Affairs, hate the media.  I could understand it when I first worked in Army Public Affairs in Germany in the late 70s.  Most of the public hated the military and many reporters made careers pointing out every flaw in the military during and after the Vietnam War.

But when I returned to the Army in 2007, I joined an Army that was loved by the public and covered by reporters who reported good news at a rate I found incredible as a Vietnam-era soldier.

And yet just as during the Vietnam era, every soldier I spoke to at any length about the media, hated the media.  In fact, once I picked up a camera in Iraq and started writing a newsletter within our own brigade, half the soldiers in the unit regarded me as part of the media.  Everything I wrote for that newsletter was reviewed by battalion or brigade headquarters.  But I was the media.

In 2013 in one of the many ironies of my career, I actually went to the Defense Information School (DINFOS) at Fort Meade, Maryland.  For three months I learned how to take pictures and write to military standards.  Since I worked in public affairs as a civilian for nearly 30 years, a lot we were taught was not new to me.  My biggest surprise at school was my classmates and teachers.  Most of them liked the media no better than pilots, door gunners, grunts and mechanics. One major I worked with regularly was as suspicious of the media as anyone I ever met.  Some of my DINFOS classmates were openly hostile to the media.

Many civilians in public affairs, particularly those in media relations, are like me.  They wanted to be reporters, but decided the pay and future were so bad that they went into public affairs.  Also, one important thing I lacked that is necessary for a good reporter is an internal Bullshit detector.  My default setting is optimism.  My Army stories in the 70s and in Iraq were all about soldiers doing their job.  I could not investigate anyone.  So serious journalism was never possible for me.  After college, I found a job that kept me in contact with serious journalists.

My civilian job was mainly media relations in business media. I was in regular contact with very smart reporters who were paid a lot less than me.  I even helped a few find jobs on the "dark side" as public affairs is known among reporters.  I like reporters as a group and had good relationships with reporters throughout my career, some that lasted two decades or more.  Several reporters are still my friends even now that I am retired.

In civilian life, there is no question who is a reporter and who is in public affairs.  Nobody confuses the White House spokesperson with a White House reporter.  But in the Army, most soldiers of every rank from private to general think their own public affairs people are reporters.  Some of the military public affairs people I have known get into that career because the path they actually wanted was blocked.  Some are simply assigned to do something they really don't want to do.  Both in Germany in the late 70s and since returning to Army Public Affairs in Iraq, I have met very few soldiers who know the difference between Army Public Affairs and reporters, and very few soldiers in public affairs who actually like the media.

Every Thursday, I Shave My Legs--Even in Iraq

Since one of my first big bike crashes in 1994, I have shaved my legs every week, usually on Thursday before racing on the weekend.  I started riding seriously in 1989, but resisted shaving my legs until the crash at the Tuesday Night Training Race. I continued to shave my legs throughout my deployment to Iraq in 2009.  I rode 5,100 miles on Camp Adder, Iraq, so it made sense to keep removing my leg hair.

So why do bicycle racers and most serious cyclists shave their legs?

Crashes.

In 1994 I crashed at 25mph on a rough road surface. I had deep cuts on my right side from my shoulder to my ankle.  The worst was almost two square feet of shredded skin on my right thigh.  Inside all of those cuts was the shaggy hair from my hirsute legs.  I cleaned and disinfected my injuries, but within a few days, the big red mess on my right thigh was oozing green.

My doctor, General Internal Medicine, rotates many residence through the practice.  That day I had a young, fit doctor doing a month-long family practice residency.  He took a lot of care cleaning my many injuries.  He prescribed antibiotics, then he leaned back, folded his arms and said, "You're the first healthy person I treated in three weeks."

I thought this was funny.  I was bandages from ankle to shoulder.  This fit young doctor, like others I had met and have met since, got into family practice to care for communities.  But a quick scan of the waiting room anytime I am in the office says most of the practice is geriatric, bad lifestyle, or both.  He seemed ready to switch his specialty to sports medicine or surgery.

And speaking of treating injuries, my oldest daughter, Lauren, was 5 years old at the time and very happy to help me change bandages every day.  She was clearly disappointed when I finally healed up.  Lauren did her first race that year and from age 8 to 10 was part of a kids race series.  She was around so many bicycle racers as a kid she thought men with leg hair looked weird when she played sports in middle and high school.

After 22 years, I can't quite imagine having leg hair again.  I still race, so I still shave.

Trump Is Not Hitler, Not Mussolini, But Is Dangerous

NOTE***After I posted the following essay, three very smart people showed me a big thing I missed in asserting that Trump is neither Hitler nor Mussolini.  That is, Trump sets up the conditions for tyranny and appeals to people who want authoritarian government. So even if Trump does not become a dictator himself, he sets up the conditions for tyranny.  Really, he is doing so now by stoking anger for his own purposes when a sane leader would aspire to lead the entire nation.  It's well to remember in this connection that Hitler never had the support of more than a third of Germans before his power grab in 1933.  The SS and the Gestapo raised his "popularity" after that.
Trump, in one friend's view, is the "gateway drug" to tyranny.  I  think he is right.***

The New York Times Sunday Review recently had yet another article comparing Donald Trump with Adolph Hitler.  Trump also gets paired with the Italian dictator of the same period, Benito Mussolini. These comparisons make some sense given the horrible things Trump says, but miss an essential difference between Trump and these 20^th Century dictators: physical courage.

During World War 1 Hitler volunteered to be a courier in the trenches, one of the most dangerous jobs in a war of mechanized slaughter.  Mussolini was 33 years old when Italy entered the war.  He volunteered to be a private, a front-line soldier.  Mussolini was in the trenches on the front lines with young men half his age.  Then he was badly injured when the howitzer he was assigned to exploded.  He went through a long and painful recuperation with many operations to remove shrapnel from his body.

Both Mussolini and Hitler served jail time for their grabs at political power and when it came time to take power, they both were resolute at holding out for full power, not compromising.  Also, Mussolini took power in Italy at age 39 in 1922.  Hitler took power when he was 44 in 1933.  

By contrast Donald Trump hid from the draft and never missed a cocktail hour for his political views.  Physical courage and relative youth made Hitler and Mussolini even more dangerous than their lust for power and horrible beliefs.  By contrast, Trump is a flaccid old man who let another man serve in his place during the Vietnam War and expresses his manhood with lawsuits.

Hitler and Mussolini are two of the worst people ever to disgrace the human race, but they were not cowards.  When their countries were at war, they signed up to be on the front lines. When Donald Trump’s country was at war, he signed up for college and let another man go in his place. 

Cowards are haunted by their cowardice.  When Trump slammed John McCain and all Prisoners Of War, Trump was acting as any coward would.  By tearing down someone truly brave, Trump could tell himself he is better.  Trump may sound cynical or crazy, but much of what he says is just the self-talk that bubbles out of the cauldron of insecurities in his craven guts. 

Even if he does not become a tyrant himself, Trump inspires people who want authoritarian government and he paves the way for their evil designs.  Trump may not be Hitler or Mussolini, but he is dangerous.

Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Book 16 of 2016

C.S. Lewis in 1917

There are two kinds of people in this world: 

• Those who think prayer is a monologue. 
• Those who think prayer is a dialogue.

[If you are thinking, 'What about people who don't pray at all?' they are in group one.  If no one is listening, then prayer is a monologue.]

I have been both at different times in my life.  So has C.S. Lewis.  The picture above was taken just before he volunteered to serve in World War I.  He was 19 years old and did not have to go.  Lewis is from Northern Ireland and would not have been drafted.  Lewis had recently become and atheist and would remain one for another decade until he became a believer in 1929 and a Christian shortly after.

At about the same age as Lewis, I volunteered for the Vietnam War.  Lewis served in that horrible war and was twice badly wounded.  He remained an atheist as he recovered from shrapnel wounds.  I never got closer to the Vietnam War than western Utah.  But like Lewis I was injured in an explosion.  His was hit with German artillery fire.  I was close enough to a missile interstage detonator explosion to be blinded by shrapnel and almost lose two fingers.  

We both recovered, but in the course of my recovery, I came to faith.  The experience of blindness, and not being sure I would see again, made the universe look vast and me feel as small as an oxygen atom.  

As I recovered I became a believer and then a Christian.  They are very different.  Over the four decades since I first believed, I have never stopped being a believer, but have had many struggles with being a Christian. It is not belief in Jesus that was a problem, or the basic principles of faith expressed in the Creeds of the Church for nearly 2,000 years.  

My problem was with the culture that has surrounded Christianity in America and through most of western history since Christians took political power.  I came to faith in a Baptist Church in Utah.  The members of that Church saw themselves as a resistance movement against all the sins of the world and most of modern science and philosophy.  The Evangelical Church in America in all of its expressions is anti-intellectual.  And in the past half century it has become almost incredibly materialistic, given the life of Jesus.  

I quickly became discouraged with trying to be part of a culture that seemed collectively delusional.  Just when I was ready to give up completely, a military chaplain on our base in Germany gave me a copy of C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity."  The day I got the book our unit was going to Heidelberg to watch fireworks.  I read the book on the bus, then ignored the fireworks and read the book on the bridge where we went to watch.  

Reading that book convinced me to leave the Army at the end of my enlistment and go to college full time.  I wanted to be a Christian with a brain like Lewis.  

I did go to college and eventually read all of the 40 books C.S. Lewis wrote, many of them several times.  This reading of "Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer" might be the fifth time I read this wonderful, practical book.  

Most of us feel the urge to pray and then feel modern life and thinking fight against the urge.  Does prayer for the sick really make sense?  Could any sane parent keep her sick child at home and pray instead of going to a doctor?  In a series of "letters" to a friend on prayer, Lewis talks about how he prays.  He also talks about how and why he struggles with prayer. 

Of course, the book has nothing to say to people who do not believe in God, but it does show how a sane and brilliant man who fervently believes in God prays.

Book 15 of 2016: Homer's Iliad--One of the First and Great War Stories

The Iliad of Homer one of the first and one of the best War Stories of Western Literature.  It opens with "The Anger of Achilles" and ends with funeral of Hector, the great hero of Troy. Hector was killed by Achilles in the last of many fight scenes.

In this reading, I was struck by how much the combatants "talk smack" to each other. They insult and provoke each other like professional wrestlers before cutting each other to pieces with sword and spear.  Hundreds and hundreds of men die in this story, many of them falling to the ground and "biting the earth" as they writhe and gasp on the way to Death and Hades.  

The meaning of "biting the dust" is just the same for us as when Homer sang his poem 3,000 years ago: fall headlong in the dust, and bite the earth [πολέες δ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ αὐτὸν ἑταῖροι//πρηνέες ἐν κονίῃσιν ὀδὰξ λαζοίατο γαῖαν].

Dozens of times as I read "he fell headlong in the dust and bites the earth" I heard the refrain from "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen.  

With spears, swords, arrows and not a few big rocks, the combatants smash skulls, tear out eyes, rip open bellies, tear flesh and break bones. The poem glorifies combat and bravery.  There is no doubt Homer's audience thought that to die bravely in combat was the best death.

The war that leads to so many deaths of brave men, the 10-years war between the Greeks and Trojans, was unnecessary.  It was the wounded pride of King Agamemnon of the Greeks that started the war.  In the Iliad, "...the face that launch'd a thousand ships" was the bearded face of King Agamemnon, not the lovely face of Helen of Troy. Christopher Marlowe's play Dr. Faustus in 1604 is the first reference to Helen causing the war and the source of the quote in the line above.

The song "If" by Bread in 1971 made the Marlowe's view part of pop culture and echoed in my head as I read Iliad.

Of course, it was her kidnap/elopement by Paris that was given as a reason to fight, but Helen, as all women of the time, was property.  Thousands of men in a thousand ships went to war following a proud and angry king.

The Trojan War is tragedy and loss even in victory.  Agamemnon is betrayed and killed when he returns home.  Achilles dies in Troy.  Ulysses wanders another ten years before his return.  That story is the "Odyssey."

I last read Iliad in the 90s and at the time liked he Odyssey better.  Now that I have served in an ill-conceived unnecessary war myself, I like Iliad better.  All those brave deaths, all that "biting the earth" for no reason in a losing cause is now part of my life.