Riding in Battle Gear

Yesterday I returned to the FARP (Forward Area Refueling Point) to see both Blackhawks and Chinooks refueling and rearming. Today when the Blackhawks took off they flew to a nearby machine gun range and circled at steep angles firing their door guns. Yesterday I watched the fueling from the other side of the range road because I did not bring battle gear.

We had no scheduled training in the afternoon so I rode to the FARP on my borrowed bike. Since I wanted to get close to the birds and talk to the fuelers, I wore my bulletproof vest and carried the Kevlar helmet in a backpack. When I left it was 87 degrees and sunny. So I got a small preview of my future by riding in my full uniform and bulletproof vest with a pack. I wore a bicycle helmet on the road because Army helmets aren't approved for road use. I got some strange looks even on an Army range road. The ride was longer than in bike clothes--I climb a lot slower with 30 pounds of battle gear and pedaling in combat boots.

I got to the FARP just in time to see two Chinooks take off and within a minute two Blackhawks zoomed in from the south. When the Chinooks came back I called my son Nigel and held the phone up while the big helicopters refueled and rearmed. When Nigel and Annalisa got home, they looked up Chinook on the web. Then Nigel got his geography lesson for the day about where Daddy and Chinooks are and where they are going.

Pit Stops for Blackhawks

Today I rode out to the Forward Area Refueling Point (FARP) on the edge of the gunnery range area of Fort Sill and saw two Blackhawks get refueled and rearmed. It was beautiful to watch.

Like NASCAR teammates dropping from the high banks of Daytona for a green-flag pit stop, two Blackhawks flew hard out of the south then wheeled 180 degrees and seemed to stop as they settled into the Echo Company "pits."

The Echo Company "pit area" can be any field with enough room for rotary-wing aircraft to safely land, re-fuel, re-arm and continue the mission. In this Fort Sill training area, two HEMMT 2500-gallon fueling vehicles wait at opposite edges of an open field. The crews, like their NASCAR counterparts, waited in the sun, suited up with protective clothing and helmets. They check their equipment, watch the sky and wait for the sound of approaching helicopters.

The first birds this afternoon fly straight past the FARP (Forward Area Refueling Point). Then just at 1500 (3pm) the Blackhawks circle in. While both NASCAR and Army Aviation pit crews fuel their high-performance vehicles, the cars get new tires, the Blackhawks get guns and ammo.

In nine minutes the two Blackhawks faced into the south wind and flew up and off to the east, re-armed and re-fueled. The Echo Company FARP got ready for the next pair of Blackhawks already visible on the horizon.

Remedial PT Honor Grad

<















Medicine Bluff

---------------
All military leadership schools have an honor grad--the overall best soldier in the group. Honor grad is based on a point-scoring system and ties go to the soldier with the best overall leadership skills and attitude. Among the more than 20 soldiers in my remedial PT (Physical Training) group, one is clearly looking like the honor grad. He is a big guy in his 30s who needed to pick up the speed of his run to pass the PT test. In the past six weeks he has shown up for all the scheduled PT: Monday, Wednesday, Friday company PT at 0530; Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday at 7pm with my group, plus he and his roommate have been running and going to the gym other times when they can. Two days ago my honor grad and his roommate ran, jogged and walked an 11-mile circuit. Because we are on Fort Sill, the circuit began with a 4.5-mile run to Geronimo's Grave, then back to Medicine Bluff where Geronimo is reported to have jumped off a 300-foot cliff one horseback. Geronimo survived, the horse was not so lucky. They also stopped at the Confidence (Obstacle) Course on the way back. My honor grad should have no trouble passing the 2-mile run now.
---------------























Geronimo's Grave
















Helping a buddy on the Confidence Course

Camp Cupcake

At a recent class, five of us who are scheduled to go to Balad Air Base were in a class with more than 30 regular army sergeants. All of them had been to Iraq or Afghanistan at least once and when they found out where we were going they all said, "You [guys] are going to Camp Cupcake." They had all heard of Camp Cupcake. And every one of them hoped their next tour would be there.

Almost the Whole Weekend Off

On Friday I heard we might be released early on Saturday, so I asked to schedule remedial PT for mid afternoon instead of Saturday evening. When we formed up at 0830 we had about 15 minutes of peperwork then were released for the day. I was up late on Friday so I went back to my room and took a nap. I woke up to my roommates watching an animated Manga (Japanese with dubbed English) vampire movie called Hellsing. I still am having trouble getting used to the horror-for-breakfast thing, so I went to the PX, got a latte and talked to everyone in my immediate family except my stepdaughter--and we will talk Sunday evening.

My son Nigel won his basketball game Friday night in his 9-10-year-old league. My oldest daughter Lauren was home all week for spring break and was happy for the break from studying. Lisa is still waiting see which college she is going to. Both she and my wife are on Spring Break the coming week.

In the afternoon I had time to ride 28 miles around the artillery and machine gun ranges before Remedial PT. As I rode uphill beside the impact area I heard the high-pitched whistle of a ricochet round spinning through the air above me.

When I got back to the room, my roommates had switched to a Wolverine/Vampire movie, this one had actors, not animation. I changed and went to Remedial PT. Because of the day off, I had a half dozen more soldiers than usual. The gym had more than 100 people on machines and weights and at least 1/4th of them were from Echo Company.

I am taking a PT test on Tuesday along with several of the E-4s in the platoon who need to pass the test to qualify for promotion. Since the time for me to max the run (14:42 for two miles) is only one minute 12 seconds faster than the minimum time for a 20-year-old to pass (15:54), I am going to take the test and try to max the run, which should give the guys who want a passing pace someone to run with.

Upside-Down-in-a-Humvee Training

This afternoon we took three 180-degree rides in a Humvee Roll-Over Simulator.



As you can see in the photo, the simulator is an Armored Humvee passenger compartment mounted on a large axle. The training begins with a briefing explaining all that will happen to us. We enter the vehicle in groups of four--one for each seat. We wear our helmets, body armor and elbow and knee pads. The pads are REALLY helpful in an upside-down vehicle. We carry foam replicas of M16 rifles. In addition, there are foam replicas of water bottles, radios and other things that should be tied down in a combat vehicle, but are not. The worst is the fire extinguisher. It is also foam, but weighs eight pounds. One soldier crawled out rubbing his nose after getting hit in the face with the equivalent of a gallon bottle of milk.

When we got inside, the sergeant operating the machine first turned the Humvee to 25 degrees to show the maximum lean angle for an armored Humvee. Then he tipped us 30 degrees in the other direction to show us the max lean angle for a standard Humvee. Next he turned us 180 degrees just to show us what it feels like to be upside down, then turned us back upright.

With the preliminaries over, the operators made one final safety check, then we took the six second trip to upside down and stopped. We had to hang upside down for ten seconds or so and wait while the operators made a safety check, then we heard "Egress" on the sound system in the vehicle. This was a two-way sound system. The operators and the soldiers waiting can all hear the sounds coming from inside. We release the seat belts then flip over and crawl out. The operators disable one or more doors from the outside so we if our door doesn't open (mine didn't) we have to crawl along the ceiling and follow the first soldier out who yells, "Door. Door. Door." When we get out the next task is to set up security and make sure all four of us are out. With that complete we get back in and simulate a water roll over.

In water, we wait inside till everyone is out of the seat belts then go out one door. We have 30 seconds to get out. Our crew made it in 27 seconds. The rollover was a lot of fun on a Friday afternoon. When we were on the ready line, one of the young soldiers who was not looking forward to being upside down asked me why I was smiling. I said, "I am 55 years old and this my last carnival, so I am going to enjoy all the rides."

Click Click Boom

When we first arrived at Fort Sill, we got a very dull General Orders briefing. It was one of several PowerPoint presentations that were read aloud saying we can't drink, leave Fort Sill, fraternize, etc. But before that PowerPoint started our commander, who first served in artillery, played one of his favorite videos: Fire Mission. It is available on You Tube and uses the song "Click Click Boom" by the group Saliva (first I have heard of them). With artillery, as with the cannons in the tanks I was in, click click boom is the sound. The round slams into the breach of the gun (click). The breach closes (click). And the gunner pulls the trigger (BOOM).

Fort Sill is the Army's training base for artillery. A lot of the footage in this video was shot on Fort Sill. When we first arrived I saw a Fire Mission on the very same hillside as you will see in the video. I counted a dozen rounds hitting the hillside--Fire for Effect is the term they use. We were ten miles away and could see and hear very clearly. The road the bike race was on was midway between the guns and where the rounds land.

Fort Sill Bike Race Pictures

Here's a few more pictures from the bike race.


My fan club!! 20 members of my unit came out on a Sunday morning to see me race and to see the first bike race they have ever seen live. Unless I can manage to organize a race in Iraq, it will probably be the last one they will see. Our race was nine miles out and nine back. So they got to see the start and the finish. Not exactly NFL football for a fan experience.


Before the start. The racer in the middle is a Med-Evac Blackhawk pilot in our unit. She raced on the one speed and finished ahead of about of a third of the field--and they had gears. Before going on active duty for deployment, she and her boyfriend rode from Portland, Oregon, to Buffalo, New York. She's a strong rider.


Two of the dispatch clerks made a sign for me. It is on display now in our motor pool.

Barracks Life--The Following is Posted on the Door of a Room Housing Six Sergeants

The Man Rules
At last a guy has taken the time to write this all down
Finally , the guys' side of the story.
( I must admit, it's pretty good.)
We always hear "the rules"
From the female side.
Now here are the rules from the male side.
Please note.. These are all numbered "1"
ON PURPOSE!

1. Men are NOT mind readers

1. Learn to work the toilet seat.
You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down.
We need it up, you need it down..
You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports. It's like the full moon
Or the changing of the tides.
Let it be.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want.
Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!

1. "Yes" and "No" are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it.
That's what we do.
Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument.
In fact, all comments become Null and void after 7 Days..

1. If you think you're fat, you probably are.
Don't ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one

1. You can either ask us to do something
Or tell us how you want it done.
Not both.
If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings
Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color..
Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched.
We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," we will act like nothing's wrong
We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to,
Expect an answer you don't want to hear

1. When we have to go somewhere,
absolutely anything you wear is fine... Really .

1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball
Or golf.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!

1. Thank you for reading this.
Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight;
But did you know men really don't mind that? It's like camping.
Pass this to as many men as you can -
To give them a laugh.
Pass this to as many women as you can -
To give them a bigger laugh.

More from the Obstacle Course

First I have to properly identify the place we trained yesterday. It is called a Confidence Course. But to the rest of the world it is an obstacle course. So there, I said it.

Two views of climbing the Skyscraper. The soldiers cooperate to push and pull each other up and down four floors of this obstacle. It is easier to go up than down.

































I was one of the first group on the Flight to Freedom ride down a rope on a pulley. So I waited. I have no idea what I was thinking about, but it must have been serious.
















We all went on the pulley ride. Only two of us climbed this obstacle. We will all do it when the company does the Confidence Course.

Obstacle Course on One Hour Notice

I spent the morning cleaning the SAW. Just as I was getting ready to take it back to the Arms Room, our platoon leader said, "Be downstairs in one hour. We are going to the Obstacle Course." It turns out 16 of us were going to get certified as instructors on the course so we could get the whole company over and through the most difficult obstacles. The whole group went through the Tower of Freedom, a 200-foot slide down a rope on a pulley. It was a lot of fun going down that rope.

A few of us went through other obstacles like the tower where you climb up ropes and ladders and descend a cargo net. We went through many of the ground obstacles as a group. We will be going through as a company this weekend, maybe with races.

Then and Now--Sleeping on a Range

Today was qualifying day on the machine gun range. Almost 30 of us went spent the day qualifying on the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. It was a much longer day than it was supposed to be. We arrived at the range just after 8 am, but did not start firing until almost 1 pm. Someone somewhere screwed up and the ammo did not not arrive until 12:30.

But I was happy. I love being on ranges. And after yesterday's race, it was good to have some time to relax. When things are screwed up on a range, we just sit and wait. We sit and wait in a Kevlar helmet and bulletproof vest so we are very warm.

In the 70s I knew I had acclimated to Army life on ranges when I woke in the middle of the day on a tank gunnery range on Fort Carson, Colorado. I was lying at the ammo point 100 feet behind 17 tanks lined up fender to fender test firing machine guns. It wasn't until they started firing the 105 mm cannons that I woke up. Even then, I was half asleep and saw the little stones in the sand bouncing from the blast. I stayed lying on the ammo boxes and watched the dirt bounce for a few seconds before I actually woke up.




This afternoon, after my team had fired, I was one of several soldiers who stretched on the gravel at the briefing area 50 feet from the machine gun firing positions. An hour later I woke up to more firing. If I can fall asleep and nap while four SAWs are firing full-auto on a range, then I am really getting used to life on the range again.

When I was awake, I fired qualified, so it was a really good day. Here's a good You Tube video of a SAW range.

The Green Cheerleaders

When I was racing and my kids were young, I often had the largest fan contingent of any racer. My wife and four children were at the race giving me five fans, plus about 5% of all the spectators at the race. Today at the Hills of Hell Road Race more than 25 members of my company, including half the motor platoon came to the race in a large van and a truck. It was great to have that many fans. I will post pictures from the race later when I can get them from the various people who took them.

For the bike geeks, the race was an 18-mile out-and-back course on a paved road that runs through the middle of a Fort Sill artillery range. Nobody was shooting on Sunday. I have ridden the road during the week, but the shells pass high overhead on the way to distant targets. The road are made for heavy vehicles but get little traffic compared to a public road so they are very smooth. The course began and ended at a lakeside recreation area at the base of one of the larger hills. We went up three miles form the start on a shallow grade to the west, turned south and went down the steepest hill on the course--a short 7% descent--then on rolling terrain to the turn around.

I finished third overall out of 20 starters. Definitely a citizens race. I rode with the two guys who finished first and second from the beginning of the race till the base of the big climb on the way back. At that point, the 30-year age difference between us took over and I got dropped with four miles to go. First place dropped second in the middle of the climb. Second place was strong, but he had aero bars and lost a lot of ground on the climb. Fourth place finished three minutes behind me.

There was one other racer from our unit, a Blackhawk pilot who has ridden from Portland Oregon to Buffalo NY with her boyfriend. She finished 12th overall and was the first woman. He placing was better than it sounds because she rode my one-speed bike. The chaplain also offered her a loaner race bike, but she wanted to see how well she could do on the one-speed.

I am still coughing three hours later. It was great to hang in with the 20-year-olds for most of the race and to feel like I went as hard as I could.

Saturday Night at 8 pm in My Room

So right at this moment my roommates have guests.
Two 200+ pound soldiers are dancing with each other.
A female soldier is sitting in the doorway downloading Hispanic rap songs from another roommate.
Our platoon leader just walked by and asked if I was going to sleep for the race tomorrow.
The first two stopped dancing and my roommate's dance partner returned to eating ribs and bitching about how tough the ribs are.
One of the squad leaders just walked by to ask how much one of my roommate's duffel bags weighs.
The dancer just dropped the ribs and went back to dancing in the hallway to a song called "The Percolator." Without the female soldier, my room, which is about the size of a suburban kitchen, would start looking like a San Francisco bar.
It's now 8:02pm. The dancer is back to the ribs. The music stopped. The soldier eating the ribs just asked for a toothpick.
I am going to take a shower.

College Dorm Room Draw in Camo

Today we picked our roommates for Iraq. Just as the room choice lottery is the biggest event at every campus, and in Harry Potter's world, figuring who will be your roommate in Iraq is a very big deal.



And just as college room draw goes by class and sometimes by grade-point-average, our roommate choice has several restrictions. At least in our platoon, people of the same rank room together. When there are odd numbers, soldiers can room with someone one rank above or below, but not two. And just as in college, you want to pick a roommate you really like first (we call them battle buddies). Failing that, you want to pick a person you feel like you could get along with or at least would not be too judgmental about your flaws.

But the big drama is avoiding rooming with a soldier you don't get along with. This may seem silly for people going to a war zone, but if you have to spend most of a year in a place with a lot of stress, it is important not to have more stress when you get time off.



We don't have a Sorting Hat like Hogwarts Academy, or an sorting algorithm like college deans, so roommate selection is handled by several sergeants, a group that currently shares one large room and is know collectively by soldiers outside the platoon as the Fab Five. Cliques, whether in high school, college, the Army or at Microsoft Corporation, almost always have that kind of name from outsiders.

All this applies only to the male soldiers. Some different process governs roommate selection for the female soldiers.

Road March

This morning we were up at 0345 to get ready for a five-mile road march at 0430. For the march we wore our Kevlar vests and helmets and carried our weapons, about 35 pounds of gear including Camelbacks. The march was so fast I entered it in my exercise spreadsheet as a 1-mile jog and a 4-mile walk. I spent a lot of time on the downhills at a slow run closing up the gaps that formed as the leaders strode along at the highest pace they could step out.

After the march my heel hurt enough that I limped and did my ankle exercises every time I stood still the rest of the day. I got to ride 22 miles between 1630 and 1800 (430 and 6 pm) which made my ankle feel a lot better.

The best part of the march by far was that everyone finished. When we run, we break up into three ability groups and those groups splinter in the first half mile. But with the road march some people moved up, some dropped back, but we regrouped twice and everyone finished. Some finished a few minutes after, but everyone was there at the end. It was a big confidence builder for the people who usually get dropped on the runs. It was worth limping for a day.

Three Weeks of Remedial PT

Tonight marks the third week I have been leading Remedial PT. Each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening at 7pm, I lead the fitness training for those who failed one or more of the three events of their last PT test. The test is pushups, sit ups and a two-mile run. Of the 20+ soldiers in my group, most failed the run or the run plus one or two other events. Only two soldiers failed just situps, and no one in my group just failed the pushups.

The good news for those who get back up to speed on the run is that fixing the run almost always leads to better performance on the other two. And I already have two graduates. Two soldiers who were too slow on the run on their last PT test, ran two miles under their required time and now they don't have to show up for my formation.

But for the others, three weeks is a big deal. Most of the soldiers in remedial do not have a habit of fitness training. Most organizing or exercising gurus say if you can keep a habit for three weeks, you can potentially keep it for a lifetime. On the negative side, that's probably the same threshold for smoking or other bad habits.

So the remedial PT soldiers are getting better and they are on the way to changing their habits. I was talking to one of the soldiers today and had a Dostoevsky moment. I told him I was here partly because of wanting to do good and never getting around to actually doing it. We agreed that pretty much everybody on this deployment wants to do good in some way and also wants to clean up some part of their lives: money, fitness, weight, whatever. Dostoevsky says there is a spark of God in all of us, but we need to fan it into a flame.

Sergeant Rock and Sergeant Rumpled

The military will never be the flat organization business gurus say is the future of management. We have rank, structure and a chain of command. And alongside the official chain of command (Tolstoy is great on this subject in War and Peace) is the unofficial hierarchy. We have a hierarchy in everything: the best marksman, the fastest runner, the best at drill and ceremonies, the strongest, the best sprinter, who can fart the loudest or belch the longest. Because we live so close together, everyone knows these hierarchies.


Just as we all know the best at everything, we all know the worst. Not only does everyone know who has the highest PT scores, they know who has the lowest. Some are great at one thing and bad at others. Some are good at several things. But there is always one who is the all-around best at everything and his direct opposite: Sgt Rock and Sgt Rumpled.

Our unit is the same. We have people who max the PT test, but are just OK on the range or marching troops, or leading a field exercise. We have expert marksmen who barely pass the fitness test. And people who are great at drill and ceremonies that can't shoot very well or run. But Sgt Rock can do everything, if not the best, in the top 10% in every category. Sgt Rumpled can do almost nothing except show up when he is supposed to. That's how he hangs on. He does what he is told, complains when he can get away with it and lingers on hoping to get to retirement. In fact, my first time around there was an acronym everyone used: LIFER (Lazy Inefficient F#$kup Expecting Retirement). I haven't heard the acronym here and don't want to be the one to bring it back, but it applies to Sgt Rumpled. He looks unwashed and ragged even when he puts on a new uniform. He can't lead or shoot and has the worst PT score in the company.

Not surprisingly, he also thinks himself nearly a sage as far as technical competence, but his supervisors will not give him any job they cannot check, because he is also a bad mechanic.

Rock and Rumpled are also opposites in personality. Rock makes self-deprecating jokes and is cheerful with almost everyone. Rumpled only makes jokes at another soldier's expense.

Every unit I have been in over the years has had both of these guys. I wish I knew if it was the nature of the Army or I have just been in units with the best and the worst the Army can put in one place.

Same Day Bike Repair Service

This morning I rode the chaplain's bike the half-mile to his office using the Fred Flintstone propulsion system--my left foot pushing the road like a kid on a scooter. He had the bike by 0900. He said he was going to check and see if he could get it fixed. At 3:30 in the afternoon he called to say I could pick the bike up TODAY. The shop rethreaded the pedal mountings and put on my racing pedals. I could not get the bike from him yesterday, but will pick it up at 0800 tomorrow before formation.

I Missed This Formation Last Week, But Not Very Much

Last week when I was learning how to do the paperwork for the drug test, I missed a formation in which our commander reminded everyone present that they must always take their weapon to the chow hall--unless they are on an assignment where weapons are not allowed. My class was one of the leave your weapon kind. So I did not join the other hundred or so men and women who did forty pushups in cadence (or as many as they could).

I have a photo someone emailed to me, but I cannot get Blogger to upload it. I'll ask someone who is better than I am with photos to see if they can fix it.

I hope they looked as happier than these guys.

Communion and the Lack Thereof

This morning in the Anthrax Chapel we had a communion service. It is the first Sunday in Lent and our first communion service in our mobilization training. One of the lieutenants plays the guitar at our services and the music was especially good this morning.

So now it's 9pm (2100), we have to get up at 0450 for PT at 0520. It will be 21 degrees with a 10 mph wind. We got a new roommate so there are now four of us in the room. In the Army of the 1970s, we would all be trying to go to sleep and bitching about PT in the cold and asking why we have to get up so early and complaining in general. But our room is almost silent. I am typing. Another guy is taking to his family on a vid phone on his computer, but he has his headphones on so we only hear when he talks. The other two guys are surfing the net or doing something else that makes no more sound than a mouse click.

None of us is talking to each other. We are four individuals on laptops. But at 0500 we will be bitching together, then at 0520 we will be freezing together, so we do have more interaction than most people.

Tried Out the Chaplain's Bike and Broke It!

I rode the chaplain's bike today to try it out. I was going to change to my pedals--Shimano Dura Ace for those who wonder what kind--and noticed the pedals on the chaplain's Cannondale R400 were on crooked. He said his daughter rode the bike so I thought I should try to ride it as is. Bad decision. The pedals actually were stripped and on of them came off. So one week before the race my one-speed bike will be gone before the end of the week and my borrowed bike has one pedal.

I told some of my friends the position I was was in. There advice: (paraphrased) "Gussman you are [screwed]."

I called the chaplain and he couldn't have been nicer. Although I offered to pay for a new set of cranks, he said his son put the pedals on crooked and he will try to get the bike fixed for next Sunday. So despite the stripped pedals, I may still be able to race. I guess if the bike can't be fixed I can try to rent one from the one bike shop in Lawton. Otherwise, I can only ride the clown bike. And the shifter is broken on it, so I don't think I'll do very well on a one-speed clown bike.

Stay tuned.

Got My HEMMT License; Rode in Oklahoma Winds

Today I had a 20+ mile ride in a large Army vehicle in the morning and a one-speed bike in the afternoon. After safety videos, classes, written tests, hands-on tests and driving in the motor pool, I drove the HEMMT in traffic and out on the ranges on both tank trails and paved roads. So now I have a license to drive yet another vehicle that did not exist during my first enlistment.

Actually, the only vehicle the Army still uses from my first enlistment is the M35A2 2-1/2-ton "Deuce and a Half" truck. And that is used only by the National Guard. I understand that by the time we get back they will all be retired from active service and replaced by the LMTV (Light Medium Tactical Vehicle).

LMTV


Fort Sill
We had most of the afternoon off so I rode around next Sunday's Race course backward. The wind was 20-30 mph steady with a high of 50 degrees. The terrain here is almost all rolling hills. Never flat. I was riding all of 5mph up some of the hills. But it was great to be out on the bike. I might be riding tomorrow afternoon with one of the pilots.

Borrowed Bike for the Race

Just before Noon I went to the Post Chapel and picked up a Cannondale road bike from one of the post chaplains. He offered to loan me one of his bikes for the race next Sunday. He is not a racer, but an avid rider. How avid a rider you ask? When I was getting ready to take the bike outside he said he needed to pump up the rear tire. He pulled a floor pump with a pressure gauge from behind the door in his office. A guy who keeps a floor pump in his office is somebody who loves to ride.

I will be going out to ride on Saturday. I did not ride or do any PT on Friday. My shoulder is bothering me and my right foot still hurts from the plantar fasciitis that was bothering me from last October. Joe and Gretchen, the physical therapists who treated me before I left told me to listen to my shoulder. I am trying, but my shoulder never says anything I want to hear.

One More Race Before Deployment

On March 8 at 0930, Fort Sill is hosting a 17-mile bike race through the middle of one of the ranges. They won't be firing that day. I registered last night on Bikereg.com. It looks like a citizen race from the registration. I called and they have a 55+ age group, which will be my first race in that category. It is a great course, rolling with several long and short 4-6% climbs and one 40+mph descent. I rode the course on the one-speed today and am hoping to borrow a bike with gears from the post chaplain tomorrow--he's an avid rider.

Drugs in the Army--Then and Now

This drug testing class is not very much fun. Forty hours of how to fill out paperwork and supervise urinalysis drug tests. This program started in 1971 and continues with more and more emphasis for nearly 40 years.

From the perspective of someone who served at both ends of the program, the class never addresses the really important difference 38 years of drug testing has made in the military. For me, the primary difference is that people inclined to use drugs know they are going to be hassled for all of their career and, thankfully, they mostly decide to get out.

Back in the 70s, that was not the case.

When our unit got a new platoon sergeant in the 1970s, everybody hoped it was one of the young guys with only one tour in Viet Nam, or better yet, none. Because you never knew back then if the guy running the tank platoon was going to be an experienced NCO who knew tanks and soldiering really well, or a burnout who was just trying to get to 20. The great thing that continuous testing does it make it hard for addicts to stay in. Most soldiers who really want to do drugs end up getting out before they are in charge of anything.

Most, not all. The bind the Army is in is that they instill pride in us. But pride is a sword that cuts in two directions. Once you make a soldier proud in a positive sense, you have given that soldier everything he needs to believe he can do anything. So there will always be a few cases of the senior sergeants and officers who take the pride that got them the rank and let it convince them they are smarter than everybody else.

Wrong End of the Digestive System

All this week--Monday through Friday from 0830 to 1630--I am in a class with 40 other sergeants on how to monitor drug tests--specifically how to fill out al the paperwork necessary to properly conduct a drug test. All of us were assigned this job as an additional duty. There are people from the unit I am in, various units around Fort Sill, drill sergeants and recruiters. Unfortunately, this testing is necessary because no one wants to give soldier on drugs a loaded weapon.

But I really feel bad for three people in that class. One is a cook, the other two are the instructors. First the cook. For various reasons, the Army does not have cooks cook our food. When my friend the cook gets deployed, he will be filling out papers about food service, but will not be baking, roasting or frying. Although the Army won't officially let him put our buns in the oven, he will be putting his initials on bottles of urine. I would rather see my friend the cook be a cook. But he's a good soldier, so he will be working the Exit of the digestive system rather than the entrance.

Maybe a worse situation than the cook is the instructors. These two must face a class of 40 or so men and women who have taught many classes and present information that dull hardly begins to describe. Both of the instructors are good natured and resist the temptation to make any of the jokes that are being whispered in various corners of the room. And since they are experienced teachers in this subject, they have heard all of these jokes over and over.

Tobacco

If you have been reading my recent posts you know that we are banned from sex and alcohol (except on pass) for the duration of our deployment. But a few a indulgences remain within bounds. There are no limits on music so devotees of Death Metal, Gangsta Rap, Country and Gospel can be roommates. Also tobacco, both smoking and chewing, is allowed. The smokers have to go outside to designated smoking areas, but they are no more restricted than in public places in civilian life. The 20-year-olds can, for the most part, smoke and pass the PT test. The most fit 30-somethings can also smoke and run.

The weirder tobacco habit, at least for me is chewing tobacco. A lot of ex-smokers turn to chew because they can be more fit and still use tobacco. Since I worked for several years on the dock at Yellow Freight, it looks reasonably normal to me to see a half dozen men in the motor pool with their lower lip swelled out spitting into Gatorade bottles. Gatorade had a wider mouth than a soda bottle.

What will take a while for me to get used to is seeing young women chewing and spitting into those bottles. I know we are all soldiers, but seeing women the age of my daughters carrying spit bottles still looks wrong to me. Maybe after a year, I will be completely used to it. I hope not.

Best Day in OK

Today we had nearly the entire day off. We had one formation at 1300 hours followed by a briefing from the commander than off the rest of the day. I went to chapel at 0830 then rode for more than an hour. After the the meeting and formation I rode again. altogether I rode 38 miles, the most I have ridden in one day this year. Usually riding in Oklahoma means fighting a steady 25mph wind. Today the wind was only 15 mph. It seemed like still air after the usual wind here. The temp hit 55 degrees, also better than the last few days.

Besides the bike riding, the Mob Cafe served real turkey with cornbread dressing for lunch and dinner. It was really good.

Tomorrow we are up before 5 for morning PT. But one day of sleeping in until 0730 was really nice.

Anthrax Chapel for Church

I returned to the Anthrax Chapel this morning for Church. The last time I was in it, I was part of a gas mask training exercise that ended with a test of how fast we could put on our mask. This morning there were no gas masks, but many of us had weapons.


Church looks different when 40 or so men and women in camouflage with weapons are singing hymns. The sermon was about the difficulty of hearing God's voice. The chaplain is a man who readily tells jokes and had one on himself on this topic. He opened the sermon by saying that if we traveled back in time a hundred years or more the thing we would notice most was the silence. (Since I was seated in the Amen corner, I shouted Amen at this point. I was alone.) Then he pointed to his shirt pockets saying he had two cell phones, and when he is home he lives alone, leaves the TV on and listens to the radio/CD the whole time he is in the car. His advice was to hear God's voice by seeing needs and meeting them.

But for many soldiers, they can have more silence in a barracks than in many places back in the real world. Soldiers are serious about sleep and lights out rules mean the metal music and slasher movie fans have to put on headphones at lights out.

We don't have formation today until 1300 (1pm) and the whole barracks is quiet because most everybody is sleeping in. Many of these soldiers live in homes with TVs and other media on constantly.

Going to war may be the best chance they have for a few months of real quiet.

Then and Now--My Team

Early in 1976, when I made sergeant for the second time and I was a new tank commander, I was in charge of three men, my crew. We trained together at Fort Carson, Colorado, for several months with the specific goal of qualifying at annual tank gunnery. As an ex-Air Force soldier, I really wanted to qualify distinguished (expert in tank weapons), since the Army considers service in the Air Force somewhere below the Cub Scouts on a difficulty scale. The three men on my crew were 19, 19 and 21 years old. One of the 19-year-olds was married with one child and one on the way. He was my loader. The other was married with no kids; he was my driver. The 21-year-old was single and my gunner. I was among the oldest 25% of the unit at 23-years-old.

We did fire distinguished in August of that year. Partly because I drilled my crew more than most of the other tank commanders and partly because my gunner was mostly a rumpled, grumbling lousy soldier, but he was an awesome gunner. The targets on the final test, the moving range, were pop-up panels the size of tanks in the open and tank turrets behind berms. We mostly fired armor piercing, a round with a flat trajectory at distances below 1000 meters. But the final shot that got us the top category was a truck-sized target at 2350 meters. We had to fire a high explosive shell at that target. HE is low velocity with an arc of 50 meters above the gun at 2350 meters distance. My gunner punched a hole in the center of that target with the second shot.


Tank Commander is wearing the beret, loader is wearing the helmet. The driver sits in the middle, front, just visible underneath the gun. The gunner is inside the turret just ahead of the tank commander.

My team now is simply three members of the maintenance team who tell me when and where they are when they are not in the barracks or at work. In the 1970s, I would have described the typical soldier as a 19-year-old from either the inner city or the rural south, married with one child and one on the way. His wife was 17. He enlisted because he needed a job with health benefits.

My team now are a 20-year-old welder, a 21-year-old dispatch clerk, and a 47-year-old mechanic. I see them at formations and get text messages from them when they go to the PX or the gym. I do work with the mechanic at times, but for the most part, everyone has different training specific to their jobs. Very different from the training combat units go through.

Anthrax Chapel on Improbable.com

Marc Abrahams, editor of "The Annals of Improbable Research" (Subscribe Today!) and the Web site www.improbable.com, posted The Anthrax Chapel on his site, complete with my camera phone picture, properly oriented. This may be the first connection between the Ig Nobel Prize and training barracks at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.


Marc at AIR staff meeting

"What Exactly is a Processing a Person?"

Today I was the escort for a soldier who is going home and not deploying with us. I told a friend who is a chemical engineer that I was getting this soldier processed.

"Processed," he said. "What Exactly is a Processing a Person?" He said his mind went straight from chemical processing to food processing to processing a chicken. I laughed at the image then told explained that processing in the Army means filling out all the papers necessary to get someone in, out or to a new duty assignment.


I could have posted some really disgusting chicken processing photos, but the cut-in-pieces image seemed appropriate.

I will try to be careful to explain the acronyms and Army-specific terms I use, but every day I am being "processed" further into the abyss of Army language. I am re-reading Strunk and White (The Elements of Style) now so I keep standard English in my mind while the acronyms pile up.




By the way (BTW), my friend knows by now that any three-letter military acronym with the letter 'F' in the middle is always the same participle used as an adjective. So a BFR (Big F#&king Rock) is a large stone and if a soldier uses it, BFF may or may not mean Best Friends Forever.

Specialist Dust Pan

One of the enlisted men in our unit lost his room key three times in a week causing him to be late for formation. His squad leader decided to make it harder for the young man to lose his room key, so his key ring is now connected to a black, metal dust pan. At every formation and when we are not training in the field, he has to carry his keys on a dust pan. 

If you haven't ever carried an M-16 rifle and a dust pan, I don't recommend it. By Saturday he should be able to turn in his dust pan and just carry a key ring. I, on the other hand, may become Mr. Clean. This morning I took a half-dozen soldiers form the motor pool back to the barracks to sweep and mop stairwells and hallways. Then two of us paste waxed a hallway floor in the afternoon. They tell us soon we will be training hard. Tomorrow I get driver training in a HMMTT fueler.

Anthrax Chapel

One of my co-workers back in PA asked for a photo of The Anthrax Chapel. It's not much more than a name painted on the wall above the door of a rectangular room in a military barracks. I guess about 20 by 50 feet. As noted before, this classroom also serves as the chapel for our unit. And according to one of our intelligence sergeants, the same room is where soldiers here got shots for anthrax immunization during the anthrax alert following September 11, 2001. So someone had the bright idea of calling the place The Anthrax Chapel.

This is a camera phone shot and I could not save it rotated 90 degrees. So turn your computer to the right if you want to see the photo correctly.

All Day Cleaning

Today most of the company was in convoy training or sleeping in after midnight fueling training. The few of us that were left had little to do so we cleaned and reorganized the stuff we are using while we are here in Oklahoma. So I volunteered to clean the latrine. With one platoon training all night and other people out in the field, the latrine looked bad, so I decided to clean it rather than wait for something to happen.

The other soldiers were surprised I would volunteer for that, but they weren't running after me saying, "Can I clean the latrine too?" So I spent the morning cleaning the walls and floors and restocking the supplies. One of the officers paid for real cleaning supplies (Clorox and Clorox spray cleaners) because we only have Simple Green and with all those guys, I wanted to clean with real chlorine.

In the afternoon I saw one of the sergeants in the headquarters company picking up trash behind the barracks building, so I told her I had a few soldiers killing time and we would get the front. When I got back to the motor pool, the idle soldiers were cleaning Humvees and the shop. So I got a bag and spent an hour picking up trash, mostly cigarette butts.

At the end of the day, the motor sergeant said the tool van for deployment would not be leaving for another three weeks so I could take the fixed-gear bike out of the van and ride it till then. He didn't hare to say it twice. I rode 10 miles after final formation yesterday. Riding a bike here MUCH harder than in PA. More on that later.


We have partitions--but I have been in barracks that looked like this and may be again.

Multi-Use Rooms

On Sunday the main classroom in the barracks is also the Chapel and the movie room. In fact the room has "Anthrax Chapel" painted above the doors on the inside. This morning there was a sign on the right door listing chapel services at 0830, 1000, 1800 and 1900--two Catholic and two Protestant services. On the left door was a photocopied sign for tonight's movie which starts at 2000 hours, right after the last chapel service. The Sunday night movie: Righteous Kill

Mob Cafe--Intellectual Corner

Seated near the drinks in the far corner of the Mob Cafe are the soldiers with some college who hang together and make jokes almost devoid of 4-letter words. If the Mob Cafe is a high school cafeteria, these are the smart ass kids that don't like the jocks.

Tonight I was doing my laundry when one of this group walked into the laundry room to take his stuff from the dryer. He is an ex-Marine with a shaved head in his late 20s. He was talking on a cell phone as he emptied the dryer. He was also carrying a cup he found that says, "Retired Navy." As he walked by, I noticed he was wearing a red CCCP t-shirt (the Cyrillic alphabet letters for Soviet Socialist Republic), blue sweat pants, shower shoes, and carrying an M16 rifle. An ensemble you just don't see everywhere.

Mobilization Cafe, Part 2

I got several comments back on the Mobilization Cafe. A co-worker who is also a Sopranos fan loved the idea that everyone calls it the (long O) Mob Cafe, but it looks like the Mob Cafe--like Tony, Silvio, Paulie, Bobby, et al would be sipping espresso and planning revenge hits.

Alas, there is no repose and no barista. In fact, the coffee is a good instant, but it's instant. And while the food is fairly good and there is lots of it, three meals per day more than 1,000 soldiers eat in just two hours.

At any given time there are more than 100 people in line. At a recent lunch I counted as follows: 50 people outside the door in line, 25 people between the door and the sign-in desk, 50 more between the desk and the serving line. It took 12 minutes to get to the sign-in desk, then 12 more minutes to get to the servers. Two minutes later I got the hot foot, dessert and went through the salad bar. Two more minutes to get drinks. Usually, I come to chow alone because of checking something on line or talking to someone. So while I am waiting, I look for someone who is 20 or 30 people ahead I can eat half of lunch with them. Typically, we eat in 10 to 15 minutes, so if you sit with someone who got their food 10 minutes before, they are done two minutes after you sit down. There are also a few of the older enlisted men who get to chow early and eat slow, so I can sit with them even if they have been eating for 15 minutes.

Today, the dinner choices were spaghetti with meat sauce, baked or fried chicken, and lasagna. Squash, baked or mashed potatoes and corn on the cob for vegetables. The fast foods tonight were corn dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches. A salad bar with fruit and about five dessert choices are available at every meal. The food really is pretty good. The plates and cups are styrofoam, the silverware is white plastic.

Weapons 24/7

In my room with my M16A4. We just pulled out all of our field equipment for a platoon inspection.



Tonight at 6pm (1800 hours) we drew our weapons from the arms room--permanently. We will have our weapons with us for all training until we leave. And it makes everything we do some part of weapons training. Because if it rains, our weapon gets wet along with us. And we have to clean them. The smart soldiers clean their weapons THEN themselves. I hope that neither me nor any member of my team is the first one to forget, misplace, or God Forbid, lose their weapon.

Sleep in a Building , Eat in a Tent

For the two months or so we are in stateside training, we are living in three-story concrete buildings more than 600 feet long with four entrances on each side. The two main buildings our unit lives in are side by side and together are almost 1/4-mile long. In front of the buildings is a 100-foot wide paved area with parking near the buildings. On the far side of paved strip, more or less centered between the buildings is a 200-foot-long, 100-foot-wide pair of tents with shipping container-sized enclosures in between. The tents are our dining facility called The Mobilization Cafe.

If you are curious this Web site has photos of the Mob (long O) Cafe, our barracks and other local landmarks.

Each side of the Mob Cafe seats 288 soldiers at tables that seat 16. I'll say more about the food and the service in my next post, but the seating is definitely high school cafeteria with uniforms. Junior officers sit with junior officers, pilots with pilots, fuelers with fuelers, sergeants with sergeants (also junior with junior, senior with senior), enlisted soldiers divide by age and sex, above and below 25 years old. For all the dividing up by age and sex and rank and job, almost no one divides by race. When I first joined in 1972 I was surprised how integrated the military was compared to civilian life. It's even more so now. But if all mechanics of all races sit together and talk shop, they don't generally sit with clerks and fuelers. I don't think that will ever change.

Day 2 at the Range--I Qualified

This morning we went to the rifle qualification range. It has pop-up targets from 50 meters to 300 meters that come up randomly for 3 to 5 seconds. To qualify, you have to hit 23 of 40 targets with 40 rounds of ammunition. I got 27. I passed. Since I was last on an M-16 range in 1972, I was very happy just to pass.

Cheap Bike Helmets

Apparently the Army REALLY wants soldiers and their families wearing bicycle helmets--or at least they want to remove one excuse for not wearing one. "Helmets are expensive" is not something you could hear at the Post Exchange (PX). My folding bike showed up in a shipping container that will be here just two weeks. I won't have much chance to ride it, but I took it out anyway, just because I miss riding a lot. My wife mailed one of my helmets here, but till it arrives I thought I could buy a helmet if it wasn't too expensive. I went to the PX to buy a helmet and found ANSI approved adult helmets on sale less than half price. So I bought one.

The original price: $4.28
This week: $1.99!!!!

The original price is the same price as a Venti Carmel Macchiato (my favorite) at Starbucks. The sale price is less than a tall coffee.

"That's What a Soldier Looks Like"

Today I had the biggest anxiety attack since this whole deployment started. It was first of two days of live fire with the M-16. Although I spent 11 years in the military back in the 70s and 80s, I have not fired an M-16 on a qualification range since Air Force basic training in February in 1972. Worse, in AF basic we did not go through the whole qualification process: zeroing the weapons, pop-up targets, night fire, firing in gas masks. In the Air Force, they handed us a weapon, we shot at some targets, they took the weapons and that was the one and only day in my Air Force career I handled a personal weapon.

When I joined the Army, I went straight to tank training. For the next eight years my personal weapon was a 45 cal. pistol. So this morning we boarded a bus to go to the range wearing our new bulletproof vests and helmets.

On the first range we zeroed the weapon. To zero, you shoot three rounds at a paper target at 25 meters. To zero the weapon, you must put 5 rounds in a 4 cm square. Since the M16A4 we use has both traditional iron sights and the new close quarters optical device, we have to zero the weapon twice, once with each sight.

So to zero the weapon with both sights, you have to shoot at least 12 rounds--six with each sight--and hit at least five out of six. Most of the 25 of us who were shooting fired 36 to 48 rounds. I fired 60. A few soldiers fired more. One soldier, a female sergeant, fired 12 rounds and was done.

We fire side by side in 8-foot-wide "lanes" with very prominent numbers. When the safety NCO told the tower the woman in Lane 6 zeroed with 12 rounds, the tower told her to walk down the embankment we shoot from and clear her weapon. As she walked toward the ammo point to turn in her unused ammunition, the tower told all the rest fo us to turn around and look at the female sergeant walking to the ammo point.

The sergeant in the tower said on the PA system, "Take a look ladies and gentlemen, that's what a soldier looks like. Now turn around."

Horror Movies Before Breakfast

This morning we all got up at 0430 for PT at 0530 and at 0510, they canceled it. No one asked why, we just went back to bed. But one of my roommates got up an hour later, went to chow early and came back before 0700 when I woke up. When I sat up in my upper bunk, I saw one of my roommates hunched over his computer with his back to me at the other end of the room watching a movie--Saw V.

The guy in the lower bunk on my side of the room was already gone to breakfast. Our other roommate was still asleep. Since it was time to get up anyway, the movie fan took off his head phones. As I dressed I heard yelling and screaming. I had set up the coffee pot the night before so I turned on the switch while my other two roommates stared at the screen.

While the coffee started to drip into the pot, a woman was being electrocuted in a bathtub on screen. A few seconds later, both of my roommates started sniffing and got alarmed. They both turned around and said, "What's burning?" Then they realized I was making coffee.

For a minute they were having a real multimedia experience, thinking they could smell the on-screen murder.

As I reported before, we get weekly warnings that porn is illegal and can get you busted for watching it. From the 15 minutes I saw of this movie, it's OK to watch people get crushed, stabbed, electrocuted, and bled to death. At least they weren't having sex!!