Academy Class Ranking Does Not Predict Success, or Morality

John McCain, 894th of 899 class of 1958, US Naval Academy

Class ranking at the academies do not predict success in the military or in life.  This weekend I was thinking that morally class ranking can predict the reverse. The current Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, was first in his class at West Point and under his watch we have betrayed the Kurds and he betrayed his own staff during the impeachment hearings. Pompeo went on to Harvard Law School before entering politics.  He is a brilliant man with the morals of a maggot.

At the other end of that academic ladder are John McCain and George Armstrong Custer.  McCain was 894th of 899 in the class of 1958 at the US Naval Academy.  Custer was last in the class of 1861 at West Point.  

McCain became a Naval Aviator and a symbol of endurance and courage as a Prisoner of War during the Vietnam War.  He famously refused to leave his comrades and endured three more years of confinement and torture for a total of six years as a prisoner. He became a moral beacon when the reputation of the American military was the lowest it has ever been, before or since.

McCain died two years ago in August of 2018, unmourned by the draft-dodging coward in the White House.  

In April of 2018, Mike Pompeo was named Secretary of State.  On his path to the nomination, there was a controversy about his service.  He served in West Germany near the end of the Cold War from 1986 to 1991. He never served  in the Gulf War, though Try Gowdy and other Republican liars said that he did.  Pompeo left the Army a captain and went to law school. 

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Every soldier knows the best way to be promoted is to serve during a war--the military expands the number of leadership slots, and some of the slots become vacant in every battle.

The military is very focused on procedure in peace. In war balls and bravado rule the promotion list. No other officer who ever served in the US military has risen faster than George Armstrong Custer.  

George Armstrong Custer in 1861 at the US Army Academy at West Point

In 1861, Custer graduated last in his class at West Point Military Academy.  He was 22 years old.  Within two months he commanded a cavalry troop at the First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia. His bravery in battle impressed senior officers and Custer got promoted so fast he was a Brevet Brigadier General within two years, promoted just a week before the Battle of Gettysburg. He commanded a cavalry brigade at Gettysburg that kept southern cavalry from supporting Major General George Pickett's ill-fated charge, helping to ensure the defeat of Pickett and General Robert E. Lee's army at that great turning point of the war.  

 

A month later Custer was wounded at the Battle of Culpepper Courthouse. He recovered, returned to the fight and was promoted to Brevet Major General in 1864.

 

By the end of the Civil War in 1865, George Custer was one of the officers with General U.S. Grant accepting the surrender of Lee at Appomattox Court House. 

After the war, Custer became known for defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, making a huge tactical error that led to he and his command being wiped out. Hubris, said the ancient Greeks, will lead those who rise the highest to fall the farthest.  He was a Major General at age 26 and dead at 36. 

Satire: Good for Your War, Not Mine

Catch-22, whether the original book, the movie or the recent Hulu series, is a satire of Army Aviation in World War II.  The author, Joseph Heller, was a bombardier in B-25 Mitchell Bombers flying missions in southern Europe. 

When I defended the book in a facebook discussion, my friend Joe Steed mentioned that his father, Bernie Steed, flew B-25 Bombers and on a few missions had a bombardier named Joseph Heller.  The led to writing about Bernie Steed's service in the 488th Bombardment Squadron.  Joe told me that Bernie had no idea that Heller wrote a book. Bernie read a few chapters and decided the book was not for him.

Bernie Steed receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross

I just did the same with David Abrams book "Fobbit."  It turns out I can read and enjoy a satire of a war before I was born, but I did not like reading a satire of a war I was in.  I should have known. When I visited the Bastogne War Memorial there was an M4 Sherman Tank outside the museum painted by an anti-war group. I had also seen Soviet tanks painted with peace signs. 'That's okay,' I remember thinking, 'But I don't want to see an M60A1 Patton tank painted with that shit.'  It's okay to deface other tanks, not my tank.

My tank: Bad Bitch, Fort Carson CO, 1976

So Bernie and I agree after all. Satirize another war, not my war.  

"Father Soldier Son" a Documentary of the Long Aftermath of War

Isaac, Brian and Joey Eisch

This week my son Nigel and I watched a documentary titled “Father Soldier Son.” The movie follows Sergeant First Class Brian Eisch on a combat deployment to Afghanistan and the tragedy his life became over the decade that followed. When I watched the movie, I remembered reading about Eisch getting wounded.  I read about the deployment the First Battalion-87^th Infantry in the New York Times in 2010-11.

Jim Dao, then the war correspondent for the Times, spent several months in Afghanistan following the unit from the beginning of the deployment to end. He told harrowing stories of soldiers killed and wounded during the deployment and their lives at war.

Eisch loved being a soldier and being a Dad.  Eisch was the single Dad of two sons, Isaac and Joey, ages ten and six in 2010. Eisch went to Afghanistan thinking he would resume his life when he returned. That meant moving up in his Army career and resuming hunting, fishing, camping and all the things he and his sons did together. 

From the stories, I sort of remembered who was one of those wounded, he had been hit in both legs by machine gun fire. The movie continued the story I had read a decade ago. His left leg had severe damage, but Eisch tried to recover. After two years, he pain got so bad that he agreed to amputation below the knee. 

As Eisch fell further and further into depression over his leg, his career ended and his life stalled. He met and eventually married a woman who loved and cared for him, but for a long time after he lost his leg, Eisch spent most of his time playing video games and avoiding his family. He had to leave the Army and said his life no longer had direction.

Just when Eisch’s life began to get better, then the younger of his two sons, Joey, was killed while riding his bicycle near their home. 

In 2018 when Isaac turned 18 and graduated high school, he joined the Army and became a paratrooper. 

The movie is really well done and sad.  I usually avoid watching documentaries because I worked in media and I am suspicious of visual media that tries to inform or educate.  But this documentary is so well done, I got lost in the story. The smart-ass critic in my head was silent.

If you want to know some of the cost of our endless wars, this movie shows how difficult life can be for returning soldiers.  The original articles are also available on the New York Times web site.  Dao’s reporting goes into much more depth on the combat missions in Afghanistan. 

When Walking I Don't Get Angry: Cycling is Different

Slowly healing. 

Today I saw the surgeon who put my arm back together with plates and screws  and considerable skill.  Tomorrow I begin a more sadistic physical therapy with pulleys to get more range of motion from my shattered elbow.

Three times during the visit, the doc said I should ride. I have enough range of motion in my arm to ride.

But during my three-mile walk home from the visit I had another moment of the making the contrast between bicycling and walking as exercise.  More than half the time I ride, someone in a vehicle--most often a plus-sized redneck in a pickup truck--will swerve at me or just pass too close. Occasionally he will yell faggot (women never do these things, only men).  A few times I have been hit with bottles and cans or got a "rollin' coal" cloud of smoke from a diesel pickup.

And I get angry.

Only rarely can I do anything about it. Once more than 15 years ago I got the license plate of a guy who threw tacks in the road because he hated us so much much. 

I have walked in hundreds of miles since surgery and no one has swerved at me, thrown tacks in the road, spit, called me a faggot, or any of the other things that have happened to me only in America and mostly on rural roads. 

So now I am really thinking about how much I want to ride.  I live in a rural area with lots of pickup trucks.  Do I want to return to getting pissed off at the pathetic cowards who think bicyclists don't belong on "their" roads? 

It's a question I never asked before. I love cycling so much that I thought the anger was part of riding. But knowing that I can walk and challenge myself makes the world look different. What is inner peace worth?  I will be asking myself that.

Slow Walk Up My Fastest Descent

S-Curve at the top of Prospect Hill

This afternoon I walked up and down the hill on Prospect Road between Columbia Pike to Marietta Pike in western Lancaster County.  After riding thirty years in 37 countries and descending miles-long hills all over the world, it was on this short, steep descent south toward Columbia Pike that I went the fastest I have ever ridden: 59.5 mph.  

It is the right kind of hill to go fast. Although the hill is short, it is steepest and straight at the bottom.  Other times I have been over 55mph it is always on hills that have a 15% or more grade near the bottom of the hill. Prospect Road is 16% at the steepest point. But the other factor in going 59mph was the S-Curve at the top and the 1980s Bronco that passed me on the way into the turn. 

The big, old Ford SUV has the aerodynamic profile of a brick so when he went past, I pedaled like crazy to stay near him. He had to slow in the second turn so I could stay with him. As we exited the turn, he stomped the gas and pulled away. If he stayed anywhere near the legal speed, I would have to be on the brakes. But he went way over the 35mph speed limit so could get sucked along in his draft. I could hear the spokes sing, so I knew I was flying.

When I stopped, the max speed indicator in my computer said 59.5 mph.  At this point, it looks like a lifetime record.  I have descended miles-long hills in the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rockies, the Berkshires, Israel, the Republic of Georgia, and in Macedonia. But length does not matter for max speed, only grade percentage and wind direction--and a good draft. 

Lancaster County, Corn, Corn, Corn

Looking up Prospect Hill

Looking up at the steepest section of the hill, near the bottom

Genocide and Torture: Two Sides of Silence

I am reading a book titled "Silence" by John Biguenet.  The book leads me through the pop culture, history and meaning of silence.  Until March of this year, many of us spent hours in the uninterrupted noise of airports. The only relief from the announcements and crowds is in the airport lounges for business class passengers.  They have silence at a considerable cost.

Some of us seek silence through meditation practice and by inhabiting quiet spaces.  Biguenet tells us the history of silent reading. Then he introduces us to the Unspeakable. 

The Holocaust survivor Theodor Adorno said in 1949 that after the Holocaust no one should write poetry. The Holocaust and other genocides silence millions.  The Armenian Genocide silenced more than million voice. The Holocaust silenced six million. The starvation of millions in Ukraine by Stalin, the Stalinist purges, and millions killed by Mao and Pol Pot followed by slaughter in Rwanda and Yugoslavia forced silence by death.

Biguenet then says torture is the opposite of genocide. A person tortured chooses to be silent. The torture is supposed to break that silence through agony.

Genocide survivors write and speak to give voice to the millions who were silenced. Those who are tortured choose silence at a great cost, possibly at the cost of their lives. 

Both genocide and torture are horrible, but for opposite reasons from the perspective of silence. 

Silence is part of a series of books called Object Lessons. Short books about specific things like Phone Booths, Drones, Silence, The Wheelchair, The High Heel, Traffic and fifty other titles.  My next book is about The Bookshelf.

"If It Ain't Rainin' We Ain't Trainin'" NYC Version

On the Queensborough Bridge Today, Yesterday was a Tropical Storm

Yesterday and today I walked from Manhattan to Queens and back on the Queensborough bridge. Today was beautiful weather. Yesterday was a tropical storm with sheets of rain blowing across the walkway from the north. 

As I walked through the rain wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I thought about First Sergeant Rich Francke, who was one of the people along with Jeremy Houck who helped me make the transition from civilian life back to the military in 2007.  One of Francke's mottos was, "If it ain't rainin' we ain't trainin'." 

As I walked up the ramp onto the span getting soaked at a rate that felt like it could be measured in gallons per minute, I straightened my shoulders and imagined myself marching with field gear in the woods in a driving rain and thought 'at least I won't be sleeping in this.'  

The walkway has both a bike lane and a pedestrian lane. There was no one else walking, but there was a steady flow of bicyclists. Most of them were on electric bikes wrapped in raincoats. They were food delivery riders looking very miserable.  After I turned back toward Manhattan,  saw one slow, wobbly bicyclist on a regular bike. She was pedaling slowly and crying heading for Queens. She clearly did not think riding in the rain was an adventure.

Today there were more walkers, but not a lot.  I passed maybe 30 pedestrians in each direction on the 7500-foot-long bridge.  

There were many more bicyclists. Easily hundreds passed me.  One was wearing an Ironman bike jersey. He saw my Ironman hat and we waved.  A third of the bicyclists today were delivery riders, but there were also serious riders and tourists.  

 Completed in 1909, The 59th Street Bridge (now the Ed Koch Queensborough Bridge) was the subject of a song by Simon and Garfunkel that most people know as "Feelin' Groovy." Billy Joel's video for the song "Your Only Human (Second Wind)" was filmed primarily on the bridge.  The bridge has been part of more than a dozen movies from 1932 to 2018, most recently in "Avengers: Infinity Wars."