Screwed Out of Retirement at 19 Years

Yesterday, I got a call from a soldier I served with in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. Her father is 59 years old, a Sergeant First Class, in Texas, training for a deployment later this year. 

If he goes, it will be his fourth deployment.  He first enlisted forty years ago, then had a long break in service to raise his kids.  I knew when I re-enlisted I could not get a retirement--I was too old and had too few years of service. 

But this soldier is right on the edge. With a one-year extension he would be able to complete his deployment and retire. 

It looks like what will actually happen is that he will deploy and return early and leave the Army without a pension.

I told my friend to get in touch with her Congressman right away. Her approach should be "My Dad........"  She is a veteran combat pilot in her own right.

There is not much chance he will get the retirement. Like me he will be asked to turn in his gear and all of his connection to the military will end. Fading away, as General McArthur said 70 years ago.

"Smoking's Not Going to Kill Us, They Are:" Tobacco on the Cold War Border

I started watching "Band of Brothers" again, the HBO series about American paratroopers in World War II.

At the beginning of episode 2, the paratroopers are on a C-47 transport plane flying toward Normandy in the middle of the night of June 5-6. In moments they will be the first invading troops, crowded on slow-moving airplanes flying into intense anti-aircraft fire then jumping from the planes.

By morning a third of them will be killed, wounded or missing. The men in the plane rub Rosary beads, drum their fingers, tap their feet, and stare vacantly. Some pray. A few others light up cigarettes.

My well-trained, health-focused 21st Century mind immediately thought "that's unhealthy" and I smiled. Then I thought of a joke about second-hand smoke in a plane with its jump door removed, open to the night sky.

I smoked when I was a tank commander on the East-West border in the late 1970s. I looked across that border and thought the Soviet Army would invade and my tank would be part of a vastly outnumbered defense of the free world. And that I would have the survival potential of a rabbit at a wolf reunion.

"Smoking's not gonna kill us, they are!" I could say with some confidence looking East.

The Soviets did not invade. I quit smoking before the Soviet Union collapsed, so I am still alive to write this blog post.

By then end of World War II, less than a year later, the majority of the men in those planes on D-Day were dead or wounded. Smoking didn't kill them. The Nazis did.

Talking Racing and Cheating with a Richmond Cab Driver

Cale Yarborough, NASCAR Champion

I took a train to Richmond to visit my daughter and son-in-law. I took a cab to their house from the station. The driver was a local guy in his early 70s with six-year-old Chrysler 200 cab. He had the gravely voice of an ex-smoker and was very friendly.  In a couple of minutes it was clear we were both veterans. He was drafted and served in the late 60s, getting out just before I enlisted. 

The other thing we had in common was being NASCAR fans from the 60s through the early 2000s when we both drifted away from being fans.  In between the directions announced by GPS, we talked about being fans in the 60s. Ed drove slowly so we had a lot of time to talk on the 9-mile trip. 

Ed had followed the many drivers who drove for JuniorJohnson, one of the NASCAR originals. Ed met Cale Yarborough when Cale drove for Junior. We also talked about Darrell Waltrip a three-time champion who is now an announcer. 

Then I mentioned seeing a couple of races at the Richmond track and wishing I could have ridden my bike at the annual bicycle race on the Richmond NASCAR track.  This led us to talking about in NASCAR and bicycle racing. So we talked about Lance Armstrong and Waltrip and how different cheating is in motorsports and endurance sports. 

He knew Armstrong cheated, but he didn’t know how. I explained blood doping. I told Ed after Armstrong and Floyd Landis I never watched the Tour de France again.  We talked about how in motorsports the cheating is done in the car, not in the driver’s body, so when the cheater gets caught, the offending part is removed and the driver can race the following week. 

We also talked about the death of Dale Earnhardt at Daytona in 2001. Both of us stopped being fans soon after because NASCAR made all the cars identical and both of us had become fans when it was actually modified street cars that raced on short tracks and the high banks at Daytona and Talledega.

Always interesting to meet up with a Cold War veteran.

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Two Guys Comment on the Book I am Reading: How Fascism Works

Reading Hannah Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism" led me to start reading Jason Stanley's "How Fascism Works." I happened to be reading the fascism book on a bench in 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. There was a guy napping on the bench opposite me. He woke up, looked at the cover of the book, came over and sat next to me.

He said, "Tell me how that works. Just a quick summary." So I said, "Attack the press, discredit opponents and all history, attack a scapegoat minority and you are on the way." He thanked me.

Then he said, "My girlfriend told me the FBI said I can't ever call her or see her again in my entire life. I think they have to take me to court or arrest me or something. They wouldn't just tell her. Right?"

I said I don't know much about law, but that sounded right. He kept talking. I went to my train.

On the train, a conductor I see once in a while, a veteran, saw me reading the book and making notes in it. He said, "You are always reading some crazy shit." He laughed and kept checking tickets. When I got off the train, I passed him in the doorway.

"You take care Sarge," he said and started laughing again.

We both served in Cold War mechanized units. We talked about the Cold War a couple of times and how crazy it was that it ended. Once in a while when we were on the same train he would see me studying Ancient Greek or Russian and say, "You are one weird dude."

The Heel Thing: My Bone Spur and Deployment

Ten years ago, I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, training to deploy to Iraq. With just a week to go before the long flight to the Middle East, I developed a bone spur. It ached every day. When I first stood up in the morning, it felt like I had a big rock in my right boot.

I said nothing, because I could have been left in the US and missed the deployment. Once I was in Iraq, I got a cortisone shot from the medics because they would not send me home over just a bone spur once I was in country. Cortisone and a month of stretching several times a day fixed it.

In this week in which Cadet Bone Spurs is attacking John McCain, a real American hero, I can't stop thinking about the soldiers I have known over the past 40+ years who covered up medical problems or got them fixed in order to serve.

I really cannot understand any veteran supporting Coward-in-Chief. During the Vietnam War, rich draft dodgers like Trump not only avoided service, they sneered at people who served. And he can't even remember which heel had the bone spur.

Cold War Barracks Roommate Visits for 37 Hours

At Philadelphia Airport at 6am 

During the first months of 1979, my roommate in the barracks of the Wiesbaden Military Community was Air Force Sergeant Cliff Almes. On May 2, of that year, Cliff was discharged from the USAF in West Germany. I drove him 20 miles to the place that has been home for him ever since, a monastery in Darmstadt.  

Cliff got a new uniform he is still wearing. He is now Bruder Timotheus of the Land of Kanaan. We have talked on the phone ever since I left Germany in 1979 to go to college.  I visited Cliff in Germany a few times in the last 40 years. In 2017 I spent a week with Cliff at Kanaan that included a visit to Point Alpha on the former East-West border in Fulda. 

Cliff is here in the U.S. for a family wedding in Houston this coming weekend. He flew to Virginia, visited his brother, then visited me, then flew to Mexico to visit his sister before flying to Houston. Next week he'll be back in Darmstadt. 

On this visit, Cliff met my wife and several of my friends here in Lancaster. On the long visit to Kanaan in 2017, I met some of the Brothers in Cliff's community and other people who visit the monastery. Dmitri, for example, visited Point Alpha with Cliff and I. And I visited German historic sites with Cliff and a Coptic Christian couple from Cairo.

Cliff is a military brat. His connections to the US Military go back to the Revolutionary War. Some of that story is here. Cliff's schedule did not allow for a historic site visit, but we did drive past all of the sites on Independence Mall in Philadelphia along the way to the airport.  Maybe we can go inside on some future visit. 

I met some of my best friends during my military service during the Cold War.  They live as far away as Germany and San Diego now so it's nice when we can visit.  My former tank unit, 1-70th Armor, has reunions every other year. I've made it to a couple of those. There's one this fall I'm going to miss because of conflicting plans, but I'm hoping for 2021.

In the meantime, there is a possibility Cliff and I will be able to spend a few days seeing Jerusalem in the fall. He has been there several times and I am looking forward to seeing it through his eyes.  

Three Kinds of People: Sheep, Sheep Dogs, and Wolves

The movie "American Sniper" brought into popular culture and old view of people:  We are all sheep, sheep dogs, or wolves. It is easy to criticize this simplified view of humanity. For one thing, humans can change from sheep into wolves, sheep dogs into wolves, or wolves into sheep.  Real sheep stay sheep. Real wolves don't graze.

Recently, I was talking to my older son about leadership. I used this analogy, because he is starting both an internship and later a job in which leadership is the path to success. His employers, even if they would not use the label, are looking for a sheep dog.

We were laughing about just how much like a sheep dog he will need to be with a crowd of teenagers who needed to be herded to different activities--and who might wander off at any moment.

We also talked about my oldest daughter, both of us smiling because she seems to be born for the sheep dog role. On her high school basketball and soccer teams she played with boundless enthusiasm. She also embraced the role of team enforcer.  If a player on the other team made a bad hit or was abusing one of her teammates, my daughter was in her face, several times fouling out of games with her one-on-one coverage of the offender.  In her professional life she is a social worker, helping disabled veterans get the help they need.

The best sergeants I served with in the Army had this alert, game-face quality of both protecting their sheep and barking whenever needed.

In corporate life, unlike games and the military, leadership has subtleties that blend the sheep and sheep dogs and even the wolves together into an always strained unit that presents itself as a family, but with deep contradictions everyone feels.

In the corporate world, someone has to make money and deal with shareholders.  Wolves in suits lead the sales force and accounting.  Sheep with college degrees can be less than docile.  The sheep dogs in big companies, the middle managers, are the subject of bitching by the sheep and the wolves.

I listen to friends who are corporate managers caught between surly sheep and hungry wolves striving to "increase shareholder value" and their own bonuses. Every corporation I worked for kept score in money--the only real measure of  both short- and long-term success in the world of business.

The friends who played ball or are veterans are occasionally nostalgic for the vivid clarity of games and war.  They tell me how they are squeezed between bosses looking only for profit and staff who want affirmation.

My son is beginning where most of the sheep want to be part of the herd and he can protect his sheep from the wolves.

Just as an aside, many professions are admired and scorned based on members who choose the role of sheep dog or wolf.  The best lawyers use their considerable training to protect the poor and needy from government and corporate excess. The worst are wolves making fortunes covering crimes by the rich.

The difference between millionaire televangelists sucking money from their sheep to build and buy empires, and believer who becomes a doctor to minister in a refugee camp is beyond astronomical.